Tour de St. George

Well, our first century ride of the year is complete. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever made my body do -- EVER! Rick and I knew there would be a lot of hills, but we figured we could make our bodies do anything for one day, right? We prepared moderately well for this ride and were blessed with excellent weather -- about 75 degrees, clear, sunny skies, and no wind. It was perfect...at least until we got our bikes out the morning of the ride to get started and noticed that one of Rick's spokes was broken on his rear wheel.

We sadly went to the start of the ride and watched 400 riders take off without us. We took the wheel to a bike shop and they had it fixed within about 30 minutes. So Rick and I got ready and left about 45 minutes behind the pack. We rode along, feeling great, until we missed a turn (because we both misread the street sign -- go figure) and pedaled an extra 15 minutes or so until we realized our mistake. We got back on track and then missed a second turn (not our fault this time because the road was not marked) and pedaled another extra 20 or so minutes. By this time we're more than an hour behind the pack with no hope of catching up.

When we reached our first hill, we pedaled up without a problem and felt great. Going up our second hill was when everyone going back passed us on the other side of the road. We continued to ride, feeling great and finished the first 50 miles (which was 60 miles for us because of our two detours) with plenty of energy to continue. (By the way, we actually passed four people before the halfway point.) We took a 45 lunch break and then started the second 50 miles.

As we started, I was happy to see that only the first 17 miles were uphill and figured it would be easy riding going downhill for 33 miles. What we didn't realize was that the uphill on the second half was twice the climb as the first half. When I was about 2 miles from the top, I started to cry and then couldn't breathe. Rick and I stopped for about 10 minutes so I could catch my breath again. (We had been passed by several of the SAG wagons informing us that the rest stops and the support vehicles were ending soon -- yes, we were WAY behind schedule.) We told them not to wait for us and that we would be fine (or so I hoped).

After reaching the top, we hit a flat area then a VERY steep downhill that required constant brakes. That was for about 1/2 mile, and then there was no more downhill! So, my 33 miles of anticipated coasting turned out to be 33 miles of constant pedaling. My legs ached, my neck was stiff, and my right knee started to give out. I barely made it back, but I did! We rode 107 miles total in about 8 hours (averaging 13.1 mph). That was way behind what we hoped, but we knew that we weren't in great shape and we were both packing an extra 20 pounds or so that didn't help. We're hoping to tackle another couple of centuries this year, and hopefully we'll be in better shape for them. Maybe even the STP (Seattle to Portland - 200 miles) -- hmmmm, we'll see about that one.