Road Cycling - heading out to do my first century...

myself and my co-workers/bosses are off to do an all-day ride of sorts. i think the bosses are gonna cut out early, but at least two of us are gonna go all the way from berkeley, up through the hills down into castro valley, over the dumbarton bridge, back up to half-moon bay, then up the coast into SF. gonna be grueling, but oh so much fun! i'll post a ride report when i get back if i'm coherent enough to type. :)

Sounds like much more than a century. Have fun.

myself and my co-workers/bosses are off to do an all-day ride of sorts. i think the bosses are gonna cut out early, but at least two of us are gonna go all the way from berkeley, up through the hills down into castro valley, over the dumbarton bridge, back up to half-moon bay, then up the coast into SF. gonna be grueling, but oh so much fun! i'll post a ride report when i get back if i'm coherent enough to type. :)

Congratulations on prepping for your first. I'm still looking forward to mine. I already feel rewarded, having gone from doing 10 mile rides at 17 mph my first several times, to 20 miles at about 20 mph on my last ride. Far from being comfortable about trying a century, but who knows...maybe in another 6-12 months?

holy cats! i think the mileage was about 70-80, i'm still waiting for the total.. but with 4 killer hills spread out along the route, it certainly felt like much longer. it was absolutely beautiful! we finished in about 12 hours, which included a couple stops for food, and a bunch of little stops to rest and check our route. we weren't going out to break any records or anything, just a nice, relaxing ride...hehe..riiight. views were incredible and i took a bunch of pictures with my manual camera. the thing that really kinda killed me was that i had food poinsoning on saturday, and i probably shouldn't have gone, but i feel so much better now than i did before, and i was at probably about 70% for most of the day....the first hill was clarendon st., which we wound up walking up about 1/3 of it. i wasn't quite warmed up enough for it yet, and wasn't in the right mental state for such a steep hill that early on (we came up on it about 10 minutes after we left the house). but everything after that was pretty smooth sailing. 93 was pretty rough going up over la canata, crushing headwind, no shoulder, tons of traffic, but at that point, i was leading and setting the pace, and i guess my friend realised that i do better when i'm in front, so we kept it that way pretty much until the end. i wound up walking up skyline ave in daly city. it was the last big hill of the day, and it was super foggy, super steep, and just too damn long for my tiny legs and 38/23 gearing to power up. that one came at pretty much the end of the day, so i didn't feel too bad about walking it. the descents were all really nice. not too many quick turns, so it was nice to be able to sort of relax and take in the views. hwy 1 was chock full of rollers until after el grenada, when the hills got a little more aggressive.

thie thing i love about going on huge-ass ride is that when i come home, i just get to totally gorge myself on food. all in all, it was a super fun ride, and i'm pretty proud that my legs held out. the "endurance" vitamin water is great to drink right in the middle of something like that, i found out. anyway, i'm off to work now!

Great job. How'd you get back to Berkeley? Ferry?

BART from downtown SF at like, 10pm. found out today from my friend that the route we did was pretty much 70 miles, maybe a little more. sure felt like 100 though with all the hills and the wind. he's already got the next trip planned and he said i'll DEFINITELY be needing a triple for it, and i'll be hating him ;). he told me a little about it, but i forgot already. but yeah, i guess it's gonna be harsh. i can't wait, and this time, i won't get food poisoning two nights before. :)

BART from downtown SF at like, 10pm. found out today from my friend that the route we did was pretty much 70 miles, maybe a little more. sure felt like 100 though with all the hills and the wind. he's already got the next trip planned and he said i'll DEFINITELY be needing a triple for it, and i'll be hating him ;). he told me a little about it, but i forgot already. but yeah, i guess it's gonna be harsh. i can't wait, and this time, i won't get food poisoning two nights before. :)

Congrats -- sounds like you had fun, which is the most important part. I don't care that there are riders who can do double centuries -- 70+ miles is a long way to move your body without the use of the internal combustion engine, period. You should feel very good about meeting that challenge.

.