Originally Posted by
wphamilton
Thanks for the encouraging words badger. It's still taking me 3 hours for the 50 mile workout, so I think I'll wait on a century until I can bring that down some. Although ... the pattern seems to be that the shorter rides go faster after your longer rides become routine so it is tempting.
Speed is all relative! I've got some courses that I'm proud to complete in over 16 mph.
My advise to you is to go out and do an organized ride. You shouldn't have any trouble handling a metric century or more. You'll find out real quick that your better off than a lot of other people, plus it's a great way to train.
I used to think the same as you about myself until I did my first organized metric century. I started out slow and in the back. I got sick of riding around all of those slow pokes, but I didn't want to blow up later in the ride. I couldn't take it any longer, so I had to go on. After about 10 miles (on the mountain climb) I started passing people like crazy. For the rest of the ride I passed at least 400 or 500 riders. Talk about an adrenaline rush passing that many people. I soon realized I wasn't as bad as I thought. Since then I've been getting incrementally faster.