I was debating on what type/distance ride I was going to do today when I read mscycler's post regarding his 1st metric. I said what the heck, I'll try one too .

Mind you, this is my 1st year back on a bike in 13 years and July has been the 1st month that I've been able to ride consistently due to a herniated disc. I had eaten a HUGE steak a few hours previously and had a lot of liquid in my system (32oz. of water, 16 oz. of OJ and 24 oz. of Cytomax), so I THOUGHT I was all set.

The first 25 mile loop was fine, I held back a little and averaged 17.5 mph, but my 24 oz. bottle of Cytomax was now empty. No biggie I thought, because I felt I still had plenty of gas in the tank. The 2nd 25-mile loop was pretty good too. At one point a hornet attached itself to my shin and the mean sum***** stung the bejeezus out of me. The pain gave me an adrenaline boost and I averaged 18.4 mph over the 2nd 25 miles. So I figured I'd ride another 6 miles into the loop and head back to make it a metric century. Well, at about mile 51 I bonked hard and really suffered over the next few miles. At mile 59 I stopped at a gas station, drank a 20 oz. orange soda, a 20 oz. Lipton Brisk and ate a handful of cashews --- all they had was a vending machine, so I had to take what I could get before I collapsed . When I finished, I stopped at a quickie mart, drank 32 oz. of Gatorade and ate one of those packaged ice cream cone thingies. I didn't even care that I had completed the metric, I was just happy I was done. I averaged 17.7 mph overall. My legs were tight and spent, so I stretched a bit, relaxed, got in the car and started heading home.

About 5 minutes into the drive back home I started to feel woozy and sick to my stomach. I pulled over, put the seat back and tried to relax, but I simply felt like death. I couldn’t tell if my head felt like a brick or a balloon. My gut felt like it had a liter of warm vodka in it and I felt like I just lost a really ugly bar fight. I then started to get cold sweats and my heart started beating really fast. I got out of the car and paced around dizzily. At one point, I tried talking to myself out loud and my speech was slurred and barely coherent . After about 10 minutes of that, I did start to feel a little better, so I got back into the car and headed home. 3 minutes later, here comes that near death feeling again. I get home and half a step before getting to my door, and w/out any warning I blast out a few, gut-wrenching blasts of acidic vomit out of my nose and throat. Blowing my nose was fun after that.

I've since had an apple and a big plate of pasta w/ marinara. I'm feeling relatively much better, but next time, I will be so much more prepared to do a long ride the right way.

Not too sure why so many of us did a 1st time metric this weekend, but now we can say we did!