On Saturday I completed my
first century ride. It was the El Tour de Tucson, and the long route came out at 106 miles on my Garmin. I finished in 6 hours 12 minutes. It was raining the entire time, and had been for the entire previous day, so not only were the roads wet, but in several places there was as much as 12-15" of water running across the road in dips and, in one place, a normally dry stream bed that was about 15" deep and looked like white water rapids.
It was very cold, and I was way underdressed for it. Temps started in the 40s, and were in the low 50s when I finished. All I had on was normal cotton socks, a normal bib shorts, a long-sleeved compression shirt, two short-sleeved jerseys (there's layers for ya hehe), full-fingered gloves, and a cloth skull cap under my helmet. This wasn't nearly enough, and I was hypothermic at the end of the ride.
The original plan was to ride as a three-man group, but we broke up right off the start line when one guy had a mechanical issue I thought was him throwing his chain. I had to chase down the lead guy who didn't know. He went back to help, and I pulled over to wait for the to catch up. We'd started near the front, and I waited for the entire peleton to pass me by, and then thought I must have missed them in the crowd (turns out they were still at the start line working on the bike, which turned out to have a broken rear derailleur).
Thinking I was now behind them, I started riding and chased down the herd and then spent the next six hours passing people, right up to the finish line. Came in 463rd out of 1373 finishers of the 106 mile course. Thousands more joined the ride at shorter distances.
For a 270 lb uber-clyde guy turning 45 in 6 weeks, I'm pretty happy with how I did.