I've been back on a bicycle for about 1.5 years, and have been slowly raising my weekly mileage so that I am generaly riding between 75 and 100 miles a week. Two of the guys I ride with announced that they were going to ride a benefit century south of us and were looking for others to join them. I decided to go along.

Now part of the reason I went is that the ride was advertised as FLAT. Where I usually ride is fairly hilly. Not mountainous, but hilly. I figured a flat century would really be like two 50 mile group rides and not so bad.

I didn't count on three things: 1. It wasn't flat. My altimeter showed 5200 feet of ascent over the loop. 2. It was HOT-95 degrees by noon. 3. Headwinds. I know it isn't possible, but the last 30 miles felt like I had a headwind no matter which way the route turned.

Anyway, we trucked along at a good clip through the first thirty miles or so, stopping for 5 minutes or less at the SAG stations to refill bottles and grab food. The next thirty miles we met up with a group of riders that we knew and pulled along with them, so that we got past my personal record (a metric century, or 62.5 miles) in good shape.

At that point things started to go downhill. I don't think that I had eaten enough the day and morning before the ride, and I was having trouble getting enough calories in. You'd think that a clydesdale like me (205, but down from 264 over the last 2 years) would have all the calories I would need, but it just isn't so. You can't burn your beer gut up by just riding. I've read it, but like a kid with a hot stove, sometimes you've got to get burnt to really know it.

The last 10 miles were pure misery. My pace dropped through the floor, I was so dehydrated that I had largely stopped sweating, and I had absolutely no fuel left in the tank. I made it, but all I could think when I was done was "why did I think this would be fun?"

Its now the next morning and I am a lot happier about the entire event. I did finish, albeit not as strongly as I wanted, and I learned a lot in the process. I have had my sights set on the 6 Gap Century for a year, and I think that it may actually be possible. (I've still got to try one of the climbs on it--Hogpen Gap--that has a mile and a half of 18% grade in the middle of an 8 mile climb, before I fully commit). Overall, I have to say it was a good experience.