I knew that today would be met with some firsts - Riding road with a big group, my first metric century. I am happy to say I completed both of them and then some.
Everyone Getting Ready to head out:
The ride started off pretty awesome, the Clermont police blocked off all the major intersections in Clermont. From out of the parking lot and for the first mile or two, the ride was downhill. Very much downhill. It was at this point I saw the fastest time of the day - 41 miles per hour. Let me tell you what - that is hauling ass on a bicycle. I almost decided to just stick with the 35 miler and up to the point where I hit about 45 miles or so, I loved it. From about mile 34 to mile 50, the wind was just unrelenting. It was at about mile 50 when someone having fun, swapped the directional sign telling riders where to go sending me the wrong way...unfortunately I didn't notice for about 5 miles, so I ended up with an extra 10 miles. Unfortunately that also mean that I had to traverse about 5 extra hills both ways. That sucked. I went so far as to call the bike shop and asked to be picked up in a support vehicle, but they told me I'd have to make my way back to the official course. I did manage to make it back and with about 7 miles left to go, I met the guys in the SAG van. The gave me ice cold gatorade and water (and I poured a great deal of it on me to cool off). They encouraged me to ride on because there was only one more really steep hill (as I am looking at the hill from beside the van thinking no freaking way). At this point I said to myself, just do it, and they reassured me that if I finally gave out, that they would be about 5 minutes behind me. Now that I was paranoid about going the wrong way, I kept pulling out the GPS and checking, just to be sure. There was really only one more seriously challenging hill that they neglected to mention on the way back, but it was like an eighth mile from the shop and the glorious payoff to the climb was the major downhill on the other side (which without pedaling had you doing 32mph).
I ended up doing 74.93 miles (I went past the metric century (100K/62.5 mi) by more than 10 miles).
Ride Stats and Maps:
Ride Time: 4:35:26
Stopped Time: 1:06:45
Distance: 74.93 miles
Average: 16.32 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 41.46 miles/h
Ascent: 1785 feet
Descent: 1785 feet
Calories: 4258
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