Ten hundred-mile (century) bike rides in ten months

Wikipedia defines a century ride as “…a bicycle ride of 100 miles (160.9 km) or more within 12 hours, usually as a cycling club-sponsored event.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_ride). Well, starting in March and ending in December 2012, I completed a total of ten such rides, though only two of them would meet the definition in that they were “…a cycling club-sponsored event.” Only the Reston and Berryville century rides in August and September, respectively, were organized events.  (My experience from the 2012 Reston Century is described below, and my experience from an earlier year Berryville Century is described farther below.)  The other eight rides, evenly spaced - one ride per month, I completed on my own, i.e., riding solo in my own organization.  

With the exception of one of these eight rides, which I rode by repeating a 50-mile ride immediately following the completion of the first ride, all other bike rides involved a combination of completing several miles of bicycling through back roads in my somewhat hilly/rolling neighborhood, before entering and riding the entire 45-mile length of the W&OD bike trail.  These rides included the departure to Dry Mill Run, and the self-imposed mandatory departure to a 0.7-mile testing appendix, mostly a steep climb, on Woodburn Road.   

Riding one hundred miles is a great challenge to the body and mind and therefore the preparation for riding is both physical and mental.  A hundred-mile distance is respectable even when driven in a car.  Unless you are driving on a German autobahn it will take you a good hour-and-a-half to complete the distance.  On a bicycle it would regularly take me nearly six hours. Six hours of constant pedaling. True, those six hours would be interrupted by three more or less evenly spaced snack breaks lasting between 5 and 15 minutes.  However alluring breaks longer than 15 minutes would appear to be, they were to be avoided as the body rapidly cools down, muscles start to ache, and it takes an extra effort to re-gain the rhythm and comfort of the pre-break ride.  I would take the breaks primarily to eat, because for some reason I could not make myself eat while sitting in the saddle.  The food just would not go down the throat. 

Advices tailored to instruct the rider to ride his/her first century uniformly provide a step-wise approach to building the strength and distance.  Typically a timetable would be showing where the rider should be training-wise X number of days prior to the ride.  Well, there is lots of value in such information, unless you ride so much that it really doesn’t matter where exactly you are at a given time.  To make it short, after the first couple of long rides, connected with a few shorter (e.g., 30- to 50-mile) rides on weekend days in the between, I could chose to ride another 100-mile ride on a short notice.  For example, I could decide to ride tomorrow even if I did not do any riding for several days before that.  It almost appeared as I would be joking about the distance. But, not so, as, again, a 100-mile is a respectable distance regardless of the terrain you ride, or your physical preparedness at the time. Therefore I could not afford to take it too lightly. 

   

All the food and a half of the amount of the beverage I would take with me; never having to purchase anything along the way.  The food primarily consisted of 2-3 sandwiches and chocolate bars.  The beverage was mostly plain water.  From that aspect riding a century as a part of an organized event takes away the need to think too much about the food and drink, as they would be provided at organized rest areas in more or less evenly spaced intervals.  The up side of riding solo is that you can choose the day and time of your ride.  That helps a lot because in case of bad weather you could delay your ride until the weather improves.   

Completing the ten rides in ten months was very challenging and inspiring for me.  There are riders who complete this many rides in a month, and there are riders who are yet to complete their first century ride.  To the latter – do not be afraid of attempting to complete your first one; it is very rewarding once you have.  Personally, the pleasure of removing the ski boots after a long and satisfactory day of skiing, and the pleasure of removing the bicycling shoes after completion of a century ride are among the single most satisfactory moments there are.