First Century: 100 Miles of Pain

UPDATE: See the details in bold below on how to see the elevation profile.

Last Saturday I did my first century. I had no idea what to expect and really did not put much thought into it. Brian setup the ride for his wife Teri and I thought I had nothing better to do and went along for the ride. This was a gravel century that ended up being 100 miles out and back in the Iowa countryside. We started out with five riders. Brian and his wife Teri. Julie and Elaine were were along for part of the ride.

We started off at 8:00 AM for Rassy’s bike shop with Brian leading us out on our adventure. From what I have been told a gravel century is harder that a road century simply because it is, well, gravel. Make sense I guess since you are not rolling along on pavement but on loose rocks. I ended up riding my mountain bike simple because I don’t have a cross bike. Fat tires and all!

As soon as we hit the gravel I knew it was going to be a long day. There were about 3 hills for every mile while on gravel. That is no exaggeration! I was on the wrong bike for sure. Check out these two photos. This is pretty much what every hill was like. They are fun as hell to go down but a bitch going up them. Up and down, up and down is how the ride went.

We stopped three times to eat and once for water. It was a great day with little or no clouds. The sun was beating down on us the entire time unless we were in the shade resting. In retrospect I took this ride way too lightly. It was hard, really hard. To top it off I did not got to bed until 2 AM the night before. After 15 miles of hills they were killing me. My bike was way too heavy. I later weighed my bike after the ride and it was 46 pounds. Holy Shit! And that was with no water. I won’t do this rout again unless I have a light cross bike and I carry minimal gear.

As I mentioned we started at 8:00 AM and I reached my Jeep at 7:56 PM. Just shy of 12 hours. My entire body was sore and in pain. The last 20 miles I had a nice tweak going in my left hammy. This was definitely one of the hardest things I have done. Certainly the hardest on a bike, that is for sure. Overall the experience was a killing. Brian tracked us on his GPS and ride time of 7:54 hrs, stop time of 4:04 hrs.

I will do more 100 mile rides but I won’t be pedaling a horse that heavy. I think next month I will do a century on my fixed gear and pavement. Most likely the Raccoon River trail up past Jefferson, IA and back. I will be on a light bike and take some food with me to keep the stops to a minimum. Big thanks to Brian and Teri. Brian lead us the entire time and that guy is a monster on a bike! Couldn’t have done it without him.

Here are the photos I took with my iPhone. I also pulled a few more photos from the others that rode with us. Good times and big thanks to Brian and Teri for letting me go along. One of the best bike experiences I have ever had on a bike.

Since I did not take my GPS I ended up retracing the rout on Google Maps and then exporting that to a GPX file. Then I imported the file into the EveryTrail site and mapped the photo from my iPhone. Since the iPhone geotags each photo with the lat and long the EveryTrail site can map the photos to the rout. Check out the entire trip below. If you want to see the trip in a bigger window you can access it at http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=644677

UPDATE: I got the elevation profile from the ride. If you roll over the map and look at the bottom for this icon you can see the crazy elevation of this ride.

First century w/ Elevation

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