My First Double Metric Century
Today I rode my bike 225 KM and I averaged 26.6 KM per hour. I started my ride at 9 AM and I finished at 7:50 PM. I finished with more energy than previous 80-100 KM rides. This is the longest ride that I have ever done on a bike all by myself. I have never ridden over 167 KM without being in an organized event with rest stops.
I have to give a lot of credit for my transformation into a long distance cyclist to my 'endurance" coach Robert Heynen. Robert is a good coach and teacher. In my opinion a good coach or teacher does not teach or train you to do one thing, that train you to think and apply the knowledge to many different things. what Robert was specifically training me for was to run 100 KM on treacherous rock trails in Bandera State Park in Texas. I did this in about 16 hours and got a nice belt buckle to remind me that any thing is possible.
What I really learned from Robert is how to train and how to fuel my body. I was able to learn how to break through the barriers of fatigue by understanding how to train incrementally for endurance and then how to fuel the body during this endurance. Today I wanted to test my training using my bike. I have been training for an event like this for about a year. I started out by walking every morning, then I started running, then I started bike commuting every day. As I was training with my bike commuting I applied incremental increased to the distances and the difficulty of the ride gradually. I started out riding directly to work which is about 8 miles one way using easy gearing. I worked up to riding a route of 25 miles one way and I worked to build my legs up to ride the whole distance in my third most hardest gear.
Today was a perfect day to ride, it was sunny and cool. I live in the football loving bible belt so I knew Sunday with a play-off game with the Atlanta Falcons playing was the perfect day to do a ride down to the What-A-Burger in Thomasville, GA. This is the only store in Georgia and I miss eating their hamburgers like I did in Austin, Texas. It is 112 KM to the What-A-Burger in Thomasville, GA., yeah it sounds crazy to ride this far for a hamburger, but life is a game so I make up the rules and have fun.
I grabbed a bunch of goodies left over from my trail running days and threw them into my bike bag. I even took two baggies of Spiz. Spiz is amazing and learning about this stuff was well worth the price of admission to the trail running class that Robert taught. I put on my leg warmers and arm warmers and took off in the 5.5 degrees Celsius weather.
View Bicycling directions to Whataburger, US Highway 19 South, Thomasville, GA in a larger map
I have been bike commuting in the dark every morning and most evenings so riding in the daylight made me quite giddy. There was a tail wind from the north east that was between 8-16 KM. I have always hated riding with a tail wind knowing that when i turn around I will have to ride into the wind, but today I did not care, I rode with abandon and I did not try to slow down my pace. I was confident that I would have adequate energy to make the round trip no problem. I hope that you do not read this and assume that I was being arrogant, but I knew that I had trained for this journey and all I had to do was shut up and ride.
I am so privileged to have selected all of the three houses that I have purchased to have them located so that I could be on a country road within about 10 to 20 minutes. The country roads here in SW Georgia are mostly flat, straight and they sometimes have lots of cracks and bumps. Since this cycling trip was not a race and I was by myself I decided to stop when ever I wanted to take pictures. I am in awe by the size of the oak trees down here. I would not have been able to complete this ride in one day if i had stopped to take pictures of all of the oak trees that I saw. Some of the trees are right next to the road as them may be 300 years old and were there before the road. Riding down these country back roads is really cool. Even though Georgia does not have the reputation as being bike friendly like other cities that I have lived ion like Austin, TX or Portland, OR the motorist are for the most part sharing the road with cyclist. they pull way over into the other lane when they can or they slow down and wait to pass when there is opposing traffic. You can really relax and enjoy the ride. today I am sure the traffic was really light as there was a big game on TV so I was happy to see the roads almost empty.
I was glad to get to What-A-Burger. I was hungry and I wanted to eat and get headed home. I was taking a different route back home, but as it turned out i made some wrong turns and I ended up riding for 8 miles into Camilla on US 19 which is a busy highway. Fortunately there was not a lot of traffic on it today. I used my phone's GPS to guide me once I got to the city of Thomasville to find the What-A-Burger via back streets, but I did not want to use it all of the time because I knew the batter was not going to last the whole trip. I will eventually get a Garmin 810 or get a dynamo to charge my phone for my longer cycle journeys.
View Bicycling directions to Whataburger, US Highway 19 South, Thomasville, GA in a larger map
I have to give a lot of credit for my transformation into a long distance cyclist to my 'endurance" coach Robert Heynen. Robert is a good coach and teacher. In my opinion a good coach or teacher does not teach or train you to do one thing, that train you to think and apply the knowledge to many different things. what Robert was specifically training me for was to run 100 KM on treacherous rock trails in Bandera State Park in Texas. I did this in about 16 hours and got a nice belt buckle to remind me that any thing is possible.
What I really learned from Robert is how to train and how to fuel my body. I was able to learn how to break through the barriers of fatigue by understanding how to train incrementally for endurance and then how to fuel the body during this endurance. Today I wanted to test my training using my bike. I have been training for an event like this for about a year. I started out by walking every morning, then I started running, then I started bike commuting every day. As I was training with my bike commuting I applied incremental increased to the distances and the difficulty of the ride gradually. I started out riding directly to work which is about 8 miles one way using easy gearing. I worked up to riding a route of 25 miles one way and I worked to build my legs up to ride the whole distance in my third most hardest gear.
Today was a perfect day to ride, it was sunny and cool. I live in the football loving bible belt so I knew Sunday with a play-off game with the Atlanta Falcons playing was the perfect day to do a ride down to the What-A-Burger in Thomasville, GA. This is the only store in Georgia and I miss eating their hamburgers like I did in Austin, Texas. It is 112 KM to the What-A-Burger in Thomasville, GA., yeah it sounds crazy to ride this far for a hamburger, but life is a game so I make up the rules and have fun.
My house to Thomasville
View Bicycling directions to Whataburger, US Highway 19 South, Thomasville, GA in a larger map
I have been bike commuting in the dark every morning and most evenings so riding in the daylight made me quite giddy. There was a tail wind from the north east that was between 8-16 KM. I have always hated riding with a tail wind knowing that when i turn around I will have to ride into the wind, but today I did not care, I rode with abandon and I did not try to slow down my pace. I was confident that I would have adequate energy to make the round trip no problem. I hope that you do not read this and assume that I was being arrogant, but I knew that I had trained for this journey and all I had to do was shut up and ride.
I am so privileged to have selected all of the three houses that I have purchased to have them located so that I could be on a country road within about 10 to 20 minutes. The country roads here in SW Georgia are mostly flat, straight and they sometimes have lots of cracks and bumps. Since this cycling trip was not a race and I was by myself I decided to stop when ever I wanted to take pictures. I am in awe by the size of the oak trees down here. I would not have been able to complete this ride in one day if i had stopped to take pictures of all of the oak trees that I saw. Some of the trees are right next to the road as them may be 300 years old and were there before the road. Riding down these country back roads is really cool. Even though Georgia does not have the reputation as being bike friendly like other cities that I have lived ion like Austin, TX or Portland, OR the motorist are for the most part sharing the road with cyclist. they pull way over into the other lane when they can or they slow down and wait to pass when there is opposing traffic. You can really relax and enjoy the ride. today I am sure the traffic was really light as there was a big game on TV so I was happy to see the roads almost empty.
My house to Thomasville to My house
View Bicycling directions to Whataburger, US Highway 19 South, Thomasville, GA in a larger map
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