Mike's Bike Blog

We were truly blessed with wonderful weather today, it was absolutely perfect. It was a tad windy, but I didn't think it was too bad, it was definitely better than when I rode the route last August and not nearly as windy as last year.

I had the goal of riding a century in 5 hours and 30 minutes. To tell you the truth I didn't think today was going to be the day. At the end of my ride in Thursday my knee started to ache a little. Friday it didn't go away so I didn't ride at all. This morning when I woke up it wasn't sore at all, for the first 50 miles I didn't want to push it, I averaged 17.7. At about mile 30 I some how pulled away from Dan and Jared, they were gabbing about mountain bikes and the next thing I know they are no longer behind me. I jumped in with a few other riders and we took turns pulling and then by Bartlett it was just me and a lady with a Fleet Feet kit. We rode together till a bit after the Granger Lake rest stop. I was doing the math in my head and if I averaged 20 mph I could come in around 5:30. I was feeling really good so I decided to push it up to 22+.

The second 50 miles I ended up averaging 19 mph, which isn't bad considering the last 50 has a lot of sections into the wind. I sprinted to the finish at 5:20:23, my active on the bike time was 05:12:04.

Next time a sub 5 hour time!