I Did My First Century Ride!!!

Yesterday I rode in my first century ride, Venus de Miles.  It is an all women's ride with distances varying from 32-100miles.  There were around 2000 women that came out for the ride and IT WAS AWESOME!!

Check out the t-shirt we got!  It is super cute and really soft!  I'm not a huge "yellow" fan, but I love this shirt!!








While I think the majority of women were out for a fun, leisurely ride, I wanted to use it as a training ride for IMAZ.  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to test out my bike nutrition and push myself almost as if I was in an actual race.

From the get go, I felt like I was an odd man (woman) out.  I think I saw maybe 5 other tri bikes!  When we were waiting to start, all the women around me started asking me questions about my bike and about triathlons.  It was pretty cool.  AND, I think I convinced several of them to do their first tri next year! :)

Before I knew it, the whistle blew and we were off.  It was a little chilly out, but I knew by the midpoint I would be HOT, so I didn't dare complain about it.  Right off the bat I felt fantastic and just started cruising!  It was just so awesome to be out on the open roads and surrounded by the mountains.  It was sooo beautiful.

Around the 30M mark, another girl started riding with me and we got to talking.  It turns out she was a triathlete too and did IMLP this year!  She shared some IM tips with me and we rode together pretty much the rest of the way.  It was great!

Suddenly, as I was riding, I saw someone running on the other side of the road.  I was looking and looking, and thinking, "That looks like Chrissy."  Finally, I got almost right next to her and sure enough it was her!!  I yelled, "GO CHRISSY..WOOHOO!"  and she raised her hands in the air, said, "Woohoo!" and had a huge smile on her face!  IT WAS AWESOME!
All these women around me were like, who is that?  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??  Then, the other triathlete and I started talking all about her to these other girls..it was pretty funny!  I seriously thought about turning around just to see her again, but didn't.  It was definitely a highlight of my ride!





Finally, we hit the 50M mark, only to be faced with a 7M climb.  I have to admit, I suck at climbing!  I just don't do enough of it, even though I know I should, so it was definitely challenging for me.  Here is the profile map of the whole ride.  Nice to have that climb right in the middle huh?!

I just kept chugging along and finally I made it to the top at Jamestown!  I was sooo excited!  There was a much needed aid station at the top, so I grabbed some watermelon slices and rested for a bit.  The best part of climbing that hill though was going DOWN it on the way back!  It was fast and fun, but a little scary too.  There were a lot of turns and sight is limited, so with all of the traffic I just didn't feel comfortable riding in my aero bars.  BUT, I was still able to fly down the hill!  Weeeeeee!




After that, we just had a couple rolling hills, then the last 10miles were pretty flat and fast!  It was a perfect way to end the ride.  As I came into the finish chute, I think I had a huge smile on my face!  Up to this point, the longest I had ridden was 62 miles, so going 100 miles was just awesome to me.  I felt strong on this ride and it was definitely a HUGE confidence booster for IMAZ.








After the ride, I checked out the expo and got a new jersey!  I loved the design, colors, and just thought it was a super cute jersey! :)













Then, as I drove home, I had one more stop to make:

Seriously, I never drink these, but for some reason a carmel frappuccino was calling my name.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!!  Plus, with all the milk and chocolate in there, it's a pretty good recovery drink...right???!!!