Second Century is in the books...
 

Saturday, I completed my second century. The Ojai Valley Century had 5,000 feet of climbing, some nasty descents, and a long stretch than ran beside the 101 Freeway.

The highlight of the seven-hour ride (which includes rest stops and lunch), was when I pulled a group of four riders five miles in a headwind to the finish at Nordoff High School, where I out sprint them at the end.

The day started out foggy and ended very warm, so fluids and lots of salty stuff (pretzels) were required.

Cyclists out there: you have to try a century. Great camaraderie, rider support, and the sense of accomplishment is tremendous, even if painful.

Neither I nor my buddy had a camera, so I'll try to find some photos somewhere from the Ojai Valley site or from the Brooks Institute, who shot the photos.

Next up: possibly the Santa Barbara Century, with 10,000 ft. of climbing. Yikes! :D

Hmmm. I had sex all day yesterday.

I wonder which of us got the better workout... ;)

LOL! So you went riding too, huh? SmileWavy

That would be an interesting century...

dd74 didn't have a camera. Did you?

Maybe Leland will be joining you soon?

The more the merrier. It's a lot of fun with a group, though one does tend to hook up with other groups along the way. That's what happened with me. My friend wore out on the last hill which was a ten-mile 5-7% climb, and sent me on my way to chase the passing group I ended up finishing with.

Congrats on No. 2!

What kind of daily training are you doing to be prepared for a century ride? I continue to work on increasing my miles in preparation to ride from upstate NY over to Biddeford, ME late this summer so curious what your daily rides are.

Yes Sniper, but DD74 did an activity that involved OTHER people! ;)

angela

Your arm must be killing you by now...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1275916952.jpg

Ouch!

My mileage varies. Sometimes it's as low as 10 miles a day, sometimes as high as 40 miles. It depends on my schedule. But I ride every day, and include some sort of hill climb during each ride. I don't use computers or anything like that. I simply try to ride hard when the opportunity presents itself. I always keep the Eddy Merckx philosophy in my head, which is "...ride lots..."
http://www.bottombracket.co.uk/images/eddy-merckx.jpg

I do not recommend that. You definitely want a hear-rate monitor. It can tell you a lot that you may not be feeling.

Well, I'm up for recommendations. If there's something out there that also couples with GPS, miles ridden, avg. time, and can measure speed, incline, etc, as well as heart, I'll look into it.

[QUOTE=dd74;5391671]My mileage varies. Sometimes it's as low as 10 miles a day, sometimes as high as 40 miles. It depends on my schedule. But I ride every day, and include some sort of hill climb during each ride. I don't use computers or anything like that. I simply try to ride hard when the opportunity presents itself. I always keep the Eddy Merckx philosophy in my head, which is "...ride lots..."


Thanks very much, that is encouraging for me. I ride at least 15 miles a day and most days 25 to 40 right now, working on getting some 50 milers in soon. Also have a 75 mile group ride scheduled for mid August. I work on hills and will be looking for longer and steeper inclines as the long trip in August approaches.

keep pumping!

Garmin makes a "basic" GPS unit which gives you Speed, Distance, heart rate, crank speed; all the regular stuff. But it also has GPS direction, elevation, %grade, ft climed, etc, and it records it every second or so, and will build graphs of your rides. Pretty neat stuff.

It is not a "turn by turn" GPS unit. They make a turn by turn unit, but you'd probably expire for the price...$700.

The "cheaper" unit is ~$300 (refurbished), and is a Garmin 305, from Amazon.

The uber-cheap way is to get a regular wired bike unit, then buy a cheapo wrist watch hear rate monitor. They usually come with a little handlebar mount for the wrist watch. Wired bike units go on sale at bonktown for usually under $30. And a cheapo heart rate wrist watch can be had for about the same. Even these chepo hear rate monitors use a chest strap for heart rate pickup.

If you want to really track what you are doing and want excellent software with training advice, the stuff Polar sells is much better. I also use a Polar unit, mostly because I had it before the Garmin.

In both cases, I have purchased off ebay extra mounts & sensors and then use the heads on multiple bikes.

Oh snap

Does it count if photo/video of other people was involved?

I used to do a 6-8 hour ride every Saturday when I was in Podiatry school, mostly on dirt. I wish I had the time now

Yes, i did.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/577924dd.jpg

I was playing with my beautiful young Geisha princess. :)

You know Sniper, I consider myself reasonably adventurous, but even I have to draw the line at swordplay during sex. Too many favored bits could be lopped off! :eek:

Also for the bicycle training? I highly recommend Chris Carmichael's "Time Crunched Cyclist." Make your miles count if your time is short.

angela

congratulations on the century ride!

as to heart rat/gps etc.

I've been using a Garmin Forerunner 305, and love it.

it's wrist device but I strap it to the bar opposite a Cat eye, you have your choice of how many screens and what data to show. I use 4 screens on the Garmin and 2 on the Cateye, w/ time on a regular wrist Ironman

after the ride download the data to get all the info you could possible want: map, splits, map in Google Earth, time in each hr zone, miles in each heart rate zone, altitude, climb rate, descent rate, total climb, total descent, graphs of any of these wrt to the route etc .