54 Miles - Longest Ride to Date

My friend Tina and I went on a 54+ mile ride on Saturday. I had thought that I had done longer distances, but I think I just *think* some rides are longer, haha. Because, you know, I haven't been riding all that long. Remember back on August 16th, when I was THRILLED with a 10-mile bike ride? Then, I said, "I cannot remember the last time I rode a bike." Later that month, I went on a 21-mile ride, what was to become my standard "get out of the house" ride. And then on October 25th, I joined what would become my weekly after-work ride, and aw, this is the night I met Mr. W., too. If you are not strolling down memory lane with me as I write this post, here's a little snippet about him:

So now this is my Wednesday night riding group. They ride every Wednesday after work - and I can't wait to do it again. Such a nice group of people. Several of them were ride leaders, and one of them is a group leader for the training program that I'm doing next spring for the Seattle to Portland ride. He had lots of advice and was very sweet about offering to give me a ride home on Wednesday evenings after our rides if I wanted to ride my bike to the Park & Ride. (For simplicity's sake, I had wanted to just ride my bike to the P&R, but I didn't want to ride it home alone in the dark, dark, dark through the scary woods after the ride.)

I wrote that the group went out for beer after the ride, but I didn't write about what I told my friend the next day. There were maybe eight of us that went out after the ride, and I was new. We got to the bar and there wasn't a lot of seating available, so we were trying to cobble together a booth and a table and grab chairs from nearby, etc. I decided to go to the bathroom and let them sort it out, but I *KNEW* that however it worked out, Mr. W. was going to make sure my empty seat was next to his when I came back. I was correct, haha!

Ooo, I am such an ingenious girl, I just went to the Cascade site and grabbed the picture I remember being taken that night at the bar. Here's the night we met, with my not-coincidentally open seat next to Mr. W, haha.

Seating strategery on Mr. W's part.

Anyway, shortly after that ride on 10/24, I had my surgery on 11/12 and I was out of biking commission for awhile. You'll remember, please, that the point of this post was that although I may *think* I've done longer rides, I really haven't had much time to do so. I need to remember this on days like Saturday when my ass was completely KICKED by the 54 miler. Whew! Dang - Tina and I got back to my place and I laid down on the front lawn. I'm a bit surprised I'm not still there!

We had such fun! It was the most beautiful day - the bluest skies ever. It was windy, and that really worked against us, but we made it.

Here's our route. We spent the day along the lakes. Heaven!

Kim and I had just chatted about my back-pocket plan to try for my first "Century ride" (100 miles) this weekend, when Tina and I go do an event called the McClinchy Mile. Kim said she equated 100 miles to running a marathon. And you know what? She's exactly right, I think. I can tell you that after riding 54 miles, I felt as tired as when I've run half marathons. So yes, I've decided that 100 miles is the equivalent of running a marathon. This is a very scientific process, haha.

I don't think I'll be going for my first Century this weekend. That's a lot. I could do it on the flats, but Western Washington is known for its gabillions of hills, not flats. And I don't know this area at all, so I'm just going to assume it's hilly. I think I'll stick to the 48-mile route we have planned, and maybe add in the 18-mile loop, or, if really ambitious, the 34-miles. (See, it's three loops, which together add up to 100 miles.)

We'll see! It felt really great to finish the ride with Tina, although toward the end I was at the limits of my endurance, and that last stretch is really hilly. Remember the mile long ascent to my house I wrote about last week? Yeah, that's a really hard hill to get up when you're dead tired. But I'm happy to say that I held firm to my stance that "bikes are for pedaling, not pushing," and I made it up. Verrrrrrrry slowly.

(Coming back to add: I am sooo tired of all the anonymous comment spam I've been getting! Although most seem to be caught by the blogger filter, they still send an email notification for all. I've changed the comment settings here to "Registered User - includes OpenID." I have no idea what this means, haha, but we'll give it a try.)