California Classic Century Bike Ride 05-17-2014

On May 17th, 2014 I decided to change things up a little bit.  While I in no way consider myself a cyclist, I decided to ride the California Classic Century ride that starts and finishes in down town Fresno.  I dusted off my old Schwinn mountain bike that I use to ride many, many, many, many, years ago to High School, and I started riding about a month prior to the event.

My typical rides were about 40 miles long and I did about one a week for 4 weeks.  I learned pretty fast that I needed a better quality seat if I was going to last for 100 miles sitting down on my ass.   I picked up some cycling shorts, but I’m honestly not a big fan of spandex so I wore the cycling shorts under a pair board shorts. The cycling shorts helped give me that extra cushion that my ass needed for long bike rides.

The nice thing about riding 100 miles versus running 100 miles is that riding the distance was way faster that running.  Riding also required a lot less food.  All I took on the ride was 6 Gu’s and I filled my water bottle up at the aid stations. 

I mounted my Garmin Virb camera to the handle bars of my bike and took some footage of the ride.  For the most part the ride was nice and scenic.  There was one really tough climb that was about 5 miles long, and it was followed by a pretty nice downhill section. 

I can honestly say I prefer running over cycling, but it was a nice experience riding 100 miles.  I found that most of the people on the course weren't much for conversation, but there were a few really cool people that I had the privilege of talking to.

Now that the ride is over I’m back to training for ultras again and have my first race coming up on June 21^st.  I’m really looking forward to running a really long distance again.  The race I have coming up is a 24 hour event in San Francisco.  Shortly
after the 24 hour event in San Francisco I will run the Cool Moon 100 and the
Headlands 100.

Until next time…

KEEP RUNNING!!!!