Slight Overexhuberance

I am training for a century--for those of you who don't know what that is it is a 100 mile bike ride. A marathon for bikers. I have done one previously but that was in September of 2004. I trained minimally for that ride and it wasn't easy. I did not ride my back after that until just over 2 weeks ago.

I know pathetic, but I was over it and I didn't have another ride planned. I am a person who needs to be working towards something, I am not going to exercise just to exercise, I need a goal. So, when my best friend called me up a month ago and asked me if I wanted to do the Tour de Palm Springs in February, I said yes. Forget the fact that I live in the Midwest and it is winter, I decided I could train and be ready for the ride. So I bought rollers and I use those freqently--but they are hard to ride and I haven't been able to do more than about 30 minutes at a time on the rollers. I have been lucky with the weather the past week or so and this past weekend I did two rides--one 13 miles and one 18 miles. These were just warm up rides as it was pretty cold outside, and I hadn't ridden in just about forever.

Yesterday and the rest of the week it will be in the 60's and this weather will carry over through the weekend. Hubby worked from home yesterday and I was able to take advantage of the weather. I wanted to do a long ride so I rode 46 miles. I was able to keep up a pretty decent speed (13 mph) given the amount of rolling hills that I swear were always a little long on the up than the down going in both directions. I also did a good portion of my riding on city streets which always requires lots of starting and stopping which is hard especially on the return trip when your muscles are getting a experienceing a little lactic acid build up. Needles to say, my back and arms were a little sore yesterday and my knees a little creaky. No my ass wasn't sore, it doesn't get sore anymore when I ride. I am happy that after only 2 other short rides that I was able to do nearly 50 miles, but I now know I would have been in pain in the next 50 if the century was this weekend. Thank goodness it isn't.