Sunday, August 10, 2008

Saturday Century Ride

I love riding my bike! Especially now when I’m feeling my strongest following RAGBRAI a few weeks ago and the MS Ride last weekend, so I just want to ride as much as I can! Charlie is enjoying his hobby; restoring a car he bought earlier this summer which gives me time to bike without feeling guilty!

I seriously thought of going to Watertown to ride their century ride on Saturday with a biking friend, I really wanted to go but didn’t want to spend a 4th consecutive weekend away from home for a bike ride. I decided to do my own century around home. But I also wanted to sleep in a little and didn’t get started until 7:30 am. A stiff south wind also slowed me down and I wasn’t sure I would get a century accomplished but I took it slow and easy. With seven hours of riding time (14.3 mph average) and two total hours of break time, I finally finished at 4:30 pm.

A perfect day; I got to spend the day riding, we grilled steaks for supper, and then spent a quiet evening watching a movie!

One more thing, I had lunch in Vermillion at HyVee with my minister who happened to be there at the same time. We had a really nice visit, I found out that on RAGBRAI we went through the area of Iowa where she grew up and she has family that continues to live there. It happened to be my favorite part of Iowa and I remember the area well (some of the towns run together that we went through and don’t stand out). I want to go back sometime to the Lisbon, Mount Vernon area, it is very Americana, like a Norman Rockwell print. We were talking about biking and pastor said to me, “I never realized you were such a hard core biker.” I don’t think of myself as hard core but I told her my motto: “Anything worth doing is worth over doing!” I have thrown myself into a few serious hobbies over the year; ie. genealogy (I dragged my husband through a lot of cemeteries!), scrapbooking, etc., but I never would have dreamed I would take up biking!

Map of my ride – never more than 25 miles from home.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's quite a climb at around mile 85! I admire your spirit, I have yet to complete an Imperial Century. Came close on the TdK ride into Brookings, but setting up camp and getting a cold beer sounded better to me than riding another 7 miles or so.
Just lazy I guess.

Unknown said...

I was dreading that climb to get home, that is the "bluff" that runs from Vermillion to Volin and beyond. It looks more impressive on the elevation profile than it really is, it's just that everything else around it is so flat!

bikingbrady said...

Hard core....yup...that's you...

DIRK said...

One definition of "hard core" - Just going out by yourself to ride a century, because it's a nice day and you want to.

Ham(m)er said...

Cathy you should set your self for the century a month club. Though I'm not sure that you can technically stock pile them for December/January/February.

Tez said...

WoooHooo...GREAT JOB!