I’ve learned that being defensive is most often a bad thing. It leads to bad impressions about you so it’s sometimes better to be humble and admit mistake.

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I won’t lie… I was tired by the end of the ride yesterday. It was miserable to be drenched and pounded on for 8.5 hours.

But at the end of the day, I definitely felt like I had accomplished something. Looking back, it feels good to have gone through that pain and to know that I was able to finish it…

The first 50 was cold but do-able. I was able to sustain a 17.7 mph. Then went it came time to head east, things just sucked… We were riding straight into 20mph wind. The kind that blows you side ways. By the 70th mile, one guy on our team dropped out and took the bus back. The next 20 was just pushing and pushing to get the energy to finish. The final 10 was definitely memorable.

I remembered reaching 93 and wanting to stop. Then I got a power bar and that got me going again. The finish was definitely beautiful – a climb up a hill to the school. I got up to 99.9 miles to the door and decided to add the 0.1 miles to make it a 100.0. On the money. Can’t ask for a better finish.

I had my heart rate monitor on the entire ride and it looks like the rain and wind was an additional 2 hours worth of riding by itself. That really burnt into my reserved energy coz I was feeling tired at the end of the day. And it sucks to finish without getting any food (other than cookies!)

The day before, I had purchased a face mask and bitched about paying $30 for it… It’s definitely worth it now. All my clothes were drenched and I haven’t gotten around to cleaning up yet. Just wiped down my bike this evening and will get to the clothes tomorrow.

All that training and spinning definitely paid off good. End of the ride – 14.5mph average, so it was a descent finish ~5200 calories.

Would I do it again? If I trained for it, maybe…

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