Week 7

Date
February 15, 2016

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 7

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 
You never know when you're going to have a good day.

I was off for Presidents' Day and the weather was great, so I expected a fun day, but due to recent rides I wasn't expecting much in terms of physical performance. I drove out to Fernley just for a little change of scenery. US 50 is a fun ride when there's not much wind.

I started off feeling stronger than expected and at the 1-hour mark I noticed that I had covered more than 20 miles. I didn't think much of it. It was early, the route is super flat, there hadn't been any stop signs yet, and I probably had a slight tailwind. I just kept riding the same pace.

At the 90-minute mark I was over 30.5 miles in and I had ridden through the only stop signs on the route (in Fallon). That's when I started to entertain the idea of trying to finish in less than 5 hours. Let's take a little step back here. Riding a solo century in less than 5 hours is a thought that I've had in the back of my head for a long time, but I've never actually set a goal to do it because I didn't think I was physically capable. There are rules to goal setting and one of the major rules is that a goal should be attainable. I didn't consider this goal attainable unless I had a tailwind the whole way, and what's the point of that?

I started riding a little harder to see where my time was at the 50-mile mark. If I was still on pace by the halfway point, I'd go ahead and give it a shot.

Close to the turnaround point

I felt myself slowing down between miles 40-50, but when I made it to mile 50 I had 3 minutes to spare. That's when I decided to go for it. I just told myself that there would be 2.5 hours of hell and then I'd have an easy week.

It wasn't exactly 2.5 hours of hell, but I did end up working much harder just to keep a 20mph pace. I felt like I had a slight headwind, but the reality is that I was probably just running out of energy as the ride went on. When I made it to Fallon all of the sudden I was paranoid about the stoplights. I seemed to hit a red on all of them. How horrible would it be to ride so hard and miss out by 1 minute or something just because of a stoplight? After I passed through Fallon I was still on pace, and that's when I actually started to believe. I could give it everything for an hour. An hour is nothing.

I finished with about 3 minutes to spare. I couldn't believe that I had been so lucky. I had a good day out of nowhere. The weather was perfect and I had just so happened to have picked an ideal route- flat with only one town to ride through. Here I was achieving a goal that I hadn't believed to be possible and I did it without any planning or training. (I know this is no big deal for a lot of riders, but I'm not that fast.)

It makes me wonder. I've always had the idea of riding across Nevada in less than 24 hours in the back of my mind, but that's another one that I've never considered attainable. Should I give that a shot this summer? There are a few other "not quite goals" that come to mind. I guess you never know until you try. Should goals really be attainable, or is that just a limit we put on ourselves that actually holds us back?