Blazing Saddles Century - CycleCentury

About 15 min. into the ride, I realized I didn't have my phone, or my Road ID, or the cue sheet. Awesome. I could see this turning ugly real fast. I trucked along for the first 10 miles with a couple people around at a few points. But no converstations or anything. And that was about the extent of my human contact during the ride. THANK GOD I DECIDED TO BRING MY IPOD! It was just me and the cows and they weren't talking back. At about mile 20 I thought "what the hell was I thinking? I can't do 80 miles of this!" Hills, hills, and more hills. I know I don't have much to compare to, but this is the hilliest course I've ever ridden. Ouch. I stopped at every sag stop for no more than a few minutes each. Refilled my water, took a bite of whatever they had there. The stop before the 56 mile turnoff I decided I was going to cut it short. There was no way I could do 80 of this. So there it came, the turnoff for the 56 miler. I stared at that mark on the road and somehow passed it. I don't know why. Maybe I had something to prove to myself. I also remembered looking at the elevation map and I recalled that the first half was much worse than the second. So I gave it a chance. The hills kept coming, but it wasn't as bad as the first 20 or 30. It just seemed like there was never a decent. I just kept climbing. My ipod made my day, I sang along, outloud. Why not? I knew the cows weren't going to say anything. Then...rain. It could have been a lot worse, but it just made everything icky. Like it wasn't humid enough. I was glad that those clouds covered me almost the entire time.

I got a little bored I guess, so I started playing games to keep me entertained, and try not to think about how badly my legs hurt. The first, "count the dead armadillos". The second, and my favorite, "if only I had a camera". My two favorite scenes from this: 1) At a graveyard, a sign that read "please see the commisioner before picking or digging grave". 2) A lady weedwacking the grass that was growing around the car that was parked in the middle of the yard. Good times.

At the last sag stop, I refilled and chatted. I asked what mile we were at since I knew my garmin was off. They said 63. Six whole miles further than I thought! Awesome. Piece of cake. So of course, like it always seems to be, the last few miles were uphill. I cursed the people that made this route. It hurt...a lot. But I made it back in time to get my free chick fil sandwich, and that was just what I wanted.

Set my garmin up correctly BEFORE I LEAVE. Bring my phone and the cue sheet. Other than that, not too much.

Walked a bit and stretched and ate my sandwich. But I just wanted to go home by that point. It had been 7 hours since I started.


Hills, hills, hills. And maybe a few more hills.


The volunteers were great. For this just being a ride, they put in a lot of work and it shows. I brought all this stuff with me, but I didn't really need any of it, they had everything covered.