Friday, September 19

Seacoast Century Prep

Tomorrow I ride on the Seacoast Century, the 100-mile loop around the Seacoast area of New Hampshire including York, Maine and Newburyport, Massachusetts. How they made a 20-mile strip of coast in to a hundred-mile ride, no one knows for sure, but they did, and they bill it as the flattest century anywhere.

I've wanted to do this ride since last year, when I saw it coming through town a year ago. I was really confused/aroused by the sight of literally thousands of people on bikes at the time, and sort of just followed them to there they were going. Of course I started much later in the day, and it turned out that they weren't going anywhere. The crowd sort of just thinned out and then I was left like 20 miles from home, having already ridden 60 miles, totally exhausted, and slightly lost. And that was about a week after I'd quit smoking, so it was pretty intense. To date that is still the longest ride I've ever done.

So far, 60 miles seems to be about "the right distance" for me. We'll see what another 40 miles does.

In the meantime, I'm going to be eating spaghetti with a shovel. It's going to be awesome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

good luck!I am sure it will be a blog-fodderful experience.

I confess I once drafted off a tandem during a chunk of that century. Well, a co-ed tandem. Well, a co-ed tandem stoked by a person with just one leg. they were good sports, though.