Road Ride Report This is called the 180 century

It's called this because it's put on by a group that's called 180west. What they do is help kids in crisis. Help them turn there lifes around, like 180 degrees around.

The ride starts in Norwalk and then heads east. We rode over to Yorba Linda and man, was there tons of traffic lights. But there is virtually no real hills. For the whole 100 miles we climbed 2600 feet which would make this a flat century. My goal was to do the century in under 5 hours. I went out with my road club (Cycling Connection.org) and decided to ride with them for a while. Most people in my club are above average riders so I knew we would be clicking along at a fairly good pace. We were motoring along and we made it thru a light that the most of the club got stuck at as we had opened a slight gap. So now there were only four of us in this group and we went to chase the lead group which was a group of four. The tandom was not going to be caught though as they ride way fast. After a few miles myself and another club member who rides hard came with me and we dropped the rest of our club. He told me he didn't think he could do the century at this pace as it was his first. I told him what I was going to try to do and my plan was to take it up a couple of notches after I hit the river trail and got away from those damn lights. As I made the turn my club member friend said good bye and I put the hammer down. I looked thru my computer and my average was only 18.2, shoot, now I was really going to have to work. As I started down the bike path I seen very few folks in front of me. As I went by I asked where everyone was. One guy told me there were a few out front but not many. Well, almost everyone knows how directionally challenged I am (I get lost even going to the bathroom) so I looked at my route sheet and pulled out my reading glasses (not an easy thing to do when hammering down a bike trail) and looked for the next couple turns. Looked like everything was going to workout! I spotted some guys up front who looked like they could be from our ride but I wasn't to sure I could catch them. After chasing them for a few miles I really hadn't gained on them and figured maybe they'd get caught at a light and then I could grab a wheel and not have to work so freekin hard. About then a young guy that was pretty built comes up behind me and asked if I wanted him to pull. I of course I said ,sure. Seems he'd been sucking my wheel for over 5 miles and now wanted to return the favor. His english wasn't that great but then again neither is my spanish but we managed to talk while we took turns pulling. We finally caught the guys with the Pats Bikes jerseys and started to work with them. Now I guess they wanted to impress us and the speed went way up. We were now doing 26 and maintaining it. We worked our way thru Yorba Linda but the little hills were slowing us a little. But I knew the SART was just a few miles down the road and we'd be very fast working with these guys. We stopped at the start of SART to refill our bottles and some guys grabbed a few things to eat. Then it was off to the races. Did I mention these guys were fast! Freekin just going out we hit 28 and I was hoping they'd bring it back down otherwise I was going to get dropped. Finally after a few miles like this we started to hit a head wind and they backed off. But now even though the speed was down the wind was just to much and the group shattered. I fell in with the second group and we went at 18 mph where we are usually at 23 or more. Freekin wind was going to kill my 5 hour mark! So after about 20 miles we started to break up again and I found myself alone out front but it was a lot of work. I seen another group about a mile up ahead and went after them. It took about 5 miles to catch them and finally a break. They were doing 18 and that was fine with me. I worked with this group all the way down thru Huntington and till we hit the San Gabriel river tail. After we made the turn we lost the rest of their people and we had been a big group of 8. I found out these guys had left a half hour before the ride started. So now there were 3 of us. The pace picked up and now we had a tailwind HOTDAMN! We started out at about 22 but in no time we'd hit 26 and weren't even working that hard or so I thought. The guy I'd picked up in Yorba Linda was with us at this point but he finally cracked at mile 90. So we said our goodbyes and I went out with another guy with a Pat's Bikes jersey ( shit, are all these guys this freekin fast?). We rode for about 3 or 4 miles and he went off the back. I slowed for him but he said he was going to wait for his friend we'd dropped a while back. So once again I'm off by myself and the trail is deserted. So I rode for a while but started to think I'd gone to far as I was almost at 100 and hadn't seen a turn. I stopped at 100 miles to see how much time I'd taken. 5 hours 7 minutes! Damn, am I ever going to break this 5 hour mark? I looked up and seen a racer from our club as she was going in the opposite direction. I asked her how much further and she said , not much ( or that's what I thought she said) So I kept going. She had told me we missed the turn and was trying to catch me but she finally gave up and turned around. After I hit 106 I turned around. When I got to 110 I seen some folks turning off the trail and they were my club! There were ten of them. We had 26 show for this ride. I pulled up behind them and didn't say a word. They were very suprized to see me riding thru them and were asking WTF? I told them of my additional 12 miles and they all got a laugh out of that. The racer girl ended up with 22 miles over and she finished her century at 4:58.

The weather was perfect all day long and I've never rode a century with so many SAG's there had to have been 20 different places where they were trying to give us food or water. I stopped at only one in Costa Mesa ( where I grew up) and it was unbelieveable they held my bike for me, brought me gatorade , sat me down in a chair with an electrical massage machine which was freekin great. I spent about a half hour here. Shouldn't have done that. The hills are nothing and the food they give you after the ride was very good Chicken, carne asada, potato salad, macaroni salad fruit bowl and hot links along with a bunch of other stuff. This is all included in the low price of 50 bucks which goes for a great cause. I'll put this one on the regular century schedule. This makes my sixth century in 5 weeks.

sorry for the long post, it was a long day!

 

Nice!

Holy CRAP, Mike!

I feel like I'm going fast when I hit 24mph comming home from work.#-o

Great RR!

 

I actually read all that. And now i'm tired. #-o

good job mike :bang: