Lisa (so strong!) and me post rideAt the beginning of the summer, Lisa and I had thought we'd do the full Clarksville century, fast. The record for the elite peloton (which is fully supported, meaning they never have to stop except to answer the call of nature if necessary) is 3:45; that's a strong, fast group of guys! We thought we could try for 4:30 for sure. But she'd been sick the last couple weeks, and I just finished an IM, so we decided to go do the metric century, 100 kilometers vs. 100 miles. We started at the front of the group of a few hundred, happy to be with some strong guys and away from some not-so-steady riders.
I knew when we hit mile 24 at 1:01 it was going to be a fast ride. I wasn't disappointed. We started out with about 30-40 riders with us, and when we finally got organized there was a good group of 30. At mile 30, a few riders stopped at an aid station and the rest of us continued on. We split up some more along the way and ended up finishing as a group of 12 riders.
Who takes pictures while he's riding?About 5 miles from the finish, we got passed by the elite peloton. They cruised in at an average of about 27 mph for a finish time of 3:49. Wow. Surprisingly, no one in our group even wanted to chase. I was disappointed; we were so close and I wanted to jump on their wheels for as long as I could. Instead, I stayed with my group and we finished in 2:40:26, riding 61.13 miles at 23 mph. Amazingly, my HR was 140. I so could have gone harder!
When Lisa and I finished, we both agreed we could have gone farther and longer. It felt so good to ride with such a good group! Parri and Lisa would have been on board, and we could have finished around 4:15 at our pace. We are so in for next year!
Lisa, Parri, me, and Lisa- Totals: 2:24:31; 61.88 miles; 22.4 average; 138 HR (181 max); 33.3 max speed
- Metric Century: 2:40:26; 61.13 miles; 23 average; 140 HR, 3,864 calories
- Cool down: 5:05; 0.75 miles; 96 HR
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