I’ve officially started training for my first century: this weekend I rode a 30-mile loop on some of Minneapolis’ excellent bike trails. Saturday’s weather was gorgeous, with just enough wind to keep things interesting on a very flat route. After filling myself with carbs, my tires with air, and my pockets with some trusty peanut M&Ms, I saddled up the Trek 1000 and set off on the first step towards century #1.

In choosing a starting point for the build up to 100 miles I wanted a bit of a challenge — something to remind me what it’s like to spend a few hours on the bike, and to give me a sense of how aggressive or conservative the rest of my training schedule will be. 30 miles turned out to be a pretty good choice, and the results were both interesting and encouraging.

I’ve put in quite a few miles this summer, but the last significant ride was 43 miles back in April, with a couple of 15- or 20-mile trips in there as well. The majority of my summer riding has been quick 7.5-mile blasts to or from work, and I tend to push pretty hard during the commute. It seems that, as a result, I’ve been training myself as a sprinter! My goal was to maintain a steady effort at a cadence of about 90, but my legs were constantly begging to shift up a few gears and hammer away. As I reached the end of the ride I felt great — plently of energy left, nicely hydrated, ready to keep going! — but again my legs were a different story. They felt mechanically tired, not really used up but just spread thin from spinning for so long. (Perhaps… like butter scraped over too much bread?)

Another “mechanical” issue was, of course, the butt. A minor seat adjustment before the ride made things a bit more comfortable, but not nearly enough to hide the fact that 30 miles is way more than 7, and two hours in the saddle is way longer than 30 minutes. Some new shorts may also be in order, but I don’t want to blame anything on clothing until I’ve given my ischial tuberosities (thanks, Sheldon!) some time to adjust to the higher milage.

The most important discovery, though, is that my endurance is as good as or better than I had hoped. I had plenty left after 30 miles, so I should be able to increase the milage fairly aggressively for the next few weeks, at least, and let the physical tolerance kinks work themselves out as the miles roll by. 100, here I come!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Minnesota, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.