Today (or yesterday I suppose since it’s after midnight), I completed my first ever century ride. I’ve done a good number of 80+ mile rides prior to this and have ridden a couple of 90+ mile rides, but today is the first time to reach that magical three digit mark. While I normally ride for time, today I decided that I would ride until my odometer read “50.0″ miles before I’d turn around.

The ride itself went pretty well. I started out my ride today fairly strong and steady. Usually, I start out very conservatively and keep it that way at least for the first hour. But today I was fueled by a little anger from yesterday where I mistreated my body out of boredom, which is no excuse and I know better and should have exhibited better self-control. Add to that not being able to do just one thing that I wanted to do while I was in Chicago - go to Steak N’ Shake - and it was adding fuel to the fire. We don’t have Steak N’ Shakes in Minnesota; the food isn’t even really that good, but I was starving at the time and it sounded really good. But my girlfriend was feeling tired and a little sick after the wedding yesterday and just wanted to go home, so I oblidged. It was more selflessness for an event that I didn’t really feel like attending in the first place. Probably more like adding gasoline to a fire, but I digress. :P I needed to have “hermit time” after yesterday and it seemed suitable that I ride long and hard today.

I went through a new series of feelings while riding today. I’ve already had the patches of feeling bad during a ride and riding through them to where I feel good again, but today was different. I felt really strong from the get go and started out at a brisk pace, although in the back of my mind I was wondering if this was the best thing to do starting out the longest ride I had ever attempted before.

The first 40 miles would take me along a route that I’ve done a bunch of times before and was pretty uneventful. The last 10 miles to 50 was unchartered ground for me both physically and mentally. My mind was playing mental games with me for that whole stretch of road. It kept telling me to turn around before 50 and that I really didn’t need to ride all the way to 50. “4-5 hours was good enough, why go beyond that…? For every additional mile to you in this direction, you’re going to have to do that same mile in the other direction…” But I didn’t act on this and just proceeded onwards.

Shortly after the turn around, I’ve had a feeling that I’ve never had on a ride before - fear. I don’t really know why, but I had this sudden feeling of fear and uncertainty and I no longer wanted to be riding my bike. I think I was scared about how hard I had pushed myself to that point and that I was only half way through my ride. That and I started out late and would be battling the sun setting and riding a bike with no reflectors (hey, I never said I was smart), so I knew I had grounds to be concerned, but not fearful? I haven’t felt “fear” in quite a while so this was a total surprise to me. But I pressed on and very slowly, my feelings of fear subsided and were just replaced with fatigue when I hit my normal landmark indicating that I had 40 miles left.

My now, I normally would have ridden long enough in duration where I would have had me maybe 20-30 miles from home by now, but I was still 40 miles out - a distance that just seemed too far given how I was feeling. But sulking wasn’t going to get me home anytime faster so I put my head down and kept riding. During miles 60-75, more new feelings arose. I’m not even really sure how to describe what I felt, but it was somewhere between dizzy and almost drunk. My upper body coordination seemed to be failing me and doing a simple task like taking a drink while riding seemed incredibly difficult. I felt like my reaction times were slower and honestly hoped that I didn’t just fall over and blackout in a ditch someplace. But oddly enough, legs were feeling pretty good despite this. It was like my lower body wasn’t attached to my upper body and my brain just put my legs on autopilot while it sorted out the rest of the fatigue with the rest of me. Very strange indeed.

At 75 miles, I knew the end was near. I had just another hour or so before I would be someplace where I felt I was close to home and I knew that would be a big mental boost. I just needed to concentrate for one more hour and get there. I just dug deep and gave it everything that I had left and 25 miles later, it was all done. I had ridden 100 miles in a faster pace than I had ever gone before for a long ride and had experienced a bunch of new feelings on the way. Hopefully, these feelings will be nice treasures for me come race day.

I think Lance Armstrong described suffering pretty well in his book Every Second Counts:

The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring, of finding someting unexpected and revelatory. When you find the outermost threshold of pain, or fear, what you experience afterward is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities. Pain is good because it teaches your body and your soul to improve. It’s almost as though your unconscious says, “I’m going to remember this, remember how much it hurt, and I’ll increase my capacities so that the next time, it doesn’t hurt as much. The body literally builds on your experiences…”

It’s a good feeling to know that I’ve widened by capabilities just that much. I’m improving.