By early June, I had shed my burnout and was preparing for 3 events - the PWTC Spring Century, The Tour de Blast (Tour of Mt. St. Helens) and the Watermelon Century. The Spring Century sucked, and we battled headwind and rain the entire way. I rode with Ed, a guy from my club, and his brother Wayne. We finished in 5:35, which was my fastest century to date. I wished they moved it to later in the month, but oh well. I figured the poor conditions were further training for STP, in case the weather went bad during that ride.
The Tour de Blast was a lot of fun, I rode with Ed again and Monique did the short route. It was fun, though I wish we could have ridden together. I had to use that as a training ride, so I couldn't take it leisurely - all that kind of riding would come after STP, I told her. We lucked out with the weather, and the views of Mt. St. Helens were spectacular.
The Watermelon Century was another tune-up ride for STP. They had a 200-mile route and Adam and I agreed that I could try to do as much of that as I could, but to option out of it at anytime after 100 miles if I felt I couldn't continue. I showed up at 5:30am for the "mass start" they wrote about on the web site. There about 12 of us doing the double and we got splintered into 3 groups early on. I was in the middle group, with 4 other guys. The ride was a lot of rolling hills and a lot of headwind. I was very tired at 100 miles, but I felt I could go on. One of the guys had Advil, so I popped a couple of those and believe me, I'll never to a double again without it.
At mile 120, we were toiling along some rolling hills into the wind. We got up to the crest of a hill when there she was - a 16-17 year old hottie with big boobs in a bikini top and daisy dukes. And she was painting the fence! You've never seen a group of suffernig guys get well faster in your life. I'll remember that as one of the most random and funny moments cycling.
By the time we got to mile 150 and the last major rest stop, I felt like I could complete the whole thing. Plus, I felt bad about abandoning these guys I had worked together with all day. Its funny how fast you make friends when you suffer together. So I stayed on and ended up completing the entire ride. We finished in 14 hours, with just over 11 hours riding time. My riding partners told me that this ride is much more difficult than STP - that if I could do this ride, I could do STP no problem.
I had a new confidence heading into July - 3 weeks before STP and I was ready physically and psychologically. I looked back and couldn't remember what it was like to weigh 198 pounds. After the Watermelon, I felt like I was walking on air.
<- Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 ->
Author's Note: I wrote this article in the Fall of 2004 and since
then I have received great feedback and a request to make it more
available. Since then, I've lapsed into some old (bad) habits but I'm
on my way back. A new "Re-Reinventing the Cyclist" is in the works. For
now, I hope you can find some nugget of usefulness from this archive. -
Carlo