Ok, Craig is starting to make me feel lazy.
I have not one, not three, not even five, but seven full centuries to report since my last update! You heard that right! Seven! That brings me up to eight total on the year!!! Look at all those exclamation points!!! Hell yeah I'm shouting!!!!!
Full century #2 on the year: March 18th
Took off with Charles for a ride around the Amanas. As a joke, we hit every gas station along the way and took pics of Charles sitting on the curb to send to his friend and show him what hard core endurance guys we were. 104 miles on the day.
Full century #3 on the year: March 25th
I took off to explore some new to me roads up around Anamosa, meeting Charles along the way. Found some great hills that I'd never ridden before. Weaseled around town for a few miles at the end to get a full hundy in. 100.6 miles on the day.
Full century #4 on the year: April 1st
Picked up Charles at 1:30 in the morning, drove to Des Moines and joined up with Courtney for a 4am start. The big goal of the day? 200 miles of gravel and a picture in front of the "Welcome to Missouri" sign. Highlights of the day included losing track of the number of B roads we hiked, following a Garmin that was stuck in Guitar Ted super sadistic mode, and my own whininess because I bonked hard less than halfway through the trip. We ended up with 210 miles by the time we rolled back into town around midnight, but I'm only counting it as one since actual gravel miles were somewhere between 120 and 130. Don't count on us ever doing that again in non-race format. It was... Erm... Difficult.
Full century #5 on the year: April 28th
Another year, another Trans Iowa DNF. Teamed up with Courtney since I wasn't about to try to keep up with Sir Charles of Gigantic Manliness. We drove hard through wind, soft gravel and many, many hills. So basically, typical Trans Iowa. I burned everything I had to make the first checkpoint in time and had nothing left to give beyond that. 60 miles in I encouraged Courtney to go on ahead without me since I knew I didn't have it in me to make CP2. Ended up stretching it out for a hundred anyway, just so that I could say that I did. Rode the last couple/few hours with Dave Mable and called it quits in Hedrick. Thanks to Dave for encouraging me to man up and finish out the hundy on course instead of on pavement.
Full century #6 on the year: May 19th
This year I decided to do Almanzo instead of the Royal, thinking it would be a good easy fun training ride to hold me over between TI and Dirty Kanza. Yeah... So much for easy. Hot, windy, hilly was the theme of the day and it took me a good hour longer to finish than I was expecting. At one point I plopped my wasted carcass in the shade of a cemetery tree in a futile attempt to cool off. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I managed to get back up and finish it out though, swapping tires from front to back 10 miles from the end to avoid a front blowout. I wasn't feeling too confident on that big bulge brewing on my tire tread. It made it intact though, and so did I. 100+ on the day.
Full centuries #7 and 8: June 2nd
Redemption for one of my two DNFs of 2011, I finished the 2012 running of Dirty Kanza in 17 hours and 16 minutes. Apparently Minnesota had traded Kansas for its weather plus two storm systems to be named later. DK will never see nicer conditions than what we had this year. Temps were in the low to mid 80s and wind was single digits to non-existant. I rode with Courtney for the entire race, plus a couple other friends for portions of the first leg. I have never felt that good for that amount of time in a race before, and Courtney and I even finished it off in a three man sprint. It was more for posterity than anything. That's what I'm telling myself anyway, because that sandbagger beat me ;-)
By my count that puts me at 6 metrics and 8 fulls to date, which is looking pretty good over last year. Things are going to slow down for me now as far as the long rides go, but I'm still planning on going 12 and 12 by years end. Until I ramp it back up, I'll just have to settle for heckling the rest of you from the peanut gallery. Cheers :-D
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