Salt Lake City, Utah
May 16, 2009
105 miles
Considering that I haven't ridden my bike since the Zion Century in February, and my attendance at the gym has been sporadic at best, I was a little nervous about this ride. But I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. My friend, Becca, and her husband picked me up at 6 am and we headed up to the SLC Fairgrounds. We picked up our free t-shirt and goodie bags and were ready to start by 7:30 am. We hooked up with a friend of Rich's named Olly (short for Oliver) and he rode with us. There were around 1,500 people signed up for the ride, so the first few miles were pretty busy. Luckily the police had closed down a few of the roads and were controlling all of the intersections, so we just rolled right on through. It was quite a site I'm sure. We made it to the first rest stop about 18 miles into the ride pretty quickly. There were a lot of people who got flat tires along the way, but luckily we made it through unscathed. The route was pretty much flat, which was good for my weak legs. If there had been any major hills I would have been in bad shape! We hit the next rest stop, filled up our water bottles, and continued out to Antelope Island.
Along the route, Rich and Becca were motoring along and I was too tired to try and keep up. Luckily Olly was going a slightly slower pace, so I hung out with him for a while. We were chatting as we were riding along and learned that we had something in common. Long story short, his ex-in-laws were from Cardston, Alberta, near where I grew up. And, to make things even funnier, the aunt and uncle of his ex were the parents of a boy I dated for a while in high school. I was cracking up! Talk about a small world. Anyway...
I had only been to Antelope Island once before, but that was last year on the Antelope Island by Moonlight ride, so it was dark when we started anyway. So this was the first time I've been there during the day. It was quite pretty! Although I could have done without the brine smell and the bazillions of bugs. It was rather disgusting, actually. Riding toward the island on the cause way, there was a stretch of about a mile where it was like we were riding through a rainstorm of bugs. It was hard to breathe because you'd inevitably suck a bug (or five) into your mouth or up your nose. Aaack! That was miserable. But, once we got past that it was much more bearable. We rode a small loop on the island and then headed back towards Farmington. The wall of bugs had moved by the time we headed back, so that was nice.
We stopped at the lunch stop at about mile 70 and were glad that we were almost 3/4 of the way through. It was a beautiful, sunny day with hardly any wind. The last 30 miles covered the same route that we started on, so it was nice to know what was ahead and that there weren't any major hills waiting for us. We kept a pretty good pace and made it back to the car around 3:30 pm. That was by far my fastest century! It certainly helped that the route was flat and the weather was great, so we didn't have any hills or wind to slow us down. Not to mention, Rich is a work horse and pulled us along faster than I would have gone on my own. :) It was good for me though. I will definitely do this ride again in the future!
Facts from my Garmin:
Distance: 105.7
Time in saddle: 06:21.35
Calories: 5660
Average speed: 16.6 mph
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