Wet Century

JJ and I met at 5am on Saturday for a 6.5 hr tour in the rain. At 4:58am it wasn't raining, at 5am it was- oh well. I've got to be honest, I wasn't sure that we would actually go the distance as early mornings, no coffee, rain, and cool temps, don't actually come across as a high point on my wanna ride radar. I was hoping JJ would start the whining and wanna bag the ride, but no he was fired up to ride his first century- so off we went.

We rode out through Fryeburg and then to Lovell and then to North Bridgton where we stopped in at my folks house for our first reload on water and food. Mom was surprised to see us at 6:30am soaking wet, but then again maybe she wasn't surprised. Then it was off towards Bethel. Taking advantage of each others draft was tough as there was a lot of water on the road, so often we were riding either side by side or had about a ten foot gap between us, this didn't help our recovery but it did keep us from drowning. We eventutually got to Bethel where the woman at the Mobil station said that she hoped we didn't have far to go, when I said that we had to ride back to North Conway she looked at us like we were nuts, when I told her we started in North Conway (or close enough- I think Center Conway would have thrown her off!)I think she just plain stopped believing me. The trip on Rt. 2 back to Evans was a touch dicy, not much road, poor visibility and big trucks- not may favorite combination. Once we were on Evans I think we both felt better and the pace got ridiculus, with the first 3/4 of the climb done at about 18mph. We just flew up the Notch, I'm not sure why but we did and I have to say it was fun. The trip down wasn't as fun. It was cold and the road was dodgy so we took it pretty easy.

From there home things were pretty mellow. I started feeling my mental approach to the ride break down once we hit 90 miles, I just wanted to be done- but we had to add a bit of a loop to hit our 100 so we headed down East Conway road and then came back up 302 riding right past my driveway, then it was up Davis Hill here Dennis finally shouted out the magic number (which I didn't hit until I rode back to my house). I think both of us felt pretty good considering it was a sub 6 hour ride time, 6.5 hr total time, and all done in the pooring rain.

I felt good the rest of the day, much spent on a stool installing ceiling fans- fun.

It's sunday morning now, just got done at RSN and now thinking about a ride- anybody up for a ride?


Dr. Evil