So I probably didn’t think this through earlier this week when I registered, but today I did the Bob LeBow century charity ride. This would have been fine on its own, but after taking a week off the bike, racing less than 8 hours before, plus only getting four hours of sleep, riding a century was probably not the best thing to do in terms of recovery. But since I preregistered, I went anyway. At least the weather was perfect for it and there wasn’t too much of a wind. Since we started in Nampa and went south then west into Oregon, this was a good thing — the winds tend to blow harder out that way. There were a good number of “racers” riding it so I had a good-sized group to ride with. There were times that they were going harder than I wanted to. After my little mid-season break I’m back in “base” training, which means I keep my wattage below threshold on all these long endurance rides. So there a few times I was bit frustrated with the erratic pace, but that’s the price I had to pay for the draft benefit.

The best thing about these rides is the feed stations. There’s usually food and water every 20 miles or so. Most of the racers went straight past the first few feed stations, but I decided to stop at one. It didn’t look like much until I went inside where they had tons of bananas, snack foods, water, and Gatorade. It was awesome! When I started up again I was by myself but then a couple guys joined me from behind. We rode to the next station where the “racer” group stopped. From my vantage point, it looked like they only had water so I was really glad I stopped at the previous station.

A few miles later the big group caught me and I jumped in. I stayed out of the wind most of the time but I could feel my legs becoming fatigued. I stopped at the last feed station at about mile 70, and watched the racer group go on. There were a few others who also stopped along with me, so I had a little group to ride with. At some point, we got off course so we had to check the map a few times to get back on course. But we finally did and then I rode easy the last few miles back to the start. It was a good ride but I think I could have done without the last 30 miles. The racing last night and insufficient recovery time got to me. But I can consider it a mini-training block and just rest on Sunday and Monday. The next couple weeks I plan to do long hours on the bike, so I want to make sure I’m rested.