My first metric century morphs into a 93 mile ride! – ride report
I woke up at dawn to ride from my house to the start of the North Shore Century where I met up with 2 friends. We filled our water bottles, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed off for what we intended to be a metric century (our first). The weather couldn’t have been better. It was cool in the morning but not cold, and even as the day wore on, the sun never got too intense thanks to a bit of fog.
Things were great heading into the first rest stop. We felt good and were making good time. However, at some point after that, all of our maps ended up in the hands of a friend. A friend, I should say, who got dropped after the first rest stop . . . So I and my other friend were without a map. There were enough riders on the road so we didn’t feel like we really needed a map. For a while, we were riding with another group of women, but at some point decided to break away from that group, and we found ourselves alone on the road.
Eventually it occurred to us that it had been quite awhile since we have seen any other riders. Were we off course? We tried calling our friend with the maps, but no answer. We had the phone number for the event coordinators, but all they were able to tell us was that we were very much off course, but since we were also off their maps, they could not say by how much, or how to get back. Finally we got a hold of our friend who was at the 2nd rest stop. She helped us get back on course – turns out we hade gone 7.5 miles too far, thereby adding 15 miles to our ride!
On the return trip back to our missed turn-off we see riders going in the direction we were coming from. We knew we couldn’t have missed the turn off twice. We flag down the riders and examine their map. It turned out that they had missed the same turn off as we. So we head off together and finally reach the rest stop! (And on the way ran into our friend with the map who had doubled back to find us).
The rest of the ride was without blunder. We rode for a while on a very nice bike path and then through some amazing neighborhoods. The real estate in the north shore is something else – huge castle-like mansions right on Lake Michigan. Just when we thought we had seen the biggest most dramatic home imaginable, the next one was bigger.
By the time we got into the finish, I was ready for the ride to be over – I was getting tired and was running late to meet friends for a football game. But the ride wasn’t over. I still had to get home (8 more miles). So I didn’t dawdle at the finish but hopped on my bike and headed for home. That stretch was hard. I was alone, and my right calf was starting to cramp up. I knew at that point that I had pushed myself to my limits, which was a good feeling.
In all, riding to the start, the metric, the missed turn-off, and the ride home, I did 93 miles. Previously, my longest ride was 50 miles, so this was a huge accomplishment for me!
After the ride, I didn’t even have time to sit down. I showered, changed, and went to join some friends for a football game. I was jumping up and down for 4 hours watching my team win, and by 6:30 pm realized that I hadn’t even sat down since my ride – that realization itself was enough to suck up my last bit of energy. I headed home, and at 7:30 crashed on my sofa where I am now writing this ride report.
