The 56 Mile Half Century

Well it was hot, long, tiring, and AWESOME! I finished the 50 mile route (+6 due to a wrong turn) of the Seattle Century. I got to ride with some really fun people. Everyone seemed like they were having a good time, even though the road directions didn't match the map and a few of us got lost (I saw more than one person checking the ride map which wasn't very accurate). I was 3 minutes under my goal time of 4 hours. I was completely exhausted when it was over, it still hurts to walk up or down stairs. To give everyone a rough idea of the course. It started in Magnuson Park (near the University of Washingtion), went north west through Bothell, east into Woodinville, south into Redmond, then Bellevue, I took a wrong turn here and went east into Issaquah, then west along I-90 along the water over Mercer Island (horrible hills), and finally back into Seattle and north back to Magnuson Park. Whew! Here are the stats that I tracked (since I'm a data nerd):

• Total Ride Distance: 56 miles
• Total Ride Time: Just under 4 hours
• Average Pace: 14.1 mph
• Max Speed: 29 mph
• Approximate Number of Calories Burned (calculated): 3,000 (I'm still hungry)
• Starting Temp: 72
• Ending Temp: 89ish (felt like 110)

Overall it was a great experience and I'm going to start training harder for the next event. More distance riding and faster time. Oh, pictures will be coming at some time, I haven't even seen them yet.

Tour de France 2009

For those of you that are not complete cycle nuts and don't already know, the Tour de France is in full swing, full swing being stage 11 of 21. Now if you don't read the news Lance Armstrong is back in this one and his entire team, Astana, is doing AWESOME! Lance is in 3rd, Alberto Contador, his teammate, is in 2nd, Levi Leipheimer another teammate is in 4th, and yet another Astana teammate, Andreas Kloden, is in 6th. If you haven't caught any of the tour you need to get up early (You can catch the last few miles if you start watching at 7ish). You can watch it in the Versus network (they replay it later in the day I believe). If you don't then head to the Tour de France 2009 site and in the upper right they have a live video link (it's the Versus network again if your in the US, but there are other world wide sites). Fun stuff! It's a great year to be cycling!

Seattle Century July 25th

Yea! It's almost here. As some of you know I'm in the middle of my second season of cycling. This is the first event that I will be participating in. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm only doing the half century this time (Seattle to Bothell to Redmond over the I90 bridge and back to Seattle). The goal is 50 miles in 4 hours! Every time I think of that my legs start to hurt. This is only the second time this event has happened, but they are apparently doing very well with registrations this year, somewhere north of 600 based on the last number I heard. If you're going to be in Seattle that weekend and own a bike head on over to their website and sign up. Right now I'm a solo rider, but it would be a lot of fun to have a few people riding that I actually know. Oh, and if you are in the area, but not riding be careful on the roads. Lot's of cyclists so traffic will be impacted through the route.