"I don't even feel like I rode today" - Nate Schontag

Nate and I signed up for a century ride in March... When did we start "training" for it?? Oh... one week ago... That's when I found out that Nate was NOT going to let me bail from it! This century ride is in the Berkshires which are a set of mountains in Massachusetts. Last year, we signed up for the "flattest" century ride... We didn't end up doing the ride because it was in Maryland, it was an 10 drive to ride our bikes for 6+ hours and then drive home. Oh, and it was going to rain. Oh, and I had fallen off my bike a few weeks before and hurt my hip really bad. This year, we didn't sign up for the flattest century ride. Quite the opposite actually. We signed up for the "most gorgeous, yet grueling" century ride. And we have 3 weeks to "train" for it... FANTASTIC PLANNING!

Back to our training. I knew that we needed to ride a few long rides before we attempt 100 miles, so I figured, oh yes, let's ride around the largest lake in NH. It'll be pretty. It might be a bit hilly. I unfortunately did not use my GPS thing on my phone, so I don't have a complete elevation gain... but I did find this site that does have the elevation gain... We only rode 60 miles and there are three different places from that site that we didn't follow, but for the most part... Yup, we rode that!!!

Here are a few of my favorite examples of elevation gain:

and my favorite...

I will not claim to have rode up that first hill non-stop!! I did ride it! I did stop...  A LOT!!! But I did ride it!!

I'll give it a few days before I say whether or not this ride was fun!! It was hard!! My muscles are sore! I was really uncomfortable for the last 20 or so miles. Not uncomfortable enough to quit, but definitely uncomfortable to complain about it... Not that does any good!!!

Some of my accomplishments... Slowest riding ever... I think it was right after our first stop. Of course, we stopped at the bottom of hills and this hill we could not see as we were resting. But as I neared the top, I looked down and my speedometer said, 4.5 and my cadence was about 40. OUCH!!! Another accomplishment... fastest riding ever!! My speedometer clocked me at 39.7!! WAHOO!!! I was cruising!!! I'm pretty sure the speed limit was 45 mph so I unfortunately did not speed. Final accomplishment, I took a picture while riding!! I didn't make a phone call or facebook or anything like that, Carrie... :-D

And my lovely boy, what are his comments:

"I really don't even feel like I rode today."

"I think I'm going to go home and mow because I'm not that sore."

"That hill (as we just finished going up a hill) was really fun."

"Really? You are that tired?"

Thank goodness that he's soooo stinking cute!! He would've gotten beat!!!

Here are some of the pictures I took while I was riding:

Amanda enjoying the flat road on a beautiful day.

Nate, happy as a clam on our first break

Nate on one of our last few uphills

The lake! The only picture I was able to take of it and it was a little cock-eyed b/c there were lots of cracks that I was riding over...