Portland Century Post-Ride

I knew it was going to be a long day the night before the ride when I couldn't get to sleep. I finally managed to eek out about 4 1/2 hours before the alarm woke me a 5 a.m. I got up, showered, gathered my gear and off I rode to the start line downtown at Portland State University. It's about a 7 mile ride down so I got a pretty good warm-up before we set off on the hundred miles. There weren't nearly as many people riding as I thought there might be so I found Kirsten and Dr. Paul pretty quickly. I met Kirsten at the 11 Bridges Ride, she manages a large vet clinic and Dr. Paul is one of the managing partners of the practice. He was a super-nice guy, very down to earth and really funny - and as it turned out, very fast on a bike.

It's tough to ride with people and actually stick together and right out off the start I was moving and quickly lost my two companions. I slowed down and rejoined them a couple of times. That's how the first 20 miles or so went. The next 80 miles consisted of me riding alone while the two of them rode off ahead at what seemed like breakneck speed. I would manage to get to the rest stops just as they were ready to pull out for the next leg - so they got to rest for 20 minutes and I rested for like 5, then rode out with them only to watch them slowly disappear up the road from me. Each time asking myself why the hell I didn't just stay at the rest stop.

The ride itself was nice, but they weren't kidding about the extreme climbing. There were three or four hills that were damn near straight up and went on forever. I've never climbed something so steep for so long. I remember looking down at my bike computer several times on the climbs and was averaging 3.5 to 4 miles per hour. To give you some idea just how slow that is, 3 mph is really the point at which you can't ride a bike without falling over. Lots of folks were throwing in the towel and just walking. I didn't give up, but I sure as hell seriously considered it a few times.

The weather was perfect, hovering around 70 pretty much all day and cloudy with some sun. But what would a bike ride around Portland be without some rain? At the final rest stop about 11 miles from the finish, it started raining and the closer we got to the finish the harder it rained.

My knee bothered my pretty much throughout the entire ride and really ached on the climbs. I'm not near as sore as I was after the Seattle-to-Portland ride though. I think my long rides are done for the season, although Dr. Paul was trying to convince me to do another century to the coast in October. I'm not ready to commit, but I'm not ruling it out yet either.