I did my second ever century on Saturday!
I don't think I ever talked about the first on tumblr, so here's a little ramble on both of them haha. Sometime this spring, Ben was going on a work retreat in Valais and decided to cycle there as a fun challenge, doing a little over 100 miles the first day (Sunday) then like 40 miles on Monday morning while everyone else takes the train. I didn’t have my new bike yet but figured since he had heavy panniers I’d be able to keep up on my old trash bike, and to go along for however long I’d manage to keep him company and get a nice ride out of it. One of my goals for the year was a 100-mile ride, and I did think about how awesome it would be to do the whole thing with him, but I didn’t really think it would be possible, not on my old bike and so early in the year on so little training. Long story short, I did it. It was insanely flat - I just checked again and the whole 100 miles had 1,000 m of elevation gain, not a single of which was in an actual steep hill, it was all just gradual inclines. It was hard anyway. Riding a bike for 8+ hours is just... hard, haha, and we were going into a brutal headwind for about 30 miles towards the end.
After that, I was pretty proud to have done it, but it also felt a bit like a fluke, and I still wanted to do it again somehow. For reference, after my first marathon, I thought... well I don’t think I ever thought “never again”, actually, but I definitely wanted it to be a damn long time until my next one. This was different somehow. So now, a few months later, Ben is training for the Tour de Mont Blanc, an extremely long ride with 9,000+ meters of elevation gain he wants to do with some friends in a couple weeks, and I suggested doing another 100-miler this weekend. So we went and did it - no real prep, I just plotted a route and we got up early and got going and somehow arrived home again 8.5 hours, 100 miles and 2,302m of elevation gain later. These things always sound impossible until you do them, right? They do to me, anyway. It was a pretty grand day. Perfect weather - not too hot, not too cold, sunny most of the time; the route combined two of our favourite areas with some new stuff in the middle and we got really lucky there, aside from some weird industrial areas with very difficult navigation around Zug all the roads were great; some really hard hills, one with at least 20% incline that I nearly died on :’D but mostly steep but efficient inclines. I think that’s what was hardest about the day, it was just up and down, up and down, no really big climbs but just endless haha. Somehow this one feels so much more real than the first one? Like okay, I can really do this apparently. I’m really enjoying this new sport, still.
