50 miler of fun!

I just recently finished my first 50 mile ride of the year by completing the Lilac Century ride. Its my annual hommage to getting into bike shape plus basically a big social fest of roadies and triathletes mixing it up for between 50 and 100 mile ride options.

Normally if I was training for Ironman, I would be doing the 100 miler but since I'm only doing HIM race distances I can somehow justify doing the shorter 50 mile ride.

The day started out 2 hours later at a more reason time of 9am with a group of about 75-100 riders. I started out the ride at SFCC with my fellow Team Blaze members (Mason, Colleen and others). Unfortunately my roadie training partner Eric Abbott wasn't able to join us so my goal was to find another fast rider to help pace me.

At the second rest stop I was able to hook up with Rick Williams from Spokane Rocket Velo who graciously agreed to pace me the last 25 miles. It was fun to have a roadie talk me through how he attacks each hill climb with a high candence style. He noted that I was spinning way too slow (85mph) and suggested that I'm probably riding in too hard of a gear or need to work on some single leg exercises to build up my strength. So more to learn and to work on during my training so I relish the challenge to get better especially now that I have a new road bike as well to hone my skills.