Capital to Capital Century

 

Last Saturday, I rode the Capital to Capital Century down in southern Virginia.  The route went from Jametown to Richmond and back.  The weather was cool, cloudy, and pretty windy.  My friend Shawn also rode it.  It was his first century and he did great.  We didn’t ride together because I was trying to finish under 5 hours and 30 minutes and his goal was just to finish. (which is a great goal for your first century).

I rode with Brian Laubscher, a friend of one of my riding buddies (Chad). It was the first time I had ridden with him and I have to say that we had a blast.  Brian is a beast!(and now my friend)  As we rode we talked about training, nutrition, equipment and relaxing on the bike.  Brian has ridden accross the country (every mile) and had lots of experiecne and advice on distance riding and endurance.   I learned a ton from him. He was a bit stronger than me and he pulled about 70% of the ride. (Not counting when we were in a bigger group for about 20 miles)  I got right behind his wheel and we were flying.  When he got tired I would pull for a bit and then he was ready to go again. 

At the 75mile mark we stopped for some BBQ at the lunch stop. (about 20min)  The wind was blowing hard and the temperature was dropping.  I had arm warmers so I kept pretty warm.  Brian only had the short sleeve jersey and looked cold.  I looked at my GPS watch and we figured that if we did a 21 mph pace for the last 25 miles that we could finish under 5 hours riding time. 

We were both motivated to ride hard (though it took us a second to get pysched up).  As we were leaving we noticed 10 or so people on Cerevelos pulling out. (There was probably $30,000 worth of bikes in this group)  We let them leave so that we could taunt them a bit as we blew by them.   Sure enough, we started picking up speed and easily passed the group.  As we passed I smiled and said to the leader, “With 10 people and all those nice bikes, you should be able to catch this 2-man break away.”  Brian put pedal to the metal and I was right on his wheel.  We left those “posers” in the dust!  Actually, they seemed like really nice people, having fun on their bikes, but hey, we needed a bit of motivation.

As we approached the finish, Brian picked up the pace even more.  We had another group latch on to us as we passed them.  Brian was an animal.  We were going 25-26mph and he was doing all the pulling.  I was 2 inches off his wheel!  With about 1000 meters to go I looked at my watch.  It said 4:58.  I told Brian about the time and then got up on my pedals for an all out sprint.  I was surprised how much juice I had in my legs.  Brian had led me out and now it was my turn to sprint to the line.  I felt like Tom Boonen as we fininshed in 4:59.

Well, it was a marvelous day.  The weather held.  Brian and I beat the 5 hour mark and put a hurting on the posers! (We dedicated our ride to Chad! We missed him and our other buddy, Pasi!)  And Shaun came to the finish with a huge smile on his face.   I love this sport!