Did I Just Do A Century Ride Today?

Nope. It just FELT like a century ride, unfortunately - my first ride in a long, long time. Too long, as it turns out. I thought that getting onto the Comeback Trail would be tough - but it's going to be even tougher, as I found out today.

The ACTUAL ride was only about 30 minutes long - and wasn't even 10 miles long (more like 6.5 miles) - and it wasn't even hilly - it was FLAT! And I still died... :(

I guess something happens once you get past 55 (the last time I did a real ride, I wasn't even a Senior Citizen) - I'm 56 now - so THIS is what's it's like to be an old-timer, I guess. Ugh! I have a feeling it's going to be a tad harder to pull off those extra pounds, too.

But here's the good news - my new Garmin Edge 500 worked really, really well - I love it - and will be posting all my rides up on the GarminConnect website, with my handle (polarlight) - so everyone can watch me go from "Mr. Slow" to "Mr. Go"... :)

But it's gonna take awhile - I figure about 6 months before I can point with any pride to any rides I do - but it looks like I'll get some help along the way - I've already heard from a bunch of my riding buddies - Chimene, Andy, Jeff, and Jason - and I'm sure they'll help drag my butt around, firmly attached to the saddle of my bike - and hopefully get strong enough to cause them some anxiety when we hit some hill (like I did at one time - a very long time ago!)...

So today's initial ride was nothing to write home about - but at least it's a start - and that's all it was meant to be. It would have been closer to an hour, but I got started late (work crap!) and then spent a bunch of time getting my new Garmin Edge 500 configured just right - I mean, they now give you 3 (count 'em!) different displays to toggle through - and you can even have the toggling through the different screens done automatically while you ride! - and each screen can have up to 8 programmable fields - and you can choose from about a zillion (well, maybe closer to 42) different fields - nice! It'll be fun to get home tonight and upload the data to my PC - or maybe I'll just upload to the GarminConnect website, since it has all my older rides (used to be called MotionBased.com) - I'll decide later...

So it wasn't a century ride - but in about 6 months, I plan on doing a *real* century ride - and hopefully, get in good enough shape to tackle the Santa Cruz Mtn Challenge next summer - but that's just dreaming right now...first you crawl, then you walk, then you run, then you get on your bike (and die) - and then repeat as needed... :)