09/16/13

With this training ride I officially completed the UMCA "Year Rounder" Challenge -- at least one Century or longer ride each month of the year!  Ok, so with the two "make up" months I actually met the requirements in October, but I wanted the full 12 months of centuries. Must be a obsessive-compulsive thing... 

I slept in Sunday morning, so I didn't get on the road until just after 10am, which is relatively late for me.  It was a little brisk out and overcast, so I wore my warmers, glove liners and a skull cap.  I started at my house and took Brown to Power following Power until it turns into Bush Highway and along Bush Highway to Beeline Highway.  It started warming up on the climb just past Saguaro Lake, so I took off the glove liners and skull cap.  There was a little wind throughout the ride, but it seemed to come pretty consistently out of the North, so I had as much of a tail wind as a head wind through the ride.

Somewhere along Beeline I was just starting to take a drink when a horn sounded behind me.  I was drinking with my head turned slightly to the right as a truck went by and I noticed a flash of white go by.  I stopped drinking and saw someone's bare butt was hanging completely out the window.  The truck had already past, so at least I wasn't treated to a full moon...  That's the first time I can remember being mooned on a ride.

My streak of having flat tires on century+ rides continued on this one (I've had at least one flat on every century since Cochise).  Shortly before getting to Shea I had my first flat.  I picked up a wire from some tire debris.  My route took me up Shea to Palisades (going over the "three sisters" in Fountain Hills).  On the first descent I hit some large object (didn't see it, don't know what it was) that resulted in flat number two.  Of course the tire didn't immediately go flat, so I thought I had gotten lucky.  Instead it went flat about half way up the second sister, so I had to restart on a pretty steep grade.  And I was down to one more spare tube.

I took Fountain Hills Road out to Rio Verde, then up 9 mile hill to the Shell station at the top.  I haven't done 9 mile hill in quite some time and it was longer than I remembered it.  There's a cattle guard a few miles up and for some reason I thought that was closer to the top than it actually is.  9 mile hill is kind of interesting because it always seems like there's a head wind on the way down making the descent feel harder than it should feel.  This ride wasn't much different and I was only able to maintain high 20's on the way down occasionally touching low 30's.

The ride back to Fountain Hills had a nice tail wind, so I made pretty good time.  I turned on Saguaro and took that to Grande Ave to go through the indian reservation back to Beeline.  I was concerned going down Beeline because there was a lot of debris and I was down to that last spare tube, but I made it to Gilbert Road ok.  I took Gilbert to McDowell and followed McDowell to Greenfield Road.  As I was approaching Higley my bike got bouncy again and I looked down at flat number three with only 5 miles to go in my ride.  I'm just not having any luck keeping my tires inflated!  And these are relatively new tires!

Not a bad last century of the year.  Just over 108 miles in 6 hours 23 minutes (including all those stops for flats!).  I'll be riding with the Lifesport group next weekend on an out and back from Superior to Winkleman featuring the climb known as "End of the World."  Should be a lot of fun!  Next Century will be the Casa Grande Century on January 8th (starts and ends in Chandler).  This is a great century with a nice flat course and is ideal for anyone considering a first century.  If anyone wants to try it, let me know and you can sit on my wheel. :-)