CRW Spring Century 2012

The annual CRW Spring Century took place yesterday leaving from the Wakefield Vocational Technical High School.  It was a warm, but beautiful spring day.  Extremely low humidity and perfect blue skies.  Met up with Matt first thing, planning for an 8:00 departure.  Wheels up at 8:00 and off to New Hampshire and back.  Robin, Sue’s long time friend, joined us for the first 30 or so as she was undertaking the metric century.  We averaged in the 19.0 mph range for the first hour or so, then amped it up.  By the third hour we were cruising at just over 20 mph. 

Matt is a beast!  He pounded the pedals and I worked to stay right there with him.  We traded some pulls, but he led the way, most of the way.  Power was slightly higher than expected from the start, but HR was mostly behaved throughout the morning.  We latched on to a few groups here and there for some recovery and the pace continued to be pretty high.  Onward we pressed, passing everyone, being passed by no one.  Felt really good to go at a good pace with a specific end goal in mind.  At hour 3, I was confident that I wanted to break the 5:00 mark for the 100.

We stopped at the mile 50 and 79 rest stops to fill up the bottles and get a quick snack.  Then away we went back at it, the two us, soldiering on.  Was fun to work together and Matt is so steady it’s very easy to ride with him. 

At mile 65 or so, I started to feel a little tweak in the knee that began somewhere in the quad.  It became a problem as I continued fatiguing and keeping up with the pacing.  Power began to decline and then eventually pace.  Matt finally decided enough was enough and dropped me around 95.  At this point, it was hot, I didn’t have a whole lot left, but I knew I still wanted the sub 5:00.  Sure enough, 100 came and went at around 4:58 of ride time.  Really happy about that!  The last 5-10 were a bit of a grind and ended up with 105 miles on 5:15.  That’s my longest ride ever.  All in, pretty happy with the effort.  Matt seemed to be happy, as well.  Overall, normalized power of 231W which exceeded expectations.

The aftermath has not been too bad.  Iced a little afterward and fell asleep quickly, before 9:00.  I was up early and ready for a nice session at the pool.  Looking forward to building this riding base and know all the hard work is paying off.  Still, running a marathon after that seems extremely daunting.  It’s far…but, we’ll get there.