bike a century

I’ve (finally!) started biking to work this week.. better late than never, right? I’m stopping to fill my coffee mug halfway there, which adds about .5 miles total – my commute is just over 27.5 hilly miles round trip. Doing that every day should certainly get me in a better position to do a century, no?

My ankle has healed enough that I can ride my road bike, which is euphorically fantastic. I rode 42 flat-ish miles Saturday in just over 3 hours, 22 miles in the foothills Sunday in just under 2 hours, and ~12 hilly highway miles today in just over an hour (skipping out on some office hours, I’ll have to make those up sometime…) Today it was so warm I was in shorts! With the 42 miles coming straight out of not being able to do any meaningful exercise for months, I’m confident in my ability to do a century this summer. Yay!

I had plans to do a LOT of running this year, gearing up for a 17 mile race over a mountain pass, but a twisted ankle has had me out for almost two months (stupid thing won’t heal!) so I’m out of my racing schedule for this year… which means I’ll have a lot more time to give my road and mountain bikes. Maybe once I figure out when my injury will let me start riding again I’ll come up with a training plan, but I figure if I just ride more and more each week I’ll end up with a century under my belt. My longest ride to date so far, was 36 miles over the course of four hours in November – riding my poor road bike on rocky/sandy/hilly forest service roads as if I was riding a full suspension mountain bike. I’m excited about this century thing :)