11/16/2008

 Sunday, November 9th was the Silverbell Century that started in North Tucson and headed to Marana, Avra Valley and back to Tucson.  This was my first century event since the Davis Double.  My friend Robert Ehlbeck also decided to join me for his first ever century ride!  The route itself wasn't terribly difficult with some climbing at the beginning, a good long descent in the middle and flat terrain back to the start.  For route and ride statistics and to replay the event, check out my ride at http://enfield.motionbased.com and select the Silverbell Century.  Use the "Player" to follow my progress.  Very cool.

We left Robert's house in Chandler at 4:30 am and got to Tucson with plenty of time for the start.  My car showed that it was 40 degrees when we pulled into the parking lot!  Brrr...  I knew it would be brisk, but 40 degrees??  It was a cold wait standing in line to check-in at the registration table.  GABA didn't want anyone to leave until after official sunrise, so they didn't start checking people in until exactly 7am.

Colin Cordell, the GABA organizer, was kind enough to send me a copy of the route sheet before the ride, so I was able to create a route to use with my Garmin 705 cycling computer, so I had navigation available during the ride.  I REALLY like that.  The computer tells you exactly how far it is to the next turn.  No more wondering or trying to calculate distance left. 

The course started at Craycroft & River in Tucson.  Robert left the start a bit harder than he should have to try to warm up quickly from the cold.  I let him go for a bit, but caught him before the turn onto Sabino Canyon. There are a couple pretty good climbs through the next section of the ride, but Robert seemed to be doing pretty good.  The cold was impacting him some, but he was never that far behind.

There was a steep descent on Kolb road headed to Sunrise and that's where I hit my high speed for the day at 49.5 mph!  Cold air always seems to affect my bladder, so we stopped at a Burger King on Sunrise to use the facilities.  I went first then ate a banana outside and shed my vest while Robert was using the facilities.

We maintained a pretty good pace along Sunrise, then turned onto Paseo Del Norte.  At one point along Northern Ave, my 705 told me to turn left on Magee, but everyone else was going straight.  Hmmm... we stopped and checked the printed route sheet and it didn't say anything about turning on Magee.  Right after going through the light, the 705 said to continue for another 1.4 miles.  Ok, so it's not perfect!  The map screen shows a very slight dog leg turn, so the 705 incorrectly thought we would be on Magee very briefly then get back on Northern.  I'll have to keep an eye out for those kinds of issues when I do routes or it could throw me way off course! 

I had a pretty good pace going through some big rolling hills and completely missed the first SAG stop at the bottom of one hill.  Oops.  I stopped at the top of the hill to wait for Robert and he told me I blew right past the SAG stop.  He wasn't completely out of water yet, but was running low so we planned to stop at the next convenience store/gas station.  About when we turned onto 1st Avenue in Oro Valley the wind started to pick up.  Not bad, but it was definately a head wind.  I wasn't riding too hard into the wind, but Robert fell a bit behind.  A couple times I looked back and was surprised to see Robert leading a little pace line!  Robert is about 6 foot 5 inches, so he makes a really nice wind barrier and the people behind him were really enjoying that protection!

There's a store on the corner of 1st ave and Tangerine, so we stopped there so Robert could fill his bottles and I ate another banana.  Then we hit the long descent down Tangerine.  It felt like we had a bit of a tail wind and I maintained right around 33 mph for the descent, occasionally getting up to 37-38 mph.  What a fun descent!  I thought I'd have to wait for Robert, but when I looked back, he was right there, so I just had to slow down a bit for him to catch up.  The wind was shifting a bit and getting stronger, but we had another tailwind going down the frontage road to the Circle K in Marana. 

Mark Goldentyer was doing the ride and we passed eachother a couple times along there.  The first time I went by and looked over I thought he looked familiar, but didn't recognize him.  Robert dropped back a bit, so I slowed down before the turn to wait for him and let Mark go on ahead.

We didn't really know how much the wind had picked up in strength until we turned onto Sanders road.  Wow!  Sanders road always seems like it has a HARD wind and it was true again this time!  It's amazing how much more effort a 0.1 or 0.2 mph increase in takes when faced with a strong head wind.  I didn't force my speed and took it easy, but Robert had to fight his way into that wind.  He said it was brutal.  We stopped at the SAG for 10 minutes or so and I snacked on mini-brownies and had a diet coke.  Robert used the porta-potty, then we headed out again.  The 100 mile route turned off of Sanders onto Trico road to add about 17 miles to the route, but at least that turn gave us a cross/tail wind because the Trico is at about a 45 degree angle off of Sanders road.  That only lasted for a few miles though.

The wind continued to pick up strength and it was a long, slow ride around and along Avra Valley road.  The flags at the Avra Valley airport were straight out showing a really hard cross wind.  Robert was starting to show the effects of fighting a strong head/cross wind, so we stopped for a brief break at the turn onto Airline/Lambert road.  At the next SAG we spent about 15 minutes to eat and use the facilities.  Mark Goldentyer was there and we chatted for a minute or two about the Mount Lemmon 200k brevet that was scheduled for the following weekend.  After leaving that stop, Robert and I got a bit separated.  Not much, only 200 yards or so, but several dust storms came between us that were bad enough to block all visibility.  He was only 200 yards back, but all I saw was a tan cloud if I looked back!

Luckily, with the turn onto Orange Grove, that cross/head wind became a cross/tail wind.  I waited for Robert at the turn and we rode the rest of the way together.  For his first century, he was riding pretty strong at the end, trying to make his goal of completing the century with an on-the-bike ride time under 6 hours.  About 5 miles out, I told him it was time to start cooling down and started riding easy.  With an easy pace we would be close to his 6 hour goal and actually pulled into the parking lot with a few minutes to spare, but he looked down and saw our distance was 99.3 miles, only 0.7 miles short of seeing 100 miles on his cycling computer!  So we rode circles in the parking lot for 0.8 miles which pushed our time to just over 6 hours, 7 hours total (including stops).I felt pretty good after this ride.  I didn't fight the wind too much and riding with Robert certainly helped me from going too hard.  I wound up with an average heart rate of 128 which is relatively low for me.  So I've decided to do the Mount Lemmon 200k on Nov 15th.  Robert called his wife after the ride and asked her to check weather.com for Tucson.  There was an active wind advisory with sustained wind of 25-30 mph with 40+mph gusts!  Ouch!  Guess that is a bit on the brutal side!

Congratulations to Robert on finishing his first 100 mile ride! 

After the ride, I got this email from Robert for his perspective on the ride:

“To all of you that might listen to the convincing arguments of Mike Enfield when it comes to the ease of a century ride, what you might all fail to realize is that he does NOT control the weather.  The 25-30 MPH sustained and 40 MPH gusts about killed me

100.3 Miles
6 Hours and 5 Mins
7,658 Calories
An average heart rate for 6 hours of 159
5 shots of straight sugar, 2 power bars, 12 bottles of water,
and enough salt on my forehead to fill a salt shaker later…

…we arrived at the finish line.

But in all seriousness, thanks for making me do it Mike.  It was a milestone (100 of them actually) that I am happy to have reached and plan on doing it many more times.”