Part two of my Livestrong Challenge journey (well, the athletic part two) was the bike ride. The ride is a century although folks can do either 20, 45, 70, or the full 100 (probably more like 95). The terrain was a bit intimidating from driving around but I didn’t do a bike ride at all until the morning of the ride.

A century is tough enough (I’ve done six of them) but to add to the challenge, the weather was seriously compromised. My Team Fatty Philly teammates said that the weather service had predicted a 70% chance of rain and the possibility of thunderstorms; we were given instructions on what to do if there were thunderstorms (take off our cleats, put a marker on the road, and get off the course to wait for a sag pickup).

So there was no question this would be more challenging than my typical century in Honolulu.

It ended up being far more than that.

The quick, fun part was riding from the hotel to the start as Team Fatty. As I’d find out at the start we are by far the largest team and we got lots of love from the crowd and public address announcer.

Unfortunately, we wouldn’t get a lot of love from the course.

The first bit of the ride was described to me by my captain Philly Jen as “junk miles”. It turned out these were a lot of rolling hills–and rollers are not my friend. However, they were different from the kinds of rolling hills I know of at home; they were shorter and steeper. Combining that with the 10K I ran on Saturday plus the dreary weather conditions and I have nothing to say but that course was really kicking my anatomy.

The first rest stop I met up with other Fatties. Philly Jen had dropped back and we rode together with Jennie, one of our other teammates, for quite awhile. We continued on through some of the worst hills I can remember–not long, but steep, and over and over again.

The weather was not helping. When we got to another rest stop, it looked like this:

We ended up here for quite awhile.

Jennie decided she’d stay with her original plan of 45 miles; I went with Philly Jen for the 70. I hoped to do the 100, but the course, the weather, the long rest stops–did I mention the course?–indicated the 70.

And then the cramps started.
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