Cinderella Classic: a very late report

I understand that my numerous fans have been waiting for over a month for the exciting report of my first 100km ride. My apologies to my devoted fans.

The pain and exhaustion of my epic ride has faded, which may be a good thing for you. But first I have to start at 7:00am the Friday before the ride when I rolled my ankle while walking the dog. Some of you know my dog and she is a bit of a spaz, but she didn't do anything to make be sprain my ankle. I just stepped on the edge of the sidewalk. That led to a few hours of fretting and trying to decide if I would be riding. Finally, after an email exchange with coach and comments from friends, I decided to ride with the sprained ankle. (It wasn't a very bad sprain.)


The day started very, very early with meeting the Mermaids to caravan to ride start. Gina, Jill, & Naama did the Challenge (longer with big climbs) and Diane, Wilma, and I did the Classic, 67 miles. As Molly pointed out, the is 5 miles longer than a metric century.

We headed out for our epic ride at around 7:45 am. It wasn't raining, but it was just about the windiest day I have seen in long time. Great. We started out from the fairgrounds in Pleasanton. It was nice and green.

and checking in behind me


We pedaled and pedaled and pedaled through Pleasanton, which I don't know at all so I was really hoping the directions were correct. Mostly, I followed the women in crazy costumes.


We got to the first rest stop at 23 miles, I think. We refilled bottles and I discovered the rest stops had circus animals cookies. Score! We headed out for the next section which included our first climb of the day. Nothing horrible, just a long steady climb.


Some people stopped to regroup before the climb.


And, some of us just went for it. One of the good things about the climb was that it wasn't windy. I was about 2/3 of the way up the hill when I realized that I wasn't in my granny gear, I was still in the middle chain ring! Woot, woot! Which of course, meant I had to finish the hill in that gear.

There was a killer descent after that climb. Nice long, but not too steep hills. Sa-weet!! And, then we really hit the wind. Crosswind. Which I have decided is worse than headwind.


Self-portrait in the wind.

Then our next stop was lunch. Mmmmm . . . food! Diane and I met up with Wilma there, she ditched us on the climb.


Refueling. I probably should have had more to eat.

After lunch we headed back out. Back out into the wind. We were on a slight descent that we should have been able to go about 20 mph. Instead we had a headwind and I was having trouble maintaining 10 mph. :-( I was not happy.


That sky looked scary, but didn't produce much.


And, this was the last we saw of Wilma. She had a hot date and needed to finish faster than I could.

We had one more climb that was very pretty. When we were dealing with the headwind I thought I would much rather have climb. But once I got to the climb I wasn't so sure. But, really I think I will taking climbing over the &#$@! wind. After we finished that climb we had our last rest stop. What I really want was caffeine. Coffee, coke, diet coke, tea, mountain dew, jolt, I didn't really care. But there was no stimulants to be found. :-( Keep in mind that by now we were riding through Danville and could have stopped at any number of places for caffeine. I have no response to that.

As we were driving through Danville, something felt funny, kinda squishy. I yelled back to Diane, "Do I have a flat tire?" Her answer, "Yes!" Crap. We stopped and sat down on the sidewalk to change my tire. I had all the stuff I needed but was really hoping for one of the SAG wagons to drive by. I got my tire off, which was amazing because it is really tight. I got going on changing the tube when Diane spotted a SAG. She almost didn't wave them down, but thank goodness she did because it turned out I had a hole in my spare tube. D'oh! They got me all fixed up and on the rode again.

Diane said they must have filled my tires with magic air because I took off and was yelling "on your left" over and over. (Really, I think it had more to do with all the downhills and the 30 minutes of rest.)

The last 5 miles were torture. We were back in the wind. My ass hurt. My ankle was achy. I was done. But we finally made it back to the start. It was a good ride, but I would have been perfectly happy with a true metric century, I didn't need the 5 bonus miles. Diane (and Wilma before she left us) was a great partner and we had a good time. Just as we were pulling out we saw our buddies doing the Challenge route roll in. (I'm so glad they didn't beat us.)

When I got home it was time for a very long, hot shower and pizza.


The End.