We were ready to go by 6:30am!
While we started off with Katie and Kevin... they were doing the full Century and took off ahead.
Not long into the ride, it was fun to feel the excitement. Although my favorite part was when when I yelled back to Tammy, "come ride next to me".. and some guy replies, "but I am riding with her (some other lady ahead)"... so I yell back to the guy.. "well gooooo ride with her".. Never thought of that as a pick up line, but maybe that is a good one. I should start asking guys to come ride next to me :)
We were soon joined by a guy who had a prosthetic arm. He was involved in a motorcycle accident about eighteen months before, and lost his arm. In his healing process he has gotten into cycling and was riding with a hook that hooked on to the bike. He was a nice guy, and shared some stories with us, before he took off and peddled ahead to catch up with friends.
Fast forward to the end, we saw him again, with his robotic arm on, and we shared stories from the route. While finishing, each of us were handed a nice cold Michelob Ultra, however, the route guy handing them out didn't realize he couldn't let go of his handle bars to grab the beer, as he would have fallen over, the beer fell to the ground. The things you don't think about when we are so lucky to have two arms.
Gorgeous views of neighborhoods, and small roads, we were surprised when we got to Golden the drivers who did not seem happy to have us riding through their town. One guy honked, so I waved, and he flipped us all off, so I may have flipped him off as he was honking and driving away. I laughed, and was surprised by the first hand experience of drivers not happy about sharing the road.
A few miles later, we hear a driver honking, thinking he was just politely letting us know he was coming, until he sped up, and laid on the horn. Every rider seemed to comment, while one guy yells out, "hey man, you own the car, not the road. Share the road." All entertaining and part of the ride.
Soon joined by our new friend Alex, who thought we had a good pace and joined us for possibly the next hour or so.
He shared stories of riding, getting the miles in each week. This was a long ride for him and he was thinking of bailing out of the MS 150 next weekend. MS 150 is 75 miles each day for 2 days. We lost Alex after the 2nd Aid Station ~ He said he heart rate was up and needed to relax for a little while. That was the last time we saw him.
The weather started to head up, and we continued to ride on! By now all the Century Riders were catching up to us and we asked some of them how they liked Lookout Mountain, each one was happy to share their story.
A few responses
~ Awesome, my 3rd time this week, best time yet
~ Brutal
~ Killer
And I can't remember the rest
The Century Riders were fast and fun kind of people.
Next thing you know ~ We are at the last Aid Station
We are riding strong and only have 15 miles to go.... The last part of the ride was hot, long, and we at some point was ready to be done. We were pretty excited to Cross the finish line! I checked my GPS and it showed we did 81.4 miles. Seems like they were off on mileage of about 5 to 6 miles, but I was darn proud we did 81 miles, that is the farthest I have ridden so far.
All good stuff! Fun Times! Maybe next year we will do the full Century!
WE DID IT ! Cheers!
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