Century

On Wednesday we rode from Watsonville through San Francisco to Tiburon.  It was my first time riding a century (112.75 miles).  The morning was a cold and windy, our support van had mechanical problems, one of my teammates was having knee trouble, and someone else's bike broke...it was a rocky start to the day.  To combat the discouragement that this caused we stopped at a roadside stand and ate deliciously fresh strawberries.  After that we went two more miles and saw a sign that said, "World's best muffins."  Naturally we had to stop here as well :)  I got a pumpkin spice muffin - yum.  After those stops we kicked it into high gear and started cranking out some miles.

Apparently San Francisco is hilly; not nice rolling hills, but steep nasty hills.  At one point we were riding through a construction zone with no shoulder and cars zooming past...and I'm pretty sure we were riding straight up as well.  That was a bit scary, but what goes up must come down and that downhill was really sweet...the cars weren't passing us anymore.  On the other climbs my teammates and I sang songs and practice our multiplication tables to keep our minds off of our burning quads.  The other slightly scary part of the ride was the wind at the top of one of the hills.  It was crazy windy and blowing us all over the place.

Eventually we made it through San Francisco and rode over the Golden Gate bridge.  Even though it was foggy it was still great to ride over that bridge.

Once we got over the bridge we were about 10 miles away from the church where we were staying.  Originally we were not going to be speaking at the church, but the plans changed and we only had 15 minutes to get to the church before our speaking engagement.  We cranked out the miles as fast as we could, but we were still a little late.  When we got to the church we were all spent, but pizza and showers were able to revive us.