What? 100 Miles? No Big Thing

I know that there's been collective breaths being held throughout the world of the internet while waiting for the result of my 100 mile bike ride held exactly 10 days ago. Well, tense internet-world, hold your breath no more, because the following is the answer you've been waiting for:

It was pretty cool, but sort of hard... Yea, overall it was fine.

Whoa, did that just blow your mind? Did I just use totally boring, nondescript words to describe something that's super crazy? Definitely.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the day came, and the day went. We got onto our bikes at about 6:30 in the morning, and then we were on our bikes for a long time, and then it was over. Nobody (me) hit a wall like last year, nobody cried or went crazy, and all in all everyone felt fairly strong the entire ride. This whole thing basically went down without a hitch, and because of it, the story of Dustin, Ben, and Erin's century ride is extremely boring and ultimately doesn't have any twist to it.

We began the ride at exactly 6:38am, and were cruising. Around an hour in, however, Ben got a flat tire. We ended up stopped for about 35 minutes, and were back on the road. This was literally the most crazy thing that happened all day.

We made a plan before the ride that we were going to spend no more and no less than 5 minutes at each rest stop, but we were going to completely blow by the first stop (17 miles in), as it wouldn't be open yet (the rest stops opened up at 8:30, and there was just no need to stop at that rest stop that early on in our journey). This plan opened us up to making the best time we could make early on, when we would be able to go faster, as we wouldn't have the disadvantage of extra mileage working against us. We were completely successful in abiding to this rule, and even decided at the last stop that we were going to ignore it. This resulted in us achieving our goal of under 7.5 hours. It took us 7 hours and 15 minutes in all, which we were all super thrilled with.

We met up with our adoring fans (the fan section grew considerably this year!) at mile 71. If there was a point at which any of us was dragging this year, this was it. I was sucking wind pretty badly at this point, although not to the degree that I was last year at mile 90 (I considered myself to be 'dead' at that point last year... Whenever I look back on it, that's the terminology that I use). I took some ibuprofen, chugged some Gatorade and pounded a banana and some Fig Newtons and we took back off. The next 30 miles were pretty amazing.

In a strange way, I somehow got stronger as we approached 100 miles. Maybe it was the Ibuprofen, maybe it was support, maybe it was a lot of other things, but I could have seriously biked another 50 miles after the 100 that day. I'm not sure how much in agreement Erin & Ben would have been with me on that point, but I did feel amazingly fresh. The whole story basically ends with us finishing the 100 miles and then eating some pizza.

So yea... Second Century -- Demolished.

We'll be gearing back up again towards the end of the summer for the Seagull Century, so stay tuned to the blog for that training stuff -- That'll be interesting for us, since it'll be completely different than the CASA River Century, and it's in my hometown of Salisbury. I plan on mostly continuing the sandwich blogging, too, so keep checking in for that nonsense.

Pre-Race Sandwich Week

This Saturday is my second-ever century ride. It's for this reason that I didn't put a lot of effort into turning the sandwich world on it's head this week. To be fair, I made an awesome sandwich. Borderline historical sandwich, even. But considering the thought and effort that I've been putting into sandwiches for the last 2 years or so, this was pretty run-of-the-mill.

I constructed this week's sandwich with two goals. The first goal is the same as it always is: Make a sandwich that is both fulfilling to my appetite and also delicious. Check. The second goal, unique to this week, was to create a sandwich that took advantage of a few extra ingredients that were lying around from sandwiches past.

Like I said before, this wasn't rocket science sandwich making, but it turned out to be a pretty monstrous, and successful, sandwich. I took my go-to Wegman's whole grain white bread, and spread a bit of mayo on it. From there I built the tower: Wegman's Jim Beam Deli Turkey, Sharp Provolone Cheese, hot red pepper relish, pickles, tomato, lettuce. The ingredients were run-of-the-mill... The combination was anything but.

Gotta hand it to Wegman's on this one (cause I never do...), that Jim Beam turkey is delicious. For the first time in 3 weeks, I'm not going to declare the sandwich I'm currently eating as possibly the best ever... But it was damn good. Took a little while to make, not in a complicated way, but more in a way that assembly line products tend to do. There are just a lot of components to this sandwich, and it was a little time consuming for something I end up eating in like 150 seconds.

Anyway, successful sandwich... I score this as a 9/10... Very enjoyable.

I Just Won Sandwich Making

When brainstorming sandwich ideas, what I like to do is set a challenge for myself. This isn't meant to set myself up for failure or anything, but more because I feel like true greatness cannot be fully realized without hardships or difficulty. Would Michael Jordan have been so great if he didn't have to defeat Isaah, Magic, Clyde, Ewing, Stockton & Malone? For those who do not understand this analogy and are also not capable of reading between the lines, like, at all, the answer to this question is a resounding no.

In the past I have challenged myself to create sandwiches by venturing outside of what I consider to be traditional breads. I've also challenged myself to create sandwiches that are completely vegetarian. This week I decided to challenge myself to construct a sandwich that was mostly centered around fruit. To be fair, this is not a new idea, as this is a challenge that I also set out to conquer last summer... I've found myself repeating this challenges, but in all honesty, who cares, cause I'm making delicious sandwiches.

The idea for this weeks sandwich came from a delicious salad that my wonderful wife made recently, of which apples had a starring role in. Apples have a great sweetness to them, and I decided that if I could successfully incorporate them into a sandwich, then I would have a tasty meal on my hands.

Mission accomplished. I hate to say this two weeks in a row (because it diminishes how serious I am when I say this), but this may be the best sandwich I have ever made. I took sliced oven-roasted chicken, melted a generous portion of swiss cheese on top of it, and then sliced up an even generous-er portion of both golden delicious and granny smith apples on top of that. On one slice of my toasted Wegman's Honey & Apple Oat bread (total win here, by the way) was Dinosaur BBQ sauce, and the other was a thin layer of mayo. Like I said before, I think this could be my crowning achievement in sandwich making. I can't wait to make new friends so I can make this sandwich for them at an undetermined time in the future. Obviously the arbitrary scoring system rates this bad boy at a 10, but that's only because the meter goes no further than that (Maybe I'll put in an 11... Not sure we have the technology for that). Either way, this week was a rousing success.

This weekend Erin, Ben and I are going to be headed to Mount Vernon on our 62 mile 'rest' ride the weekend before the race. With the race only one week away, I feel good.

83 Mile Training Ride

This weekend I took a trip out to West Virginia with Ben and Erin to both simultaneously knock out what would prove to be our longest training ride, and to also get away from the DC area and it's absolutely atrocious biking conditions. On Friday night after work we drove to Martinsburg and stayed with Ben's hospitable family for the night and headed out at a slightly-more-reasonable-than-what-we've-been-doing time of about 7:00 am.

The route was mapped out in order to incorporate some of the track that is used for the actual CASA River Century, and that was another reason to why we made the trip out to West Virginia. As far as weather and temperature goes, Saturday was ideal. I think it was probably as cool as 60, and about as warm as 70-75. With most of the trip in the shade, the conditions for long-distance biking were as good as it gets.

We made some incredible time. We exited the driveway from Ben's house at exactly 6:54, and returned at exactly 1:22, meaning that we banged out a good 83.5 miles in 6 hours and 22 minutes. Considering that we would like to finish the century ride in under 7.5 hours, this time bodes well for us... Another hour and 10 minutes to go 20 miles may be on the quick side (especially considering that by the end of this ride we were slowed down considerably), but given the fact that water and food will be more plentiful, I think it's reasonable to think that we can speed up that time a bit more on race day.

This trip was a huge success... Although we couldn't get this ride done in under 6 hours (this became sort of our goal for a while after a torrid start to the ride), I'm still very pleased with our time. It's amazing to me how much more these West Virginia rides are about the actual ride and less about everything else (hills, traffic, stress). I find myself noticing the physical ailments a lot more on the West Virginia rides because there's no big-time mental issues associated with the rides. When riding in DC, I find myself mentally exhausted from dodging cars, stopping at stop lights, and trying to figure out directions. West Virginia is a really nice change up from that.

Philly Cheese-steak Sans the Steak Part

The central idea behind me devoting a good amount of my blog towards sandwich creation is one of health. While it's true that it may be healthier to eat salads for lunch everyday, what would eventually end up happening would be that I would go out to lunch once, maybe twice a week to get away from eating something that's not filling or particularly exciting, rendering my salads-for-sandwiches swapout useless. I figure that, although my sandwiches may not be the healthiest things in the world, they are probably a good enough downgrade from some of the other much-worse alternatives out there that it more than makes up for it being less healthy than other sort-of-healthier alternatives (does that make any sense at all?).

So I figure the when I introduce vegetarian subs into the fold, that should mean not only am I being healthy by way of this post's initial paragraph, but I'm also being healthy because... Duh, vegetables! (You will realize that this sandwich ended up being not super healthy, but... duh, vegetables!)

The last vegetarian sub that I made last year was an unquestionable success. Hell, it may have even been the best sandwich that I've ever made. The vegetables that I chose for this sandwich are the same, but the makeup is wildly different. Whereas last year's veggie sub was done sort of in an italian style (pesto, mozzarella), I chose to take a decidedly American direction with this week's sub. I give you the Philly Cheese-steak inspired veggie sub (I haven't actually come up with a name for it).

I sauteed a mixture of regular white and baby portabello mushrooms on Sunday night in preparation for this sandwich all week, and in addition cut up some red onion and poblano peppers, throwing them all into a pre-toasted sub roll with melted ultra-sharp cheddar cheese... As always, these delicious and adequately priced items were all purchased at my local Wegmans. The combination of flavors was awesome. After a good 15 minutes in the toaster oven, this sub emerged with a crispy outer shell and a gooey melted cheesy center. It was incredible.

Every week I wait until either Wednesday or Thursday to take pictures. The reasoning behind this is because I commonly tweak the construction of the sandwich for either taste or structural reasons. This week I began slathering Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce on the sandwich both before and after heating, and in both instances the sandwich was just a mess. Delicious, but a mess nonetheless. After a few disaster trial runs, I decided that I should just cut my losses, and use the sauce (by the way, the absolute best BBQ sauce in the world, I mean this stuff is like crack) as a dip, instead of as a part of the sandwich.

Arbitrary scoring scale ranks this sandwich as a 10/10. Yes, a perfect score. This sandwich was a top 2-3 of all for me... What does it mean that 2 out of the top 3 are all vegetarian subs? I don't know, probably nothing.

70 Mile Stress Ride

This is gonna be a quick one.

This past weekend proved to be yet another week were Ben, Erin & I were unable to get completely together on a long ride. We had what was thought to be a stellar route mapped out, but yet again life (or flat tires) got in the way of the foolishness of training for a century ride, and we ended up split up between Saturday and Sunday.

Ben took the Saturday slot, and crushed it. In 5:08 he traveled 70 miles, and that is some pretty good time, probably better than any time I've ever made. Erin & I hit the route on Sunday and didn't fare quite so well. We clocked in at an unimpressive 7:20, but to be fair a lot of that time was spent making unpredicted stops. I would assume that if those stops weren't made, and we were both firing on all cylinders that we would have banged out this route in close to 6 hours.

This route was brutal no matter how you slice it, though. This is one of those classic 'uphill both ways in the snow' sort of things that your grandparents tell you about... Only it was biking, and instead it was 70 miles. It was also stressful to no end, as it's the first real road ride we've done during this training. I forgot how shitty it is to bike on roads in the general DC area. It was not fun.

This week's sandwich post coming soon!

Worst Sandwich Week Ever

This week's sandwich roots were noble, and complimentary again towards the city of Buffalo. For the second week in a row I decided that I would pay homage to one of the best food cities in the country, but this time I chose to construct a Beef-on-weck sandwich... Much lesser-known to those outside of the city of Buffalo, but certainly not less important.

The beef-on-weck, to those unfamiliar, is a very simple sandwich that has German roots, but was ultimately invented in Buffalo. It's simplicity is in that it is roast beef, thinly sliced, placed on a kimmelweck roll... Horseradish is also acceptably thrown into this for those who feel adventurous. When made properly, this is a wonderful sandwich, both in it's taste and in it's unapologetic simplicity.

Something I had not counted on was the fact that this is almost primarily a Western New York delicacy (did you not read that Wikipedia article I linked?!?), and therefore when I purchased the kimmelweck rolls at my local Wegmans in Lanham, MD, I was disappointed in the very un-Wegmans like staleness of the rolls -- This was not a bread product that they normally sold a lot of. Determined not to let this get to me (and driven by the promise of giant sandwiches filled with meat), I decided to make the sandwich happen anyway. The following is a chronicle of the next 4 days of lunch.

Monday: Though fairly stale, the insides of the roll prove to be surprisingly fresh. The roast beef is very rare (perfect for this sandwich), and the week's 'Potential Lunch Enjoyment Outlook' (PLEO) is scoring off the charts.

Tuesday: The rolls are rock hard already... Very un-Wegman's like. I decide to take a 'wait-and-see' approach to the rest of the week's sandwiches. Still very good... I decide to soften the roll up in the microwave, and although it's mostly in that weird partially-hard-partially-soft-definitely-too-hot-in-that-microwavey-sort-of-way, I eat the sandwich anyway. Hard to knock this sandwich, even though it's less than ideal.

Wednesday: This is the day that I set the kitchen on fire. Attempting to soften the roll for a second day, I toss it in the microwave for a 30-second soften, and leave the kitchen to retrieve the camera (for those all-too-important blog screen shots)... I return to see the microwave on fire from the inside out... I have set the roll on fire. There is something primal to human beings when it comes to fire. There's nothing more exhilarating than creating fire where there was none before, and equally there's nothing more terrifying than accidentally creating fire when there was never intent to do so. That's why I shrieked like a little girl. In probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me at work (the setting of the fire, not the shriek... Although that didn't help), I created a lasting impression both in the minds of my co-workers, and more notably in the kitchen at CPI -- That shit smells terrible, and remains to this day.

Thursday-Friday: I bring regular bread. This is the part of the story that's not interesting.

So yea, rough week on the sandwich front. On a brighter note (followed quickly by another disappointing retrospective negative note), we have a 70 mile ride coming up after being unable to complete last week's ride because of a rainout. We've got 3 weeks left of training before the century ride in West Virginia... Pretty crazy that it's all happening this quick.