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.