If you have read my blog for awhile, you might be aware that I have a list of 100 Things that I would like to do in my life. On that list is the goal to ride a century (#19). If you don't know what a century is, it is a 100 mile ride (64 miles if you do a metric century).
In order to ride that far, I really need to start adding miles. After all, you don't just go out and bike that kind of distance without some kind of training.
Daniel and I (with Jack in tow) have been consistently taking 9 mile bike rides over the last few weeks, so today I asked if we could go farther. My initial goal was to up the ante to 12 miles.
We went to Hays Nature Preserve (one of our favorite places to ride) and set out. This is the first time that I have been able to maintain Daniel's pace for the majority of our ride. We even raced at a couple of points and I was able to hang with him. The last 1.5 miles I slowed down, but I still kept a decent speed.
I think the hardest part of increasing our mileage will be Jack's tolerance of being on the back of a bike. Today we rode for just over an hour and he was starting to get fussy at the end.
When we stopped, I was pleasantly surprised to discover we actually did 13.28 miles. We also managed to do 1,519 feet of elevation gain by riding up the waterfall hill at Hampton Cove. Daniel's fastest speed was 17.8 mph while mine was 16.8 mph.
I don't know if I will be able to ride a century any time soon but it has been nice to be out on our bikes on a semi-regular basis as a family.
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