Ride = Reward

25 April 2010 - Salem Bicycle Club's Monster Cookie Ride is a metric century that rewards you with, you guessed it, a monster cookie at the end.  Gone are the days of the dangling carrot, give us our sugar, and monster size it.  Did it really help me dig deep to get through the last miles? Not really.  Did I pass the cookie up at the end?  Are you crazy?  I haven't had a snickerdoodle in ages! Ah, but I'm supposed to record a post about the ride not just the cookie I ate afterwards.  Fine, fine.  Let's get on with it.
NO CLIMBING!  That's what I should have started this post with - a big huge Hallelujah, there was no climbing on this ride.  A metric century, for those that don't know, is 100km, or approximately 62 miles.  Was I worried? No, not really.  In fact, although I had not ridden in two weeks, I figured that since there wasn't any climbing, it shouldn't be too difficult to go seven more miles than our Estacada ride.  Alas, it had been two weeks and one day since I had been on my bike at all.  Various bits of life cropped up and I missed our group ride on 17 April.  I was extremely happy to know that this was a flat ride. 
So, I was riding through a pool of marshmallows...no, I wasn't, but I just realized that a long flat ride makes for a rather boring post.  I could tell you that only about ten miles in, we saw the flashing lights and crowd of cyclists all watching as a rider was loaded into an ambulance, seemingly okay, but wearing a neck brace.  And two lines later, we are back to the boring post about the flat ride because we simply rode by this scene and I did not stop to get some cutting edge story out of it.  This IS kind of like riding through a pool of marshmallows: slow.  Daniel Tosh and his dreams. (Go to 3:57 of that video and you can stop wondering why I am talking about pools of marshmallows.)
So, we rode amongst about 3,000 other cyclists that wanted a cookie from the capitol building to Champoeg - the lunch stop and turnaround point.  For those that opted to have lunch provided as part of their registration, they got to go stand in line and collect a sandwich.  I had not, so I ate my delicious Power Bar and yummy gel blasts.  Mmmm.  I'm not sure why, but the group was rather content staying at this stop for a very long time.  I think we were stopped for a good 45 minutes.  They agreed we would not stop this long ever again, though.  I think it was partially visiting fun as the Eugene team was able to join up with us on this ride.
We hit the road again in smaller groups - a faster paceline and a more moderate paceline.  Of course, I joined the fast group because, well, I'm me.  The pace we were keeping is a pace I have kept on many rides: 18-20mph.  About mile 40, though, my hips starting burning like never before.  Really, I have never had hip problems.  I don't know if it was that I hadn't ridden in two weeks or what, but I was in pain.  I dropped our line down to 15-16mph.  It was a horrible moment.  Flat ride, only 40 miles in, and I was spent.  My group was very good about it, though.
We finished up our 62 and I couldn't have been happier to be done.  For being so flat and easy, it really wore me down.  I collected my reward - a monster snickerdoodle cookie - and vowed to get my rides in during the week.  Next Saturday's ride was another organized ride of 65 miles.  It was not going to be flat, so I would need to be in better shape.  (Note, this was several weeks ago and I've yet to get a ride in during the week. So much for my vows.)
While the cookie was a great reward, the best was an understanding team.  Go Team!