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In this edition of pissant goals I'm working towards, I'm taking my first step towards my long term plan of finishing a century ride on my bike. I haven't gone much farther than 20mi in a single ride before, so my plan is over the upcoming months to set goals of first a metric half century, then an imperial half century, then a metric century, then a full century.
This weekend I'm going to attempt a metric half, down at the Jersey shore. This was where I had previously done my eponymous five hour marathon to settle a bet, in the early or late off-season the shore is ideal for self-planned endurance events in that it is A) Empty, B) Pretty, C) mild weather-wise, D) Relevant flair there's a Wawa every so often that is open 24 hours a day I think there's seven on my intended 50km route, creating natural aid stations where I can get a drink or a Snickers or a band-aid rather than packing all that stuff in, E) It's easy to convince my wife to go there with me for a couple days, F) Navigation is easy as the barrier islands are very long and narrow with mostly grid-layouts, so as long as you know where the sun or the water is it's pretty much impossible to get lost, and finally for cycling it is F) flat. Worst case scenario and I crash or injure myself, I call my wife to come get me. Best case scenario, I call her to meet me at the end for our brunch reservation in Cape May.
It's funny, because I know that this is a truly irrelevant distance for anyone who is even a modestly serious cyclist, but it is also a reasonable challenge for me in that I haven't attempted a distance this long before. I'm excited to try something I've never done before, with what I find to be the right degree of planning and preparation, which is to say less than most people would recommend but enough that I think I can get it done safely. If I do ok on 35 miles, I might try to do a 50 mile next month, but after that I'll have to spend the winter working on getting faster. I've yet to really fail on endurance anywhere, but I struggle to keep any tempo over ~60 for very long, which limits my ability to climb and go very fast, and I think I'll need to sustain 18mph to credibly finish a century. Any slower than that and I don't think I'll be able to stay in the saddle long enough to finish. Then I'll target a metric century in early spring, and a full century in late spring, or if that doesn't work out this time next year. Or I might actually seek out a real event for a century ride.
I suppose I'll need a new username if I finish, but SevenHourCentury just doesn't sound right.
What was the bet?
I had a climber friend who was super into endurance running, I was pretty into weightlifting, we were jawing back and forth about which one was harder/more impressive. His argument was that running a marathon was much harder because it took much longer and much more effort, one is destroyed after running a marathon where one is just fine after a 1rm. I argued that a big back squat was more impressive as if you can't squat 300lbs, you just can't squat 300lbs, where if I wanted to run a marathon today I could, it would just take a while, give me enough time and I can travel 26.2 miles on foot today no problem, but if you can't squat 300lbs in the morning you won't squat it in the evening either.*
So this bet formed where I would run a marathon, and then he would attempt a back squat at a weight set as a percentage of the world record equivalent to the percentage of my marathon speed relative to that world record.
He basically thought there was no fucking way I would ever finish a marathon without any training, so he was safe.
Ultimately I did finish the marathon, but he welched and started trying to argue about needing to do the squat as a percentage of the world record at his weight class, which I said was stupid because I didn't get the advantage of running a marathon at the 195lb record. Then that argument kind of ended the thing.
I would say that while I did finish 26.2 miles with no training and just guts, it sucked way worse than I thought it would. So we both kinda had a point.
*My argument ignores the option of breaking the 300lb object into smaller pieces, or needing to run the 26.2 miles per hour at a certain speed to avoid something catching you
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