Bright Ideas and (Failed) Sugar Fasts

It's been awhile since I wrote a blog. And it's been awhile since I rode a century. But if you're invited on a gorgeous ride down the "coast" (the majority of the ride is a little inland) with good friends, who cares if it's a little longer than you're used to, right? Okay, I know it wasn't the brightest idea - I've been averaging about 20 or 30 miles at a time - but the scenery promised to be gorgeous, the weather was a cyclist's dream, and we had a friend ready to pick us up once we reached Santa Barbara. I was so excited I could hardly sleep.

Shannan, Patrick, and I got off to a dazzling start. We took some wrong turns going through our very own (and VERY SMALL) downtown, but gracefully recovered. We also tried a little adventure through some side streets to avoid our first climb, but it turned out to be a dead end and we made the climb anyways. On this climb, we learned that Patrick's front derailleur wouldn't shift to his small chain ring, a problem he decided he didn't want to bother trying to fix. The crazy kid did the whole century on his big chain ring!

I bonked around mile 35, firmly establishing myself as the weakest rider in the group. The perk? No expectation to pull through rough headwinds. The solution? My first ever, vanilla bean gu, fondly referred to by Shannan as, the miracle gel. Try it, you'll see. It destroyed that bonk (and my attempted sugar fast) like nobody's business. AND it tasted like vanilla pudding. Delicious.

We stopped at a gas station, manned by this sweet guy, Ruwan (ROO wahn). We chatted for a little about our ride, discussed the sci-fi movie he was watching, and learned he moved here from Sri Lanka. But get this: he gave us all peanut butter filled chocolate bars! He might as well have given us all winning lotto tickets we were SO stoked.

A quick shout out to the Ride:Well Pacific folks: you guys have some gorgeous riding ahead of you! There are some nice hills but nothing unmanageable. I thought we'd have a nice tailwind most of the way down, but I'd say it was about half tailwind and half headwind or no wind, which means half and half going up too! AND it's storming today, so I'm thinking we'll have green hills for you all to ride through!