2 Goals finished in one (very long) ride

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  On Labor Day, my good friend Josh and I embarked on a crazy bike ride that was much more difficult than either of us expected.  About a year ago (around the same time I was making my list of goals), I asked him if he'd want to train to do a bike ride from Milwaukee to Madison.  He was definitely on board from the start.  He's a very good biker and has done a few 100 mile rides in the last couple years.  My training was going well this summer and all of a sudden a 75 mile bike ride didn't seem as hard as I'd originally thought.  Around midsummer, I threw out the idea to Josh to do a Labor day ride from my house to Madison - and back!  He was as naively excited as I was.  From that point on, we constantly talked on the phone about how our training was going and how stupid an idea this really was.  The longest ride of my short cycling career was the 90 mile race I did just a few weeks ago.  I felt strong coming out of that distance but there's no way I could've known the drastic jump from 90 miles to 100 miles to over 150 miles.

 

Here's Josh about 35 miles out from Milwaukee.

  

Not a lot of options in the middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin.

 

Here I am making the final climb up to the Capitol Building in Madison.

  

The reality hasn't set in yet that we were only half-way done with the ride at this point.

  

  This was BY FAR, the hardest thing I've ever done.  I wondered if I would ever do a bike ride that was as hard as running a marathon.  This was it.  Physically, I knew I was ready to do the ride.  The mental challenge was what made it so difficult.  It's very hard to have ridden 60 miles and know that you have 90 miles to go.  It's even harder to know that I'd been on my bike for over 6 hours and still have 50 miles to go.  I was so happy to have Josh there to not only pull most of the way, but to offer encouragement and keep the pace moving.  He's a crazy good athlete and I know I couldn't have finished without him.  After the ride, we both enjoyed our well-earned Oscar burgers and custard and tried to stave off death.  I know now that 154 miles is the farthest I will ever ride in a day.  I'm usually a "never say never" person but I can't imagine a scenario where I would ever want to beat this feat.  I guess time will tell.

 

  God is so good.  Here we are safe and sound back at home.  I stuck a 2x4 down the back of my jersey to prop me up for this photo :)

Here are the stats:

154 miles

8 hours and 54 minutes in the saddle

17.5 mph average

Almost 10,000 calories burned (That's a lot of Oscar burgers!)