Zion Century Ride

One of the items on the my list of things to do before I die is to do a Century ride. Last weekend I got to check it off. For those of you who don't know what a Century ride is, it's a 100 mile bike ride. I picked the Zion Century ride because I thought the beautiful scenery would distract me from thinking about how tired I was and how much I didn't want to see people in spandex anymore. Plus it was a good excuse to head to St. George to see Joy, Joel, and Baby Mason!

My friend Yvette was nice enough to do the ride with me. She was only planning on doing the 60 miles, but ended up doing the whole thing because she's so hardcore.

Everytime I do some sort of a race, I put on a fake tattoo.

The morning of the race was only about 35 degrees and so we tried to bundle up to stay warm.

Joy was nice enough to come see us off.

Waiting for the gunshot.

The ride starting in Bloomington and wound around the backroads of St. George, Hurricane, LaVerkin, and took us to the mouth of Zion National Park. We stopped at mile 55 for lunch. The first 55 miles had a lot of uphill and a lot of wind. In some parts the wind was so strong that I had to pedal even when I was going downhill. It took me 4.5 hours to get here.

I've never had a Subway sandwich taste sooooo good!

Here we are at the finish line, so happy not to be sitting on tiny little bike seats! For some reason the course took us on some random loops so we ended up doing 107 miles. Since the wind was in our favor on the way back, it only took us 2.5 hours.

Overall the ride was amazing and I would definitely do it again, hopefully next time I'll train better and be able to cruise up the hills like Yvette.