100 k Bike, its real tough.

27th june, 2010

Time: 4:30 am, Mumbai

My aim was to try and bike 100k and hope no rain would come. So far, i have biked only 42k in slightly over 2 hours. This is a real jump to even attempt 100k and im probably the worst biker there is.

My bike experience started in Jan 2010 when i bought a scott racer bike with the intention of doing an ironman some day. Every week, i normally bike 20k and have fun. Really thats a no go.

At 4:30 am i started biking with my Garmin strapped to my bike and 3 gels in the back seat. I estimated that the bike would take about a little over 4 hours. I must be a little mad to attempt 100k as there is no real base to do this and also my experience with bike gears is very low. Im basically a runner trying to do a tria.

The first 2 hours were okay. I went out at 24 km/h for the first hour, then 22 km/h for the second. Then my butt started hurting and slowly the pain started moving towards the quads. Fatigue was setting in fast. Beyond 3.5 hours, i was just biking on will power. It was also boring going up and down Marine Drive and Worli Sea Face in Mumbai. What set out to be a 4 hour plus bike ride landed up to be 5 hours and 9 minutes at a pace of 19.6 km/h. Not good enough. That too i was on the bike almost all the time!!! Maybe 2 to 3 minutes off it for food and when by body hurt real bad.

I have to learn how to increase my pace on the bike, stave off fatigue and hydrate better. Did not carry enough food for the ride. The primary reason is that i thought biking was easy and i would be easily be able to handle this.

Lesson learnt:

Biking is very tough and like any sport, a lot of research i have to do on how to get my speed up.

Use a gel seat cover. I can yet feel the contours of my bike seat on my butt.

How on earth can anyone bike 180k and then run 42k? Going by my first 100k bike ride, it would take me between 9 and 10 hours to do the 180k. If that is the case, then i will not make the ironman cut off of 17 hours.

Time:	05:09:27
Distance:	100.00 km
Elevation Gain:	205 m
Calories:	3,560 C

Timing

Time:	05:09:27
Moving Time:	05:05:51
Elapsed Time:	05:09:27

Avg Speed:	19.4 km/h
Avg Moving Speed:	19.6 km/h
Max Speed:	39.6 km/h

Speed

Pace

Elevation

Elevation Gain:	205 m
Elevation Loss:	213 m
Min Elevation:	-3 m
Max Elevation:	45 m