Bike Madness

So I've been going on bike rides every weekend, and I'm truly obsessed. I haven't had lots of energy for riding during the week, but I get out every Saturday for a nice long ride with my coworkers.

This past weekend, Jonathan and I rode out to Sonoita, which was my first 100-mile ride. In bike parlance, a 100 mile ride is called a "century" and it is officially a "big deal" when you complete your first one. The ride was actually 104.3 miles. I rode it on my brand new Specialized Jett Gel saddle, which appears to be the answer to my desperate prayers for a saddle that would let me ride until I was tired and not just until I couldn't stand sitting on the damn saddle anymore.

The ride out to Sonoita is beautiful. The first part is the usual trip out to Vail, via the New Old Vail Road. Apparently it is now called "Mary Ann Cleavland Way" since having two Old Vail Roads was even more confusing than your typical Tucson road name confusion. After a stop at Quik Mart in Vail, we rode out AZ highway 83 to Sonoita. It's a climb most of the way, until you reach the top about 10 miles outside of town. And by town, I mean the first gas station with food and water that you come to. I actually have no idea if there's anything else in Sonoita, other than windswept desert grassland and at least one Harley biker club that cleans up their section of adopted highway on Saturday. But the ride is beautiful, and I can see why 83 is designated a scenic drive. It's a sort of "Best of Southern Arizona" embodied in a 30 mile stretch of road.

We stopped at a gas station/deli with some excessively quaint name that was clearly designed for tourist brochures. I got a turkey sandwich and some Propel fitness water and thoroughly enjoyed the break from pedalling. We refilled our water bottles and headed back home. Since it was a climb and I'm relatively slow on the downhills and flats compared to Jonathan, the ride clocked in at an epic 9 hours, with 7 hours and 40 minutes of actual bike-in-motion time.

Now that I've completed a 100+ mile ride, I'm much more confident in my ability to finish El Tour de Tucson. Just four more Saturdays of training rides before the big event.