Getting Ready for a century ride!

 Century Ride Preparations.

I am getting ready to go on a 100 mile ride also known as a century ride. I still don't have a firm date in mind but it will be in the next few weeks. I started to get all my equipment ready and tested out before I go on that ride as I really do not want any failures to happen half way through and end up stopping becuase of something I forgot to do. I purchased a new bike rack one that does not strip the hole more than they are from the prior failure of a bike rack I bought. This one attaches to the seat post and then clamps on the back of the bike near where you would screw in a regular rack. I am a bit upset that I can not use a regular rack anymore and I am not about to tap the screw hole to make it work as I would end up ruining something if I attempted that. Either way this new bike rack works fine as long as I don't try to adjust my seat. I already took it on a 20 mile test ride and it worked out very well. I had the bag from my other rack set up on the charriot so I do not have to buy another bag I can just use the one I have. 

I will be taking my trusted Ozark Trail G.1 Explorer for this ride and I am excited to do it. When I first bought this bike I thought it was not going to last at all. I have had some things brake on it that but still have only had to repair the brakes with new pads. The other broken parts are still on the bike and working fine distpite being broken. Looking at you front derailleur that is in two peices...I will have a bit more of an update on the bike itself in a day or two I want to get a 1000 mile update and go over some more thoughts on it but for now I will just leave it as I trust this bike. 

For the physical preparations for myself I have been riding roughly 20 miles every day in the morning every day with two of those rides towing my kids behind me. I have done a few 30 miles rides as well and I have done a few 25 miles rides with another 20 miles after I go home for some lunch. I think I am set on what I need to do to get a 100 mile ride done in terms of being able to physically do it. I am going to have to keep it a bit slower than I normally ride and rest at least two days before I do the ride. I have not had a full rest day in the past 2 weeks and my thighs are on fire when I first start my morning rides now. This is not going to work for riding a 100 mile ride and it for sure is not going to work in general but after the 100 mile ride I think I can cool down the number of miles in the morning to something a bit more reasonable. 

The last part of the planning here will be route planning and that one is going to be a bit harder for me to do as I do not like road riding all that much. I don't mind paved mulit use paths but riding in the road with cars has started to scare me more than maybe it should. Most of the problems I run into are people who are running red lights and getting a bit too close. The trails I ride on have one part of road you have to cross to get to the next section of trail, it is such a stupid set up as you have to cross this road that no one stops at. The trails are very nice and I love that its only a short bit of road but if there was a cop posted outside of that light they would get so much money from people running that light or not caring that anyone is waiting in the cross walk. I would say it is distracted drivers but I have had people stop on one side just before the light turns and wait for me to cross only to then run the red light right after I cross so its just a big lack of caring and divers just wanting to do what ever they want to do. Anyway I will have to plan my route along the paths the best I can and limit the amount of regular road as a result of this fear of drivers but from what I have looked at on Strava and Google Maps this should be doable. I have lots of trails that connect to others and a few paths that are maybe not meant for riding but they are bright blue on the Strava heatmap so people are doing it often anyway. 

I am planning on recording most of this century ride and taking pictures along the way so that will be exciting to blog about once I am done. 

Blog Update and other random updates.

I have been thinking about this blog and when I started it I was not sure how I wanted things to look or feel so I knew I would be changing things over time. I started noticing that my posts were a bit lacking in structure,  meaning that I would have long texts but no real headings or information on what the section is going to be about. I thought this was fine when I first started because who would care about that I used the main headline as a place for what the post would be about right? Well I started to look over some of my older posts and they are messy to read through and a bit untidy. So I am going to try out using the headings and see how that looks and feels as well as cleaning up some of the writing style I had prior. It will still be a bit of a brain dump but I am hoping that I can tighten things down a bit and make it less all over the place. 

Along with the blog I was trying to get a bit of vlogging in as well but this has proven to be harder than I first thought it would be. I have all the equipment and I know how to make a video well enough but something happens when I record something for the intent of vlogging. I made an intro and was planning to make more of the content the other day and I got home and copied the files from my camera over to my computer for seeing how things came out and I was shocked at how bad it was. I sounded okay for the microphone I was using but it was like I was a robot who was trying to make videos with out being caught by his parents or something. It was not natural sounding and I was stiff as board in vocal tone so it was just useless for an intro. When I was on my bike making the intro I threw in some fun and a little silly into it as I thought I was not taking to serious but the fun and silly I put in ended up with the same exact tone as the rest and just looked bad. I am not sure how to fix something like that as in my head I was not whispering or sounding robotic but talking normal and having fun. I will keep taking cracks at it and maybe end up posting one of them to you youtube but its going to take more effort than I thought to do so. I know that everyones first video is not going to be perfect and I should just do it and get it overwith but I want it to be at least watchable and relateable not something where a person clicks on it and then just leaves because I sound robotic. 

Anyway, I am off to continue the journey! Have a wonderful day and thank you very much for reading!