Reflecting and looking ahead...

As the year comes quickly to a close, I've been spending some time thinking about my first year of road cycling...what I've accomplished and where I will go with my riding in 2007. When I started in May, my goals were small...a 50 mile organized ride in September, a metric century (65 miles) in March of 2007 and then finally...I would train all year for a century in September 2007. All of that flew out the window when I met a new friend (lovingly referred to as "the instigator") who encouraged me to aim higher and had me signed up for a century ride within a week of having my bike. I was able to complete the 102 mile Cool Breeze in August 2006, before having to take a two month break from the bike. Upon my return, I did the challenging OCW Fall Metric, which was my most difficult ride to date. Shorter than Cool Breeze, it was the climbing that had me pushing my limits and nearly giving up. Pride and a stubborn streak kept me climbing and I was able to complete the ride.

My original goals reached a full year early, I needed to decide what my goals would be for 2007. Riding centuries didn't seem like much of a goal for me, since I was able to do that within my first three months on the bike. So, what's the next logical step if you've completed a century? A double century, of course. Or to be more precise...three double centuries in a year, which will earn me the honor of wearing a California Triple Crown jersey, or as I like to refer to it...the essence of badassness. Logical might not be the right word to describe my desire to do double centuries, in fact, I am safe in saying that you need to be slightly insane to want to ride 200 miles in one day, but what the hell...I'm going for it.

I have decided to choose some of the easier rides...easier being relative because really...200 miles is 200 miles and there's not going to be anything easy about that...but in regards to climbing, I am choosing to ride some of the double centuries that have the least gain in elevation. My original plan was to start with Butterfield, which is in mid-February, but after contemplating my training schedule over the last couple of days, I have decided to give myself some extra training time and I will be riding my first one on March 31st, The Solvang Double. This will give me a full four and a half months to build up my base mileage slowly and I'm confident that I will have time to train properly for this event. I'm excited and nervous all at once, but having challenging goals this year is going to motivate me into improving as a cyclist.