Century Week!

It’s Century Week! That magical week of rest, eating, anticipation, relaxing, looking backing – you know, tapering.

Tapering is the practice of reducing exercise in the days just before an important competition. Tapering is customary in many endurance sports, such as the marathon, athletics and swimming. For many athletes, a significant period of tapering is essential for optimal performance. The tapering period frequently lasts as much as a week or more.

The MS City to Shore ride is this Saturday and I, along with my team, are booking 100 miles in one day. It should be a good time. The MS Society puts on a good tour and raises a lot of money.

#CenturyWeek
I feel a little guilty this century week due to my lack of discipline and training this year. Century week is supposed to be the reward for hard work and I feel like I didn't work hard enough. Things that didn’t happen were me riding to the Rocky Statue and hitting my 60 mile long rides.

I do plan to continue riding throughout the fall and winter – both outside and on my bike trainer at home.

New This Year

Biking

This is my second year riding the century (I documented last years training and ride in a series of posts located on my Manda's Century page.) My training program was not as intense as last year as evidenced by me not having a full-blown adrenal crash mid-way through. I am a little disappointed in myself, still. I wanted to do more. My bike training is full of inner turmoil.

Additionally, I have a team to look after. I did my best on prepping them and encouraging training. Most of it fell by the way-side but my super-ridiculously-handsome man-friend came along with me for some long rides – the most we did was 51.1 miles. A good distance.

I feel a sense of responsibility toward my team because last year I had to learn and do all this biking stuff on my own. I didn't want to abandon anyone or lead them down some type of wrong path. Some of my frustration was due to anxiety in prepping them correctly and some of it was because I really love doing this but I had to tone myself back because you don’t go all athletic cray-cray on newbies.

Resting

Future Plans
Since I only participated in two biking events this summer, I’m hoping to book at least one more this fall.

If you remember, I had my whole year planned out with biking events, documented in my My Year In Biking post. While I respect myself's passion, I whack myself's with a rolled-up newspaper for over-estimating my abilities.

 I did participate in Girls with Gears - wrote about that in my Sports Weekend: 5Ks and Bike Rides. Other than that, this century is all I got going on so far. I do plan to do the Covered Bridges Ride in October - maybe someone will even want to come along with me. Once you make someone do a century with you, expectations for participation sort of go way down.

Winter biking is not something I did last year, it feels like a new frontier that I’d be interested in learning about.

Go fitness! But, you know, after century week.

Be Part of the Adventure
Do you have a suggestion or want to see me attempt something? Drop me an email at AdventuringAmanda@gmail.com with your suggestions