The PTO 100

Read Time: 5 minutes

I recently took down my biggest and baddest challenge yet. “The PTO 100.” The rules of the challenge were simple: take a day off work and ride 100 miles. The point of the challenge was to take a day for myself and do exactly what I wanted, all day long.

My training has been going super well over the past few months and I was really itching to accomplish something big. Something beyond my traditional weekend riding. I am dying to compete in a race. Dying to. But with COVID there’s slim chance that happens any time soon. God damn. Oh well. Personal challenges will have to do for now. As soon as I came up with the idea, I committed. It was just a matter of timing until I took a swing at it.

Conditions

There were three things I wanted to align for the challenge: the weather, the route and my health leading into the day.

Weather: Finding a beautiful day would be easy. I was in Rhode Island and the week I picked called for nothing but sunshine.

Route: I found a cycling club called the Narragansett Bay Wheelmen that has routes mapped out all over New England. Their routes are marked with painted arrows on the road at all necessary directional changes. By doing a NBW route, I could ride without having to frequently check my phone for GPS and avoid riding aimlessly until I hit 100 miles. It was exactly what I wanted.

I wanted a ride on quiet roads with scenic views. Tom and Pat’s Nearly Half Century seemed to fit the mold, so I planned to do 2 loops of it (+ a little) to reach my 100 mile mark.

My health: In the days leading up to my ride, I mixed in more yoga than usual, kept my riding more casual and focused on my bedtime routine. No mid-week ice cream. Devastating. I had to do my best to prime myself for the big day.

Race Day Nutrition

The final piece of preparation for my ride would be my nutrition. My rides up to this point had typically ranged from 20-50 miles. Sometimes I ride fasted. Sometimes I eat before. Sometimes I eat during. Sometimes I eat before and during. It all really just depends on how I am feeling. When was my last meal the day before? What time am I riding that day? How many miles? etc. For a century ride, it wouldn’t be smart to be so casual. I needed to dial it in.

To be honest, I did not have much background info on how the human body processes food for energy. My current nutritional framework focuses on when I eat and what I eat. I keep it pretty simple. For this quest, I had to start from Square-1. Here is what I learned:

• I would need a full breakfast before my ride
• I would need carb-based snacks of about 250 calories for each hour of riding (6 or 7) and plan to eat every hour

I used my Whoop data from a recent ride and calculated that I burn about 500 calories per hour riding. To follow the suggestion of variety, I pieced together my snack list to include a pack of Yomi bites, a Cliff bar, 2 half peanut butter + banana sandwiches and 3 bags of cashews, almonds + peanut butter pretzels. I tried to keep each snack around the 250 calorie number while getting most of those calories from carbs.

For hydration, I had three 24 ounce water bottles with an amino recovery blend mixed in. I ballparked this based on how much water I usually drink on rides. Rationing 1 bottle for about 33 miles seemed fine to me. Time to hit the road.

The Ride

I began my ride at 10:39 am. A later start than I expected, but that’s what happens when you don’t look up how long it takes to drive to the starting point. All good. I started at Coventry High School and navigated local neighborhoods before following larger roads that sent me out into the countryside. The first thing I noticed was that the ride was hillier than I expected. Considering the elevation just didn’t cross my mind. After reading the scenic notes on the map, I just kind of assumed it would be a casual ride.

I was wrong. Painfully wrong.

I went back and checked the GPS mapping of my route to learn that each loop had about 2,600 feet of elevation. 2 loops and over 5,000 feet up. Woof.

Regardless, I wasn’t giving up. I’m used to riding hills anyway. I paced myself as best I could amidst the elevation, snacked pretty much on the hour of each hour and rationed my water appropriately.

After completing loop 1 (46 miles), my plan was to do a small loop to reach 50, then do all of that in reverse. Once I was riding, I realized that all of the markings would be on the opposite side of the road as me for loop 2, so I changed my mind and simply did the loop in the same direction, two times. I turned right around at 46.

Loop 2 was a test. I did what I could to preserve energy, but I was pretty much at the mercy of Tom and Pat. Plus I have 1 rule about hills: slowing down only makes it harder. Both pb+b’s were gone by mile 60 and I was left with 2 bags of nuts/pb pretzels and a cliff bar. Mile 85 came around and I was 1,000% ready to be done.

After 6 hours, 59 minutes and 41 seconds, I crossed the 100 mile mark and made my final turn back into Coventry High School.

The ride was simply epic. I had tons of highs and tons of lows. I laughed at myself and swore at myself. What I had set out to accomplish was absurd and I couldn’t help but admire my ambition as I did mile checks knowing how much longer I still had to go. No matter how long your ride is going to be, you always want your current distance to exceed your expectation. At least I do. Doing checks and seeing I still had 80, 60, 40 miles to go? Is this a sick joke?

In Hindsight

• I’m glad I did the same loop twice. It helped me have a ballpark idea of where I was on the route, what was ahead and how much I had left.
• I shouldn’t have abandoned the mini loop. My last 10ish miles were just riding to get distance. It was hell. I actually should have ridden the mini loop twice after loop 1 so I could finish loop 2 right as I crossed 100.
• Half peanut butter + banana sandwiches were the best fuel, by far. I named them Cycling Tacos and am 100% making that into a shirt.
• The nut + peanut butter pretzel mixture was nearly useless. Fuck those 3 bags. They didn’t do anything. It’s interesting to then go back and see the f/c/p % splits.
• I was fine with 3 water bottles, but there was no reason I couldn’t have brought a 4th. I would have benefited from it.
• I would have started earlier.

And that’s a wrap. Now back to the drawing board to see how I can top this.

On your left.