Preston 100

I’m finally recovered. I admit, it really didn’t take that long to recover physically but the mental recovery took a while.

Last Sunday I went down to Preston, MN with Carol and Tim to meet Neil to do a century. Memories of the terrain from two years ago where still haunting me. After climbing hills that look worst then they are you start to think that the hills in Preston won’t be so bad. Yeah right!! Those hills are killers. Right from the start we started a climb. OK, we had a 1.5 mile warm-up—but the climb was about 3 miles. I can’t imagine how the pros can do one climb for an hour. Thanks to Neil’s Garmin, I can tell you there were a number of 10% grades during that first hill. My heart rate for the entire 3 miles averaged 175 bpm. Being at that heart rate for that long—was excruciating. Yeah, I saw Jesus a few times but told him I'm not ready yet. I needed to finish this ride.

As the ride went on the hills got easier but the difficulty of them was just as hard. I think the first one was the hardest since there was not much of a warm-up. We climbed a total of 5 major hills. Carol was amazing! Her conversation did not skip a beat no matter the grade.

What I don’t understand is that the week before Carol and I did the Afton 100 ride climbing about 4500 feet. The Preston ride, with much harder hills, was the same amount of climbing! That couldn't be right—but it was. Comparing the two rides—hands down the Preston ride was the prettiest. I might have to say, the SE corner of MN is the most beautiful area of the state.