Little Red Riding Hood 2010

What an awesome weekend!

I successfully finished my first century (100 mile) bike ride of the summer! Wahoo! Now I have finished four centuries in the past year. Not to shabby, eh?

It was a beautiful day for a ride. It was sunny with some scattered clouds, but it wasn't too windy and I didn't get rained on like last year. There were 3000 ladies registered for this women's only ride in Logan, Utah. It was awesome to be on the road with so many ladies!

My husband was my personal photographer again this year, and I have to say  he did a great job! He didn't catch up to me until just before lunchtime because he ended up being asked to help direct traffic at the starting line. Three thousand ladies, cars and bikes is a lot to get organized.

Here I am with my bike. This is when I was leaving lunch, so I had gone 50 miles at this point.

I have to say that the organizers of this ride did an awesome job! I heard parking was a bit of a challenge for some ladies, but everything else was wonderful! The rest stops had plenty of water, great food and great volunteers. There were SAG cars ready to give assistance to anyone who broke down. Even more importantly, there were plenty of bathrooms!

The entire ride I didn't end up waiting in line to use the bathroom, which was phenomenal. :o) Another thing that was great was the lunch. The food was fantastic and it was at a nice park. Check out all these ladies and their bikes!

Even though I was doing the ride by myself, I met plenty of people and rode with different groups here and there. One leg of my journey I caught the wheel of a team that was keeping their speed up around 20 mph. I managed to hang in with them, and it was so fun!

After lunch Honey Daddy got some pretty great shots of me. I had a hard time choosing the best ones, but here are my favorites.

The course was mostly flat, but of course there are always hills. Here is a picture of me going up a hill right before my first rest stop after lunch. I am standing up and pushing hard. I have a nice series of photos of me passing another cyclist up the hill, but I don't want to bore you with too many photos!

I love this picture too.  It was fun to know that occasionally I would see my husband a little further up the road, waiting to take my picture. He even got some pictures of other cyclists that we know who were doing different distances, including my mom who finished 35 miles!

I am proud to say that I finished my 100 miles in 5 hours and 45 minutes of ride time. My average speed was about 17 miles per hour, which is 1 mph faster than I did last year!

I have to say that I love Little Red Riding Hood. I definitely want to keep on doing this ride.