Well, I did the Reston Bike Club ride yesterday, and I'm still alive. I didn't wuss out and do the 30 miler, but I did forgo the metric and just did 54 miles instead. Overall it was nice — the scenery wasn't up to par with the MS ride, but there were some sections that were just flat out nice. Dry Mill Road, which runs parallel to the W&OD, was a particularly nice, low traffic stretch where I could just clock along effortlessly at 20 mph and take in the bucolic surroundings.

I'm not sure if starting at 8 AM helped because there wasn't much rider congestion. I originally expected somewhat of a traffic jam on the W&OD since weekends are the most crowded, but I was pleasantly surprised not to be stuck behind anyone… mainly because I was that person that other bikers were stuck behind. Holy manoli. Talk about some seriously overzealous riders. I don't consider myself to be that slow — mainly because I've finally talked myself down from being the stupidly competitive 17-year-old that used to chase down triathletes — but really, did everyone else find it necessary to form a paceline on a rail trail? If you want to do a century for time, don't do it on one that uses the W&OD, only because you're going to have to stop about nineteen times at road crossings and also because it's just obnoxious to be that guy who runs down 6-year-olds on training wheels.

So, in a nutshell — yes, I'm glad I went, but not having to pay the registration fee and getting a free lunch and cool tee shirt made it all the better.

Alrighty, I finally got the Reston Century packet yesterday in the mail. It turns out there aren't three routes (half metric, metric, and regular centuries), but an additional three sections that you can do. Basically, you can choose to pedal 32.3 (half metric), 52.8, 63.5 (metric), 76.2, 91.5, or 104.2 (century) miles divvied up into eight cue tables and about 10 maps. The first and last cue sheets are entirely on the W&OD, and portions of the rest (one loop in Ashburn for the half metric, two loops in Hamilton, and one in Taylorstown) also hit the W&OD for a few miles here and there.

Anyway, I mapped out the metric century on MMR, and needless to say, I'm a little disappointed:

Booooooring.

Now, based on last night's ride, I can't say for sure if I'll do the metric. To put it bluntly, I felt like crap. I'm also sleep deprived from watching the Olympics until 12 AM every night, which is NOT helping my energy. The 52.8 mile route removes that stupid loop of Route 7 and the W&OD in Purcellville, which I'm more than happy to omit. However, looking at the sheets, there's another loop ("Hamilton South") that encompasses part of the MS ride I did back in May, and I'm tempted to do that part… but doing so would mean I'd hit 76 miles… and not that's not likely with my lack of training.

So, that being said… the 50 mile route is looking like it'll be in the cards. My average speed as of late has been turtle slow, so chances are it'll take me nearly 4 hours to finish.

Since I seem to live my life with my head stuck under the sand 90% of the time, I shouldn't be suprirsed that the Reston [metric for me] Century ride is in 6 days. Crap, crappity, crap… I was kind of hoping that I had at least another week to build up my endurance a little more. Stupid August going by too fast… grumble grumble. The 60-70 miles/week commute that I've been putting in might not be enough, but then again my commuter bike weighs probably twice as much as my new(er) bike does. (Although if you ask any of the tri geeks I rode with a few weeks ago, my road bike may as well be made of cement compared to their $5k carbon fiber rockets.)

The other consideration is that a good chunk of the ride is on the W&OD, whose elevation from Reston looks something like this:
__________________—______________–*–_____

Last year's route is below, not sure this year will be the same, but I think it'll be doable. If not, I can always be a wuss and do the 30 mile route.

1. Download ColdFusion MX from Adobe website.
2. Get all confused about needing a serial number and try to think of ways to get around it.
3. Finally realize you don't need a serial number to install the developer edition, and also think that even if you did "find" one, you'd be in hot water for using not-so-legal software on company property.
4. Set up multiserver configuration using Apache2, not realizing it may cause issues since PHP4 is also on Apache.
5. Wait 20 minutes.
6. Freak out when you try to start the Apache server when an error comes up, only to find out it's already been started and it's a Windows bug.
7. Run configuration wizard.
8. Wait another 10 minutes.
9. Spend the rest of the day doing actual work. In the meantime, [incorrectly] shut down the multiple instances of JRun that are using up approximately 300 KB of memory. Stop Apache server while you're at it, that thing eats memory too.
10. Start Apache again, try to start JRun only to fail because "some JDBC thing wasn't defined in jrun.xml." (Not exact wording.)
11. Rinse, repeat, get multiple Internal Server Errors while trying to load the ColdFusion admin. Try to figure out why JRun isn't working, realize that PHP4 is probably also messed up since CF is now on the same port, etc.
12. Uninstall ColdFusion.
13. Try to reinstall, only to find out stupid JRun wasn't uninstalled the first time around.
14. 1 hour later: Finally get ColdFusion back up and running.

Go home, because it's already 5, I need to go biking, and there's no way I'm going to sit here another hour going through the tutorials.

Okay, Wordpress… what the heck. I just typed out 3/4 of a post, accidentally hit the "back" button on my mouse, and my post was eaten! I thought there was a friggin auto save feature on this version!

Let me try to reiterate what I just spent 20 minutes typing out. I'm still biking to work; saw Dumb Bike Dad again last week and had to refrain myself from stopping him and mentioning that he's probably causing irreversible brain damage to his baby. 1) I'm not a confrontational person by any means, 2) he was hauling ass going the opposite direction, and it'd be nearly impossible to catch up with him and carry on a conversation ("Say, not sure if you're aware of this, but your 6 month old's brain is getting bounced around in his skull back there") without pissing off at least 30 people nearby also using the W&OD, and 3) he could very well be a crazy person and jam a stick in my spokes, thus causing me to flip over and break some important bone(s).

Oh yes, and I'm signed up for the Reston Century. Booz Allen is being nice enough to cover our registration fees, although it'll mean I have to wear the dorky cool team jersey. There's no way I could train enough to do the actual 100 miles by the 24th, so I'm just going to do the metric century (65 mi). Although… I might consider trying to get up in front(ish) this time after my MS ride experience of being stuck in a pseudo-peleton of people who force me to brake going uphill.