2006 Metric Century Mud Fest

This past Sunday was Honolulu Bicycling League's annual Metric Century bike ride.

On any sunny day, imo, this is HBL's best ride, even better than the Century Bike Ride. Starting at Haleiwa's beautiful Kaiaka Beach Park and running to the 100km turnaround point at Swanzy Beach Park in Kaaawa, the scenery of Oahu's North Shore, with the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other can't be beat. But unfortunately, not this year!

The ride started under cloudy skies, but a couple of miles out of Haleiwa town (and for essentially the remainder of the ride), the roads turned wet and muddy for all the 700 or so participants. Had I known the entire ride was going to be that way, though, someone would have had to pay ME $30 to do the ride! But being the good HBL supporter that I am, I coughed up the 30 bucks and signed up as a late registrant, sans Tee, that morning.

But the show must go on and luckily for me, I was the SMARTEST guy of all!!! Just prior to the start, I decided to put on my SKS Race Blade rear fender and it truly saved my day...no irritating wet dirty road spray stripe painted up my a$$ and back! Just look at how clean my ride number is! I can tell you that no one else had a cleaner number than me! I mean, if it functions and makes life more pleasant, who cares how dorky a fender looks!!!

And as prevously mentioned, my new Ti bike performed purrrrfectly...except for the fact that I had my seat TOO and very PAINFULLY high on the way out. Once adjusted properly, the bike was flawless.

On the way out, some of the islands fastest tri guys were on the front driving the head pack to cover the first 46.5kms in a slippery and dangerous, but fast, 1h 12min 30sec. (If your wondering, the ride is NOT a true 100k but closer to 92k.) On the way back, I hooked up with my friends Mark and Darin and we got back with a slower than usual ride time of 1h 17min 40sec and covered 45.4kms.

Our return trip from Swanzy was not as easy as we were expecting, thanks to absolutely NO help from the usual trades that are suppose to really usher you back to Haleiwa. Mark was strong and doing fine for the entire ride, but D was not feeling all that great for the last 15kms or so.

Shortly after standing on the side of the road to fix the second of 2 flats, all wet and dirty, D contemplated taking a (don't tell anyone) "short cut" back to the finish in Haleiwa. Luckily for him, under threat of "exposure," he sucked it up and covered the entire distance on the official course route. If he didn't, though, this lack of intestinal fortitude would have to have been recorded for all prosperity...somewhere...maybe online??? Hahahah...lol..

Here is some of my power data from this year's ride and how it compared to 2005 and 2004. In 2005, I took more than a few really good hard pulls on the front of the pack on the way out, but this year, I just sat in and didn't take any pulls on the way out. Hence last year, I had more time in the my highest power zone.

2006







2005







2004