Basil's Account of Century Day

To all my riding buddies,
Yesterday was the hardest, longest and most difficult ride of my riding career! We left our campsite in Saunderson TX at 8:00 am sharp and 108 miles & 11:30 hours later we arrived at our destination 12 miles west of Del Rio, TX on the Armistead Reservoir, just as the sun was setting. This large body of water is on the border of Mexico and the good ole USA and it is a recreational spot where we plan to take our first day off after 19 days of riding.(NOTE: I personally took day 5 off due to bonking the day before).
The map elevation showed the ride to be a general 2000 foot of elevation loss, but as it turned out we probably climbed at least 2000 feet in the effort. That does not sound like that much climbing, but we were also battling a very stiff head wind the entire 108 miles. The entire ride was in desert high country, with hardly a tree over 3 or 4 foot tall. Thank God it wasn’t extraordinarily hot, only about 85 or 90, and there were several stretches of 40 miles without so much as a drop of water to drink. I managed to stay with the others about 75% of the time. Quite frankly there were a few moments when I wondered if I would make it! We arrived in a little place called Comstock at about 5:30 with 23 or 24 miles to go and with the sun slowly setting. I had been behind a few hundred yards at that point and as I rode up, Taz handed me an extra tail light and without actually, saying it, the implication was,” we need to make it over the Anistad Reservoir Bridge before dark, so you need to buck up. Well, there was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to finish that last 20 something miles, and I certainly didn’t want to do it alone in the dark . So to my handlebar bag I go, and gets me a 5 Hour Energy, and off I went, while the others were hydrating. Needless to say I made it but not without a lot of support from the team and every ounce of energy I had in me. I think we were all pretty well beat. It was so beautiful to pull into the RV Campground to see that Karlie( our sag driver) had set up all the tents, which is not in her job description, and had all the comfy lawn chairs up and awaiting our exhausted bodies. Out came the protein smoothies, and shortly thereafter the “Evil Liquid”, commercially known as Mike’s Hard Lemonade (mine was an O’Doul’s).
We have earned this day off, and plan to do some swimming and chilling.

Thanks,
Basil