2013 Casa River Century

The Casa River Century was a little bit shorter this year than the ride last year.  It's been a really tough physical time during this past week.  The bulk of the issue revolves around a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at work last Wednesday. I haven't played ball in over 5 years by design.  There are really good reasons for that decision, all of which came back to me during the tournament.

I guess I thought the tourney was going to be a lightly contested stand-around and shoot jumpers kind of outing .. Wrong!  Double-elimination games to 15 points or 15 minutes against a bunch of guys that are younger, stronger and play regularly.  I entered with Erik Bursch and Jeff Weigand from work.  All of us over 40, with only Bursch playing regularly.

Cutting this short, since this is a biking blog, we won 4 straight games to make it to the Championship game against the winner from the loser bracket.  I was done after game 2.  Games 3 and 4 were just death on top of my already spent body.  This was a "lunch time" event and time was getting late, so we called the game to my delight.  Between me and the thousands that read this blog, I don't think we'll be playing that game.

So I entered the Casa River Century ride with a very painful lower back, hip pointer, sore right foot, jammed left thumb and other undisclosed ailments.  It took a lot of mental fortitude just to drive up to Shepherdstown, WV.  In the end, I rode a really aggressive 50 mile route in the same time it takes me to ride the same distance on the W&OD trail.  The route was rolling hills, nothing too big.

The weather was getting iffy and I felt pretty good after the 50.  I wandered up to the lunch station and parked it for awhile talking with other riders and eating some pretty good food.  And then headed to the car. I think that was a good decision given the Mountains of Misery Century is this Sunday.

I did see a pretty funny sticker along the route.  We've all seen the white stickers on the backs of people's cars with the mom, dad, son, daughter, baby and dog right?  Out in WV they've got a different sense of "family".  Shocking there's an NRA sticker as well.

And the other interesting site was smoke rising from the wooded hills.  Ever see the show "Moonshiners".

In the end, riding time was 2 hours 51 minutes for 50 miles.  Pretty good average speed of 17 1/2 mph.  I'll take that as a lead up to the Mountains of Misery next weekend.