100 Mile Bike Ride - Hardest Physical Task I've Ever Done
“Let’s bike 100 miles!!” I said. Even though Mitch isn’t a fan of biking, he agreed.
And so, this past weekend we did just that.
Little did I know that it would just about kill me.
I love to bike. I think that’s obvious from training for our first marathon earlier this year. I’m not one of those hardcore cyclists but I’ve spent many hours out on the road biking and listening to podcasts over the years.
I didn’t think 100 miles would necessarily be easy but I didn’t think it would be hard either.
That’s hilarious because it was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done. Give me marathons any day of the week over the 100 mile experience.
We had waffles for breakfast and choose the bikes that we thought would make the most sense for the task.
*spoiler alert, we were wrong*
After loading everything up, ensuring that we had some stuff to eat for lunch and enough water, we were off.
We headed to the rails to trail trailhead where we could do 50 miles out and 50 miles back in one straight shot. After unloading our bikes and throwing on our backpacks we were off.
The first 25 miles my spirits were high. I was feeling good and excited for the task ahead. It was a beautiful day and while the morning air was quite crisp, we knew that it would warm up nicely soon enough. During this portion Mitch was struggling. We weren’t even 10 miles in yet and he was having a tough time with his butt hurting and the fact that we had so many miles to go.
At 25 miles we took our first break. We realized at this point that we were going super slow and needed to speed things up. We ate cold chicken sausages and sourdough bread before saddling back up and heading onward. Shortly after getting back to it we both reached uncharted territory. Up to that point we were both quite familiar with the trail. Now it would all be new to both of us.
From 25-35 ish miles I was okay but then things quickly started to change. I began to experience severe pain in my adductors and quads… and let’s not even mention my butt from lack of conditioning.
I was going so slow and I knew that I was going slow but I could hardly go any faster. This is when I started to wonder about the bikes and if we made the wrong choice.
Regardless, we peddled for hours and hours. Finally, 5 hours and 55 minutes (for real) later we reached the 50 mile mark which happened to be our second break, too.
Complete collapse. I was laying along the side of the road at this point and unable to move without big time pain in the lower half of my body. I truly had no idea how I was going to do another 50 miles.
I’ve done 50 miles before. I’ve done more than that. But I did all of those miles on a road bike. This was not road bike territory and when I told Mitch that I thought this would take 8 hours, I got that time from estimating my road bike speeds and not the mountain bike on rails to trails speed.
After our short 50 mile break where I had a protein bar, we hopped back on the bikes and headed back towards the car, knowing that it was a long ways away. I was very seriously questioning how we were going to make it and recognizing that we’d have to bike some of the final miles in the dark.
But what can you do in that situation other than bike, bike and bike some more?
So that’s what we did.
For hours and hours. At one point I started crying because I wasn’t feeling good. I started to feel really nauseous which is never fun, but especially not whenever you’re exercising.
I was cursing the bikes and starting to break down completely. I didn’t want to stop until we reached 75 miles but about 10 miles away from that checkpoint we ended up stopping and switching bikes. Thankfully. That brought me some relief and lifted my spirits a bit.
This happened to be my third big time endurance thing of the summer. I have learned that when I am doing endurance tasks that I am on a huge rollercoaster. Up and down, up and down. During the marathons I noticed it but it was nothing compared to the highs and lows of this bike ride.
Switching biked put me on top of the rollercoaster and I tried so hard to stay there. I did relatively well as we made our way to 75 miles. Our last break.
I only had one protein bar left and I ate it along with a few bites of Mitch’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Off we went again. This time, back on familiar territory and tackling the last chunk of this journey.
For about 10 miles I was pretty good. In so much pain but otherwise, good. Then it started to get dark. I really didn’t want to bike in the dark because there are pretty remote areas of the trail where there is no cell phone service and road access is miles away. But at that point we were so close and I wanted to finish the thing so onward we went.
We happened to have a light that we grabbed last minute because I knew that we’d have to go through some tunnels on the trail. When I grabbed the light of the charger after only charging it for a brief period of time that morning, I had no idea the circumstance that I would be in and desperately need it.
At this point darkness was setting in. We saw a opossum and heard some other rustles before I started to actually panic. I was starting to feel nauseous again, combine that with the darkness and 15 miles to go and I was going through it!
Mitch decided to turn on the light. We were trying to wait as long as possible because we didn’t know how long it would last but due to my panic I think he figured that if he didn’t do it now then we’d be even worse off. Better to risk a dead light in the future than to have the panic overflowing from me ruin the potential to hit 100.
The light was comforting but I still was not comfortable. I kept telling him to keep talking and I didn’t know what he was saying, I just needed words to be spoken. We had to slow down big time because of how sick I felt and how panicked I was. But still, we peddled.
I knew that I was too hungry. I didn’t eat nearly enough but we were out of food so there was nothing I could do about it. Both of our phones were dying so they were on airplane mode. I was quite confident that there was no service where we were or at the upcoming road access but I tried anyways. I wanted to call my mom to meet us and give me food or just pick me up. I wasn’t sure which yet.
It didn't mater though. I couldn’t do that because there was no service. What do you do when you’re in the middle of the woods on a bike trail in the dark without any service? You just keep biking.
As we kept going I was becoming hysterical and could not calm myself down. At that point Mitch remembered that we had an apple left in his backpack. I demanded that apple asap and I didn’t want to stand and eat it. I wanted to keep biking. The first few bites of the apple were awful. Trying to eat when you’re so sick is tough. But I knew that I was feeling so sick because of the lack of food that day. About 15 minutes after eating the apple I started to feel better. We made it to the crossing where there was no service and I was determined to continue on and finish these miles. I was afraid to go the whole way back to the car because we didn’t know how much time we had left with our flashlight along with the reasons that the previous miles were hell so I devised a plan to have my parents drop off our car at this section of the trail and we would bike back and fourth where there was service and streetlights. They agreed to drop the car off and I got a fire under my very painful butt like I’ve never had before. We biked back and forth with sheer determination. I was at the top of the rollercoaster at this point and staying there. Finally, 13 hours later we hit 100 miles.
13 hours later!!!
We biked for 13 hours.
Finishing didn’t feel real. It still doesn’t feel like we did that. It is absolutely crazy. It made marathons feel like a piece of cake.
It was absolutely horrific mentally, physically, and emotionally. It tested me like no other physical challenge has tested me before. But we did it. We checked off the box and while it didn’t happen in the way I anticipated, a nice 8 hour bike ride at the end of the summer season, it was exactly what it was supposed to be.
There is NO WAY I could have completed it without Mitch. He had his own struggles but they didn’t match the level of my struggles and thank God for that because he was the guiding light in my hysterics. Truly the saving grace of the whole experience.
Finishing the summer with 2 marathons and a 100 mile bike ride feels great.
To finish things off, I want to encourage you to do hard things. Get out there and live! Achieve your goals! You are capable of more than you know. I know it sounds cheesy but it’s so true. If there is something that you’ve been wanting to do then I encourage you to get out there and do it. Put in the hours training or sign up for the class or do whatever you need to do to do the thing. It might not look like you envision. Actually, it probably won’t look like you envision it to look, but there’s so much beauty in that. That’s where the magic is. The growth. The evolution. You will be given the exact experience that you need in that moment and not knowing exactly what it will be like is such a beautiful thing.
Fall begins tomorrow. Let’s hone in on a goal to achieve this season and get out there and get after it.
Get blog posts straight to your inbox by signing up for my Substack here.
