Justin's first 100 !!

Actually 108 km. I've been trying to build Justin's distance slowly up to and beyond 90 km so that come race time in Miami he'll be comfortable at that distance. Well today Justin blew 90 km out of the water! So far he's done rides of 70 and 75 km but we needed to get that distance extended and then follow that up with progressively longer runs off the bike. Well not only did we get 108 km in today he showed no where near the physical effect that his 70ish km rides had on him. His legs are getting stronger and I've had him working on his nutrition during the ride so his energy levels remain high. His progress over the last month has been amazing. Chris was on the ride as well and he was planning to ride for 5 hours so at some point he was either going to drop us or we'd part ways somewhere along the route. We rode up York Durham Rd. all the way to Zephyr and continued a few km further up to Ravenshoe Rd. A right turn and 6 km later we were in Udora where we stopped at the local store for a quick break and to refuel. Our distance at this point was 54 km and I turned to Justin and said "looks like you're going to break 100 today". I think he was kind of excited that he'd be riding 100 km but right at that moment it looked like he was more interested in his peanut butter sandwich because he just kind of nodded, half smiled and grunted "yup". I'm willing to bet that the sandwich had something to do with his excellent performance today. From that point Chris' and our routes parted. He set out back along Ravenshoe Rd. from where we'd come and I learned later after talking with him that he turned north to Lake Simcoe, followed the bottom of the lake to Woodbine Ave., back south to Bloomington Rd. and home from there. A total of 160 km and he averaged 31.5 km/hr. Wow. He must have really picked it up because we didn't ride that fast getting to Udora. Way to go buddy, awesome ride. Justin and I decided to ride south from Udora on Brock Rd. and work our way back to Concession 2 and then south to home. Hmmmm. In retrospect we could have made a better decision. Actually the blame is all mine because I picked the route. Sorry Justin but in the end you'll thank me when you rock the ride in Miami. Over the first 12 km riding back we hit climbs of 50', 85', 50', 100', 50' and 80' (thanks Google Earth). 'Get me off this freaking road' and I did first chance I could. We turned on to Sandford Rd., westbound to Concession 4, south to highway 8 then west again and in my brilliance south on Concession 2. With last weekend's ride and the hills that Chris and I encountered on Concession 3 still fresh in my mind I thought Concession 2 would be a better option. Well 4 km and climbs of 95', 45', 95', 75' and 85' later (thanks again Google Earth) I looked like an idiot. Once again I turned to Justin and said "you'll thank me later". I don't think he bought it this time. Actually I don't think the hills affected him that much because he rode very briskly the rest of the way home. Maybe it was just the fact that we were almost done and he wanted to get this ride over with so he could grab those couple of slabs of pizza he kept telling me about that he was going to reward himself with. Either way, I'm still waiting for that thanks. Seeing how good he was feeling at this point of the ride I figured this was a good time to tell him that I still expected a run out of him, no matter how short it might be. If he was feeling good up till then I think I changed that pretty quick because I know he wasn't expecting to run. Thing is though I need to get him running on fatigued legs so he relented and agreed. We did a real short run, only about 3 km but it was tough on him and I think he realizes these are necessary. As for me, my legs felt great and I could have gone much further. My plan was to go out with Chris after he got done riding but as good as I felt when running with Justin, by the time Chris called my legs had been immobile too long. So I settled with the 3 km but was happy that my legs had felt good for the short run I did.