A couple weekends ago, I fulfilled a longtime goal – to bike one hundred miles (i.e. a Century, as they say) in a single go! The backstory of this was my good friend Kate (the one I did the Dead2Red 250km relay with, along with my other dear friends Branden and Caitlin back in 2015) and her husband had done the famous Door County Century (DCC) before, and because they knew I loved bike riding and punishing my body, they asked why I’d never done it. The main reason being: I’d never heard of it until they told me about it!

It was from my entreaty to my old 4-H friend Kayla, asking her if she wanted to do it with me and stay with Christine and I at my sister-in-law’s cabin in Egg Harbor, that led me to the BikeMS ride that I did a month earlier; Kayla pointed out that Iron Man in Madison would be the same weekend as the DCC, so she regretfully declined – but then told me that if I wanted to do a long grueling bike ride with her, but for a good cause instead of pleasure/pain, there was this little fundraiser called BikeMS… (and the rest is history, or at least, in a different blog post)

I set a calendar reminder back in like, August 2024 for January 1st, 2025 – the first day that you could register for the DCC 2025 (and also the cheapest; they raise the price of registration slowly over the months until they sell out of registration passes). I paid $69 to register. That includes a couple beers and dinner at the end, as well as a fully supported stops along the route (6 of them, about one every 15 miles) with all the snacks (sandwiches, fruit, and energy drinks mostly, but some of them had extra stuff – like one had squeaky cheese curds, and another had strawberry shortcake) you could eat. Pretty darn good price.

It’s a pretty great looking route; lots of coastal parts, or at least near coast (there’s so many trees/rich people houses that you can’t often see the water) but clearly there’s a reason why it’s so popular and the same basic route has stayed the same for many years.

Branden and Caitlin agreed to join us (who could pass up a free stay in a cute little cabin in the woods in Door County?) both for their own enjoyment, but also to give poor Christine an extra quartet of hands to help out with Baby Lukas while Crazy Papa was off hurting his body. We drove up separately though; it’s incredible how much “stuff” it takes to have a 3-month old infant on a 3 night trip. Stroller in the trunk, play mat for him to kick his Lil’ Lukas Legs on, “rocker” seat device to put him on when he tires of play mat – anyway, so much stuff to bring. I think the era of transporting friends to things when we go on trips is behind us for awhile.

The four of us had a relaxing Saturday before the Sunday ride – took some walks around the Egg Harbor subdivision where the cabin is located with the baby in the stroller, and had dinner together at a folksy log cabin themed supper club that had a pretty good stroganoff special. Luke got way, WAY too overstimulated + overtired by his stimulation, by the artwork and log motif of the restaurant and flipped the hell out about halfway through the meal and cried uncontrollably, but other than that, it was great!

I left for the ride alone with my brother’s bike strapped to the back of the Crosstrek at about 7:30AM – it takes about half an hour to drive down to the ride’s start/end point in Sturgeon Bay. They don’t do a single “ready set go” for everyone – it’s very specifically and repeatedly mentioned that this is not a race, it’s a fun ride, and they don’t encourage the idea of it being a race. They recommend that you know your own speed and plan to start between 6am and 10am in order to attend the dinner, which goes from 4-6pm. Using my BikeMS timing of about 4.5 minutes per mile, I knew what I’d need. However, I’ll tell you right now – I didn’t factor in the fact there were six rest stops, and that I would definitely be making use of their restful capabilities. It took longer than I thought since I stayed at each one except the last one for 15, even 25 minutes depending on how wiped I felt.

It seemed like almost everyone had a buddy or a dozen of them to ride with. I looked around the starting point for other solo riders but I didn’t see anyone alone. Since I had a jersey number to pin onto my back and I was too shy to talk to anyone, I had to strip off my bike jersey and pin my own number onto the cloth rather than having someone to do it for me. I miss my old group rides in Madison – hard to believe it was over a decade ago I was doing stuff like this, it feels like a lifetime.

Enough nostalgic moping – I had a century to travel. I realized very early on, in the first dozen miles, that I was not quite properly dressed for this. I’d never been “cold” on a bike ride before but that 8am September air on a peninsula…? Yeah, the wind was brisk. One woman biking past me with her gal pals, commented “don’t you want to put your windbreaker on?” and I replied “I don’t have one!” and she said, as she and her multi-thousand dollar bike disappeared ahead of me “wow, you’re braver than I am.” I was just in my old jersey from Jordan, Cycling Rome to Mecca (now we’re talking 16 years ago! good lord where does the time go) and some bike shorts. It did get slightly warm right around noon when the sun came out but it was just chilly, cloudy Sunday for the most part. My legs were extremely sore and stiff by about a third of the way in, worse than I could ever remember them being. I don’t think I warmed up and stretched properly before the ride – I had figured that since I would be biking slowly, leisurely, and relaxingly (not a word) I would “warm up” naturally on the ride. The problem was that since it wasn’t warm, that never happened, so my muscles, even as miles piled onto them, never got properly ‘warmed’ – oof. I was walking bowlegged like I’d been on a horse’s saddle instead a bike saddle for a day or two afterward. My bony old behind is not padded enough.

The cars were pretty nice for us too. I believe this is the 47th year the ride has been happening, and it’s slightly outside the main window for tourism in Door County, so the locals remaining aren’t the sort to be jerks to bicyclists (also they know the sort of tourist bikers who spend thousands of dollars on racing road bikes are the sort to spend lots of money in their quaint little shops, too, so why piss them off). Several times along the ride, locals were just out on their grass in lawn chairs, holding signs that said stuff like “good job, you can do it!” and cheering us on. They might have been looking for a friend or something, but they’d cheer anyone who went past them. That was nice. Since the ride’s start/stop was in the Door County fairgrounds, I asked one of the adult volunteers if all the youngish looking people who were also helping out were 4-H kids, and was told no, they were the local high school band kids. The youngsters were all real nice and friendly too.

Let’s see, what was the worst part of the ride? Well that’s easy to tell you – click on the map link again, the one of the main route, and move your cursor on the chart at the bottom, showing mile 64 through 68. See how the route is going due west? Yeah… turns out that the peninsular winds often blow from the west to the east. So that area there, real flat (but also some uphills) not in the coastal forest, right into the wind – was just awful, awful riding. I think I was doing an average speed of 9-11 MPH there. In contrast, you see the next section on the map, where we’re going from mile 71 to 74 almost due east? That was great! We were zooming along with the breeze, I could tell my fellow riders near me were also having a great time after the slog that previous section had been.

Right around that point there, a young woman who I’d passed, and been passed by, a few times in the previous few hours started chatting with me. Her name was Dawn, and she’d been biking the route with a friend of hers but then that friend started to not feel well, so she took one of the shorter loops (oh yes I didn’t mention; you can also do 30, 50, or 70 mile route options, it’s not just 100 miles) and ended early and now Dawn was by herself. As naturally chatty and gregarious as I am, Dawn and I bantered about biking; bikes and routes (she’d done many century rides before, but she was a relative newcomer to Wisconsin, working for Milwaukee Tool as an engineer and had never been to Door County before) and just generally enjoyed each other’s company through the final stretches. She was a mere 25 years old and filled with energy, good vibes, and positivity.

We biked through the finish line together, she congratulated me on a great first century ride, complimented my cute baby son (of course I talked about him, and used him as an excuse as to why I hadn’t trained as much as I should have probably (sorry Luke)), and then disappeared into the crowd to find her friend who had been waiting for her for hours. I hope she had a great trip to Door County and enjoys her new life/career in Wisconsin!

Branden and Caitlin had to head back home immediately after, but Christine and I stayed one more night in the cabin; I knew that my legs would barely be in enough state to stand/walk, much less to sit and work car pedals – and being exhausted for a 3 hour drive back down to Madison wouldn’t help either. It was a very quiet, relaxing night – I heard from the three Luke caretakers that he had been a pretty sleepy boy and well behaved; good to know after his log-cabin-fueled meltdown the previous evening.

Anyway, I’m glad I did it! Maybe Lukas will love bicycling as much as I do. Maybe in 3-4 years Christine and I could do the 30 or 50 mile ride with him in a trailer behind one of us (she’s got the e-bike now, I’m sure that can tow just fine) to get him exposed to it. Maybe in 7-8 years he’ll want to do the 30 mile ride with us. We’ll see! For now though, I’m glad I did it when he’s still a small portable baby instead of a larger, less portable toddler with more opinions and tantrums and that sort of thing.