Josh is dead. Long live Josh!

Well, I have pretty much laid the old Josh to rest. He simply isn't here anymore.

I rode my first century today. Yep. 100 miles. And I did it alone and unsupported. Somewhat unplanned actually. Not in the sense the I was lost and had to do it, but in the sense that I haven't been training for it, but realized that I could probably pull it off anyway. So I got up at 5:30 this morning, ate a bowl of oatmeal with a banana and 3 huge scoops of sugar in it, loaded up a bunch of energy bars and gels, filled up some bottles with sports drinks, grabbed a 100 oz. Camel Back and headed out around 6:45. I rode down tons of gravel roads. I don't really like that on my road bike, but you gotta do what you gotta do. It went well, though. Of course, 40 of the last 50 miles was all crazy headwind. I also had to tool around Neureut some because I was about 5 miles short of the goal as I rolled back into town. That was annoying. And insanely boring. I toughed it out, though. I am unbelievably proud of myself.



A shot down Grabener Allee. This dude runs for dozens of miles from the castle north to Graben. And it is mostly gravel after the first few miles. That equals friction.



There are about a bazillion storks around here. There's actually a family of them right around the corner from our house as well. The "storklings" are now old enough to fly, and we see them flying around in a group overhead at the park a lot.



There's my big boy and my, uhhh... Navy SEAL? It's hard to figure out what that little freak show is going to bring whenever she comes through that door.

OK. I feel unbelievably good for 7 hours in the saddle and a hundred miles under my wheels, but my ass is packing up to an early evening in bed.