Milliron's Race Journal: 2010 Chico Wildflower Century

Did the Chico Wildflower Century while out in California, visiting my parents. Huge ride, awesome weather, excellent food and support. Lots of fun.

As you can see from the above profile, there were three major climbs and then about 30 miles of flatness.

In addition to the century, they offered a few shorter routes including 64 mile, 30 mile and 15 mile. Total, there was over 4,000 people registered. Since there were so many riders, there was no mass start. They just asked that you got onto the route starting from 6am to 8am and finished by 5pm. I rolled out about 7:30.

This worried me since I didn't really feel like doing the whole thing solo. Ended up doing most of the climbing solo and drafting people on the flatter sections between the main climbs. On the 30 miles of flatness at the end, I got into a fast group that ran a double pace line most of the way. Cruising along at 24 mph or so. It hurt but I made up a lot of time.

Took about 5:30 to finish.

GPS: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/31270861

Set a 20 minute power PR (ie; critical power or functional threshold power) on the second climb. Moved up my best from 220 avg watts to 255 avg watts. Huge increase considering I then went on to ride hard for over three more hours. A little curious what I can do with a full rest week followed by a dedicated power test.

Cruising up the first climb.

Second climb. Spent a lot of time passing people that were doing the 64 mile route (they skipped the first and third climbs) and people that started the route earlier then I did.