I had never ridden a century before. My longest ride up until January 8 was a metric century (62 miles), last March. I did not know whether I was in the right shape or how my body would react to the hours. Sometime in the last year, I flipped through Bicycling‘s issue on mastering “the hundo.” I give anyone permission to slap me if I ever use the phrase “hundo” unironically. I did not know how long it would take, but I estimated eight hours. I wanted to leave from and end at home, so I designed a route that went west (more rural), covered a lot of familiar ground (giving myself better insight into each section), and had a bailout plan.
Mile 0. Sunday morning. Left the house around 8:40am. Rain. I packed two sets of gloves, two jackets, two sets of lights. The forecast said the morning rain should taper off to scattered showers in the afternoon. Pedaled west to and along Multnomah Blvd, the Fanno Creek Greenway, and streets of Beaverton before taking some new roads.
Mile 11. Passed the Nike World Headquarters, which is something of a cross between a sporty Disneyland and a Cold War era research and development campus, set back from the road behind berms of earthen walls. Some office building has a shoe tread architectural feature, and you can see basketball scoreboards through the windows.
Ride with GPS, which I used to plan the route, sent me on a path adjacent to the Rock Creek Country Club’s driving range. No net. Many yellow golf balls lined both sides of the path. “Beware of errant golf balls. Serious injury may result,” read a small sign with a silhouette of a golf ball bouncing off a person’s head.
Headed north and farther west, passing from commercial to industrial buildings. I heard what I thought was a bunch of children excitedly shouting and playing at recess, until I remembered that it was Sunday. I looked up and saw hundreds of geese landing noisily in a soggy baseball field.
After a UPS warehouse and a few more turns, the concrete ended and farmland began.
Mile 20. Stopped at Helvetia Farm Market for a muffin and espresso. Enjoyed the porch’s shelter from the rain and warmth of a propane heater. I wrung rain out my gloves and shook the water off my jacket and considered whether today was the best day to ride my first century. I decided to keep going, and for just a few seconds the rain blew out and a blue sky peaked through clouds to the west. I changed gloves and got back in the saddle.
Spotty showers through the farm lands. The benefit of riding alongside farms in winter is that you can see all around you for miles. Although the weather comes mostly from behind me (from the southeast, while I am riding northwest), I learned to distinguish the darker bands of rain and the lighter, fast moving low clouds.
It was quiet out on those roads. I wondered if that was because of relatively fewer houses, the fact that it was Sunday, or the rain. A couple of times, I stopped on the side of the road just to listen to the rainfall, watch spotted towhees pluck worms from the fields, and watch the low clouds ride before the wind that pushes them across the valley. Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” formed itself in my head and played on a circuit for the rest of the day.
Once my route joined up with a segment of an Oregon Scenic Bikeway, I saw the telltale blinking red light of another cyclist a mile ahead of me. We rode together, a mile apart, all the way to Banks.
Mile 35. I had planned to stop for a real break, to refuel and stretch, every thirty miles. At the southern trailhead of the Banks-Vernonia State Trail, there is a clean restroom and an Adirondack style rain shelter. I used the dry pocket for deep stretches. Shoulders, hamstrings, quads, gluts. Changed jackets from rain shell to Rapha Brevet insulated jacket. Changed caps to a Flanders style cap that covers the ears. The wind was picking up, and it rains more where clouds hit mountains, forcing the air to lift and become colder.
I ate almonds and dried fruit, and I watched two other cyclists finish their morning ride along the BV. One’s husband picked her up, the other loaded her bike onto the back of her truck. Both told stories of enjoying their new bikes, despite the rain, and made plans to do it again next month.
I chose the BV because I know it. A paved trail on a converted railroad bed, it climbs gradually. It’s an out-and-back, and I would reach the halfway point of the century on the trail. It was part of my planning that if I wanted to turn around as soon as I hit 50 miles, I could. Or, if I felt good, keep going to Vernonia, where I could find lunch.
The BV is a forested climb. It’s probably what you think of when you picture the Pacific Northwest. Giant ferns, cathedrals of Douglas firs overhead, the occasional logged hillside, mossy logs, loamy soil. I had to stop every three to five miles to rock my rear wheel back and forth, and loosen the Douglas fir needles that get caught in the fender brackets. Any other debris (sand, leaves, water) is either too large to get under the fenders or too small to get stuck. Douglas fir needles are perfectly sized to be the bane of fenders in the PNW. When wet, they stick to one another and pile up against fender brackets, rub the tire with resistance, and make a small zipper sound.
Mile 50. Just as I reached Vernonia Springs, a u-catch trout farm/wedding venue/retreat center, I passed the halfway mark and decided to keep climbing.
I passed few other cyclists going in the opposite direction. One was the cyclist I chased through the farm fields. One ripper on a Specialized ebike. A few mountain bikers. The Stub Stewart State Park‘s mountain bike trail network is the best, closest trail system to Portland metro. If it had been a dry day, there would have been more.
Mile 53. The last few miles at the top of the BV have several sharp rips in the asphalt caused by tree roots and potholes from standing water. Normally, I swerve around them, but my legs and shoulders were tired. My dexterity was off. Those last couple of miles were rough.
Mile 56. Lunch at La Cabaña in Vernonia. I sat at one of their outdoor tables under an umbrella and mostly just stared off into space. A veggie burrito, Jalisco style. Sebastian, the waiter, was chatty, calling everyone “amigo.” The black beans and hot coffee restored my focus. I could feel nutrients running through my legs and arms, like a wave. After more stretches, I left feeling refreshed, and the speed bumps of those first few return miles were much easier to navigate.
Mile 68. The sun started to set on the return ride down the BV. I turned my lights back on, and once I crested the summit, I knew I could enjoy a seven-mile descent and save some energy. I turned the cranks gently throughout the descent just to avoid stiffening up.
Mile 80. By the time I reached the southern trailhead in Banks, I was tired and the sun was down. I had a choice. Ride back twenty miles through farm roads at night or ride to Hillsboro and catch the Max, Portland’s light rail train. Either way, I would have plenty of miles left to hit the century mark. It was a choice between ending up with just over 100 miles or 120+ miles on my Wahoo. I chose to take the Max, thinking this minimized the amount of time I would spend on dark farm roads. Turned out, I still had to ride a ten-mile stretch with no street lights, few houses, really nothing other than me and my lights. I kept thinking about how hard it would be to fix a flat tire if something happened out there—cold hands, no light but my headlights, no place to sit or bench to work with.
No mechanicals. Just a peaceful ride through pitch black rain. Smooth asphalt. I rode in the middle of the lane. Not a single car the entire time.
Mile 89. I hit the Pacific Highway just east of Forest Grove, where conditions changed. I was relegated again to debris-filled bike lanes. Fast, loud, wet tires of passing cars and trucks. Grocery stores, gas stations, fast food, window tint garages, day cares, gun shops, dispensaries, tire shops, ice cream stands. Pacific Highway is a stroad, and almost everything was open. The amount of neon and colored LED lighting was a jarring contrast to the tranquil, rural, and empty spaces where I spent the last nine hours. The next five miles felt like the longest of the whole day.
Mile 94. I hopped on the Max in Hillsboro. Loaded the bike, took my helmet off, and sat down. Paused the Wahoo. Wrung some water out of my gloves. A man with a duffel bag climbed onboard just before we departed. He opened the top of the duffel to reveal a Rottweiler puppy. He spoke in the tongues of a meth addiction and harassed the puppy, which bit him. He got off at the next stop.
I took out my phone for the first time that day, slipped in earbuds, and listened to “Into the Mystic” on repeat for the next twelve stops.
Still Mile 94. I stepped off the train in Beaverton. Bright lights, small city. After taking a few minutes on the platform to adjust gloves and cap, I set off for the last ten miles. I retraced my path from the morning. The mid-century neighborhood of houses and apartment complexes, the Fanno Creek Greenway, the pizza and Thai restaurants, the gradual climb to Multnomah Village, the Safe Rest Village, the drop to Terwilliger and I-5.
I live at the top of a hill. Not a tough one, but every day that I ride home, I know that I have to climb one last time before I can kick off my shoes. I reached the stoplight before the climb at Mile 102. I had little left to give. I clicked into the highest gear on the cassette and set no personal records.
Mile 103. Home. Eleven hours after leaving the house. Eight hours and eight minutes rolling time. 4,038ft of climbing. 103.2 miles.
Coda. Living in Portland, it is fitting that I would ride my first century in the rain. Unless I waited for summer, it would be hard not to. The next day, I read about the atmospheric river wreaking havoc on the central California coast. I realized that my century took place at the same time that rainstorms were washing homes off pilings, knocking bridges from roads, and moving whole rivers. The poet WH Auden once observed from a Pieter Brueghel painting how suffering “takes place/While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” and “how everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster.”
