Naperville Century..... what happened

The Road

To get to the location was a challenge itself. I had programmed my GPS to take me to 111th street in Naperville, once there, I could not see a thing. The fog that morning was thick, I could barely even see the traffic light. I then programmed that GPS to take me to Crone Middle school. For some reason it took me on the corner of a farm field. I decided to make a U turn when I saw a van in front of me taking a U turn with bikes on it. We both looked at each other, shrug our shoulder and proceeded to the next obvious destination when one is lost, the Gas Station. He direct us down the street.

I finally go there and met the couple who followed. We were all into riding the century. I registered on the spot, checked my tire pressure, put on my gear and away I went, with the new friends. The first 10 miles was easy, talking to them was fun. In Fact inspirational. The guy, Mike, have been running ultras and gave me some good tips. My plan is to eventually run my first ultra next year.

We stopped at the first rest stop and I had to use the bathroom, I told the couple to go ahead and move one and I will catch up. Well, after I started riding, it looked like I took a wrong turn to the direction I came from, so Went back and noticed I had to go ahead. There are marks on the road that tells you where to go and what color to follow, depending on the distance. It got a bit confusing since, I did not yet see my color. At about the third rest stop, this is where I took the Real wrong turn. Instead of making a right, I took a left. I saw the purple arrows and that is what I follow to do the century. After awhile, I came t realize that I was riding back where I came from. Not good. According to my calculation, I was at the 55 mile turn around mark and should have gone right but did not observe any arrow.

During the ride, I somehow got stung by a bee right in my left ear. Never before has this happened to me. What that? The stinking was painful and it burned. I had to stop for awhile to check it out. But the pain slowly went away in about 5 minutes..

So overall, it was a good ride. The next day, i was not sore and did not feel a thing.... Which is good.