The New Centurion

By Adrianne Jucius Navon/New York

There is something seductive about numbers with zeros in them. Milestones in wealth or accomplishment, they whisper, "Come, you can do it." One hundred is a special number for bicycle riders. Cycling 100 miles--or even 100 km--in a single day is a rite of passage cyclists call a century ride. It is for a bicyclist what a marathon is for a runner: a badge of endurance and achievement.

Each year hundreds of thousands of bicycle enthusiasts participate in the many century rides organized by charities and bike clubs all over the U.S. These rolling events provide measured fun, challenge and physical and psychological support for riders and can raise substantial sums of money for causes such as AIDS, diabetes and MS. Most offer distance options: there's the classic 100-mile century, the 50-mile half-century, the grueling 200-mile double century and, for the internationalist, the 62-mile (or 100-km) metric century.

Last month I joined a field of 750 registrants for my first century ride, sponsored by New York City's Five Borough Bicycle Club (the 5BBC). Though I took up recreational cycling only a year ago, at age 55, I have gradually increased my endurance, heading out on Saturday and Sunday mornings over the bridges of Manhattan toward beaches and landmarks 20 or more miles away. When the 5BBC announced a century ride to Montauk at the easternmost tip of Long Island in May, my biking buddy Jane and I, with a sense of adventure--and trepidation--mailed in our $52 registration fees for the metric. For beginners like us, the draw of this particular ride is that the route along the southern shore of Long Island, a glacial outwash plain, is not only scenic but also mostly flat.

Century Day, May 21, dawned with a 49[degree]F drizzle requiring layers of clothing and rain gear. While most of New York was sleeping, Jane and I gamely cycled to Penn Station to join a colorful flock of metric riders at 6:30 a.m. (Those doing longer distances had already departed amid pelting rain.) Bagels, bananas, oranges and energy bars--foods that quickly refuel muscles with carbohydrates--were provided at the train station and later on at rest stops. While 5BBC volunteers loaded our bikes onto trucks, we boarded the train for a 2-hr. ride to Mastic-Shirley, our starting point.

There we reconnected with our bikes and checked in satchels of dry clothing, which volunteers then trucked to the finish line. At 9:30, we joined the steady stream of cyclists for the long ride eastward. Those on svelte road bikes were the fastest, but in the rain their narrow tires were especially vulnerable to punctures. Cyclists on workhorse mountain bikes had to pump the hardest. Most of our pedaling was on the broad asphalt shoulder of Montauk Highway, which parallels the coast as it runs through resort towns and lavish residential areas. Forsythia, lilac, horse chestnut, wisteria and dogwood splashed bright colors against the rain-wrung greenery, and sometimes the fragrance of roses and the briny freshness of beach air eclipsed the exhaust from passing cars. We caught glimpses of cormorants, egrets, red-winged blackbirds and gulls.

A few miles after the final rest stop at the Green Thumb organic vegetable farm in Water Mill, Jane was halted by a flat, her first ever. I had a tool kit and she had a spare tube, but we needed some know-how. Todd, a rider in a yellow rain jacket whom we had chatted with at the last watering station, graciously stopped to help us. Flat fixed, we cycled on.

While the supreme joy of century riding is in completing the trek, the prospect of hot food also helped propel our weary limbs against a headwind across the final miles of rolling dunes. At 4:30 p.m., Jane and I joined the swarm of self-congratulants at the finish line. Hot showers were available in a truck, and riders could book massages. There were steamy trays of pasta, road stories to exchange and big smiles all around. Revitalized, we biked off to Montauk station, where trucks and the train were waiting. At 10:30 p.m., our triumphant troupe of cyclists emerged from Penn Station into the cool night air. Volunteers called out our numbers as they handed down the hundreds of bicycles one by one from the back of the trucks.

I met some remarkable people throughout the day. The 15-year-old Matthaey twins, having cycled a mere month on mountain bikes, rode the full 130 miles from Manhattan to Montauk; so did Donna, 56, a psychoanalyst who had started cycling a year before and was revving up for the August 510-mile Alaska AIDS-vaccine ride.

Never having viewed myself as athletic, I was amazed by my own accomplishment. Though I still fear faltering stamina, this century ride revealed to me a power I didn't know I had. Now I'm on the lookout for new challenges, more difficult and longer rides, more opportunities to share the journey of exploration with friends and the bicycling community. A month ago, 100 km was my goal. Now it is just the beginning.