In the cycling world, completing a 100 mile bike ride is similar to a runner completing a marathon.  Both require a great deal of preparation and mental fortitude.   I get asked a lot by other cyclists about  how to plan for their first century.  Preparing for your first century bike ride is much simpler than you might think.  There are 3 key areas on which to focus:

• Hydration & Nutrition
• Gear
• Training

Hydration and Nutrition

Hydration and nutrition are the fuel that keeps you going.  Screw these up in training or during the century ride and you screw yourself.  Sounds dramatic.  I know.  But it is too true.  You should be sipping H2O and/or sports drink every 15 minutes on all of your rides.  Though you won’t have food and water stations on your training rides, take advantage of them on your century ride.  But, don’t get greedy!  Save snacks and hydration for other people too.

Tips:

1. Experiment with different food and hydration on your training rides so that you can identify a combo that works for your body.
2. Keep some sports gels handy.  I like Hammer Nutrition, but you can more easily find Gu and PowerBar gel.  **Don’t go overkill on these.
3. Don’t limit yourself only to sports bars.  I like Fig Newtons a lot.  Also a good PB&J works wonders.
4. Don’t limit yourself only to sports drinks like Gatorade.  They are HIGH in high fructose corn syrup.

Gear

Any bike will work, honestly.  Granted if you plan on riding a crappy “mountain” bike from a discount retailer, your century ride will suck.  The key is to get a road or touring bike.  Narrower and non-knobby tires translates into reduced rolling resistance.  Depending on the time of year and geographic location of your century, you’ll need to be prepared for cold, rain and sun.

Tips: 

• Hot and humid conditions?  Plenty of sunblock, salt tabs, light cycling-specific base layer to help wick sweat from body.
• Windy or chilly conditions?  Cover your knees by wearing leggings, knee warmers, booties, arm warmers or long sleeve wool base layer.
• Freezing cold conditions?  Windproof layer on top, booties, warm wool leggings, thin headband or balaclava.
• Get a bike fit from a certified bike fitter.  Seriously.  DON’T skip this step.
• clipless pedals are key if you want to be comfortable and be able to engage different muscle groups at different times.
• rain jacket that is cycling specific that you can cram into the back pockets of your jersey if you think it will rain
• full saddle bag with tools and tubes, etc.

Training

You’ll have to train for a century ride.  There is no getting around it.  They key is to give yourself at least 6 weeks of consistent riding.  You need to give your neck, ass, shoulders, triceps and legs time to get used to performing on a bike for 100 miles.  It takes a bit of time.  The good news is that the body adapts quickly.

Tips:

• At the beginning focus more on frequency, not distance
• Ride at least 3 times per week
• Save long rides for Saturday
• Don’t be afraid to get an indoor cycling trainer from your local bike shop for areas with lots of rain or snow
• Do it with a friend or local group if possible.  It’s always safer to ride in groups for any number of reasons.

If you are looking to create a blog and want to use your newly purchased domain name (web address) and want to learn how to connect the two, you are reading the correct article.  Before we give you the step by step, there are a few things to consider.  First, there are two “different” Wordpress locations where you can create an account:  wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

Wordpress.com

You’ll want to go here and create an account if you are an average person that has no desire to change the coding to the blogging template, pay for 3rd party hosting or actively manage and organize all of the files associated with making your blog look good to the public.

Wordpress.org

You’ll want to go here and create an account if you are interested in affiliate marketing, blog customization (via coding), have already had an active, simple blog template and want to be able to do more.  Also, you’ll want to go here to be able to feature banner ads on your blog.

It’s important to get some terminology understood at the beginning:

Content Management Software (CMS): These are the platforms that enable you to blog.  i.e., Worpress, Technorati, etc

Hosting: This is an integral service for all websites.  Hosting services “lease” you space on their computer servers so that people can see all of your files, images and videos.  It’s where the guts of your blog or website live.

Domain: This is what computer people call a “web address”.  So that your blog can have a cool name you like, you may want to purchase your own domain.

Name Server: This is the function that translates your unique domain (i.e., www.thesaiko.com) to a complex numeric address that makes sense to the computers.

Getting started is much easier than most people think.  It’s just a matter of doing things in the correct order.  Below we’re going to show you how to set up a basic blog with  your own unique domain.

1. Go to www.wordpress.com and create a free account (btw, this is where you’ll go to login each time you want to add photos later, etc)
2. You’ll have to name that blog account.  Don’t worry about how lame or cool the name is that you give to the blog.  It will be overridden by your purchased domain name once you connect them.
3. Find a template you like on Wordpress
4. To connect your new account to your purchased domain, go here to learn the links for the name servers http://support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-existing-domain/
5. You’ll then go login to GoDaddy (or wherever you purchased your domain) and search for your name servers.  Swap the name servers by following the directions above in #4
6. Give it a few hours or a day and then you should be able to see the blog by typing your domain into your Internet address bar (sometimes it takes affect immediately)

It’s as simple as that.  Be sure to keep your content updated to prevent it from becoming stale.  Generally speaking, the more traffic to your site, the better.  However, that may not apply to your situation.  Maybe you just need a place to post information that will make sense only to a few people.  Regardless of your situation, have fun blogging.