The Magazine

My Century

David Skinner, centurion.

Oct 6, 2008, Vol. 14, No. 04 • By DAVID SKINNER
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One hundred of anything can technically be called a century, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, but when I heard that a one-day, hundred-mile trip on a bicycle was called a century, I took it to mean a really long time. Instead I should have been thinking, a really long distance.

My wife and I were planning a two-week vacation at Deep Creek Lake, in western Maryland. I had only one week of vacation, so I would be joining Cynthia and the kids for the second week of the stay. The question of how I would get there arose. Cynthia and the kids were taking the family car.

Not a problem, I explained, earnest as a Boy Scout about to earn a merit badge: The towpath for the C & O Canal, a well-known bike path, courses out that way along the Potomac. Its terminus lies a short car-ride from the lake. I bicycle to work every day, and here was a nice opportunity to try something longer, 184 miles long to be exact.

The trip would take me three days, I told Cynthia, about 60 miles a day. But with three kids to supervise, she was going to be waiting eagerly for my arrival. The trip would take two days, she told me.

I had a little choice in how to break up the journey. Given the location of hotels along the path I could do the shorter leg, of 80 or so miles, on Day One or Day Two. But as a website for the towpath explained, "Either way, you are looking at doing a century during one of the days." Ah yes, I thought, there's that word again. I decided to knock off the hundred miles on Day One.

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