Maybe I just should stay away from pay rides.  I've only done two this year - the other one being the Ride That Killed The Carbon Aero.  
 
We were planning this ride very well.  We tried not to kill ourselves on the front half, which was all into the wind.   We tried not to let anyone pass us, but at the same time weren't trying to just rip the road to shreds either.  Which was a good thing because there were some long grade false flats and some pretty bad chipseal that seemed to be about 30 or more of the first 55 miles.  We had just turned with the wind behind us and I was cranking along, ready to ramp it up enough to finish the century with around a 20mph average, or as close as I could get when, hitting a rare smooth patch, I felt what I thought was a flat.  
 
 I pulled over and noticed that my tire had suddenly formed an S shape - like part of the tread inside had broken.  We were right on the split that decided 75 or 100 miles, so we opted for the 75.  We just rolled along - I figured I could get someone to look at the tire when BANG!  It exploded.
 
Had it just been a tube puncture, it wouldn't have been a problem, but the sudden explosion caused me to dump the bike pretty hard at around 17-19mph.  There's a gigantic hole in what is an otherwise perfect tire - the tread itself has no real wear and has 800 miles on the bike.  No reason for this kind of failure at all.  So I have a pretty achy bump on my elbow and skin scrapes down both buttcheecks again.  Instead of my crash shorts, I was wearing my BRAND NEW unattached skinsuit which is now useless.  
 
after waiting about 20 minutes I got picked up by one sag and taken to a rest stop where someone else took me all the way in, in time to catch up with Mark.  Pica of my tire and bottom will show up on his website soon I suppose.  
 
The bike's fine though - only hit a bit of the seat and the quick release, so essentially zero damage.  
 
 
I ended with 57 miles 18.2 average.

There was no real climbing to speak of - just some small stuff, but there was one section of a long false flat into the wind that slowed us down to 12 or so for a few miles.  
 
The tire was an irc roadlite.

Quote from aikigreg on Jun 28^th, 2008, 3:37pm:

 
 
The Stradas' send condolences on the achy rump/elbows! That pretty much SUCKS!!! Sorry to hear about the misfortune. Now that you have achy posterior ,do you still feeling like SITTING for 9 hours tomorrow??