Ride a century?

Those who know me know that I've been riding bikes for years. My whole life actually. Through all those years, I've never ridden a century. The reason is because I never considered it a particularly difficult challenge. I mean I ride 50-70 miles at least once, sometimes twice per week when the weather is good. Here in Sacramento, that is most weeks of the year. What's another 30 miles? Well yesterday I found out.
Our friend Noelle, who is preparing do the 525 mile aids ride (click here to support her) suggested I ride my first century as one of my 50 extraordinary things. So we lubed up the chain on our Santana Arriva Road Tandem and rolled out.
The route we picked was only 80 miles so we started by heading out in the wrong direction for the first 10 miles. Everything was going great until we turned around at the 10 mile mark. That's when we discovered the 20 MPH headwind. For the next 50 miles we fought it. Buffeting us to the side. Slowing us down. God damned wind!
So many times I've spent the morning fighting headwinds, only to have them shift in the afternoon so I got to fight them on the way home too. Luckily, this day they kept blowing. It took us 5 hours to get out to the lovely berg of Winters, CA and just over 3 hours to get back thanks to the tailwinds we earned a ride on.
Out in Winters there was a live band playing music for a motorcycle club. We stopped for lunch and wished for beers at the cafe that had just taken ownership and neglected to think about the idea of selling beer. Oh well. We had sodas instead and I got my beers when I returned home. This is a nice ride that I'm going to post for my bike club, The Hammerin Wheels.
At the end of the ride I thought to myself, this is no worse than riding 70 miles. That was yesterday. Today, my glutes and quads feel like they've been run through a tenderizer. I wonder when I'll feel recovered? I've been riding to work all month and my quads haven't had a chance to recover. I don't remember what it feels like for them to not ache. On the bright side, I can eat whatever I want and I'm not gaining any weight.