Spring Break day 2

Today was another soggy day in the saddle. I manned up and decided to ride the Freshy Steve “Pain Train” ride to Fontana Dam and back. The estimated mileage was 75-80 and 5 hours. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a 5 hour ride so I wasn’t sure how the legs were going to feel. The other fact I forgot to mention about the “Pain Train” ride was that the people who generally go are the fittest and fastest people who come on break. I knew I had a rest day tomorrow so I thought I would test my fitness with the best of the best on a pretty serious ride. About 10 of us rolled out together after breakfast in a light drizzle. The pace wasn’t too bad in my opinion for the overall ride. Either I’m actually gaining some fitness or the ride has lost a little bit of its edge. I was a little uneasy for the first little bit thinking to myself I was riding with some heavy hitters until I reminded myself I was very capable and deserved to be on the ride.

The gradient on most of the climbs was below 7% with a couple 15+% climbs thrown in randomly to keep you honest. By no means am I calling myself a climber but I feel a lot more comfortable and confident in my abilities compared to this time last year. To top things off I’m doing it on an aluminum cross bike while just about everyone else is on a carbon road bike.

The miles ticked by rather easily up until the 3 hour mark. I just started actually base training a month ago so there haven’t been too many rides over 3 hours. There was a little discomfort in my legs at this point but nothing out of the ordinary. The group stopped at a gas station around the 3 hour mark before the last leg of the day. Tuskegee was the last major climb of the day with over 1000 vertical feet of climbing in less than 2 miles. The rest of the ride home was smaller climbs by comparison and some serious rollers for about 25 miles. I’ll admit I was a little intimidated by the description so I took option B. Dallas and Julio were going to take the EASIER route (if there is such a word in the mountains) home because Julio was suffering pretty badly the whole day. We rolled through Robbinsville and gradually climbed our way out of the valley back home. Along the way on a false flat an arrow came sailing over my head just barely missing me and my front tire and landed in the grass right next to the road. I had to look twice to make sure I just saw what really happened. I snapped my head to the left where the arrow came from and found 2 little kids about 1oo yards away with bows and arrows all over their lawn. I flipped it and grabbed the arrow for our story time/meeting held every night otherwise it’s just another embellished story. I’m glad the kids missed me because it would have been hard to explain to a doctor much less my family what really happened. All said and done the ride was 85 miles and 5 hours with a little under 6000 vertical feet of climbing. Even after stuffing my pockets with food I was still starving for the last couple miles back home. As soon as I got back I went to the fridge and made this! Sorry the pictures are scarce, didn't want to flood the camera.

I’m pretty happy with my form so far over break and hope things keep rolling along this nicely. Enough typing for one day it’s time for bed. I’ll try to update every day so check back often.