Asheville Training Camp-March 2010

Post Asheville, North Carolina training camp this photo represents what my legs felt like. I think I actually had to switch dress pants one day since my quads grew like a chia head after 4 days of some great riding. This year including myself, we had a total of 14. It was a really great group of people, including some new friends, some of the OSU Collegiate Cycling Team and some old friends.
Wednesday - a ride to the small town of Marshall NW of Asheville with a nice coffee stop. About a 60 mile ride with a few good climbs.
Thursday - we headed out west and then south to tackle one of my favorite rides and climbs up Route 151 to the top of Mt. Pisgah. This is an Alp of almost epic proportions and really will test your ability to give it the berries for about 10 miles.
Friday - Was what I deemed a 'recovery' day. Kinda of a joke, as there are no real ways around Asheville, to go ride the flats and any 50-70 mile ride is going to muster the phrase, "shut up legs". We headed out to Black Mountain and up and over the Continental Divide, a great ride on the coldest and windiest day of our week.

Saturday - We headed back out east to Black Mountain and up and over what I will now  deem as one of my favorite hill climbs up to the top of the Continental Divide and down to Bat Cave and then dropping into Lake Lure. If you didn't know, Lake Lure is famous for a few movies being shot there: Dirty Dancing, The Last of the Mohicans, My Fellow Americans, A Breed Apart, and Firestarter. This ride route will also go down as one of my favorite all time rides on a road bike. We all stopped in the little lake village of Lake Lure to take photos, eat food, fill up bottles and hang out at the very nice and well equipped Shell Gas Station and have a few laughs. Jon said regarding our tailwind on the way back to the hotel, "Am I going to get blown uphill". Stunning, downhill, stunning up hill, and a 10 mile climb out of Lake Lure with the last 1.5 miles on a sick ass gravel road with 15%-20% grades to the top. Once at the top, the gravel disappears and wahla, it's pavement again.
We make it back to the hotel in once piece and mange to hit around 6k of climbing or so on the day with close to 80 miles on the day.

Sunday - we choose not to ride as the weather had finally given up and gone ugly overnight. Rain, fog, cold and more fog. The ride plan was to hit up Elk Mountain Rd for the climb, get onto the Parkway and then bomb back down Town Mountain Road into town - it's a great route, we usually get it done each year on Sunday morning in less than 2 hours. But, with the fog on the mountain, we felt like it might not be too smart to bomb down the parkway and Town Mountain in the rain, slick roads and fog.
Breakfast was much much better, including pancakes, delicious dark coffee and maple syrup.
I'll try to tally the totals as soon as I can.