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.

Asheville North Carolina - Training Trip

Asheville - Highlights and ride graphs.
We were short this year of our miles from years past. This was more or less because as the week dragged on, we all became very tired of riding in the rain and in the path of wheel/tire spit. My bike clothes, even after two washes still have sparkly bits in them from the granite in the road burrowing into my socks, knee warmers, bibs and rain jacket. The rain itself was not an issue, the temperature was in the high 50's or low/mid 60's most of the days, which made the riding less painful in the wet. We started out Wed, with a group of 17 riders to Marshall. Thursday rolled around, 15 riders. Friday was about 12, Saturday about 8 or so and Sunday a meek 5. I went to go ride, no matter the conditions. There were some disappointments of last minute cancellations, but no skin off my back really, their loss, next year I am getting deposits I think from everyone interested in going. Many of us burned through at least one set of front and rear brake pads, which was quite amazing, considering all the downhill we did in the rain. I can't believe how fast that rubber burns up in the rain on downhills at 45 miles per hour. We did have some new additions to the group this year. A few more women. Laura, Amy, Ginger, Alicia, Cara. Rock star awards go to Ginger and Laura and Alicia for making the climb up Mt. Psgiah (151). Super Rock star award to Alicia for being the only woman to continue on & join us on the hatelful / hurtful day to Hot Springs and back. Ben B., Ben A, Layne, Tim S., the OSU Wood Bros., Danimal, Glen G., and Marty, rounded out the boys. We all rode very well as a big group on Wednesday. I was impressed with everyone and their fitness. We all got on very well and didn't have too many issues. We did run into a few bumps waiting on some people and some mis-communication and lack of acurate people counts when we stopped at one point Friday. The weather was not nice, it was cold and windy and frustrating for some that turned around and went back to the warm and toasty hotel.
The hotel was amazing, perfect and super swanky. They treated all like rock stars and even got cleaning towels out and a hose for us to clean our bikes every day.

Miles - 215 Climbing - about 20,000 feet Total Rides - 5 Total Rides in the rain - 4 Near Accidents - 1 (a shoe slipped out, while rider was near the yellow and an on coming car). Flat tires - 3 My total Calories Burned (kj) - 19,514
Group sets of Brake pads burned through - 8

Sunday at the 7:30 a.m. wake up call, the sun was creeping into our room. Wow, it was like I just got transported to the beach. We could see the beautiful mountains in all their glory and beauty - finally. It was going to be a good ride. We had 5 show up in the lobby for the last official ride. Tim and I decided to re-route the ride and hit up Elk Mountain Road, to the BlueRidge Parkway, to Town Mountain Road for the superfast finish back into town. It was a great hurtful 5 miles of climbing after our short warm up out of town.