General Jackassery

This past weekend, I participated in a Bicycling Team-Relay. For those who thought I was going to be an official on this thing, that wasn’t the case. I actually rode my fair share of miles and help make this thing a reality. The idea was to start at the southern end of the Blue-Ridge parkway and work our way north to the northern end in Waynesboro, VA. Due to run ins with the park rangers last time we got off the parkway in Boone and proceeded along highway 221 to Adney Gap in Virginia. This allowed us to keep a follow vehicle behind the rider at all times for safety and comfort reasons as well as the Ultra-Marathon Cycling Associations rules. Since none of us had actually ridden on Hwy 221 we weren’t sure what the terrain was like, so we guessed how long it would take us and made the determination that we would arrive at Adney Gap at daybreak to get back on the parkway. At that point we would have 135 miles remaining to finish. As luck would have it, we arrived in Boone right on schedule, meaning we were averaging a little above the expected 15 mph. When we started on Hwy 221 we realize that it was a really good road and there were no major climbs, the longest climb was about 2 to 3 miles and it was a pretty shallow grade. We arrived at Adney Gap almost 3 hours ahead of schedule. We basically budgeted enough time to average 15 mph and make it to Adney Gap right at daybreak. In reality we average over 18 mph on 221 and arrived at Adney Gap and the BRP at 3:30 AM.

The only record for the Blue-Ridge Parkway was set by a solo rider: 469 miles, 29 hrs 36 minutes. After the first failed attempt and after watching Kari struggle to maintain an average that was well below that speed we weren’t sure that we could beat that time. We all felt like we had to do whatever we could to beat it, but the time is absolutely phenomenal for a solo rider. You have to understand that it is extremely difficult to average over 15 mph on the BRP due to the constant elevation change. To give you an idea, the climb out of Ashville is 17 miles long. The climb out of Cherokee is 11 miles long only to go down for 3 and up for 5 more. So, our goal was only to beat the 29 hour 36 min record. It didn’t really matter by how much, only that we beat it. After all there were 4 of us and 1 of him.

Reaching Adney gap two and half hours ahead of schedule was huge. Not only did it virtually assure us of beating the record, but if we could maintain the speed we would smash the record. But, 135 miles of big hills still remained with perhaps one of the steeper climbs on the parkway still to be tackled. So I challenged the guys, I said “it’s 3:30, we have about two and a half hours until day light, let’s try to get to less than 100 miles remaining before the sun comes up.” That meant riding about 36 miles in 2.5 hours. We did it. Then we kept setting small goals and counting down the miles. With about 25 miles left we saw an organized century ride was taking place on the Parkway and this was all the incentive we needed to finish strong. It was like having a rabbit out there. The amazing thing was we all had almost 100 miles in our legs, no sleep, and we were all pretty much toast, but we were smoking the people who were on the century ride. It made me feel pretty good to drop people on climbs after riding 90 + miles.

At mile marker 3 (the markers count down from South to North, so we always knew how far we had left) we all got on our bikes and road in to the finish. We started at 8:30 Saturday morning and we finished at 12:00:12 on Sunday afternoon. For those who don’t care to do the math we finished in 27 hours and 30 minutes and 12 seconds. Our official time will be 27 hours 31 minutes, but whose counting. We beat the solo rider by over 2 hours.

I can’t thank Jackie Whitaker, Josh Burton and Matt Pinkston enough for all of their help. Without them we couldn’t have done this. I’d also like to thank John Dye for letting us stay at his place in Franklin on Friday night. And I’d like to thank Rodney, Anthony and Ryan for letting me be part of the time.

I’m sure it seems like all I post about lately is cycling, but I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that I’m still training for the Marathon in October and despite suffering some set backs due to injury, I have actually made up all of the ground that I lost and am now ahead of schedule.

A couple of weeks ago Sarah and I were in Nashville to visit her family and I decided I wanted to go for an 8 mile jog. It was supposed to be a recovery run so I planned on taking it nice and easy. However, I was also still recovering from the trip to the Blue-Ridge Parkway and I decided to let myself sleep as long as I needed to sleep. Unfortunately I woke-up about 10:00 and didn’t start my run until about 10:15. This in and of itself was stupid, but factor in the fact that I hadn’t had any carbs for the last two days, I only ate 5 grapes prior to the run and I didn’t bring anything to drink along with me and you have a recipe for disaster. Needless to say I bonk 4 miles in and I ended up walking the majority of the 3.5 miles back home. I took a short-cut home because I didn’t want to have to go over the hills I run on the way out. That bonk was probably a good thing because I’m still learning my body and now I realize that I’ve got to take fluids with me even on the shorter runs.

The next weekend I did a 12 mile run with the TNT group, we walked the first mile, but I ran the next 11 miles at about a 10 min/mile pace. That’s right where I wanted to be on a mostly flat course.

This past weekend we where in Nashville again and I needed to run only 10 miles because the TNT schedule does a long run and then a step back every other week. I knew that I was going to miss a long run in two weeks because of the record attempt, but I’m also not going to be able to make the group run next week so I wanted to do a slightly longer run than was on the schedule, then do a small step back this coming week.

So, I went on the U.S.A. Track and Field site and plotted out a course that was 14.7 miles around Sarah’s Parent’s house. Friday afternoon when we got up there I hopped on my bike and rode the course with a que sheet, stopping at every turn to note the mileage. When I got back that night I put it all in a spreadsheet and calculated the times that it should take to get to each turn. That way I could actually start slow and finish faster. By the time it was all said and done I had a nice que sheet that had me averaging about 10:46 / mile for 14.7 miles.

I got up a 5:00 on Saturday morning, started running at 5:40 and finished the run 1 minute ahead of what I had planned. I was pretty happy with that, I had planned my run well and executed my plan well. I plan on using that strategy for every long run I do from here on out. I think it will be really helpful to keep me on pace.

After the run was over I was tired, but I felt really good overall. Most important was the fact that I had no blisters or any last effects.

Now back to cycling. Since we’re getting really close to the next record attempt for the BRP, Rodney wanted to get a feel for what it would be like to ride during the “worst” hours of the night which are between 2:00 and 4:00 A.M. So on Sunday night after Sarah and I got home, I met Rodney at 11:30 and we went over to Redstone to ride. We started at 12:00 and rode until 4:00. We got 65.5 miles in in just under 4 hours. No problems staying awake, but it made for a hard day, the next day. Oh well, it was pretty nice to ride on a 4 lane road and be able to have your own lane with no vehicular traffic.

Anyway, long story short, everything is on track, now I just need more help with fundraising and I’ll be good to go!

Well, we’re back from the Blue-Ridge Parkway safe and sound. My buddy Kari rode a phenomenal 28 hours straight for a total of 344 miles on the Blue-Ridge Parkway two days ago. Here’s how the last couple of days have gone from my perspective.

I went to bed at about 11:00 on Monday night and was up at 4:20 on Tuesday morning. Kari showed up at my house at 5:30 and we loaded up the bikes and stuff for the trip and headed out to pick-up Rodney at work. By 6:45 we had Rodney’s stuff loaded up and we where on our way to the Mountains. We stopped at South Pittsburg, TN for gas and food and then headed off to Cherokee, NC. At about 2:00 in the afternoon we where in Cherokee at the start of the BRP and Kari and I took off on our way.

To give you a feel for how the BRP is, Cherokee is 2000′ above sea level. The BRP starts there and works it way up to 5150′ in the first 10 miles. Then you go back down about 3 or 4 miles and you start back going up to 5700′ after another 5 miles of climbing. After that you have a 9 mile descent back down to about 3100′ before you climb to the highest point on the parkway at over 6000′. It took me 2 hours 20 minutes to ride over the first two climbs and down to the base of the climb up to the highest point on the parkway. Rodney took over after that and rode for another 30 miles or so. By the time we reached the Pisgah Inn, 61 miles in, Kari had created a 10 mile gap between him and us. In other words, Kari was 1 hour ahead of Rodney and me.

To put things in perspective, Rodney has ridden the BRP many times and he said they used to always leave Cherokee early in the morning and it would take them about 7 or 8 hours to get to the Pisgah Inn. Rodney and I rode that distance in 4.5 hours and still Kari was 10 miles ahead of us.

Anyway, Rodney and I picked up our bikes and drove ahead to catch back up to Kari and as we were heading in to Ashville Kari saw a sign that said “Folk Art Center 2 miles.” He pointed at the sign and indicated he wanted to stop there to grab some food. So I drove ahead to the Folk Art Center and parked, I figured as fast as Kari was riding I could hop on my bike and start heading up the hill out of Ashville and Kari would eventually catch me, so I took off. About 30 to 40 minutes later, Rodney come driving up and asks if I’ve seen Kari. I said “no” and immediately thought, there’s no way he’s ahead of me, but if he is, I’ll never catch him and he hasn’t had anything to eat. About 3 miles later I see a flashing red tail light and realize “Holy Crap, that’s Kari ahead of me!” Then I think to myself, “HOLY CRAP, I’M CATCHING KARI GOING UP HILL!” That was bad news because it meant that Kari was slowing down. It was also bad news because he had gone an hour past where he wanted to go for eating. It took Rodney a while longer for finally decide that Kari must have past us while we were getting my bike ready. He finally found Kari and me about 11 miles into the climb out of Ashville. It was dark and I was ready to call it quits for the night so Rodney took over riding with Kari and they climbed another 7 miles before finally making to the top of the climb.

Fast forward….it’s now 3:00 a.m. and Kari is finally ready for a 15 minute nap. Kari has ridden from Cherokee, NC to Blowing Rock, NC a distance of about 170 miles. Rodney takes over driving and I nap off an on for the next hour and a half for a grand total of about 30 minutes of sleep. Kari is swerving all over the road, but he’s still going like the energizer bunny. It’s now 4:30 and Rodney is starting to get sleepy again, we’re going up a long hill and I say, “Just stop right here and let’s do a Chinese fire drill.” So we stop in the middle of the road, get out and run around the car and I’m driving again.

It’s another 3 hours before we make it to Doughton Park, 229 miles into the parkway. We stop and have breakfast and discuss options. Kari has been on the bike for 17 hours and at his current average speed it would be about 1 or 2 the next morning before he finished. So we decided to just turn around and ride back towards Ashville. We figured he would still get a lot of miles in and we would be closer to home with every mile. By now, Kari is starting to get pretty tired and his speed has slowed down such that Rodney and I have no problem staying with him. Actually, Kari was starting to have a problem staying with us. Of course, we had roughly one-third the miles in our legs that Kari had so it makes sense that he might be tired. Anyway, Rodney and I alternated about every 20 miles or so for the rest of the day until we got back to the entrance to Mt. Mitchell state park. I had planned to ride up to the top of Mt. Mitchell, but there was a thunderstorm approaching and I just didn’t want to take the chance of getting caught in nasty weather. So instead of climbing to Mt. Mitchell I rode down the mountain to Ashville about 26 miles away.

By the time it was all said and done, I had ridden 126.5 miles and been in the saddle for a total of 8.5 hours over the course of a 29 hour period. I had a lot of fun and I think I rode pretty well.

After we got done we headed into Ashville and got a hotel room so we could get showers. Then we headed out to grab a bite to eat before heading home. It was about 8:30 when we got on the interstate to drive back to Huntsville and within about 30 minutes of driving Rodney and Kari were out like lights. I made it almost all the way to Knoxville before I got dangerously sleepy and had to pull over in favor of another driver. Rodney took over and I tried to get some sleep between Knoxville and Chattanooga, but was not terribly successful. I think I might have gotten another 30 minutes or so and the rest of the time I was just resting my eyes. Anyway, we got to Chattanooga and Rodney had had enough so we switch out again and I got us back into Huntsville. It was about 2:30 when I finally got back home and probably close to 3:30 before I was able to wind down and get to sleep. All-in-all I was awake for the vast majority of a 47 hour period, rode by bike 126 miles and drove my car about 700 miles.

Now, that’s the life right there!