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.