Week 1 Review Part 1 – Wow I’ve learned alot

Well, a little more then one week under the belt, and holy crap – I’ve learned alot about my body, my bike, and climbing hills.

Let’s start out with getting on the road. I’ve finally gotten a routine down that for the most part I’m ready with in 5-10 minutes of when I say I will be. Being packed in the car and on the bike before 7am isn’t easy. Now that the Stanley Cup Playoffs are over, this should be a bit easier as I’m trying to get to bed by 10pm each night. (Not my style.) I’m considering shipping some stuff back home, as I’m a chronic over packer (the Potters have already shipped stuff home.

Next up – electronics. I can’t even begin to describe how grateful I am that I bought a Garmin 810 a month ago. (Learn all about it here.) First – I’ve never had turn by turn directions for riding before. I’ve always tried using my iPhone and gone as far as buying the full Wahoo suite of products (iPhone mount & ANT+ sensor + external battery.) This ended up being fail for a few reasons – one big one was that one of my gmail accounts requires a phone password and while – yea it’s a pretty good idea – if your phone locks while you are riding entering a PIN to see your speed/stats/etc is kinda lame. In addition – when going on long-ish rides – say 40 miles – I start to battle the battery gods. Between GPS, grabbing sensor data once per second, and just normal activity (incoming email, and whatever else an iPhone does to suck down your battery) I’d be down to like 30% half way through my ride. The only solution I found that saved my battery was to turn off cell service – but what good is that. Anyhoo – the Garmin has been brilliant once I got the Lower 49 states maps loaded (more on that in a bit). So – turn by turn directions – brilliant! Bruce maps out the ride the night before – emails me a GPX file, I load it and off we go. If we run into a problem with a confusing turn or anything – we have full maps right on us, as well as auto re-routing to get us back on route. Finally – after a 70 mile ride I still had 56% battery left. The only thing this thing doesn’t do is tell me the weather – we’ll it does if I let it pair to my phone via bluetooth – but I’d rather have a charged phone in case I need it than the weather as we check it pretty often.

OK – so there are 2 ways to buy maps for your Garmin 810. The easy way (which Bruce did) is to buy the SDCard with the required maps preloaded at Performance Bike or REI, plug it in and you are done. Well since I don’t have either of those around – and I bought my Garmin very shortly before my trip, I chose the download route. So for $59.99 you insert a SDCard in your Garmin, then you download it and you are done. Turns out – this is kinda true – you just have to wait like – overnight… I had to start the download, configure my laptop not to go to sleep, and wait overnight. They finally updated (after like 5 tries – even one with Windows) and I had the maps.

Also – between Bruce and I – we are seeing some elevation differences of about 10-15 percent. I need to look into if I need to calibrate mine or something.

In Part 2 of this post – I’ll talk about what I’ve learned regarding Nutrition, Climbing and Pacing myself.

Day 9 – Lookout to….Hazard?

Some days go how you plan them. Then there’s today. But variety is the spice of life… or something

Apparently Pikeville KY is an amazing civil engineering feat. No, I don’t me how epic the DQ is (tho I highly recommend a late night DQ run after a long ride). The road that cuts through Pikeville is one of the largest civil engineering projects in the western hemisphere. I’m not sure where all these roads went before the cut-through, but now they go through pretty amazing man-made landscapes.

JP got a bit of a jump on me today. Since we were staying off route, we had to drive to the start location. Rather than get the boys up super early just to be stuck in the MCC, Heidi and I let them sleep in a bit (6:45! gasp!) while JP and Art left the hotel about 7. JP snapped this photo in the morning fog of a particularly bike friendly IGA.

There were two pretty serious climbs early in the ride (1k’ and 800′ respectively) that had some serious grade to them. I caught up with JP at the bottom of the second climb and we continued on the route together. After about 8 miles, it was pretty obvious JP was gassed from the previous 2 days’ climbs. JP has really been kicking ass on the climbs, especially considering he normally trains in the flatlands around Lake Ontario. However all that ass kicking came at a price. His legs were spent. He hooked a ride and I pushed on through the hills.

Heidi had more practical plans for the day. After the first few days, we realized we had all packed too many clothes (and we only allowed for about six days of clothing plus swimsuits, etc to begin with, so this was a bit of a surprise). We all sorted through our bags and chose some clothes to send back home. Today, Heidi stopped at one of the PO’s along the route and got 2 small boxes of stuff we don’t need sent back to Maryland. While we still have the same number of bags, they’re not nearly as full which makes packing them away in the MCC much easier.

About 55 miles in to the ride, we found that the route out of Dwarf, KY was closed due to construction. Heidi was a few miles in front of me in the MCC and she started working her way through the detour and attempting to get on route. I followed behind and eventually we found ourselves pretty far off route and headed in towards Hazard. While Hazard is (basically) on route, I had burned a fair bit just getting there because of the detour. I called Hazard “good enough” and jumped in the MCC for the ride to the hotel.

We’re once again staying off route… there aren’t a lot of hotels in this part of the state. But tonight rather than staying at a mass market hotel, we’re staying at the Buckhorn Lake State Park Resort. It’s a hotel and resort run by the state of Kentucky. Beautiful views from each room, great food, and lots to do. Dax even got to play mini-golf. He was shockingly good.

 

Tomorrow we ride to Berea, KY, the end point of the second ACA map for this ride. JP’s legs are pretty nuked so he’s going to take tomorrow as a rest day. It’s 77 miles and a fair bit of climbing but I hope to have us in to the hotel in the early afternoon. We’ll see how it goes.

Day 8 – Meadowview, VA to Lookout, KY

Welcome to Kentucky! As it turns out, Virginia is a really wide state. It took us 8 days to work our way (just barely) in to Kentucky.

Our route started about 8 miles from the hotel so we took the MCC to the start point just after 7am. Well, we tried to, but I got us lost in the first 2 miles. As I started to make the Uturn, Heidi asked me to stop the MCC in the middle of a 4-lane divided to snap this wonderful shot of the morning.

No fog this morning, but still chilly. Even with a vest and armwarmers, I was actually shivering. J “I’m a furnace” P wasn’t bothered by it. Heidi took the early morning light to snap photos of vehicles she wants.

Our first climb was just outside of Hayter’s Gap. 1,500′ of climbing in 3.5 miles. LOTS of twists and turns. The GPS tells the story of the switchbacks.

On the climb, we saw 3 other TransAmerica riders… tho they were going the other way so we really didn’t get a chance to chat. They seemed happy enough, but I think mostly because they were going down this pitch we were working our butts off to climb. It was a bear, but we both made it. This was definitely the most serious climb JP has ever done, and he finished it strong.

Today we both had our first mechanicals. JP’s front brake started sticking towards the end of the ride. Likely it’s just gummed up and started sticking from the heat and crud. He’s currently got degreaser on working on the brakeset and it should be back to normal by the morning.

My issue was a bit more adventurous. About 40 miles in to the ride, I couldn’t shift in to my large front chainring anymore. It seemed like the derailleur was moving correctly but it just wasn’t hitting the chain to cause it to shift. I thought maybe the derailleur had turned or shifted somehow, but everything seemed tight. I adjusted the limit stops and kept riding.

About 20 miles later, I stopped for lunch. When I went to get back on the bike, I realized my left crank arm was loose. That was the real issue. My right crank had slid over about 5mm due to the play in the left arm. I took the crank apart, reassembled, and everything seemed perfect. The derailleur worked like it should have and the crank was tight. I started riding again… about 2 miles later I realized I hadn’t tightened the crank arm enough and it was almost falling off the bike. I clipped out from the left and pedaled with my right foot until I had a safe place to pull over. I reset the crank (again) and tightened the hell out of it. Everything seems OK now.

In hindsight, I think the crank had been loose since I got the bike. I felt some “play” at the top of the stroke on the left side, but I thought it was due to something wrong with my pedals (they were a new set of Ultegra pedals that had never been ridden). Now that everything is tight, the play is gone. Lesson learned.

Towards the end of the ride, there were 3 serious climbs coming in to Breaks Interstate Park. It was approaching 90 degrees and it was sort of cruel and unusual punishment at that point in the day.

Of course the “Welcome to Kentucky” sign came on a downhill. Both Heidi and I missed it on the first pass and had to loop back. But, here’s the proof we made it 😉

 For some added fun, I got chased by at least 6 different dogs in the last 10 miles of the ride… including 2 dogs who were out in the middle of nowhere on a really steep climb. I ended up off the bike walking past them with a blade out in case they came at me. Seriously, Kentucky, put your dogs on a leash.

We’re staying pretty far off route in Pikeville KY. Given how long the day went, our evening has been dinner at Steak n Shake, some shopping at Walmart, and lots of prep for tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’re off to Buckhorn State park. Wish us luck.

 

 

Day 7 – Wytheville to Meadowview/Abingdon

For day 7, we had to leave the wonderful town of Wytheville behind and head to Meadowview… or Abingdon… or rather, Abingdon by way of Meadowview.

Another cool, foggy morning today. Looking at the weather for the next few days, I think it may have been our last before summer seriously sets in. Started out the morning with the GPS fully charged and the NiteRider 650 on “super blinding seizure blink” mode. Seriously, the 650 is a bright light. On blink mode, it brings out the candy ravers.

Not kidding, it was foggy. You can sorta see the end of the parking lot.

The fog broke by about 9am and it was a beautiful day for a ride. I think I’ve said it about a dozen times already, but this route is beautiful. There were some amazing views today and lots of wildlife, flowers, trees, and run down barns.

We had two fairly high peaks to reach in the Jefferson Nat’l Forest, but thankfully the pitch was very manageable. We were done with both major climbs by 11 and had an early lunch. JP and I reached the summit of the second climb together, but Heidi wasn’t quite ready with the camera. What you see below is a recreation of the event after we finished lunch.

The remaining 30 miles was mostly downhill. We rode through Damascus VA which apparently is a big town for fishing, canoeing, and bike tours on the Virginia Creeper Trail. There were 100’s of people on bikes there, mostly rentals. As JP pointed out, however, we were the only road bikes in the bunch.

The ACA route takes us through Meadowview (our stop for the day) but sadly there is no hotel on the route. The closest hotel Heidi could find was down the road in Abingdon. JP hitched a ride from Meadowview with Art. I decided to push on the last 8 miles on US 11 and ride to the hotel. I was pretty spent, but US 11 was _fast_ in that stretch and it was nice to be out of the hills for a bit.

Abingdon has a lot to offer. It’s home to the Virginia State Theatre (the Barter Theatre). There’s a rich music scene here; in fact there was a music festival going on downtown. There’s also quite a number of artists that call the Abingdon area home. We stopped by The Arts Depot and chatted with a few of them… they were very hospitable and  loved the kids. Bobby took time and voted for his favorite photos in their photography contest. One of the artists called him a “budding art critic” which may have embarrassed him a bit.

Afterwards, we had milkshakes made from cupcakes… let that sink in for a second. Babycake Cupcakes in Abingdon will take a cupcake, put it in a shake maker with ice cream and milk, and blend it in to a shake. It was seriously unbelievable. Like, potentially the best shakes any of us had ever had. Crazy.

We finished off with dinner at the Barter Cafe. Light fare but yummy. JP and I worked on our plan for tomorrow. We are climbing Hayter’s Gap. Aptly named as its a 3.5 mile climb with 1,500′ of vertical. For those doing the math at home, that’s an average 8% grade. Yep. Can’t wait. Till tomorrow…