Usually on Sunday morning I’m sending out twitters from wherever I am on my bike ride. This Sunday I’m sitting at home on the couch writing a quick post about the ride I did yesterday, and haven’t gotten around to posting anything about yet.

So I met Scott N yesterday morning at around 8:30 AM at Moratock Park on the Dan River. It’s about an hours drive from my house. The sky was grey and cloudy, and we expected there was a chance of some rain at some point during the ride. We started from the park and were immediately climbing. Very soon we reached the turn to head into Hanging Rock park and we turned towards the mountain. Looking back on it, I think it would have been better to leave the mountain until later in the ride. I feel like we were only just starting to get warmed up at the time the route turned seriously uphill.

All I can tell you is that it’s a hard climb up to the visitor’s center. There may be more climbing to do in the park at around the top, I don’t know. I made it to the visitor’s center, but just barely, and not without stopping. I blew up at what I learned later was about two thirds of the way up the mountain. My heart rate had spiked to 205 beats per minute and I was gasping for breath. I looked up at the road before me and it just kept going up, and I looked down and confirmed I was in the lowest gear I had (for you gear weenies out there I ride a double chainring and my lowest would be 39-25). Farther, I could see a curve that went out of sight, but I couldn’t tell if it leveled off after that. I didn’t think I could even reach that curve, so I got off the bike. I walked it maybe 100 feet to a stone ledge at the end of a fence and took my helmet off, drank some water, ate some of my Clif Bar and just rested for a while. I almost decided to just head back down the mountain, but I kept looking at that curve at the top of the road that I could see and wondering what was around it? How close was I to the top?

So I got back on the bike, I had to aim it back downhill to get started – I couldn’t even get clipped into the pedals facing uphill, and then I started to climb again. The rest-stop had done the trick and I was able to make it over that patch of road and around the curve. It didn’t flatten immediately, but pretty soon there was a less steep part and I was able to recover enough to keep going. Finally I reached another really steep kick up. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what the grade was there, but I would guess it was plus 10% grade. Luckily it was just short enough for me to make it over without getting off of the bike again, and pretty soon I saw the sign to turn left into the visitor’s center. What a relief. I circled around and found the water fountains and refilled my water bottle and then started back down.

After all the exertion of climbing I was drenched in sweat, and the downhill quickly became very chilly, but that’s okay because it went very fast as I hit nearly 40 mph. There were a couple of left hand curves that made me flinch just a little bit.

Once we made it out of the park the rest of the ride, all 36 miles or so of it, was just constant rolling hills, some of them not insubstantial, as we essentially circled the perimeter of the park. Given all of the climbing this was not a fast ride. We did about 46 miles all total and it took us nearly three and a half hours. We climbed around 4600 feet over the entire route. I think it was a really good test of my climbing strength. I can see I may not be amongst the best climbers, but I can hang in there. Maybe with some repetitions I could be pretty good.

I’m also thinking that if the route were re-arranged some it might make more sense. To not have Hanging Rock right out of the gate when we were barely even warmed up. I might even consider parking at the top and riding down to start. That way you would know you had to make it back to the top to collect your car. No way around it. That would be a kicker of an end to the ride and a nice reward once you made it.

Anyway, nothing in the Tour to Tanglewood should be this hard, just longer. I think it’s another good indicator that I’m in a good place prior to that ride which is now about 41 days away. Please Support me if you haven’t already by clicking this link.