Slayed By The Mountain

After a sort of a stressful week of heat, solo parenting, and work, I was looking forward to a 2 wheeled escape to the mountains. Teammates and friends D-POW and Aaron would be joining me (or would I be joining them?). Riding with them is always a humbling experience. Then again, these days riding with my grandmother would be a humbling experience, and Saturday would be no different.


We started with a big forest road climb up Camp Run Road, then hit some single track and double track. Then forest roads of various surface types, lengths and steep grades. Don and Aaron were crushing it on their single speeds whilst I hauled my carcass up with 27 gears.

We made up the backside of Seven Springs and I persuaded D&A that we didn't need to stop for water, and could hit a pump along at an Laurel Highlands Trail camp along a road about 7 miles away. 7 miles later... OOOPS! There was indeed a pump, but it was indeed dry. My bad. But at least they still had a little water, and I had lots left (not good planning, just poor hydrating). We continued on.

We hit Neal's Run and started up. As soon as the grade turned up you could hear me cracking throughout the mountains and beyond. The bonk was epic. Why is it that I haul 70 oz. of water, 20 oz. of Gatorade and 20 oz. of the fart inducing Perpetuem around for 4.5 hours and finish with all of it. I try to time my hydrating, drink before I'm thirsty, all that "how not to bonk" stuff, but always fail. Oh well, at least they guys were getting a some rest in the shade was they waited for me.

Once to (sort of) top of the climb I urged the guys just to go ahead and finish out the ride at their pace. They refused. We had planned to head up Tunnel Road and fly down Auckerman Road, but opted to just go back down Camp Run Road.

It was a great day in the saddle for the most part and we ended with a hair over 50 miles and God knows how many feet of climbing, based on some rough estimating on MapMyRide stuff, it was probably was close to 4,000 feet or so but who really knows except some dude with a GPS.

It was also a bad day in the saddle from mile 37 on. Just wasted from the heat. No real complaints though. 50 miles of mountain trails and roads, and over 4:30 of saddle time is a pretty sweet way to spend a Saturday.

Later.