End of the season epic – Sassafras Mountain

It has been a longstanding tradition dating back to my college days at Clemson to end the season the week after the Michellin Classic (now called the Greenville Cycling Classic) with an epic solo ride. While I was at Clemson, I had a 200 mile loop from Clemson with an insane amount of climbing including Brasstown Bald – the highest point in Georgia – and the climb up to Highlands, North Carolina. The ride would take me about 12 hours (7am to 7pm).

Well, I moved away to grad school and stopped racing for several years. I still managed to squeeze in a few epic rides out in California (e.g., Mix Canyon), which were even more epic since I wasn’t training as much and there was always a real possibility of not being able to finish a 4 or 5 hours ride. I picked up racing again in 2005 and at the same time began teaching at Samford University. Along with that came a 2 day fall break right at the end of the season so for the past three years, we have been heading back to Clemson in the middle of October and I have been able to continue the old tradition of an epic ride while Kristine graciously watches the kids for 5 (or sometimes 6) hours.

For the past three years we have been staying at the Fieldstone Farm Bed and Breakfast which is on one of the roads I used in my 200 mile ride! It is also a great launching point for a number of other rides. And it is a very cool farm, too. When we first stayed here, I did a 90 mile loop through Highlands, North Carolina. For the past couple years, I have headed out to Sassafras Mountain instead. Last year, I did an out and back ride that ended up being about 92 miles and over 9200′ feet of climbing (http://www.toonesalive.com/cycling/maps/Richland-Sassafras.pdf).

This year I wanted to ride to Sassafras again, but I wanted to turn it into a loop through Clemson. It ended up being close to 100 miles taking 5 hours 45 minutes. The ride was awesome. I took roads that made up cycling routes from my days at Clemson and the reminiscing of long ago rides was nearly as awesome as the ride itself. I wound my way over to Clemson through Seneca remembering sprints for stop ahead signs, county line, and city limits signs – through the university passing dorms that I lived in when I was a student – then taking the traditional route (map to be posted soon) up 133 through Six Mile passing Six Mile Mountain and Woodall Mountain before making it to the first real obstacle – Beasley Gap (13 minutes of hard climbing in zone 5), a short rest during a 1 mile switchback descent to Rocky Bottom and finally a 35 minute climb up beautiful Sassafras Mountain finally making it to some real fall colors in the higher elevations. It almost doesn’t do the ride justice to try and describe it so I’ll leave it at that, post a detailed annotated map, and encourage everyone to go try it some day. You won’t regret it (if you can make it)!

Stage 1 – Time Trial, 2008 Fitchburg-Longjso Classic

Quick summary: not dead last (127th out of 145 if you count the people who didn’t start), thunderstorm, “the river”, “the lake”, epic.

The details: I had a great warm-up and was feeling very good with my TT position on my road bike. My TT bars were far enough out that I could stand comfortably without hitting my knees. One downside is that I had to slide very far forward on my seat in order to have my arms at the right angle. Still, I felt great and felt like I was putting a lot of power into the pedals on the hills as I was warming up.

As I rolled up to the start line, I could see the storm clouds slowly moving in. I was one of the last starters so it was quite a disadvantage since a good majority of the field got to ride it in dry conditions. Five, four, three, two, one and right as I took off the thunderstorm hit with a torrential downpour, a little thunder and lightning, too. This normally wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the heavy rains obscured the cracks, uneven pavement, and potholes. A few times I almost fell and each time I scrubbed speed to make sure that I didn’t fall.

Even with all of that, I was having a bad TT but it wasn’t the worst in the world until I tracked right into “the river”. Yes, the rain was so hard that it had created a virtual river running down the righthand side of the road on one of the steeper climbs. I didn’t see it in time and ended up riding straight into it, nearly falling, and having to slow way down in order to get out of it and back onto the part of the road that didn’t have a river in it. Then at the bottom of the next downhill was “the lake” where enough water had pooled on top of a narrow bridge that it formed a lake that you came flying into at 30mph, huge splash, but kept it upright. Finally, a very sketchy 35mph downhill to the finish line, with potholes, uneven pavement. Nasty, cold, epic. Here’s my HR and power data for the ride:

2008 Fitchburg-Longsjo Stage 1 Time Trial

1. Going out way too hard
2. Paying dearly for going out way too hard
3. OK on the steeper hills, nothing left for flats or downhills
4. Better here on the steepest climb
5. Very sketchy downhill

In summary, I went out way, way too hard averaging almost 580 watts for the first minute, dropping to 421 watts for the next minute, 381 watts for the third minute, 324 watts for the fourth minute, and then averaging only 342 watts for the rest of the TT. Even then, the only reason I was able to manage an overall average of 363 watts is because I was still able to crank out some wattage on the steeper climbs. Hopefully, that means good things for tomorrow’s 104 mile road race.