Getting mostly back to our regularly scheduled programming. The passing of my mother in law (post here) kept us in Macon and away from home for the better part of 3 amazingly emotional weeks. In those weeks Katie spent a majority of her time at the hospital visiting with her Mom which meant I was taking care of the kids at her parents’ house. I was also trying to do as much as I could to make sure there was food for everyone when they got back from the hospital and anything else I could around the house so time to myself was pretty minimal. I did not take a bike with me since I was not going to have the chance to ride it anyhow. If you know me, you know this is unusual, bikes go just about everywhere with me.
The stage race is only about 10 days away now, so from a riding/training perspective I had a few big rides planned for the week right after she was first admitted into the hospital. My intentions were to ride about 3 of the stages pretty close to race pace. This would get me some much needed time on the trails after spending so much time on gravel/road/trainer this winter and some bigger longer back to back efforts. Now obviously when she was admitted to the hospital there was no question or hesitation about dropping these.
When we left the house I did think to throw my bike bag in the car though. Not really knowing how long we’d be there and what it would entail I wanted to have options. As I’ve mentioned in the past riding/training is my main outlet for stress and the primary thing that helps me stay grounded. Katie’s dad has a handful of bikes that fit me and he has a pretty nice indoor trainer. So if nothing else I’d hop on that thing before everyone else gets up in the mornings. Which ended up being the only thing I really had any time for. So I did what I could to get some bigger efforts in on the trainer and let that be that. Which worked out pretty well, I was able to be done before anyone else was awake and let me be fully supportive of the family without thinking about getting active. My time riding was really one of the least important things during this time but I really think that it helped me tremendously in keeping my mental state.
Now we’re back in Brevard, I’ve tried to make sure I get out on the single speed on trails almost every day (even if it’s only for a couple minutes). If you’ve ridden a single speed in Pisgah you know it takes some time to get used to all of the “other” work you have to besides just pedaling your bike. This weekend I did manage to get out for a bigger ride with some fast friends. A midday ride on a Saturday is pretty rare for me but I got the pass from Katie and was pretty excited to get some trail time.
Parking at 280 and Turkey Pen Road we would ride up the gravel, South Mills, Mullinax, Squirrel, South Mills, Gauging Station, Funneltop, Horse Cove, back to Squirrel and back the way we came. This gave us most of Squirrel Gap in both directions as well as a few other trails in the stage race. Riding with Wes and Joe the pace was sure to be pretty high most of the time and me being the dumb one on the single speed I was sure to be working hard to keep up.
Squirrel gap is right up there as one of my top trails in Pisgah and it definitely didn’t disappoint, mostly dry conditions led to being able to clean more than I usually do on that bike. Moving pretty smoothly through all of that, up the fairly low grade of south mills over to Gauging station and onto the climb up Funneltop (5018). Apparently Wes decided to put the hammer down for the climb and I stupidly tried to match it, tried being the key word. After a pretty good effort up we caught our breath a little before the descent down Horse cove, which gets a little chunky at times but is always a good time. We made short work of the return trip on Squirrel and took it easy on the smooth fast downhill of south Mills to the bridge.
Over the bridge and Joe wants to go right up the trail, fine….its steep, lots of step ups in it, and the constant worry that someone coming down is going to run you over. I managed to clean most of it which surprised me, I did step off once but that was largely from a bonehead move. At the top and we find out that Joe didn’t really know there was another option out, oh well. It was a great day for a ride with some great company and just what I needed. It did remind me how much the stage race is going to hurt.
This allowed me to have a nice happy relaxed Sunday with the family and start worrying about getting everything ready for 5 days of racing in Pisgah. Excitement is building.
