We trekked from Joe's house up to the base of a climb called Butterfly gap. It was me, Joe, Sam, and Joe's dad. We knew the climb would be hard and long, but none of us had ever climbed it except Joe and his dad. When we hit the base of the climb, Joe took off with Sam, I kept tempo and Joe's dad took it nice and easy. Joe soon rode away from Sam, while I tempoed past Sam about 1/2 way up the climb. Joe definitely knew what he was doing, and all 130 pounds of him disappeared from sight. Meanwhile, I stood up on a 23% grade (Thank you Garmin!) and my left calf seized. I had to dismount and stretch before resuming on the grade while Joe's dad rode past. We regrouped at the top and continued up the gradual top of the climb to the parkway, looking forward to a long descent back to Maryville. Sam stood up in his big ring to attack the downhill and his chain snapped. His new chain had failed, strangely. 10 minutes later and thanks to Joe's chain tool, Sam was back up and running and we were screaming downhilll. The speed was affected by a heavy fog which didnt let us see more than 30 feet in front of us, and when the fog cleared, we dropped the hammer again. I floored it the last mile or so, topping out arond 42 mph and stopping at the bottom. Apparently I hit a nail on the descent and discovered it at the bottom. After I fixed the flat, we hopped on the homestretch in the pouring rain back to Joe's house. The days stats: 38 miles, 3650 feet of climbing with an average of 17.5 mph. Joe's dad is a baller rider, he was pusing us hard on the flats. Elevation profile:
Annnnd after that ridiculousness we drove to Boone, NC. The good news is our room is pretty awesome, we have a kitchenette and 18 steaks for 3 guys over 4 days. You do the math. Were eating a lot of steak.
Today we wanted to get 2 rides in with a target of 4 hours. We wanted to incorporate the Lees-McRae Road Race course as much as possible, as it is decidedly the most difficult course of the year. It has 1500 feet of climbing per 10 mile lap, most of it climbing. We rode from the hotel to the course in 46 degree sunny weather and when we got onto the course it was closer to 50 degrees, and it would only continue to get warmer. The arm warmers came off as we hit the first climb, about 2 miles long. It then hits a fast windy descent made worse by sand and salt in the roads (Banner Elk got 8 inches of snow last week). Sam and Joe were balls and took it full speed. I dont like crashing, so I took it slow and caught them on the very small flat. That flat then turns into a 3+ mile climb. We rocked the ascent, but at the top Joe noticed my tire was low. My tube had a slow leak. I replaced it, again, and we moved on. Lap 2, after the screaming descent, Sam decided to joke around and cut Joe off on accident. They collided, Sam stayed up and Joe hit the ground lightly. We finished the lap without further incident and rolled back to the hotel up yet another 2+ mile climb. In Boone, its either up or down.
At long last we got to cook up the steaks. We ate like Kings, watched Leprechaun 4: In Space (a 2 hour long cliche...) then geared up for part 2. This time we drove to the LMC course. The route to the course from the hotel is a busy highway, and we decided to just haul the 5 miles in the car. This time around, we were all a bit more confident, and I hit the ascent with Joe. We waited for Sam, then hit the descent hard. Sam was ahead of me, and Joe a good bit behind. I took the descent very fast with Sam, while Joe took it a bit easier. We hit the flat a good bit before him, and took the sketchy right onto the long climb. The corner had a lot of sand and debris in it. We took it slow, but Joe tried a fast line through it to catch up and went down hard. We heard him crash and turned back. He played it off, but we soon found it was a bit worse than he let on. He tore up his leg with some epic road rash (although nothing compared to Clinton's battle scars from Clemson). We hit the long climb, while I kept tempo with Joe and Sam took his own pace up. I could tell Joe was hurting a bit, but figured he was just feeling the 3rd time up the hill. Turns out his leg was hurting more than he thought. At the end of the lap Joe left to get bandages and ointment while Sam and I took the lap easy , hammering a decent pace up the climb. We debated doing a 3rd lap, but decided to save something for tommorrow, which we had tentatively planned to do a 102 mile century. The elevation profiles from the 2 rides:
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