4th of july binge riding

I'm not sure when the last time I rode in the mountains was...Cohutta 35, maybe? Needless to say, I don't really have climbing legs goin' on at the moment. This 3-day binge was going to be "fun" especially since I was the lone female among a group of REALLY FAST guys. Not only are they all REALLY FAST, they can ride for hours upon hours, day after day. Just what I needed to finish out my first 3-week training block in 3 months..ouch.

Thursday July 3
Mark Baldwin, Eddie, and I arrived in Dahlonega early on Thursday to get the groceries, prep bikes, play with our dogs, and spin for a bit. Harvey arrived later on that night with his two dogs. We had a full house...4 people (1 girl, 3 dudes), 5 dogs (1 girl, 4 dudes)...hmm.

Friday July 4
We left the 5 dogs in the house with our fingers crossed as we headed up to Ducktown for the annual Cartecay Bikes 4th of July ride. Because Harvey and Mark were with us, they ensured Eddie and I were not just on time, but early! for the start. I joined the "A" group in hopes for a good 40 mile ride to kick off the weekend. There weren't many girls in the group...Ursula and Loretta (token fast chicks) but I heard them talking about not doing the full route, they were going to hammer for a couple hours and call it a day..then there was me, and Julie Barker from FL. Julie had a tough time on the pavement climb so her fiance stopped to wait for her. They didn't know the turns so I offered to stop and wait at the next turn..except they never showed up. Harvey and Eddie had dropped off the group to wait for me. We caught up with the rest of the "A" group soon after, but lost them for good when my legs couldn't spin fast enough on the Old Copper Road to keep up with the "A" pace. Oh well, I wasn't too sad. I spent the rest of the day trying to keep the gap between me and the Harvey-Eddie group as small as possible...we got close to 40 miles, mostly singletrack..and even got to ride Thunder Rock Express twice. I don't think many other people actually did the full 40 miles, probably because Kevin (the "A" ride leader) crashed pretty badly. (Hope you're OK, Kevin!!) Oh, I bonked bad, though.

Saturday July 5
Harvey decided to do his own shorter ride today with his dogs, so Mark, Eddie and I headed out to do the Fool's Gold 50 route. Mark and Eddie are both really fast so I had another tough day...racked up another 40 miles, 4 hours for a total of 80 miles in the mountains..not bad.

Sunday July 6
Today was another big day, Dave Muse was coming up to ride with us. However, I fell off the pace so fast that 45 min into the ride I was pretty miserable and feeling sorry for myself. Mentally, I was struggling with being the slowest person on the rides all weekend (fully realizing that I was in company with complete rockstars, but still....) and I really wished I had some fast girls to ride with today instead of the fast guys. I made the decision to leave the group so they could actually have some fun and did my own ride. I rode another 3 hours and arrived back at the car at the same time the guys did.

Between all the riding, we consumed massive amounts of calories...I hope I didn't actually gain weight while I was there! I'm really not looking forward to this week...more internship hours at the hospital. It's a well deserved recovery week, though. Hopefully something fun will come up for the weekend so I can look forward to something!