July 4th Weekend / Start of the Tour de France

The Tour de France officially started on Saturday with the Prologue (5.5 mile time trial). If you get Versus on your TV they are showing the Tour about 5 times a day. Here again, it is a three week stage race with only 2 rest days over that span. Fabian Cancellara with Saxobank won the Prologue so he starts out with the Yellow Jersey. He's not a strong climber so he's not really favored to win the overall Tour but will probably be involved in the outcome for most of the flat stages and time trials. Time trials are individual races against the clock. It's a discipline that involves riding strength, technique and aerodynamic efficiency. Lance Armstrong did well and is currently in 4th place. Each stage (day) involves different terrain and distances. The rider with the lowest accumulated time overall wins the Yellow Jersey and keeps it until someone comes in with a lower accumulated time. Even after three weeks of racing 2,400 miles or so the difference between the leader and second thru tenth place may only be seconds.

Well, I did a ride with three guys on Saturday that I had never ridden before. I had planned to go to the Gaps in Dahlonega but someone suggested riding Burnt Mountain instead between Jasper and Ellijay. Based on the Mapmyride.com profile, it was going to be a 40 mile ride with a 6 mile climb up the one side and it looked from the profile about the same on the other side. We rode up the front side without too much difficulty although I never really found a rhythm and didn't feel that good. On the descent down the other side, I reached a top speed of 47 miles an hour which is probably the fastest I have ever been on a bike. Unlike the Gaps, the Burnt Mountain ride is fairly straight with only a few moderate curves. The Gaps are swithback after switch back so it is a much more technical descent. Going down Woodys gap which is a good 6-7 miles, my speed will vary between about 32-38 mph and because of the swithbacks you have to lean into the curves which is pretty thrilling and scary at the same time. When we reached the 20 mile mark at what was supposed to be a store stop (turned out to be an abandoned gas station) we decided to split up. Two of the guys followed the remaining route which was pretty flat for the most part while Dale, a 47yr old British guy and I decided to ride back over Burnt Mountain the other direction. Dale is a strong climber and he wanted to do it just for the workout. I wanted to do it as a training ride for my trip. Needless to say, by the time we reached the mountain and started to climb we realized that this side was much steeper than the 6% grade that we rode up on the other side. Since I wasn't feeling that well, I really struggled and actually had to stop and get off the bike three or four times. I would ride up a couple hundred yards and I would be red-lining at 160 bpm for most of the distance and just had to stop and recover. As you get more fit, the thing you notice most is that you recover from hard exertions much faster. I would stop for maybe a minute then get back on the bike and ride some more. Dale stopped to pee and take a few pictures and still beat me up to the top. When we finally reached the top, I screamed down the other side. I'm a pretty good decender but Dale is relatively new to road cycling and doesn't feel confident to go very fast. We had about a 10 mile ride back to where the cars were parked. The other two guys were surely going to beat us back but to my surprise, I arrived back at the cars first, a good 10 minutes ahead of Dale and maybe 20 ahead of the other two. Apparently my friend Richard (another Brit) bonked real bad and struggled to just make it back. Oh yeah, one more thing about the Burnt Mountain ride; when I was decending down the steep side at a doe jumped out about 100yds ahead of me with a little fawn behind her. The fawn saw me then jumped back onto the shoulder then back after her mother than back off the shoulder then back towards the doe then finally back off the shoulder and into the woods as I approached. I did not want to hit Bambi doing 40+mph, it would not have been a pretty sight. After we got back, the guy who did the mapmyride profile looked at the profile again on the computer and some of the back side climb exceeded 18% grade with a couple around 20% grade. In cycling, those are beyond category climbs. Climbs are categorized 1-5 with 1 being the toughest. Beyond category I believe is anything in excess of about 12% grade. Most all the rides in the Pyrennes are going to be no more than 6-8%, but long. The Col Du Tourmalet, a very storied Tour de France climb and a stage that I hope to ride the Tuesday after I get there, averages 6% grade but is 18 Kilometers long (11.16miles...UP). The longest climb that I have done to date is 8 miles, Fort Mountain in Dalton. Ideally, I would like to do this climb just to say that I did it, but I don't want to burn myself out and not enjoy the trip. I plan to take a lot of pictures which will give me plenty of times to stop and rest for a few seconds at least. It's comparable to Alp du Heuz the most famous of the climbs in the Alps portion of the Tour.

On Sunday, I needed a rest ride so I did a 20mile loop from my house to and around Stone Mountain (inside the park) and back home. This was the 4th of July and Stone Mountain has one of the largest fireworks extravaganzas in the southeast. I didn't leave the house till about 5pm so many of the roads to the park were already closed to car traffic (perfect for cycling). There must have been 250,000 or more people in the park walking all over and oddly enough only a few cyclists. Normally, the park is full of cyclists doing training rides. There is a lot of climbing with very low speed traffic which can only go around about half the park. The back half of the park is limited to one way traffic only with the other lane split for runners and cyclists. Over the last ten years or so, it has become a haven for walkers, runners, cyclists and the like. I even ride there some after dark because the roads are well lit and there is virtually no traffic after dark. I finished the ride in good order and felt fine.

On Monday (holiday) I did a 45mile ride which starts at Atlanta Cycling in Vinings and heads west past Six Flags towards Douglasville. It was a really nice scenic course with some of the same roads we ride on the Beyond Six Flags (fast) Saturday training ride. There were a few climbs on it that were pretty substantial but the pace was pretty moderate. I fell off the main front pack but finished with two other riders a few minutes later. I ran out of water with about 3 miles to go and after packing the bike and changing, went to the Deli to have lunch with some of the riders. I felt fine until I got out of the car then my left leg cramped up so I could barely walk. I also started feeling a little light headed. Once again, I probably did not prehydrate enough or drink or eat enough along the way. On a ride like that I will burn up about 2,000 calories. If you don't eat, you bonk which means you run out of energy, strength, stamina and it can be really ugly. We passed a guy walking his bike up a steep hill on the way back that was ahead of us. He must have done the same thing because he said he was cramping bad. The only thing you can really do at that point is eat, drink and try to walk it off till the electolytes reach the muscles and the cramping subsides. After I ate and drank quite a bit, I went home and watched some of the Tour I had TIVO'd and fell asleep for a short time in the lazyboy. Bad move. When I got up both legs started to cramp again. It is important that you make sure and walk or do something to allow the blood vessels to carry away the lactic acid that builds up from really hard exertions. That is what fatiques the muscles and ultimately leads to cramping if the fluids don't thin the blood enough to keep it flowing and clearing the lactic acid. I'll try and do better next time. I plan on doing a more moderate version of the Silver Lake loop tomorrow nite at Atlanta Cycling, then take off Wednesday and ride Thursday. Not sure what I will do this coming weekend but I will probably do at least one more long hard ride over the weekend then taper down to a couple shorter moderate rides on Monday and Wednesday and that will be it before my trip. Till my next post.......