The first heavy lift of the 2024 season has concluded! Was fortunate enough to spend 3 weeks down in the Carolinas laying the base for the upcoming season. The training theme was just straight hours. Honestly, this is some of my favourite training, just long days in the saddle. It started off in Columbia SC for the first 2 weeks of January with a quick trip out to Myrtle Beach and wrapped up in Brevard NC with a mega week in the mountains.
A few of my highlights rides are below
Marion to Myrtle Beach - Not a typical “cycling route” but was a super solid ride and saved me sitting in the car for an extra two hours on route to the beach. Experienced some beautiful back roads and farm country. There is NOTHING out there, very relaxing and quiet. Highlight came in the final 25-35km. I built my route on Garmin Connect and followed heat maps. I popped through a small subdivision and made a left onto a small gravel road. I hopped around a fence and found myself on a 9km section of sand dune/unassumed road. Tough sledding on the 28 c Maxxis Highroads but the rig handled it fine. A little bit of running never hurt anyone. Made it through with the bike in one piece with just enough daylight to make it into the resort. A solid day on the bike.
January 14 - Flat Rock Climbing Route -This is a must-ride for anyone down in the area looking for a big day on road bikes. The ride starts at a beautiful bakery (Flat Rock bakery) and drops down a bunch of elevation into the Saluda, Tryon area. From here you hit many climbs that are through upscale residential areas. I don't usually do out and backs but these climbs are awesome! Sustained 7-10 percent grades and switchbacks the entire way up. The finisher of this ride is the greenriver add-on. It starts with a few fast and techy descents down to the river and then continues false flat downhill for 25-30 minutes. It's a beautiful stretch of high speed road with fast corners and a river view the entire way. The final kicker of the ride is the 4km, 7.5% booter up the Green River climb. 11 switchbacks later and you reach the top with just over 20km back to the car. A highlight of the ride is finishing at the Flat Rock Bakery where they have some of the best pizza available this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Always a fan favourite and was great to catch up with several Canadians. Unfortunately a new of us got snagged up on some black ice and I hit the deck about an hour into this one. No major injuries to report but the knee took a serious knock that I am still nursing back to 100%.
Jan. 16 MTB Pisgah Epic
Shout out to Lucas Gomez for the rig and place to stay… Got to rip a Santa Cruz Bronson with the new XO transmission. Unreal bike. It is a mullet setup (29 up front, 27.5 out back) and again with the new SRAM Transmission. The shifting on it is super smooth however the speed is noticeably slower than the old stuff and even slower compared to cable-actuated systems. I noticed it when trying to dump several gears all at once, especially higher up on the cassette (came into numerous river crossings and had 0 - shit moments when I couldn't shift fast enough).
All-time Pisgah conditions with the 50-50 frozen dirt made for a great day out. Leaves were gone and the boys were buzzing. Amazing day on the trails.
Tri-State Finisher: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and back. Today was COLD. We waited as late as we could to start (10:30) but it was still -4 when we rolled out of Rosman. The ride started with a long descent down towards Pumpkin Town SC and then had a few hour stretch of rolling terrain. We got hit with a weird rush of Church Traffic on a semi-busy road down near Lake Keowee. Once we were out of the cars we could really enjoy the scenery. The chain of lakes that we were riding around today had some insane vacation homes on them. We road past a massive nuclear plant on the bottom Lake Keowee that was crazy to see. We rolled through Walhalla and the climb up to Highlands started. Old Highway 28 next to the Chattooga River provided an hour of beautiful scenery and climbing. From here we linked onto War Woman Road, a road that was on the OCA camp's daily commute back in 2016 and 2017. It winds and weaves through some great scenery and crests out in Highlands where you get a beautiful vista view back over the Valley. Quick cortado and cookie stop in Highlands and we were trucking back to Rosman, racing the sun. We made it with 20 minutes to spare, capping off an unreal training block.
Totals:
Week 1: 22h22min 830TSS
Week 2: 24h22min 892TSS
Week 3: 30hr 59min 1235TSS
79h43min 2957TSS
Camp Takeaways:
20 hour weeks are long but you can still be a normal person for a few hours a day
For me 30’s are hard. Wake up, eat, ride, cook, eat, straight to bed. Not much time to do anything else.
Super happy with the block. I have been back in Canada for over a week have gotten myself rested up and ready to hit it again. Onwards and upwards.
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