Dobovedo's Journal of Journeys

Wednesday seems to have become Cullowhee Mountain day. Three weeks in a row. This time I did the same thing as the previous week and made a 50ish mile loop of Cullowhee and Cowee Mountains. I was joking with one of the guys on the Tuesday ride about how I had modified the Ring of Fire loop to be a Ring of Smoke, because it wasn’t as difficult as doing the Elijay climb. He then adapted it to Ring of Embers. But I came up with another name. You know those little oval stickers on the back that have evolved from 2 letter country codes to just about everything and anything? Well, around here a lot of them say “WHEE” on the back, like so:

Read more on Ring of W[h]eeeeeee…

After two Bent Creek trail rides and Dupont I wasn’t expecting to have much for Tuesday’s MM Ride. I left a little bit early so I could take my time riding into town and ended up getting there a half an hour before the ride. Musta been a tailwind. Gradually riders trickled in and it looked like we’d have a big group – 25 or so – more like the first week. We rolled out en masse and I put in a token early pull and then headed for the back. The ride wasn’t nearly as aggressive in the first miles as it was the first two weeks and I was quite happy about that. Although I didn’t feel too bad, I wasn’t in any real hurry to get to the top.

Or so I thought.

Read more on Dammit, Chad!…

After just one day of recovery from the Dupont 12k trail run I had some time to kill in the early evening and just happened to be driving past Bent Creek. OK, I wasn’t really driving past it; but I was driving near it. OK, I really wasn’t driving near it either, I just wanted to go there again. Let’s say “in the vicinity of”.

It was also a good excuse to go check out the brand new Asheville location of Motion Makers. Consider this a plug and go check it out!

Read more on Bent Creek Redeux…

To follow up my first real MTB ride on Friday evening, I did my first real trail run on Saturday morning, the Dupont Forest 12K. An odd distance, it is about 7.4 miles. A friend and fellow Ironman (he’s done six) who has lived in the area for quite a while turned me on to it and said it’s one of his favorite runs. I put off registering for it for quite a while but once I saw that five and six mile runs weren’t negatively affecting my PF recovery, decided to go ahead and do it. What the heck… it’s only 1.4 miles further, right? Well… I quickly found out that trail running is just a little bit more difficult than road running.

Did I say a little bit?

Read more on So This Is Trail Running, Huh?…

On Friday evening, I had just enough time to head over to Bent Creek and get some miles in on the Rockhopper. Since I bought it two months ago, I haven’t really had a chance to get out and do any true trail riding. OK.. I’ve had a few chances but hadn’t made it a priority. Trying to ride on snow the first time probably wasn’t a good idea, either because it gave me an inaccurate measurement what my skill level might be. In the absence of snow and ice  I figured that when it comes to strength and endurance, I can probably go up just about anything – whether it is a paved road or on a trail. When it comes to technical skills however, I had no clue as to how well I could go down the same trail. However, that also applies to going uphill, regardless of my ability to overcome gravity.  Clearing rocks and tree roots and such is something that I have not done since I was a little kid on a dirt bike. I have no concept of what the differences are between “easy”, “intermediate” and “advanced” trails.

Well… I’ve got more of a concept now, and I didn’t even have to break anything (bike or myself) to find out.

Read more on So This Is MTB Riding, Huh?…

Like last week, this Wednesday I decided to head up to the top of Old Cullowhee Mountain. This time I had more daylight, more sunlight, and less chance of rain up top, so I decided to turn the out and back into a loop. From where I live, it’s just a bit shorter to only do the first half of Ring of Fire, skip the Elijay climb/Tilly Creek descent, and head over towards Franklin instead. From there it’s the same ride home that I do from the fitness center, up and over Cowee Mountain, which is about 500′ lower than Elijay.

So it was maybe half ring of fire, half ring of smoke.

Read more on Half Ring Of Fire…

No need to belabor this one. I showed up for the second week of the Tuesday night ride in plenty of time. This week the wind was 100% turned around and I had a tailwind the whole way. The guys (and gals) trickled in and although it was fewer than the opening week, I counted at least eighteen.

Ten fewer riders, and I dropped three “places” to the top.

Read more on Tuesday Week Two; Same Thing But Harder…

Despite a little bit of light rain up on Cullowhee Mountain Wednesday was a second consecutive nice day of early spring and Thursday brought a third. Just a little chill in the air and a moderate breeze, but really… any dry day in late March is stellar. Somebody had posted on the local ride forums that the Waynesville Thursday ride was starting up and they were going at 6:00PM – route and distance TBD.

I didn’t even know there was a Waynesville Thursday ride.

Read more on Waynesville Thursday…

Continuing in a series of week-old blogs… on the Wednesday after the first Tuesday Night Ride, it was another nice evening. The winds from the previous day were gone, and it was dry and mild. I wasn’t sure where exactly I wanted to ride, or how far; I just knew I wanted to ride. Another trip up to Balsam seemed redundant (OK, it actually would have been redundant) and my flatter TT route was too short. Venturing over towards Whittier didn’t really appeal as well, so I decided maybe I’d go over towards WCU and go exploring to the SE, where I really haven’t ridden at all yet.

So that’s what I did.

Read more on On Top Of Old Cullowhee…

OK, now that it’s almost time for week two of the Motion Maker’s Tuesday Night Ride, I guess it’s time to get around to writing about week one. In short, I found out just how much my beer drinkin’ and don’t-have-a-care diet has “hurt” me over the winter. I was the seventh one up to Balsam Gap out of a group of roughly 25-30. This is actually about par for the course during the time I have been riding here. The difference was the point at which I got dropped and the gap to the leaders by the time I crossed the railroad tracks at the top.

The answers are “early” and “huge”, in that order.

Read more on Opening Day…

On Monday evening I had the first chance to take advantage of extra daylight on DST. No… Sunday doesn’t count – it ain’t a workday. So.. with nearly three full hours until full dark, what did I choose to do with the time?

Exactly… I went for a 10k run that took less than an hour.

Read more on Running “Easy” Again…

On Thursday a post went up on the WNC Cycling message board: ride to Waterrock Knob – noon Friday. The weather forecast was iffy at best, so there was a good chance it wouldn’t happen. Regardless… some of us have day jobs, no matter where they do them from, and I wasn’t free to do a Friday noon ride. So I posted a response saying that I was going to try the same thing on Saturday, also depending on the weather. The forecast late Friday night was for highs in the upper 40s and 50% chance of rain. I posted that if the radar looked good, I would be leaving from the bike shop at 1pm. Saturday morning the conditions hadn’t changed, and the radar showed a big green cell in eastern Tennessee, but I was stubborn and decided to give it a shot.

It should come as no surprise that nobody joined me.

Read more on So Maybe It’s Not Spring… Yet…