Great practice with the Jags!

Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

This was a tough day. Last year, I rode to the Vista bikepacking race, raced 320+ miles, rode to the start of the Cheaha Challenge, rode the Challenge Ultra and then rode home as part of a 983 mile five day adventure. This year, due to so much going on here at home with my daughter graduating I decided to drive to the Vista and race it as an ITT early in the week and then do the out/back to the challenge.

My mistake was thinking that I would be "fresher" with a few days of rest. Well, the problem with that thinking is first that your body kinda goes into recovery mode after backing off from a huge mileage. The second problem is that even though I had all those miles in my legs leading up to the challenge last year, I still spent the night with a friend near the race and started out the ultra with 0 miles on the day last year. So even though I had less total miles in my legs, those 80 miles BEFORE the race starts can cause lots of problems ... specifically cramps. I tried to drink as much as I could all day, but I felt the first twinge of cramps climbing back up Adams Gap just over 50 miles into the race (130 miles for me). So I had to back way off, and once you start to back off it's kinda hard to get moving again. Eventually I did find a good rhythm climbing Bain's Gap the second time and held a good pace all the way to the end from there, but I was going slow and getting passed by tons of people from the bottom of Chinnabee all the way to Bain's Gap.

The ride home was hot, hard, and wet. I called Kristine on Vandiver and reminded her of the 500 mile race where the climb up Vandiver is near the end and told her I was going about the same speed ... slowwwwww. I wanted to push through this ride though even though I wanted to quit a few times or catch a ride home to Birmingham with someone. Sometimes you just gotta do things that are hard so that when things get really hard it won't be too bad.

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Brian Toone

2022/05/15 Hoover, AL cheaha challenge plus there and back again … tough

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Great practice with the Jags!

Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

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