catching up again....

The problem with my blogging is that if I let it go without posting for more than a week, so much happens it is tough to get caught up with any amount of detail. Oh well...I will give it a try:
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After the TT from the last post I got back with a solid training week (about 23 hours) including 2 great days of training with Mark Heckman who was staying in Brevard for a few days. The week was capped off with a super fun 6 hour MTB race down in Georgia. I rode ok, not great, for 6th place and it was a blast. Other than having some serious foot pain from over supinating on the technical trails, I had no major issues....hydration and fueling were perfect. The course was quite technical (twisty with plenty of roots), so it was good practice for my less than stellar single track skills.
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The following week (last week) was slated to be a very high volume week. I got right back to riding after the endurance race....which was a mistake. After 2 days of lack lustre riding I finally took a day off (wed). When i got back to it on thursday I felt reinvigorated. Lesson learned: take a day off after an endurance MTB race in order to recover enough to train properly! I should know that already.
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Friday was the beginning of what has become an a2 annual tradition of a killer training block over Easter weekend. Since there are never any events this weekend it is the perfect time to get a nice crash block in. Friday Cara and I did a solid almost 4 hour ride on the tandem. Enough to properly fatigue me for the hardest training weekend of the season.
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Friday night Mark Hekman and $Rich$ "showtime" Harper drove over to stay and train for sat/sun. Saturday we set out to do a ride I have been thinking about since we moved to Black Mountain. My idea was to do my 100 mile (from Asheville) Hotsprings/ Doggett Mountain loop....but from Black Mountain. I knew this ride would be over 6 hours and probably over 120 miles. Of course we set out at a pace that was just above my normal solid endurance pace (which is about 245 watts). Everything was fine until we hit the Dog (Doggett Mtn) climb 80+ miles in. We had a cross tail wind on the stretch from Hot Springs through Spring Creek and Mark decided to pin it...and pin us in the gutter most of the time. We were too tired to complain and just rode.....About a mile from the base of the climb I cracked HARD and struggled up the 30 minute climb alone. After the descent I was feeling a bit better, but we still had (ouch) more than 40 miles to go. Thankfully the last 15 miles from Asheville back to Black Mountain was with a nice tail wind....and it was awesome to watch $rich$ and Mark suffer as much as I was for the last 30 minutes :) ...Ok maybe not suffering quite as much as I was. We ended up with 130 miles and almost 7.5 hours of riding on the day.
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Saturday night while I sat pondering how exhausted I was, the guys drank more beer than imaginable....I have no idea how they do that and still ride....quite amazing actually.
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Sunday we saddled up the mountain bikes and headed out for a nice 5.5 hour ride on most of the off road assault on Mt Mitchell course. This was done at a pace considerably slower than saturday...but it was great. We included what i call the "endless climb" up Curtis Creek road to the Blue Ridge Parkway..then continue the climb on the parkway to the old Mt Mitchell toll road. The Curtis Creek climb is about an hour long (14 miles?)...then the climbing on the parkway just seems endless before the turn back down the mountain.
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We survived.... and so ended the epic weekend.
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That brings us to this week and the next post........
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a2