Dobovedo's Journal of Journeys

Savannah: Century Ride

Dobo — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:05:13 +0000

The Savannah Century ride was scheduled to start at 8AM. It was a mass start because there’s a police escort out of the city and over the Big Bridge which is normally restricted to bicycles. I set an alarm, two actually, for 6:30AM. Plenty of time to get some breakfast, pack up my things, check out and get downtown. Too bad I didn’t fall asleep until almost 2AM and then woke up at 5:45 and couldn’t fall back to sleep. And even if I could, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Savannah: Hendrix 31(+) & Midnight Garden Ride

Dobo — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:21:21 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I made a last minute decision to throw my bike in the car and take a road trip down to Savannah, GA for a weekend of cycling events. The main event, the Savannah Century was on Sunday, but first were two smaller rides on Saturday morning and evening. In the AM was a “century warm-up” – a 31 mile ride, which I upsized to 71 by riding the 20 miles to and from my hotel. In the PM was the Midnight Garden Ride, which wasn’t at midnight, but at 8pm. The ride was to promote cycling safety and advocacy in downtown Savannah and was to consist of a 12 mile easy cruise through the streets with lights (required) and costumes if people chose to participate. There was a 6 mile option, as well, but I didn’t even make it that far. I bailed at 3 miles.

Pile On The Miles Week #3

Dobo — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:19:19 +0000

Psssst…. hey you. Wanna know a secret? Don’t tell anybody, m’kay? Riding bikes is a helluva lot more fun when you just ride bikes, and don’t add in other sports…

like running.

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I’m On A Highway To Hill

Dobo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:28:31 +0000

For as long as I’ve lived here in the WNC area, I’ve had a notion to do a loop ride that involved 50ish miles with a lot of rolling terrain, but no big climbs. Except the route has one big climb (where big = anything over 1000′.) There was only one problem with the route: the vast majority of it is four lane limited access highway. Now… I’m not opposed to riding the shoulder of busy roads like that. I do it all the time because I live on one. My only option, short of putting my bike in the car, is to head either north or south on route 23/441. And as I have stated a million times, I hate putting my bike in the car to go ride it somewhere else. In my experience, the only thing wrong with this type of riding is that vehicle noise and truck fumes can be an annoyance. It’s just not as pleasant as riding along a more picturesque country road. But after two weeks of building up miles and doing a lot of climbing, my legs are getting very tired, and while planning out my ride options for the coming week, I started thinking about the route again. Even if it’s not all that pretty or fun, it was the perfect amount of climbing for the distance. So on Monday I decided to give it a shot, except that I ran it in the reverse direction of what I had originally envisioned.

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Everybody Wins!

Dobo — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:28:44 +0000

On Saturday, Tanya and I did The Dam Run, a 5/10k run along the Little Tennessee River at the base of Fontana Dam. After the run, we went looking for a place to get some breakfast within the Fontana Villiage Resort. We walked into a gift shop/visitor’s center and asked the nice lady at the checkout counter where we might find a restaurant that was open on Saturday morning (because the whole place looked to be dead, more like a ghost town than a resort). She said “somthing something Bistro, up at the lodge”. I said… “OK, great. Where is the lodge?” She looked at me kind of funny, then realized that we weren’t actually resort guests, and gave us directions. I explained that we were just over here for the dam run. When she asked, “Oh… you did the run… did you win?”, Tanya gave her a rather odd look and said “No….” and something else I didn’t quite hear.

Gettin’ Loopy

Dobo — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:25:07 +0000

Last week, in the wake of my decision not to do Survival of the Shawangunks, I went ahead and registered for a couple centuries that have been on my calendar for awhile. One of those is the Six Gap Century from Dahlonega, GA. I’ve been wanting to do this ride for the past five years but have never been able to. When I lived in Ohio I could never convince anybody to do it with me and, not wanting to go to the expense of travelling solo, I always opted for the two-day Columbus Fall Challenge. Then, last year when I lived close enough to do it, but was training for Ironman. So this year there’s nothing to get in the way, and it has turned into my #1 event of the fall. While I don’t follow any kind of specific “training plan” for these big century rides, I do try and schedule my weekly rides to build and taper in some sort of loosely organic pattern that makes sense.

Blue Ridge Breakaway

Dobo — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:10:27 +0000

“It looks like we’ve got a pretty good day for a ride”. That’s what the nice lady with the microphone said at the start of the Blue Ridge Breakaway. If you ever hear these words, or words to that effect, at the start line of a century ride, especially a ride whose route goes up into the Blue Ridge, or any other, mountains on the eastern half of the US, you should expect that you are going to have anything but a “pretty nice day”.

Ring of a W[h]ee Bit Late

Dobo — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:40:49 +0000

When I was a little kid, on warm summer nights, I always wanted to stay out later than I was allowed to. All the houses on the block I lived on were connected by back alleys and driveways, and there were dozens of kids out playing in back yards, riding bikes, shooting hoops, doing the stuff kids do. And I frequently got in trouble for straying into the yard too late past dark. So at some point there was a rule instituted: be on the porch by the time the street lights came on. If I didn’t make it, I’d get grounded. I was reminded of this rule as I was out riding Wednesday evening and the street and other lights started coming on. How far was I from home when this happened?

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