Not-Bakers-Dozen Thurmond Epic

[dgaddis1]

This saturday, October 19th!

Since the Baker's Dozen has been canceled, but many of us still have planned to spend the entire day on our bikes, several of us are planning a big ride.

This is not an official SORBA-CSRA ride, and you are responsible for yourself.

The route is the Thurmond Epic – about 65 miles, covering Bartram, Keg, and Mistletoe. It’s a great long ride, lots of miles, mostly singletrack, a few technical challenges on Keg and Mistletoe, but the majority of the ride is easy cruising on Bartram. See the map here: sorbacsra.org/Trails/ConnectorRoutes/ThurmondEpic.htm

We’ll start from West Dam, rolling into the woods at 8am. We’ll arrange a food/water drop at the end of Bartram just before you hit Washington Rd, you’ll pass this spot twice. The office at Mistletoe is the other SAG stop.

This is NOT a no-drop group ride, we’ll start together but everyone can ride their own pace, and no one is expected to keep up or wait on anyone else. Rides this long simply don’t work if people of different ability all try and stick together the entire ride. Some will end up riding too hard trying to keep up and blow up and have a miserable day, others will spend too much time sitting around waiting for people to catch up….it just doesn’t work. If you want to wait for people you can, but you’re not expected to.

If you’re not familiar with the route, bring the directions! If you have a GPS I can send you a GPX file you can follow.

Feel free to join in for all or part of the ride. We leave West Dam at 8am, and should roll into Keg around 9:30-10am. We will not go to the Keg parking lot, we’ll simply cross Washington Rd and continue onto Keg.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU’RE COMING SO WE HAVE ENOUGH WATER! Reply here, send me a PM or an email, whatever - just let me know. dgaddis 1 2 at gmail dot com. We’ll probably drop some food as well at the end of Bartram (bananas, maybe some granola bars or something), but it’s best if you carry the food you need yourself, or you could drop it off yourself.

Any questions?

[troy]

I'm in!

All I'll need is water at the drop.

[dgaddis1]

Don't forget to wear orange, Saturday is the start of rifle season.

[dgaddis1]

What a great day on the bike, my favorite so far this year I think. Lotsa folks out enjoy the Bartram, Keg, and Mistletoe trails on Saturday. We had about 10 folks start at West Dam at 8am, a few others joined us at Keg, we also ran across the other group riding right there at Keg, looked like a bunch of folks there too. Five of us did the entire 62 mile Thurmond Epic (we didn't ride Lake Springs), I had my quickest time on it yet with a ride time of 6hrs and 6mins. As a rule we stayed together really well even though we weren't really trying, about the only time I was by myself was riding the road back to Keg after finishing Mistletoe and the last few miles of Bartram.

At the start of the ride the guys up front set a pretty dang fast pace, and like an idiot I pushed and hung with them. Later they bailed and took a shorter route back to the car...it was a trap! haha Anyhow, I knew I'd pay for pushing that harder pace eventually. When we hit Mistletoe it started, getting out of the saddle for the steep stuff my quads started cramping. I walked a few short really steep sections to keep full-lock-up at bay. At the Mistletoe office I drank about half a coke and ate a snickers bar, and did a tiny bit of stretching. When we got back on the bikes the cramps were gone! THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! Every other time I've started cramping, once they start, that's it, they're here to stay and the ride switches to survival mode. But not Saturday. No idea why, but it was grand.

Thanks for everyone that came out. Big thanks to Troy for the water drop (sorry I so over estimated!!) and to Stan for the post-ride burritos.

www.strava.com/activities/90045945

This was the only non-blurry pic I took, we were too busy riding to stop for pics.

[beckyl]

Oct 21, 2013 6:34:07 GMT -5 dgaddis1 said:

What a great day on the bike, my favorite so far this year I think. Lotsa folks out enjoy the Bartram, Keg, and Mistletoe trails on Saturday. We had about 10 folks start at West Dam at 8am, a few others joined us at Keg, we also ran across the other group riding right there at Keg, looked like a bunch of folks there too. Five of us did the entire 62 mile Thurmond Epic (we didn't ride Lake Springs), I had my quickest time on it yet with a ride time of 6hrs and 6mins. As a rule we stayed together really well even though we weren't really trying, about the only time I was by myself was riding the road back to Keg after finishing Mistletoe.

At the start of the ride the guys up front set a pretty dang fast pace, and like an idiot I pushed and hung with them. Later they bailed and took a shorter route back to the car...it was a trap! haha Anyhow, I knew I'd pay for pushing that harder pace eventually. When we hit Mistletoe it started, getting out of the saddle for the steep stuff my quads started cramping. I walked a few short really steep sections to keep full-lock-up at bay. At the Mistletoe office I drank about half a coke and ate a snickers bar, and did a tiny bit of stretching. When we got back on the bikes the cramps were gone! THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! Every other time I've started cramping, once they start, that's it, they're here to stay and the ride switches to survival mode. But not Saturday. No idea why, but it was grand.

Thanks for everyone that came out. Big thanks to Troy for the water drop (sorry I so over estimated!!) and to Stan for the post-ride burritos.

www.strava.com/activities/90045945

This was the only non-blurry pic I took, we were too busy riding to stop for pics.

A great day indeed! It was awesome getting to see a lot of the Snake crew out there, too. I couldn't have done the whole thing (minus ~ 2 mi. being lost at MT) if it wasn't for Dustin's encouragement. (I also had the benefit of not being a dude because I didn't feel obliged to keep up when everyone went out fast which resulted in a strong finish for me.) Thanks to Troy for the water and Stan for the post-ride chow!