Training Camp ’09- Day 2

I set out today with the intention to ride a majority of the Syllamo’s Revenge course. I started out by leaving the trailhead and heading up Green Mountain to find Blanchard Road. After taking a couple of wrong turns onto logging roads, I finally got going in the right direction. I wanted to get a feel for the race start, so I actually rode past the yellow trail intersection to the Blanchard campground, turned around, and headed back up the ~3/4 mile climb. This essentially dumps you into the most rocky, technical section of the Jack’s Branch trail. I quickly realized that the ground under the rocks was still wet, which made the rock gardens much more treacherous than usual, because they were either slippery or would shift and slide as I rode over them. The sun-sheltered spots were icy. A couple of times, I fell downhill off of the trail and was only saved by grabbing on to nearby trees.

So, in the interest of NOT falling down a mountain, I changed my plan to ride the remainder of the yellow trail and the red trail. The red trail was full of wildlife- I had a herd of wild hogs run across the trail in front of me, almost ran over a squirrel, scared up a huge gang of turkeys, then finished it all off with some random whitetail deer. The awesome part of the ride is the fact that I felt as strong at mile 30 as I did at mile 3. Looks like this base training stuff is paying off!

Some photos from a scenic spot on the yellow…

front

rear

side

self

It’s kinda weird to think that exactly a year ago, I was at the Metro training camp learning how to give Coryn Rivera a sprint leadout. Now I’m riding my MTB in preparation to hit the NUE series with guns blazing. I’m not surprised, though.