PACTour Eastern Mts - Day 5 It Evened Out

Pix on B-H FB page

Lo fallutin hotel tonight. Isolated Days Inn with nothing around. We are gonna have to shuffle today. Apparently this is the part where the hotels even out.

1st break of the day - Blue Ridge Parkway closed outside of Boone, so we detoured and cut out 5 miles, reducing the day to 93 miles. Still managed 8,000 feet of climbing and 5:45 on the bike.

We were spoiled this am with a hotel breakfast (not that the PACTour breakfasts are bad, but we get to go to bfast a little more on our time frame and linger a little more.) Out the door and on the bikes at 7am, as we had done. The first 10-15 miles were on the Blue Ridge Parkway Detour, so it was traffickey, but nice - rollers with ripping down hills. We did hit a 3-4 mile stretch of the detour which was 2 lanes 2 directions with a bit of traffic so we whipped up the pace there.

Once we turned towards the parkway, the traffic was gone and the climbing beginning. The pace was reasonable to the first rest stop, then from there apparently "Tour de PAC" began. A group of around 15 went hard on a downhill, then a small selection happened on a 1 mile climb. Spartaca missed the split, I happened to be at the front so made it. Soon there were only 3 of us. I came off a few climbs later, but there was no group close behind so I kept going.

I saw Lebowski in the middle of a climb and planned to sit up with him (he had started at the first sag nursing a knee problem.) Mr. Evil came flying by so I jumped on his wheel. I think he tried to ride me off it, which played to my favor as soon the 2 that had dropped me were in sight. Once we touched them for some reason Mr. Evil sat up and I stayed on. After a few more climbs I was hanging on by my fingernails. It was so hard for me that even on a flat 2-3 mile section all I could do to stay on. I dug deep a few times to keep contact to the second sag so got my first hard effort of the "Tour" in.

The odd thing was my max heart rate for this effort was 165!! Normally I am comfortable up to 180+ and max at 196. The volume and intensity of riding over the previous 4 days has reduced my perceive exertion/cardiovascular ability to 20-30 beats below normal. Interesting.

The rest of the day was docile, chit chat and fun. We rode with alot of the Ultra Distance guys today and learned alot about their experiences. The weather today "evened out" yesterdays environmental challenge. Today was sunny, cool, just perfect. The views were fabulous and continuous. Ride time was 5:45 compared to 8:15 yesterday.

The legs are sore!!! Gonna be interesting to see how the legs and heart rate respond in the coming days.

We are in Fancy Gap, VA, tonight. Reminds me of JW "Fancy Boy" Slauson. I miss the Turk )-:

We miss Contador and hope Ken is recovering well.

Thanx for reading.