SufferFest 08 Day 3

After Day 2 I got home and was simply not up for the whole wordy thing. Here's what I sent to the group:

I'm decidedly less verbose after two days of SufferFest 08 beatdown. Luckily Marc's got some words:
http://blog.frequency650.com/?p=825

Thanks to Keith, Danielle and Remling who made it much less miserable out there.

Saturday we ride in Ellijay, GA. Some climbing action but it doesn't look too extreme. Hope you can join us!

Joe

So today we did Ellijay. Keith, Dylan, Remling, Marc, Matthew and I headed north.

The weather was nominally better than Friday. One less layer. But still chilly and later in the ride the clouds came in and took away the sun.

The third day always seems the toughest, for me at least. You get up in the morning and you're only halfway done. But the legs creak and whine. You're tired. It's cold.

Met at Marc's to pick he and Matthew up. Matthew had been out at a bar the night before. Perfect SufferFest recovery regimen. We met up with Keith and Remling at Panera for some bagels.

Didn't actually have a pre-planned place to park. Put "Ellijay, GA" into the GPS and took a whirlwind tour of the town while we tried to find Dylan who was at what we can only assume was an invisible Piggly Wiggly. We eventually met up and parked at a school.

Marc made up today's route on the computer. We had an elevation profile but we really weren't sure what to expect. You know how this story ends.

Dylan had some fresh legs, relatively speaking. He had done some strong workouts in recent days but hadn't suffered with the fest yet. So we put him out front.

Big mistake. You see, the thing about Dylan is... well, how to put this? He's fast. So as we all exploded off the back he casually rolled forward.

The terrain at first was rolling hills. Even a little more rolling than I would have liked. Fairly narrow roads without big shoulders and a good stream of traffic. Single file riding most of the time.

But we were all more or less together. Dylan realized he was gonna have one of those obligatory chill with the slow people workouts so he was kindly pulling.

Then we hit this vertical wall of a hill. Holy crap this thing was steep. Steeper than Hogpen. Not quite as steep as the toughest part of Brasstown. I tried to stay with Dylan on the first one (not knowing there was a second) and then got destroyed by the second one. From there miles got really slow. Lots of stopping to rest. Miles 30-34 took eight hours. Or something like that.

Miserable. Up and down. Up and down.

By mile 38 we knew we'd be cutting the ride short to 58 miles and couldn't wait for it to be over. Luckily there was a nice four mile rolling downhill at the end. Without it I was gonna cry... on the outside.

Afterwards we had some mexican food in Ellijay and planned tomorrow's ride. One day to go.

Update: Dylan's got more details here.

• 

  marc dylan phone camera pics matthew keith remling