Cherohala 07-Part IV

After gobbling down several Advil for my back, I climbed back aboard the bike and pointed the front wheel upwards...next stop, 8 miles and 2500 vertical feet distant. For some reason, the first mile after this 4th feed area is always the toughest spot on this ride for me. I don't know exactly why this is, but I suspect that it has to do with putting enormous stress on my muscles, then stopping to let them cool again, then jumping right back into a 9% gradient with no warm-back-up. That's why this year I kept my stop as short as possible, just long enough to refill empty Heed, aquire said Advil, and shove a banana down my throat. It helped a little bit to ease the suffering, but it still hurt.

The real heartbreaker on this climb is that after all the climbing you've done so far, at mile 77 you begin descending. It's just 1/2 mile, but you lose a couple hundred feet of hard won elevation and you're forced to reclimb those meters of vertical. At mile 79 climb makes a sharp hairpin and begins climbing steeply for the last 3 miles of this section. From mile 77, the road after this hairpin is visible across the cove you are circling and it's so high above your current altitude that you can't help but despair knowing how steep the road has to be to reach that spot where it cuts through some rock and disappears. At this point I don't think I've ever wanted to climb off my bike and quit so badly. Even in 2005 when I had a seperated shoulder that prevented me from using the handlebars for any leverage, and I had to walk some of the steep parts, I didn't want to quit. 2007 took every bit of motivation I could muster to keep from stopping.

I made my way slowly up through the cut, where the road then shifts to the south side of this mountain range and began the final mile and a half of climbing that would leave me at the highest point of this ride, Santeetlah Gap at 5390 ft. I'll just mention here that the Cherohala Skyway is the road with the highest average elevation east of the Mississippi River.

I made it to the top, again refilled my water bottles, took a couple more Advil, and struck out for the finish, 30 miles and 4500 feet below me. But I was spent. My efforts in the first 40 miles had drained any reserve that I might have had and I could only descend at whatever speed gravity would allow. On the climbs sprinkled amongst this long descent, I had no choice but to use my bail-out gear and make it to the top as best I could. I simply had no legs left for climbing. I felt a little better though as I saw people climbing into the support vehicles at the foot of these short climbs. I've never seen people quitting on the descent of the Skyway before. That let me know that while I was suffering like I never had before, so was everyone else. Undoubtably the heat and humidity were playing a role in all of this.

At Indian Boundary Road, where the road flattens somewhat and becomes more rollers than anything else, I became like a horse who smells the barn and decided that I could take it easy and suffer, or I could suck it up and work hard and suffer. The latter would just last a shorter time, so I threw a couple of Endurolytes in my mouth and chewed them rather than swallowing, washing them down with a little Raspberry Hammer Gel, put my head down and started to suffer. The larger rollers that have always given me a little trouble in the past were barely noticeable and didn't really slow me down much. There is one particular little hill that marks the end of this section, a steep little roller that forces you to get out of the saddle and power climb it...but once past, you round a bend and descend down a steep little hill that begins following a little river the last 7 miles into Tellico Plains. When I see the river, I know that I've made it. The only thing remaining to conquer is the last 1/4 mile 10% climb back to the finish line at Tellico Plains High School. Crossing the finish line in 7:50:23, my day at the Cherohala Challenge was over.

For the first time in any time I've done this ride, I still had actively planned to skip it next year. Usually, even though I hurt, I am already making plans for how I'll improve the following year before I'm out of the showers at TPHS. This year though, until Wednesday I was planning to skip the 2008 edition. But as of today, if it doesn't conflict with a family reunion scheduled for next June, I'll be back again. Hopefully stronger and faster.

Did I mention The Beast got a new job selling EPO?