Take a Journey with Me
Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking on The Appalachian Journey race. The Appalachian Journey takes place in Floyd County Virginia, one of the least populated and highest mountain plateaus east of the Mississippi. For this race, riders in a duo team must ride together from start to finish. Each teammate may not be more than 5 minutes ahead or behind their partner at any point with time checks completed at aid stations on course. The race director said that this format comes from a belief that the best rides are experiences with others that become memorable because of challenges, camaraderie, and a shared Journey.
This race has been on my radar for a couple years now. Any event where the elevation exceeds the distance sparks my interest. What had given me pause in registering was the time of year, April is hard for me to travel to events… and the time of year! April is unpredictable with weather and at this point in my cycling journey, I don’t enjoy driving six hours each way to ride for six plus hours in the rain and then do six plus hours of maintenance on my bikes when I get home. I decided to go for it this year when one of my Dirty Kitten teammates said they were looking for a partner. I figured, what the heck! What’s the worst that could happen? So we signed up, I put it on the calendar for my coach to see, and continued training!
My teammie Em and I had been stalking the weather reports all week and by all accounts, the temps were going to be chilly at the start but it would be clear blue skies and sunshine all day - which was amazing! So I packed a little bit of everything and somehow not nearly enough of anything, and headed down to Virginia. Driving through the mountains of West Virginia we got to experience rain, snow, wind, hail - you name it - and I started to become quite nervous about what Saturday was going to bring. Packet pick up was smooth and easy - lots of goodies in our bags! And I got to chat briefly with Gordon Wadsworth, the race director. Super impressed that he knew who I was by sight AND knew who my teammie was AND the distance we were racing. Being a race director is a tough job but he makes it look so easy! We found a delicious little Mexican restaurant right in downtown Floyd and had dinner with Jen Malik and Bob Sowga who killed it the next day on the 100 mile course ON SINGLESPEED, finishing third in their division!!
Following dinner things got serious. Em and I unloaded the cars at our adorable little tiny home AirBnB just six minutes from downtown Floyd and ten minutes from race start, and started the process of getting ready for the morning. I’ve been working on tweaking my race day nutrition plan to be more carb heavy so Em gave me some pointers while they counted out 54 gummy worms which would fuel their 70 mile ride the next day. I opted for Skratch chews and the Super High Carb mix. We put our trackers on our forks, made baggies of drink mix to take with us, and figured out how to use the composting toilet in our cabin before heading to bed.
With a 9:30 start time, Em and I had time to check out an adorable coffee shop and have an actual race day breakfast prior to rolling up to the start. The start was very well managed and we rolled out promptly at 9:30. I’ll admit that much of the day for the next 6.5 hours was a blur. The countryside is incredibly beautiful and everyone we saw out on the route was friendly. The route was SO well marked that even though I had the route loaded onto my GPS, I could have easily navigated the entire day based on the signage (and we were able to quickly fix a couple missed turns due to the signage!). I had an unfortunate little bobble coming through Aid 1 and hit the deck in some loose gravel and managed to tweak my sciatica pretty badly so I spent the rest of the day feeling fairly rough - it definitely impacted our pace as I had to stop several times to stretch it out before getting back on to roll on. Aid 2 was amazing! Can’t say enough about the well stocked aid stations with friendly volunteers. Anything you could ask for including freshly made quesadillas and bacon strips was available to you. Em and I helped ourselves to a sample of the local Elderberry moonshine and it was delicious! There was one climb somewhere in there that I ended up walking part of. RWGPS assures me that it was a 29% grade and it was a fairly long S curve so I made the decision to save some matches and walk up with several other like-minded folks out there. Em was waiting for me at the top with words of encouragement before we continued on. My favorite part of the route was the “rowdy” descent section and all of the other gorgeous, fast, fun descents. My least favorite part of the route was the time spent on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a false flat and we had what felt like a horrific headwind and I can’t say that I enjoyed any of the drudgery. Gordon definitely wants you to get your money’s worth and threw in a couple hateful little climbs in the last ten miles including one final climb into the campgrounds to bring you through the finish. Post ride, there is amazing soup, fresh bread, salad, cookies, Mountain Dew, and beer if that’s your thing.
I really can’t think of anything that they could do to improve this event - I was promised moonshine and Mountain Dew and I received both of those things, along with a fantastic day of climbing in the sunshine with my teammate. It’s definitely one for your list!
