Tour de Liverance Ride Report

 

Post ride feels!

It all started with a simple FB group message from Monica.  She was gonna ride the intermediate course of Corvus Racing's Tour de Liverance.  I bit.  From there it morphed into a group of 5:  Monica, Lindsey, Farmer G, John, and I.  We decided to let it warm up a bit and began at 10 am.  This "race" was an OYO format.  A GPX was provided, but nothing else.  But there were multitudes of churches and running water for refills and a couple of C-stores, too.  

The course was 79 miles and 6500 feet of elevation.  Although I had put in some hard hours at the gym this week and knew I would be carrying some muscular fatigue into the ride, I still figured on a 6 hour ride time.  I brought 1600 calories and started out with 3 bottles, 2 filled with Skratch, and 1 with my Infinit Nutrition Triple G formula (200mg caffeine, baby!).

Punchy AF climbs ... all day long!

The beginning miles were pretty mellow and paved.  At mile 2.6, the first climb (on Flat Branch Rd -- misnomer) was at a punchy 10% grade and almost a mile long.  Needless to say, despite the 42 degree starting temp, I was no longer cold.  The first section of gravel was Wolfpen Gap at mile 8.  This was absolutely beautiful. At one point, along a flattish stretch, something made me turn around and look back.  I saw John leaning over his bike and my first thought was that he flatted.  I turned around and rode back to him.  When I got closer, I saw his bottles scattered across the road.  Uh-oh, that could only mean one thing: he took a digger.  He is going to have to work on his photography skills while avoiding pot holes. Fortunately it was only his ego that took a beating. A few minutes later, we got rolling again.

The smooth gravel soon morphed into a technical rocky Jeep trail (Harper Creek).  What with the 3 inches of rain in the few days prior, the trail was fairly water logged.

My element

Even though my legs had already started whimpering on that first road climb, it was here that I found my groove and the legs sprang to life.  I suppose it was the focus I was giving to the trail that diverted my attention away from my legs.

Lindsey "all the watts" Kenney

First of several enhanced sections

After a wickedly fun descent that dropped us out on Gates Chapel Road, we hit GA52 for a short bit to connect us over to about 10 miles of pavement leading back to Ellijay.  Mostly easy rollers, until we got to the "trailer park" climb, a section of rough pavement that seemed to go straight up, 19% at one point.  I was thinking to myself, "How the hell did they get all these trailers up here?!?"  The backside of this hill made for a much better approach in getting the tornado magnets to their destination.  Oooof!  That was one heck of a kicker!

The short section on Main Street was the scariest part of the day, as all sorts of humanity were out running the roads.  I about had my head taken off by a redneck pickup side view mirror!  Jesus!  As we worked our way over to Talona Mountain, this is where the wheels began to fall of the bus for me.  Even though I had not been doing much pulling on the road sections (Lindsey, with all her road watts, did the bulk of it), my perceived exertion in the draft was a 7-8/10.  This is where it began to get real for me and the mental game began.  But I had expected this, knowing what I had done during the week, and was ready to grin (grimace) and bear it.  I have the Dirty 130 on the calender in a few weeks and just needed to work on my mental toughness a bit.

Although the out and back on Talona Mountain was paved, it was still a SOB!  It reminded me of the straight up climbs at La Ruta.  This road would be perfect for prepping for this stage race!  At almost 2 miles long, it averaged 8%, but felt a lot more like 15%, what with several 19-20% kickers on it. I did stop half way up because I fell in love with this house.  This is my style of a retirement home.

Would kill for this house plan!

By the time I reached the top, everyone else was finishing up their picnic.  I hurridly pee'd, took some pics, fed my pie-hole, and hurried back off the mountain at a 43 mph top speed.

The view atop Talona

Take your pick:  Christ or 5G?

I was glad that the following 6 miles were slightly downhill.  It gave me some time to digest my little lunch and allow the legs to recover.  I had to shake the thought that I was only halfway done out of my head, lest it get the best of me.  The monkey was going to get some duct tape if it didn't shut up!

The next 10 miles were a mix of rolling paved and gravel country roads.  We were entering the heart of North Georgia wine country.  We crashed a wine tasting party at Chateau Meichtry looking for water.  After refilling our bottles, we continued on similar terrain for another 12 miles.  

Wine Country

Although we had made a couple of wrong turns early on in the course, now as we were probably all feeling the effects of 50+ miles in our legs, the wrong turns seemed to be increasing in frequency.  As I was not in the lead much, I had the lemming mentality and did not watch my Garmin screen as judiciously as I should.  Somehow we managed to end up at the washed out culvert bridge on Hill Road that the race promoter had changed the GPX tract so that we would avoid this.  So we had to climb back out of that steep descent and then got off course a few more times before finally getting it right 🤦.

Gap Jump

During one of our pee breaks, we met a young girl, probably 10 years old, on the coolest purple bike.  Her name, to beat it all, was Cadence.  She was riding alone, up and down on a short stretch of gravel.  Her Mom was sick with some sort of stomach virus.  She asked if she could ride with us.  My heart almost broke. So innocent and just wanting to hang out with people that were doing the same thing as she.  We talked to her for a while but then sadly had to part ways.

I am slowly realizing not to follow those who use a Wahoo GPS.  Or it could be the user 😆.  For whatever reason (and I have never used one nor seen one), but it appears that the breadcrumb trail is not as accurate as a Garmin??  Monica and I had to redirect John and Greg a few times after they missed turns.  But, to give them credit, some of these turns were pretty obscure, as it appeared that they were no more than a sketchy drug use or "Lover's Lane" area.

Roston Road, which started out as a sketchy two-track, but opened up into this beautiful stretch.

The second scariest bit of road was Hwy 52 near all the orchards.  It was just a 1/2 mile stretch, but traffic was super thick.  We meant to stick tight to one another, but John took off like a rocket, and my legs seized, immediately popping me off the back.  I slow pedaled and made it without becoming road kill.

Around the 65 mile mark, Greg was ahead but then immediately slowed and stopped.  As I approached, I saw that his rear wheel was flat.  I reached for my tire plug kit, but then he said the four words I did not want to hear, "I don't have tubeless."  A small part of me died.  I wanted to fall to my knees, lift my hands to the skies, and shout, "Noooooo .....!"  You see, I had been in this situation before with another friend last fall during a gravel ride.  His name will not be mentioned.  We all survived and made it to the finish, but it was an event in of itself.  

But I stayed positive.  We would be up and running in 5-10 minutes.  Well, 40 minutes and two tubes later, we got moving again.  But my legs went on strike.  That was a painful restart, but I just kept telling myself it is all part of the bigger picture of gaining that mental fitness.  It took about 20 minutes for me to convince my legs that we were almost home.

Then the real fun began as the course took us off a nice gravel road into the bowels of WMA hell!  A mix of chunky gravel, plowed two-track, steep ups/downs, and strewn with dead-fall (read derailleur killers), this was the most enhanced section of the ride.  Six miles of drudgery, seven if you relied on the navigational skills of your friend, with a bonus HAB section at 18%.  I shoulda stuck with my woman's intuition at the right hand turn onto that leafy, appearingly unused section of trail.  But instead I followed Greg and John onto a newly bull-dozed firebreak for a half mile before realizing the error and phoning John telling him to turn around.  At least we weren't the only dummies, as others had taken this same wrong turn.  And then had to bushwhack down to Hwy 52.

Optional fire break HAB, followed by wish I had a dropper descent.

Once back on track, the pace seemed to pick up, and for once, although my legs were cooked, there was just enough vapors left in the tank to finish off the final miles which included a 1.5 mile doozy of a climb on TurnipTown Road.  There was a reward at the top and that was the rollercoaster ride down Greenfield Road, on baby butt smooth asphalt.

John pulled us the final flattish few miles back into town and finishing at the bridge adjacent to Cartecay Bike Shop.  82 miles, 8500 feet, and 8 hours 17 minutes later, we all finished this gravel adventure.  This was definitely a much more challenging ride than I had envisioned.  Which is good and what I needed.  I must commend Chris Gray on the #enhancedgravel he included.  

Things I noticed about this route:

    -- all the chicken houses.  At least I was not the smelliest thing on the route.

    -- all the churches.

    -- all the momentum stoppers on the descents, be it stop signs or sharp uphill left-hand turns.

Thanks Monica for the invite.  I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend a warm spring day!