TNGA [Redo]

In April I made an attempt at riding the TransNorthGeorgia mountain bike route. The ride was cut short on the second day after only covering about a third of the distance. The big take-away at the time was the the route was extremely vertical and required excellent physical shape and proper gear tuning/fitting to complete.

I made the decision shortly after coming back from the bailout that I would sign up for the official race, nearly four months away at that point, and complete the ride from the start.

The [not] Prep

I felt good after that first attempt, probably because I was coming off some good fitness from riding a lot earlier in the season, so even though I had experienced what the route could dish out, I took a rather lackadaisical approach to training any further… that is to say, I didn’t. Continue reading TNGA [Redo]

TransNorthGeorgia Day 2 [Unfinished]

Waking up this morning was the driest I’ve been at a campsite in a long time. A quick cup of coffee, a tube of jerky and a refill of the water bottles in the creek and we were on our way up to Tray Gap.

Within ten minutes of starting the day, I had already convinced myself three times over that not riding this stretch the previous night was the right call.

Roads like these...It ended up taking us another 3 and a half hours to make it to the place where I’d planned on camping while doing our ride planning. Continue reading TransNorthGeorgia Day 2 [Unfinished]

TransNorthGeorgia [Day 1]

[Preface]

Jump straight to the ride

With my recent success on the Huracan350, and always eyeing bigger and more challenging things, I decided to try to take on the TransNorthGeorgia route, which traverses the northern part of the state from South Carolina to Alabama.
Screenshot 2015-04-29 08.45.00
Like the Huracan, it’s better than 90% dirt. Unlike the Huracan, this route is not flat. Over the same distance (325ish miles), it climbs upwards of 55,000ft vertically. For some perspective, The GreatDivide which is 2700+ miles, climbs 200kft, so this is somewhere on the order of 2.5x as much climbing per mile.

Ouch.

For a little more perspective, that little blip towards the end of the elevation profile between 255 and 280, that’s Snake Creek Gap.

This is a serious route, listed as one of the top ten bikepacking routes in the US over at singletracks.com, with the warning: “If you’re thinking this might be a good beginning bikepacking route to tackle, think again…” Continue reading TransNorthGeorgia [Day 1]