Adventure, Hincapie, and Disney References

We make strange choices as a pair, me and my husband. We choose to skip over normal vacations, like the beach, for other more adventurous explorations that leave me hungry for more, yet somehow sated and happy. Much like Disney's incarnation of Belle, "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can tell." I am constantly hungry for mountains, beauty, exploration, and the bountiful growth these things bring.

This year we decided to do something fun with our bikes to celebrate our fifth anniversary. I was bucking for a tour from Paris to Amsterdam, just the two of us with no guide. I figured we could combine our powers (my minor in French and Paul's decent orienteering skills) to make our way across the countryside on bikes, camping and sleeping in little inns along the way. Paul was a hard sale on this idea, though, so we let that rest aside for another year.

Then the Hincapie Gran Fondo entered onto our radar screens. Eighty miles, with more climbing than either of us had ever endeavored, through the mountains of North and South Carolina: all these things were enough to stoke our interest. This was how we would celebrate what I came to hashtag as #fiveyearsaschwer. It would follow our first years of bike racing, with full summers plentiful with rides. A weekend of riding, with friends, and a quiet celebration our life together with scenery and suffering.

The route is curated by the Hincapie brothers, George and Rich, as evidenced by the beautifully challenging nature of the course. It's a beauty and a beast. It starts out quick and rolling, and continues onto a lakeside roller coaster ride that is as pretty as it is chaotic. Skyuka Mountain and Green River Cove are some of the most amazing climbs I've ever done. They're stunning, full of switchbacks, and relatively untraveled. They're also much longer and more technical than any climbs I can easily access around here. If you had told me that morning as I stood shivering in the start corral, that I'd have a breakthrough moment on Skyuka Mountain, I probably would have laughed at you. But I did... I've never been much of a climber, as most of my regular readers know. But that morning, as I ascended into the fog, I was able to stay in charge of my heart rate and exertion level, and have fun. I took it easy, because I knew what the rest of the day held in store for me, and rolled up, all smiles. I had fun climbing. For the first time ever, I started to feel the hill repeats and afternoons riding up and down Alto begin to pay off.

After descending Skyuka, you ride through rolling scenery before hitting the next climb, the unassuming but beastly Howard's Gap. The grade is nonstop, with little-to-no-chance to recover until the very top. My legs still felt like toast, and all around me riders were paperboying (zigzagging) or walking up the incline. But ride up this, with no shenanigans. A no-nonsense approach up this climb, with a commitment to just stay on board, is the best possible method.

Following Howard's Gap, things got whiny in my head and heart. We passed a gas station where we stopped with Hobbes earlier in the year - he tossed his cookies on a long road trip - and I knew there was beer there, and food, and part of me wanted to stop there and not get back on. Thankfully, we found a group of our friends at the next rest stop, and we started sharing time at the front, and my day instantly improved.

Misery loves company. And it's just nice to see friendly faces of people you trust in a paceline when you're at a ride like this. It's cozy, like sitting around the camp fire. And while I don't see these people all the time, I feel like I know and trust them like family. That's the beauty of being out on a ride with people. They're the ones who see you at our best and worst, and generally embrace who you are.

We made our way to the final climb of the day, Green River Cove, which clocks in seventeen switchbacks, with a startlingly beautiful roll through a river gorge to lead into the lowest turn into the climb. There are signs in each switchback, counting down from seventeen, which is a fun game of memory with an oxygen deprived brain, a mechanism to distract myself from the increasingly searing pain in my legs, back and lungs. I triumphantly reached the top, met Paul, and we went on to the rest stop to wait for our friends.

After regrouping, we approached the descent from Saluda, back towards the finish at Hotel Domestique in Traveler's Rest, which makes the last few miles fly by. At this point in the ride, I was grateful for the break, and felt refreshed when we hit the final rollers into the finish and was happy to be climbing the short hills.

I told my friends it was the hardest ride I had ever done, and the metrics of the ride agree with that statement. It was a beastly amount of climbing. But it was also exciting and fun, and the route is really quite lovely, especially once the riders begin to spread out following the early rush from the start. It probably isn't the way most people would choose to celebrate their anniversary, but it was just right for us.