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I hate packing!  So it has occurred to me that typing a quick journal entry might be a pleasant distraction.  The ride begins in 2 days.  We are set to leave tomorrow around lunchtime and drive 5 or so hours to our start point, Front Royal, Va.  I'm in the middle of cleaning out the car; gathering the bike and related tools/equipment; bagging a lot of gels and bars and nutritional powders; packing some street clothes; and just generally trying to not forget anything I'll wish I had brought- like this laptop because typing these journals on my phone would be an exercise in madness!

Yesterday I prepped the bike for the mountains by putting on new tubeless tires (Continental 5000 Tubeless S TRs) and a new chain.  But most importantly I've stuck on my mountain gears, an 11x32 Ultegra cog set that should help me survive the miles and miles of climbing (paired with 52x36 big rings up front).  For those of you who are non-cyclists, suffice it say I'll be using some "granny" gears- which any of ya'll who know me will understand because I have very skinny legs!  My daughter and I did a couple hour ride to make sure everything was properly adjusted, and that was the last time I'll pedal until Thursday's adventure begins.

I'll admit I'm not the most detail oriented guy around.  Like I said in a previous journal, Josh did all of the planning for this.  As a matter of fact I didn't even bother to open up the Ride With GPS maps and elevation profiles he sent me until yesterday. Yikes- I shouldn't have looked!  As you can see in the photo above, the opening 20 miles starts out with a 3k foot climb.  And that got me thinking about a strategy to survive all 7 days of riding.  

If this were more like I'm used to, I'd only get around 4k feet of climbing in 100 miles and I'd do a lot of drafting behind Josh because he's a tall and powerful guy.  For those that don't ride, drafting saves you about a third of the energy you would expend if you were on the front- it's significant.  But going up mountains  lowers your speed so much that the draft isn't very helpful and your own strength is more exposed.  Normally, on single day routes, my ego gets in the way and I push myself to keep up with Josh so hard I risk going into the red too soon- and sometimes I do blow up and have to crawl back home.  But on something like this that would be a mistake not only from a physical standpoint, but even more so mentally.  No use being demoralized in the first couple hours of a 7 day challenge!

So I'm going to take the advice of my riding buddy Ian, another Gruppetto team member who has done a similar long ride with lots of elevation.  He advised me that at almost all times I not ride harder than a "conversational" pace- meaning if I'm huffing and puffing so hard that I can't get words out of my mouth then I should ease up some.  If nothing else, the idea of it is keeping me calm right now as the anxiety of our dreams becoming a reality are in the suitcase in front of me.  Time to get going!  

Stay tuned and on Thursday I'll detail Stage 1 of the BRPE2E from Front Royal, Va. to Waynesboro, Va.

George