Bike Virginia is a multi-day event featuring rides of many different lengths and difficulties. This year’s edition was a five-day marathon located in and around the greater Blacksburg area with a maximum distance of about 350 miles if you rode the max everyday. Climbing was assured – this area is several thousand feet higher than Manassas and there is not much flat area there. So, I signed up! What could go wrong?
After taking a harder look at the website the next day, I almost researched the possibility of getting a refund – there’s a lot of climbing in them hills but I resolved to go forth and
climb.
In order to participate in Bike Virginia I did a fair amount of riding – 30 miles most days. I tried to include all of the hilly areas in the City and PWC. The Parkway trail has 3 decent hills on it. I rode them almost every day and pushed as hard as I could. I attacked the hills with a high-cadence approach (fancy bike words for “pedal fast”). I had seen Lance Armstrong and other pro’s use this approach so that seemed like a good idea and it worked for those hills. I spun the distance up over the weeks as best as work and Council would allow. I had originally wanted to go up to Skyline drive to train but never got there. Just didn’t have time.
As a part of my planning process, I looked at the routes, the distances, the elevation data and the indicated difficulty of the different rides. The route I selected for the first day was 43 miles. Not the longest (63mi) but it had a difficulty rating of 6 with an indicated 1700’ of climbing in that distance. I figured that if it had a difficulty of 6, that was a good midpoint and I could judge my conditioning on how that ride treated me. If a “6” ride killed me, it would be time to adjust strategy and dodge the later 100 mile rides in favor of a shorter distance.
With my training done as well as could be managed and my strategy secure, we packed up all of our junk the night before and staged it by the front door. We had reserved a room in a Bed & Breakfast just outside of Blacksburg. We did have the option of staying in “tent city” which is where most of the cyclists stay but I was concerned my back just wouldn’t take it. I was also concerned my support staff (wife and daughter) might not fancy such accommodations so we booked a room at the Bed and Breakfast. That would serve as our home base as tent city would move only once and it was closer to our B&B. When move day came, it would only get better.
After attending an 11:00 ribbon-cutting for a City business, we shoved all of our stuff in the car and blasted down 81 (well, Sarah did the blasting. She’s our “wheel man”) and 4.5 hours later we were in Pulaski. As this was my first experience with Bike Virginia I wasn’t sure what to expect but, after suffering through a safety speech, checkin went easily and with a minimum of drama. They also had a “solutions desk” staffed by folks
whose only job was to make problems go away. Although I didn’t need it, I thought it was a great idea. Despite the size of the event, it was very well staffed and executed. The event also had a pretty cool sponsor/vendor area with some big name bike companies in there.
The next installment will cover the actual ride.