The Gaps

If you're not a cyclist or triathlete that lives in Georgia, "the gaps" don't mean anything to you. What's that? the rip-off version of Gap clothing line? no... not even close. The gaps are the climbs in North Georgia mountains. They are 6 of them, Jack's, Unicoi, Neel's, Wolfpen, Woody's and Hogpen. Every year Cycle North Georgia club holds the Six Gap Century ride. The gaps are famous for cyclists and triathletes who train for different events that involve long and steep climbs. All of them wish they were mountain goats when they ride on the gaps.

The first time I heard about the gaps was when I was training for my first tri in 2009. I thought why? Who's crazy and stupid enough to ride on the mountains on a two skinny wheel vehicle? The answer is (fast forward 3 years later)... I am.

When I signed up for IM Canada, I knew I had to tackle the gaps. Where else do you train to simulate the climbs in Canada? I guess we're lucky enough we have the right venue to practice. I started doing the Ultimate Cycling classes in January. Some of the drills would prepare me to ride the gaps. My IM Canada training partners had a great idea to camp at the Vogel State Park for a weekend and ride the gaps. Vogel was at Rest Stop 7/3 on this Six Gap map. Ignore the arrow signs. We didn't follow the same route.

The plan was to start at Vogel and ride the following gaps in order, Wolfpen, Woody, Unicoi and Jack's for a total of 66 miles. Here's the elevation chart.

It was a big task. I never climbed that high and never descended that steep. The latter part scared me more than the first part. Climbing was relatively easy for me. If you were tired, the worst thing could happen was you fell off the bike because your feet stopped pedaling. But descending was scary, my bike handling skills were practically nonexistent, cornering didn't come naturally for me, I was afraid of height, it was not just a straight downhill, but there were switchbacks.... the list was on and on and on. I was super nervous. a week before the ride, I carpooled with Eric and Sarah to Hard Labor Creek ride. Eric showed me Woody's descent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TnUrzL5e8&feature=related. After I got home, I watched the other gap descent on youtube. I didn't know if it made feel better or more nervous. I emailed Mary on Thursday. I fessed up about my fear. Since she was going to SAG on Saturday and she's my coach, I thought she should know. She gave me 4 tips: Look straight ahead, not what's right in front of you. Don't turn the handle bar, instead, lean towards the direction that you're going to. When cornering, drop the outside foot down and drive with your other knee. Feather the brakes, no kung-fu grip. I knew them but it was nice to be reminded again of what I'm supposed to do. Funny that on Friday, xtri.com posted this article http://www.xtri.com/features/detail/284-itemId.511713881.html. Perfect timing.

I took a day off on Friday. I thought I could relax a little before Saturday epic ride but it turned out I was busy packing, loading up the car, running errands, dropping Chloe off at Rebecca's house for the weekend.... next thing I knew it was 2.30PM. I stopped by at Lake Lanier to do a quick open water swim. I just wanted to get a feel for swimming with a long sleeve wetsuit. On the way to Vogel, I started noticing the climbs. At one point I was sure I was driving on Neel's gap. I tried not to think too much of it. I was the first one to arrive. I shared a 3 bedroom cabin with Wendy, Eric and Sarah. Susan and Ellen camped with their 2 dogs. The cabin was nice. It was old but clean and spacious. I ate dinner on the back deck overlooking the mountains.

Less than an hour later, Wendy came. I was glad I had somebody to chat with so I didn't keep thinking about tomorrow's ride.I guess we had nothing to do, so we took pictures of our bikes.

Eric and Sarah came a couple of hours later. We talked about tomorrow's route. It turned out that we would climb the switchbacks, not descend, which made me really happy.

The next morning I got up around 6AM. We were all ride ready by 9AM and met with Mary and some  friends at the parking lot. While waiting for the group, Sarah gave me some pointers on descending. I felt more confident at that point.

Carlos, Katie, Mike, Sarah, me, Susan, Eric, John and Jane

Eric, Sarah, Wendy and me

 Mary, my coach, is on the left

After a quick pow wow, we took off. Silly me, I went to a different direction and when I realized nobody behind me, I realized that everybody else went the other way. The good thing I caught up with them right away. Our warm up was just a half a mile. We started climbing Wolfpen right away. It was steep and a couple of sharp turns.... so glad I didn't descend on those. I was going really slow. I was just focusing on my cadence. As long as it was 70 plus, I was on the right gear. Keep it nice and light, it was going to be a long day. Wolfpen was about 3 miles long. I got to the top. One down, three more to go. It wasn't bad at all. Easier than what I expected.

At the top of Wolfpen

Now the first descent of the day. I focused on the tips that Mary gave me. Susan was in front me, Mary was behind me. Susan passed Carlos not long after. Carlos was pretty cautious wasn't going too fast. Having somebody in front of me helped a lot. Not long after that, we got to the bottom and started climbing Woody's. Honestly it was a blur. I think part of me was just a huge relief. Now I knew what to expect on a descent. The other part was Woody's was shorter and less steep climb than Wolfpen. I got to the top of Woody's, everybody asked me how I was doing. This was the first time we regrouped after Wolfpen descent. People were very supportive. I was really thankful for that.

At the top of Woody's gap

Woody's descent was long and less curvy. You could see far out in front of you. By this time, my aero bottle's sponge/ plug went inside the bottle, so the aero bottle didn't have a cover on. The drink kept splashing all over, my bike, my face and my legs. It was pretty annoying. There were 20 miles stretch from the bottom of Woody's and the next gap, Unicoi. On the elevation chart, the climbs looked nothing compared to the gaps but there were actually pretty tough. Something funny happened. While descending on Woody's, I heard something was flickering. What was that? was my brake caught on fire and made that flickering noise? but it was rubber... shouldn't be caught on fire. If anything, it was just going to melt (which I heard it could happen if you brake too much). Several miles later, I realized it was my cue sheet that made the noise. I taped it to my bento box but the wind blew it away.

For a while I rode by myself, I got nervous because I lost my cue sheet. there was not too many turns and Mary pretty much stopped at every turn, so I wasn't too worried. When I got to the next intersection, Susan, Jane and Sarah were there. We started climbing Unicoi. I knew this was the longest climb. I passed Eric after several miles. I heard Sarah asked Eric how many miles we had to climb, he said 10 more. I was like, there was no way, my guess was around 4 more. We were climbing switchbacks so I couldn't see how much more to climb until the next turn. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what was coming up or not. It was steep and practically no break. I peeked at my Garmin to see my speed. A couple times I saw 5 something MPH. I could run much faster than that. Then, I saw a white van in front of me. The top of the van started to disappear as it was driving away. It's the top of Unicoi. I made it.

The view I had been waiting for

The rest of the ride wasn't too bad. Jack's was short and sweet. I was ready to be done. We made the last turn to Vogel. It was actually part of Neel's climb. It was a little scary because there was no guard rail on my right. I was just praying that no car would knock me over.

Kinda like this

We got back to the park, I ran for 30 minutes and took a group ice bath at the creek. I was the only one who got submerged from the waist down.

We had a nice dinner that night. Eric made baked meatball pasta with cheesy broccoli. Yum! The next morning, Sarah, Susan and I climbed Neel's.

Day 2 Vogel State Park

At the store, on top of Neel's

We went down to the park and climbed Neel's again. Sarah and I were talking about what body parts hurt the most, it was actually sitting bones. My quads felt fine. I think that was a good thing. Ellen took a really cook picture when I was climbing up Neel's.

After a short ride, we ate lunch and parted ways. What a great weekend at the gaps!