Of course, keeping your heart rate down on hills of Georgia's caliber meant i was sitting close to my functional threshold. Mike's powertap read anywhere from 250 watts to 325... his bike+body is 75kg...my bike+body is 82kg so I assume I was pushing maybe 275-350. (loose calculations off of analyticcycling.com)
We arrived at Brasstown, threw down a gel. Tossed some extra gear to the side to pick up later, since every lb saved makes the ascent easier.
The climb was difficult, but i knew my pacing limits and I stuck to them. As we got higher, it got cooler. As it got cooler, there was more snow. Pretty soon there were snow patches on the road. We marched on until it became like this:
At this point, our tires would slip on the steeper grades...so we had to turn back. We'll wait until Saturday to try this again...
As a consolation prize we decided to hit one other climb, and then finish off with the 3gap route that we persevered through in the snow, earlier in the week. All in all, a good ride.
I think we're gonna take tomorrow off, as my heart rate numbers seem to hint at some overtraining/exhaustion. Numbers aside, my legs hurt.. you dont need a graph or powermeter to tell you to take it easy.
