Prequel to First Solo Bikepacking Trip

In a little over three weeks I will be departing on what I guess I would call the grand finale to my 2015 racing season.  This will mark the 6th year of the Trans North Georgia Adventure race but obviously my first event of this format.  Here is the official description:

The TNGA (Trans North GeorgiA) is a 350 mile mountain bike route through the mountains of North Georgia on trails, forest roads and paved roads featuring challenging terrain, beautiful scenery and over 56,000 feet of climbing.

 I have done a lot of biking and some backpacking over the years but have never put the two together.  In preparing for the TNGA, about a month ago I went up to Mulberry Gap (which is on the route) to get a little primer on how to live on your bike for a few days.  It was an awesome experience which I'll try to find some time to write about.

What I am doing this upcoming weekend will put into practice some of the skills I learned at Mulberry Gap.....my first solo bikepacking trip.  It is going to be a combination of a big weekend of riding (~240 miles), being completely self supported and testing what I actually need to pack.  If you know me well you know that I research the shit out of things before I get into them.  I have talked to a lot of people who have done bikepacking tours and races.  I have read every blog, race report and pack list in existence.  I do not like to feel unprepared.

The route I am riding this weekend is unfortunately going to consist of a lot of flat pavement but a good amount of gravel roads and one of my favorite trail systems in Mississippi.

Friday - Jackson to Noxubee - http://ridewithgps.com/routes/9444255
Saturday - Noxubee to Roosevelt - http://ridewithgps.com/routes/9444416
Sunday - Roosevelt to Jackson - http://ridewithgps.com/routes/9444504

If I have time today I am likely going to modify the long legs to get off of the main roads and onto some country two lane and gravel.  The primary goal of the weekend though is just to get some long days in the saddle and to get comfortable with my kit.

Ok.....onto the bike setup.

• Niner SIR9 with RDO fork
• SRAM XX1 drivetrain
• Shimano XT brakes (These are new.  I suffered on Avid XOs for YEARS!)
• Nox Teocalli hoops laced to an I9 in the back and a SP dynamo hub in the front
• Maxxis Ikon 2.35 in the front and a 2.2 in the rear
• Revelate bags
• K-Lite lighting (I'll do a full write-up on this later)

In the Revelate Pika seat bag:

• Gore rain jacket - on the Mulberry Gap trip I found this is also good to sleep in if cold
• CX tube
• First aid kit
• Green bag contains: Mountain Laurel Designs bivy, Klymit sleeping pad and Klymit pillow
• Thick wool socks for sleeping
• Massage ball (because my IT bands suxor)
• Extra pair of riding socks
• Merino t-shirt (camp clothes)
• Lined running shorts (camp clothes)
• Tailwind reloads 

Note that I do not have a sleeping bag listed.  It is going to hotter than hell this weekend so I don't think I will need it.  I have slept in this bivy down to about 60F with no bag and stayed pretty warm wearing a buff on my head, wool socks and my Gore jacket.  I could always pile on arm/knee warmers and wear extra socks on my hands.  Sock puppets are fun.

The top little pocket you may or may not see on the seat bag has my Spot GPS tracker, helmet light and a baggie with cash/coins, Skin Sake packets, bug wipes, ID & credit card.

The Revelate Jerry Can (little red bag under my saddle) has all of my tools in it.  Sorry no pic.....I don't really feel like pulling all of this stuff out.  Use your imagination.

• 2oz stans
• Zip ties
• Tire sew kit (I hope to never have to use this again)
• Valve core tool
• Spare valve core
• Derailleur hanger
• Multitool
• 2x CO2
• CO2 head
• Patch kit
• Tire levers
• Small lube
• Small pocket knife
• 2x quick links
• Small length of chain

The Revelate frame bag is split into three compartments.  The left side is a small pouch kind of pocket where I have a USB battery pack and some misc charging cables, ear buds, etc.  In the top portion of the bag I have a 2.5L MSR Hydromedary bladder with a Sawyer filter inline.  In the front of that section of bag I have room to stash some soft stuff like a little towel, arm warmers, knee warmers and other stuff I might shed during the day.

The bottom portion of the bag is where a bunch of other stuff gets stashed.

• Extra baggie to keep trash tidy
• Tailwind reloads for the day (so I don't have to dig into my seat bag)
• Extra MTB tube
• 32oz Sawyer bag in case I need to carry some extra water
• Toiletry bag: toothpaste, toothbrush, flushable wipes, lanacane, sunscreen & noxzema
• Pump
• Ti spork with some duct tape wrapped around it
• Medicine bag: vitamins, ibuprofen, allergy meds, starbucks vias, eye drops & endurolytes
• Bag o' protein.....tuna fish in oil and sardines

Are you starting to get the idea that I am very type A?  Everything has it's place in it's own baggie not to touch the other thing.

The only other bag is the feedbag behind my stem.  It will have lots of salty stuff in it and some sweet.  Right now some of my on-bike favorites are:  mini payday bars, apple pie lara bars, justin's PB packets, beef jerkey, bags of nuts and homemade oat/almond bars.

The other side of my nutrition story is the sweet liquid type.  Over the past couple of weeks I have been experimenting with how strong of a concentration of Tailwind I could handle and that magic number is 600 calories in a 24oz bottle (that is a LOT of sugar).  For me this should get my by for about three hours.  I'll carry one in my middle jersey pocket to drink off of while riding and a second one in a bottle cage attached to the bottom of my downtube.  In practice last weekend this is enough nutrition to easily get me through a 6 hour ride.  The 2.5L bladder (which will just have plain water in it) is the equivalent of about 3.5 bottles so I will need to top that guy off about every 3 hours or so.  I put a Sawyer Mini inline so I can fill the bladder from ditch water if needed.

So that is it.  Me and a bike for a weekend of adventure.  I am very excited that Wendi and a few other friends will be coming up to the Nox on Saturday morning to ride the trails but I have kindly asked my beautiful wife to not bring me anything in the spirit of staying self supported.  I'll write a post-ride report on my flight to SFO Sunday afternoon.

Ride on!

Flashbacks.......2014 XC was a bust

So I suppose the first place to pick this back up is a little bit of reflection on the 2014 season which I had primarily focused on CAT2 XC success.  The year started really well with some very fun and challenging races like Southern Cross and Tuff Guy which helped me gauge my early season fitness.  These were some of the longest events I had done to date and I was really intrigued by that amount of time in the saddle.  First XC race in Meridian I placed second in C2 30-39 riding a singlespeed since it was a bit muddy.  A few weeks later Wendi and I went to a skills clinic in Birmingham where I bruised some ribs pretty bad on the last day which caused me to bail out on the Ouachita Challenge and instead focus on moving from Baton Rouge to Jackson.

Shut up knee!

Got back on program within about a week, raced the Mt Zion XC race in Brookhaven placing 4th.  Also did my first road century which was a pretty good time with a nice group of guys.  Shortly after this I started developing some pretty intense knee pains.  I went to an ortho doctor and turns out it was a pretty generic (and common to cycling) patellofemoral pain issue.  Root cause was tight hamstrings and some imbalances in quad muscle groups causing some patella tracking issues.  Recommendations were to do more stretching and work on developing my VMO (teardrop shape muscle on the inside of the quad).  I built up a routine of foam rolling, stretching and strengthening that I started doing at least once a day to try and get over this hurdle.

I win!

Towards the end of May I raced Biloxi and the problem knee was in pretty pretty bad shape the entire day but I powered through it.  I took about a week off the bike focusing on stretching and strengthening.  Getting into the summer I started riding completely off plan and just focused on having fun, riding smart and stretching.  Wendi and I did a good bit of travelling and had the opportunity to ride in Marquette, MI on the NTN trails while up there for my cousin's wedding as well as travel to Utah and ride Gooseberry Mesa (proposed on a awesome overlook) and some awesome downhill trails at Brianhead Resort.

After getting back from the west I raced the School of Hard Nox 50 miler in Ackerman, MS for the second year in a row.  This year it was an absolute mud fest but I really enjoyed it.  This race really started to solidify for me that I enjoyed longer distance races rather than XC sprints.  The rest of the fall was mostly consumed with building up a new CX/gravel bike (more on that in another episode) and racing CX races.

Revolution CX

Through October and November I really started to think about what I wanted to do in 2015.  I had decided that the cross-country format wasn't really where I was the happiest on the bike.  Races were usually extremely high intensity for a short period of time.  There was also the factor of what I call race ROI.  I am going to drive 4 hours round trip to race for an 1.5 hours.....hardly seems worth it to me.  The other aspect of longer races that really appeals to me are the logistics involved.....from more intense training plans to nutrition to strategy.  This is what I really like about longer format races.  In the XC distance you really don't have to factor much in the way of logistics other than training and hydration.

One slow afternoon in November I started piecing together a schedule that would give me good exposure in a couple of different varieties of longer format racing which looked like this:

• Southern Cross - Feb 21
• Rouge Roubaix - March 15
• Cohutta 100 - April 25
• Dirty Kanza - May 30
• Trans North Georgia - August 22

Some of these are big races so I knew I had to put a big commitment behind it.  So after talking to my wife and getting her full support I started looking for a coach to help me put a plan behind all of this.  I had used an Edsall plan through TrainingPeaks before so I was good with the software side.  What I really wanted was a coach that had a good amount of endurance racing experience.  I have been a pretty steady listener of Mountain Bike Radio for a number of years and came across a podcast of theirs called "The LW Coaching Show" which was hosted by Lynda Wallenfels.  I listened to all of her episodes including a series that dissected different types of intervals and thought she would be perfect for me.  I emailed her asking for her help and attached my race schedule.  She got back to me the next day with a stacked plan aligned to each of my races and optimized so I would peak for my 'A' races (Cohutta & Kanza).

I would later squeeze in a few other races (Skyway Epic, 12 hours of Iron Maiden & RPI) but this was the core of my schedule for 2015.

Incredible wedding night

The rest of 2014 consisted of base building and wedding planning.  Wendi and I were married on New Years Eve in Kansas City.  A couple of weeks later we went to Argentina for our honeymoon where we did a 6 day biking tour and eating contest.  I'll have to write that one up later.  Somewhere in there I also had the opportunity to travel to Bangkok.....awesome trip!

Anywho.....that is a brief recap of my 2014.  I will probably have a few more of these "flashback" blog entries to significant things that happened in 2014 and the 2015 schedule to date while I write about current things happening with learning how to bikepack.

Knocking the cobwebs off of this thing.....

I have been doing some longer rides lately which has given me a lot of time inside of my own head.  I'd really like to share some of my experiences over this past year and this is probably the best medium.  Since my last post well over a year ago many things have transpired.....

• Busted 2014 XC season due to overuse and injury which caused me to think really hard about the kind of riding I actually enjoy
• Learning how to climb - Santa Fe & Bay Area
• Engaged at Gooseberry last August
• Built a sweet carbon CX/gravel bike and quickly broke it
  
• Raced some fun CX in MS & AL
• Charted a course for 2015 to include a wide variety of racing
• Working with a coach and sticking to a plan
• Wendi and I married on New Years Eve
• January Patagonia biking honeymoon
• Lots of hard/smart training through the winter
• First road race and DNF
• First 12 hour race
• First NUE race which was totally rad
• Skyway awesomeness
• High on gravel (and mud)
• Learning how to live on a bike
• Planning 2016 and beyond

That's a lot of stuff.  My plan is to turn some of those bullets into posts.  For the next month my singular biking focus is training smart and kicking ass at TNGA.