A Weekend Away: Asheville, NC

I'm a little behind on my 2015 recap & 2016 plans but Amanda and I decided to get an early jump on our adventures with a trip to Asheville, N.C. last weekend. That's the freshest thing in my mind so here we go.

I've wanted to check out Asheville for a while now but for one reason or another had never made the journey up there. With the cyclocross national championships at the Biltmore Estate, it seemed like a perfect time make the trip. It ended up being a little closer than I thought it was going to be, just under three hours. Amanda and I jumped in the car early on Saturday morning and drove up through north Georgia into North Carolina and then east to Asheville. We drove over Tallulah Gorge in some crazy fog (probably should have taken a picture) which was super creepy early in the morning. That was my favorite part of the drive. Amanda's was the fact that each tiny town we drove through had it's one unique, and ridiculously named, Mexican restaurant.

Our first stop was downtown. We actually made pretty quick work of the downtown area. We walked around and checked out all the small shops. It was impressive to see how invested in local businesses and arts the city was. I think we saw three different independent book stores, which was definitely different since we live in the definition of suburban sprawl.

After walking around for a bit and grabbing lunch we headed to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We took a short drive on the parkway and stopped by the Visitor Center to check out the Mountains to Sea Trail. The Visitor Center really cool. It had an interactive map of the entire 469-mile roadway and a bunch of other informational stuff. It seems like it would be an interesting drive, especially during the fall when all the leaves change. The Mountains to Sea Trail runs right past the visitor center and features a short loop trail. The weather was pretty nice so we decided to check it out. The trail was about a mile and a half with a mile of it traveling on the Mountains to Sea trail.

After checking out the visitor center and the trails we headed over to the Highland brewery try a few adult beverages. Breweries are what Asheville is really known for and Highland seemed to be the most popular. We ended up spending a couple hours there and tried a couple different brews. We had a few other breweries circled on the map, but we ended up deciding to save those for another day. Amanda settled on the Leggo my Lager, one of their seasonal/specialty brews. I enjoyed the Highland IPA and the Gaelic Ale. One of the best parts about the Highland brewery, and this is super dorky but fitting for this blog, was that they had a running shirt in their shop. It said 'Run Your Ale Off' which is silly but it had the Highland logo on the back so I pulled the trigger.

Because we are 100 years old we headed to the hotel and ended up getting take out and watching football. We're not really about that nightlife, life. The positive side of not doing much at night was that I got up early to get a run in before we went to the Biltmore. I scoped out a few spots to run and ended up settling on the Bent Creek Experimental Forest. The forest is part of Pisgah National Forest and features a seemingly endless maze of trails and gravel roads. I didn't have a ton of time, I figured I would give myself an hour to explore some trails but I wanted to make sure I didn't get lost and didn't leave Amanda stranded at the hotel by herself without coffee for too long.

It's hard to see all the trails, but I promise there were a ton. I parked at the Hardtimes Trail head and started out linking a couple of the forest service roads until I came across a trail that looked interesting and dipped into the woods. I linked together a few different trails and ended up popping out at the Lake Powhatan Recreational area, which is link a state park. From there I kept exploring the rolling hills. I ran across a local Sunday morning trail running group a few times. This is kind of funny because I was just running out and back but they kept popping up in different places because of the number of trail crossings. It was probably a good idea to try and limit the number of trails I used. It would have been easy to get turned around without a map.

My favorite parts of the run were the rhododendron tunnels. I ran through two or three sections where they bent over the trail and completely closed it in. Despite the fact that I forgot my Nathan pack, I decided to just suck it up and carry my phone and I am glad that I did. I got a couple of really cool pictures of the tunnels.

I ended up running 3.5 miles out, mainly on the Homestead trail, Pine Tree Loop, and Deerfield Loop, then headed back to the car. When I got back to the car, the lot had filled up with runners, bikers, and hikers. I talked to one guy that was heading out for a hike and he gave me a couple of pointers that I filed away for next time. He told me he was heading out on a seven or eight mile loop that climbs up Grassy Knob, a 3000+ foot mountain on the southeastern edge of the park. He also told me about a race called the Shut In Ridge run that follows the Shut In trail 18 miles up to Mount Pisgah. It sounded like a cool race, but that's a long way and it takes place in November, so probably not a realistic one for me. Still thought, it sounds like a badass race. Apparently it's called the Shut In trail or Shut In Ridge because of the rhododendron tunnels, so the scenery is probably pretty cool.

After finishing up my run, I drove back to the hotel to shower and gather up all of our stuff for the day. It turned out to be a little bit of a nicer day than we anticipated, so we headed back to downtown Asheville to get coffee and breakfast. Amanda has officially turned me into a coffee guy. I still prefer a good cup of tea, but I'm all about finding cool coffee shops now too. I feel a little bit like an impressionable youth. Coffee just seems so cool! I want in! Anyway, we went to High Five coffee, which is (according to Gear Patrol) one of the best coffee shops in America. It was expensive as balls. That's all I really got out of it. The coffee I had was solid, but for my money I'll take Mean Mug in Chattanooga or Jittery Joe's in Athens over them any day (or the Honey Dew on 114 in Danvers back home).

After grabbing a coffee we decided to try and find something to eat. That's when we ran across a true gem, Vortex Doughnuts (I still always spell it Donut on the first go around). This place was fantastic. I wanted to eat one of everything. Amanda and I both went with cinnamon & sugar with nutella dark chocolate. Amazing. One of the best doughnuts I've ever had and I am a man who loves a good doughnut. I need to sample more at a place like this, but I'm taking a page out of Phil Gaimon's book and starting to cook up a top 5 doughnuts list.

I'm a traditionalist, so you can keep your cronuts and reeses peanut butter filled diabetes bombs. Without putting them in any order (that comes later) I would say my top doughnuts would be the Maple Bar (TopPot - Seattle, Wash.), Maple Vanilla swirl (Dutch Monkey Donuts - Cumming, Ga.), Sugar Raised (Downy Flake - Nantucket, Mass.), Carmel Apple Fritter/Red Velvet (Sublime Doughnuts - Atlanta, Ga.), Honey Dew (Honey Dew Donuts), Chocolate Glazed (Dunkin Donuts), and the Cinnamon & Sugar Nutella swirl above (Vortex Doughnuts - Asheville, NC. I have some work to do, but that's a start.

To work off a little bit of the sugar high, we walked around downtown a little more an stumbled on Diamond Brand Outdoors which was a cool little outdoor outfitter store. We always love checking places like that out. I'm a sucker for a sticker to throw on my water bottle or something like that and those places always seem to be the best place for that. They had a sweet pair of mitten/gloves that I really wanted but they didn't have them in men's...bummer. After checking out Diamond Brand we made our way to the Biltmore to catch the women's and men's elite CX races.

The Biltmore area was really cool. Clearly they had a historic ordnance in play because all the buildings in the area were built with Victorian looking decor. We grabbed our wristbands for the race and scoped out the area before heading into the Biltmore Estate. The wristbands were a really creative touch. They served as your ticket and I was expecting something like you'd get a club for a concert, or what you get at a stadium when they are checking your bag. You know, the paper strip with adhesive that sticks to your skin and tears your flesh off then you try to take it off. Instead, they gave us rubber wristbands that said Asheville CX 2016 on them (like a livestrong bracelet). I'm a yokel, so I thought that was awesome. Made the admission fee feel a little better since you got a souvenir with it.

We drove onto the Estate and were in awe of how big it was. After making our way to one of the many, many parking lots, we jumped on a shuttle bus that took us to Antler Hill Village where the race course was. Two things about how big the Biltmore is, one - we never actually saw the house - and two - Antler Hill Village was three miles from the front gate. That place is absolutely massive. We bundled up once we got off the bus because the temperature was rapidly dropping. That changed our plans from checking out the course to making a bee line for the food tent. Chili & pizza rolls where huge. We filled up and more importantly warmed up, then made our way to the course to watch the women's race. We wanted to check out the VW tent and sponsor expo but ended up skipping it in favor of watching the race. The expo area had died down a little bit by the start of the race anyway.  

The women's race was a fun one to watch. We got to see Katie F'n Compton win something like her 12 straight national title. She was chased the whole way by Georgia Gould and Kaitlin Antonneau, but it was all Compton. We walked around the course trying to find a good spot. We checked out the barriers and the barn then settled on heckle hill, a viciously steep climb that pretty much had to be run up. It was a good spot because people weren't flying by. I was determined to find a perfect spot for the men's race so with a couple laps to go we started to move again, making our way back towards the finish. Out of nowhere I hear people yelling 'Hey stop!'. After a few shouts I realize that Amanda has stopped, so I look back at her then over at the people that are yelling. To my surprise, I see Ted King trying to find a trail through the woods to come over to where we are.

"Is that an Untapped Maple hat?"
"Yes. Yes it is."
"Did you buy it on the internet?"
"Yes. Yes I did."
"Well, I'm Ted King!"

I forget the rest of the exchange because I was trying not to "fanboy" and embarrass Amanda. Ted was super cool. He was really stoked to see someone wearing the hat so he gave me an Untapped Waffle and we took the picture above. He ended up posting it on the Untapped Instagram and on his blog IAmTedKing. I am definitely killing it at the pro cycling events. At road nationals we got to hangout with Tim Johnson and ride the GRC Beetle and at CX nationals we met Ted King.

After spending a couple minutes with my new best friend we ended up finding a great spot for the men's race. We were right next to the giant flyover and were in position to see the race come by four times each lap. The main event definitely lived up to the billing. After some early fireworks, Jeremy Powers took over at the front and it morphed into a three-man race between him, Stephen Hyde, and Logan Owen. A couple laps in Owen hit out with a big attack but Powers and Hyde pulled him back in and from there the trio battled back and forth until Powers finally broke free with two (maybe three) laps to go. He was relentless. It was really impressive to see him power away and see just how fast these guys go.

We ended up moving around a little after about 30 minutes because it was getting cold. It actually started snowing (flurries but still). We moved to a spot were we could see the finishing straight, a wicked off-camber corner and then where the riders came out of my favorite feature, the barn.

While the heavy hitters up front were the main attraction, the race for the rest of the podium was exciting too. It was cool to see a bunch of the guys I'd see on Behind the Barriers racing up close. It was really cool to see Anthony Clark out there too. He's an interesting dude, definitely an inspirational story and someone who shows that you can do some pretty incredible stuff. I was really happy to hear that he got selected for the Worlds team. For more on this dude check out this video.

Sorry for the detour. Once the race hit the final lap we made our way to the finish in time to see Jeremy Powers seal his fourth national title. We stuck around to see the top three finish then made our way to the bus. This was a great plan. We got to the car and made our way out of the estate fairly quickly then jumped on the highway and headed back to Georgia. Our original plan was to stop in Greenville and grab dinner but we made pretty good time getting out of Asheville, so we drove straight back to the house and settled on pizza and beers at home.

Asheville turned out to be a great trip and a city I'd like to head back to sometime. I think overall I prefer Chattanooga but I'd like to do a little more exploring in Asheville, and hit a few more breweries. I've been pretty enthralled with the idea of microadventures lately and this was a great way to kick off the 2016 slate of them.

CX Nats

The Cyclocross National Championships where held in Asheville, NC this year, so Amanda and I jumped in the car and made the three hour drive up through the mountains to check it out. I'll have a longer post about the overall weekend, what doughnuts I ate, where I ran, etc...

For now, here's a quick video from the elite men's race. Jeremy Powers, Stephen Hyde, and Logan Owen battled for most of the race before Powers dropped the hammer with three laps to go. He was super impressive to watch in person. I was really impressed with Hyde's performance as well. He went down at least twice and kept fighting to finish second. Oh also, I was rocking my Untapped Maple hat and Ted King called me out then came rambling through the woods to take a picture. It was awesome!

Matt Tries CX, Suffering Ensues

Over the last year or so I’ve started to become a big fan of cyclocross. I’ve always been a casual cycling fan, I watch the tour every year and now that NBC Sports shows the Tour of California and the USA Pro Challenge I’ve found myself glued to the TV during those weeks too. My recent enjoyment of cyclocross though comes from somehow randomly stumbling upon Behind the Barriers one day. I can’t even remember what I was doing, looking for Olympic mountain biking videos last summer maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve always thought it would be interesting to look into since it’s hugely popular in New England, a few friends of mine have started racing it, and I’m from the same hometown as multi-time US National Champion Tim Johnson.

 

Powering out of a corner

 

I’ve always been aware of it, but finding that random episode of Behind the Barriers led me to start following it weekly, thanks to the awesome coverage of the sport by BTB and now BTBtv. After I got my mountain bike, I remembered seeing a story about how a lot of beginners will ride mountain bikes in cross races to get started. Since I apparently have this thing where I have to try every sport that has cross in it…cross country, check…cross country skiing, check…skier cross, check…that board game cross fire, check. That really only leaves motocross and cyclocross on my list of cross sports to try. Once the CX (yeah I’m shortening it now cause I’m a CX racer) season started up I figured I would see if Georgia had a series or at least a handful of races.

 

As it turns out, Georgia has one of the bigger CX series in the southeast…score! Unfortunately, the cross season falls during my busiest time of the year during the football season and nearly all the races are on Sundays. That doesn’t work when I spend my whole Sunday at the Georgia Dome or some other NFL stadium. It also doesn’t help that it falls during my XTERRA trail racing season. Those things made it really tough to find a weekend that I could actually race. Originally, I had planned on racing during our bye week, but I ran an 8 mile trail race on Saturday and didn’t want to ride my first CX race on thrashed legs.

 

I scanned the Georgia CX calendar again and low and behold, Dingo Cross, a CX race on a Saturday a short ride up the highway from my apartment. Jackpot! I was even able to get Amanda to tag along, it was at Jeep dealership so she could window shop and I promised a trip to the outlets after.

 

The night before the race I was super nervous. The only bike race I’ve ever done was the bike leg of the one and only triathlon I’ve ever done and it’s been my experience when mountain biking that I’m not that good at it. I’ve got a good aerobic base, but the whole bike handling and power and jumping over barriers deal…I was concerned to say the least. I ended up spending an hour at the softball field across from my office practicing my dismounts, barriers, and remounts on a make shift course complete with trash can barriers. When I got home that night I laid out my kit, a new 2013 Rise Up Falcons jersey, ¾ undershirt, and bib shorts and my new helmet from Rudy Project that I won from XTERRA. At worst I was going to look like I knew what I was doing.

 

Amanda and I drove up to Baldwin, Georgia, a short trip up 985 and pulled into the Hayes Chrysler, Jeep, Chevrolet dealer about an hour and half before the CX5 beginners race started. I made my way to the registration table, got my number then headed back to the car to start getting everything squared away for the race. I got my Specialized Hardrock Disc 29er ready to go and set out for two laps on the course to see what I was in for.

 

The race started on a paved section behind the dealership, I think the story goes one of the employees is a CX racer and convinced the dealership people to hold a race in the big grass field behind their business. I’m glad they did. Anyway…the course started out on the pavement then quickly hit the grass for a twisty, up and down adventure. My original plan was to run for my warm up but after two laps on the course I felt pretty good and decided to just keep riding around a little bit to stay loose.

 

After warming up and changing into my racing kit, I made my way down to the starting area. When they called the Cat 5 racers to the starting line I was a little surprised to see that everyone had a CX bike. I thought being the beginner category there would be at least a couple people like me trying it out for the first time on mountain bikes but that wasn’t the case. A few of the guys said they wished they brought their mountain bikes because of the course, which I was not a fan of. Mentally, I was trying to use the fact that everyone had CX bikes and I was on a heavy ass mountain bike as motivation to carry me through this 30 minute sufferfest I was about to embark on. I still did that.

 

At the gun I got clipped in right away, but got my doors blown in on the pavement. I hit the grass in DFL, but made one pass as we made the first sweeping left hand turn. After a short, bumpy straight section we hit a short steep climb, I jumped out of the saddle and stomped on my pedals to catch the wheel of a pair of riders ahead of me. At the top of the climb we made a hairpin turn, dropped back down a short steep descent into an off-camber left hand turn then back up another short climb. We crested the climb then hit a section of switchback turns that led into the sketchiest part of the course (for me at least) coming out of the third switch back was a barrier. I had not prepared for this rouge barrier. I prepared myself for the seemingly standard set of two barriers, a run up and possibly stairs, but not this 180 degree turn with a barrier thrown in.

 

Fortunately I was able to practice it a couple times and I made sure to try it once at what I figured full speed would be. I powered out of the second turn and came into the barrier turn with a full head of steam. This was one of the many ‘moments of truth, for me in this race. My dismounting practice worked out well, because I successfully unclipped, dug into the turn, hopped over the barrier then ran past one of the guys I was trailing and leapt back onto my bike. It took me a few extra seconds to clip back into my pedals, but I was able to catch the wheel of the rider ahead of me and follow him into the next section of the course. My heart was pounding, partially from the hard early effort and part from surviving my first dismount/remount. Honestly, I’ve been working on the remount part of it for a while. I successfully used a cross style remount in the Tri I did over the summer and even though I’m sure I looked like an idiot, knowing that I’d done it in a race before made me confident I could do it without falling on my face every time.

 

After the trial of the hairpin barrier I latched onto the rider ahead of me and followed him through what turned out to be the toughest part of the course for me. We followed up a nice smooth straight-a-way with another off-camber downhill turn, fortunately everyone warming up on the course had carved out a good line because I would have royally effed this up otherwise. Following the quick decent it was back up a short climb and into a section of super insanely tight corners. The first couple laps I had to use the outrigger to get me around a couple of them, I think the 29 inch wheels made it a little tougher to take some of the tight turns, but I was able to power out of most of the corners pretty well.

 

We made our way out of the twisty section and I was able to stay right on the heels of the two riders ahead of me. We passed the pit area and turned left into a long straight away that led into one of the cooler parts of the course, the corkscrew. The course corkscrewed in on itself then we spiraled back out. It took a couple laps to figure out how to ride it but once I got the hang of leaning into the constant turn I thought I rode it pretty well. Coming out of the corkscrew we zipped through a couple quick turns, which was one of the few parts of the course where I felt like I was riding fast. Another 90 degree turn led into the section I’d been waiting for/dreading…the barriers. I moved toward the outside tape to give myself some space (definitely a move from my steeplechase days) and dismounted a little earlier than the two guys in front of me. I lifted the bike and hopped the two barriers and made another pass before remounting my bike and pedaling hard to catch the next rider’s wheel.

 

I thought I handled the mounting and dismounting fairly well, but I’m sure it didn’t look very impressive. I got a few pro tips from my friend Weston after the race via email that I am looking forward to trying out next time.

 

Once I made my third pass of the race I started to feel more confident. I definitely felt like my fitness was better than some of the guys I was riding with and after nearly a full lap at race speed I felt like my bike handling wasn’t going to cost me a too much. I wasn’t going to win, or even come close to podium but I knew I could at least race the guys around me.

 

Coming out of the barriers I fought to stay in the middle of our three man group despite taking a horrible line through the next section. It took until I watched the third race before I noticed what line I should have taken. The final stretch of the lap was tailor made for mountain bikes (minus the run-up), steep downhill, then a short climb into a rutty downhill. I cut inside along the tape on the second downhill and took a more aggressive line to make the pass into the lead of our three man group. I don’t know if this was a good idea, but I didn’t like being stuck behind people so I went for it.

 

At the base of the hill we had to dismount, 180 degree turn then run up the run up. This took some getting use to, but it ended up being a strong point for me. I ended up opening up a little bit of a gap on the two guys behind me despite the next part of the course being the starting paved straight away.

After coming through the finish and starting my second lap I saw two other guys that I thought I could catch so I started grinding to try and catch them as soon as I could. I caught up going into the hairpin barrier and stayed on their wheel for another half a lap before passing and riding into no man’s land. I was way behind the four leaders, but I kept pushing were ever I could and ended up opening a huge gap on the guys behind me.

 

I felt like I was riding pretty well for most of the race. I definitely lack some important bike handling skills, but I think I did a solid job on my first attempt. I ended up finishing fifth and most importantly I didn’t eat it at any point. I had a couple close calls, I bounced a back tire off one of the barriers, and slipped a couple times on the run up, but nothing too crazy.

 

Here's the Strava info:

 

 

A couple things I learned, which were later confirmed by my good buddy Weston Forsblad…the start matters, like a lot. It was tough being so far behind and having to work to get around slower riders, but at the same time I don’t really know what I’m doing. Also, I need to be gentler when putting my bike down before remounts. On the hairpin barrier turn, twice I nearly dropped my chain from dropping the bike violently. I think this is probably partially due to the weight of my mountain bike, but something I’ll keep in mind. Fortunately, I only dropped the chain from the second rig down to the granny gears and after doing it twice I just shifted before the barriers to prepare myself.

 

All in all it was a fun experience and I’m glad I tried it. I’m no Tim Johnson, but it’s definitely something that I enjoyed and I will probably take a couple more stabs at it. It was nice to do a race for fun and not worry about time or pace. I just went out and raced with no expectations and that was nice.