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The weather ended up turning out alright and we had a great weekend of riding (w/ climbing) and team building.

Day 1. After driving up over from Memphis in cold conditions, we are started our ride at mid-day from the top of Mt. Magazine @ the lodge. Our plan was to do the Tour of Arkansas race course from last year which is pretty much drop down the shallow side of the mountain (northern) and ride the undulating terrain around to the southern approach via Havana.

The ride went well… the southern part of the loop featured a nice tailwind where we tore up the miles at 30 mph with minimal effort. For the climb we all did our own thing (own pace)… I was pretty happy with my climb for the most part, but not very pleased with my drop off in watts near the top. I really shouldn’t expect much since it is still early in the off-season (on my cyclocross modified off-season).

At the top we grouped up and checked in our rooms or the cabin. Andrea and I stayed in the cabin which featured great valley views, a hot tub on the deck (with said views), and lots of space. After dinner, the 7 of us in the cabin plus several from the lodge had a good low-key party (we did have to climb the next day after all).

Day 2. Our original plan was to drive the 1+ hour to Petit Jean and do a loop. This wasted time driving both ways plus the mind-numbing boredom of the valley roads west of the park made us reconsider. After some discussions, we decided to get creative and plan another loop off the top of the mountain this time dropping down towards Havana first, then circling around on the eastern side of the mountain to the northern approach. We thought it might involve some farm roads or some gravel roads… we weren’t sure. I plotted a course on mapmyride and then pushed it in my Garmin 705 (which proved to be a good thing). (I had tried to use bikeroutetoaster.com, but it kept having issues, so I had to give up on this and its automatic turn alerts.)

We started off tearing down the hill, but taking the hairpins very cautiously due to the large amount of sand in the corners. Once we got down to Havana, the pavement ran out pretty quickly…maybe about 1/4 mile out of town. We decided to go with it. About 1 mile in we had a double flat (two people had flats at the same time). Tim’s was bad and it cut his sidewall…he ended up turning back and doing the Havana side climb along with Steve rather than risk it on the gravel roads. So were then six. We made some good progress but kept getting stopped by flats… by the 12th mile or so, we were running critically low on CO2 carts and somewhat on tubes after 5 flats (3 for Jarret, 1 for Todd, maybe 1 for Susan). In the end, we made it back to tarmac after about 15 miles on gravel roads loaded with irregular sharp rocks on hardpack. Along the way we crossed at least 5 streams and went over 3 significant hills. All in all it was pretty epic and pretty cool at the same time. There was not a lot of buildings out in this country, but the ones that we did see were interesting as you would expect to find when 5 miles or more from paved roads.

Now it is back to reality. But not for long…Andrea and I are headed to Chattanooga Friday afternoon to race Southern Cross on Saturday in North Georgia and then she how much legs are left for the 2nd Chattanooga CX race on Sunday. It would have nice to have my new Ridley out on those gravel roads today…although I don’t know I would have dropped off Mt. Magazine as fast on those knobbies.