Our "MINI" YOLOMITES Ride

On June 15th I received a group the weekly email from Jeff M., which highlighted the weekly/weekend rides and past events in and around Greenville. The email was promoting an upcoming ride called the Yolomites (which combines YOLO - you only live once and DOLOMITES - cycling heaven in Italy).

Last year I heard about this local curated event and ever since, it had been on my mind. I love doing physical feats for the first time and I have never ridden over 115 miles. The Yolomites ride is as follows (starting from Lex Mullinex Park)

First Loop: Watershed, Mine Mtn, Skyuka, White Oak, Hogback, Grade, Green River Switchbacks, down watershed to car. 77 miles, ~10,000ft of climbing.
Second Loop: Watershed, Olivet, down Olivet, down Watershed back to car. 26.5 miles, ~2600ft of climbing.
Third and fourth Loop: Cliffs - Mountain Summit to the very top, North side of Panther, back down Panther, Down Mountain Summit, back to car. 25 miles, ~3800ft of climbing
Total: 130 miles, 16,234 ft of climbing.

The funny thing is that this ride doesn't even include all of our "famous" climbs that we have in and around the area!

Karel and I love cycling adventures, especially around Greenville. There are so many hard, challenging, beautiful, scenic climbs where we live and the roads are very bike friendly. Anytime we are in need of an adventure, we can simply bike from our driveway and head to the mountains. We have put together several rides where we map out a route and try to conquer our idea. Often times, we finish the ride saying "that seemed like a good idea at the time." 😁

I thought it was crazy to ride 130 miles and 16,000 feet elevation gain on some of our most challenging climbs outside of Greenville but I was just crazy enough to come up with my own version - calling it the "mini" Yolomites. I mapped the route, invited a few friends and talked Karel into my crazy adventure. Here's the route.

With the route loaded in our computers and bottles filled, Alvi, Kenny, Karel and I started from our house around 8:30am and finished the ride around 4pm, with right around 7 hours of riding time. It was great to have the company and a lot of laughs were shared along the way.

As for the ride, I was surprised how quickly the day went by. It was hot and very windy. Because I kept my computer on the map setting, I never knew the time of the day, how far we had ridden or how much we had left to ride (that is until Alvi would remind me that we still had x-number of miles or feet of climbing left ;)

Karel was feeling empty from the first pedal stroke but he was able to finish off strong (must have been the ice cream from our one stop in the town of Saluda).

We kept the effort pretty chill throughout the ride as it was a long day in the saddle. Karel and I wore our hydration packs that we use for mountain biking/gravel riding (Karel wears USWE and I have a CamelBak). Having our hydration packs was a game changer as we had plenty of fluids and calories so we never had to ration on drinks to rely on a store stop. Alvi and Kenny brought an extra bottle but I'd say that we were probably a bit better hydrated thanks to our packs. It was also nice to be able to keep one frame bottle of water to use for cooling as it got into the 90's during our ride.

I started with two bottles of Skratch Superfuel (400 calories per 26-ounce bottle) and then 4 scoops INFINIT (custom formula) in my 50-ounce hydration pack. I brought along 2 baggies (each with 2 scoops INFINIT, ~240 calories total each bag) to refill my bottles along with a packet of FLUID (which I gave to Karel because he didn't have any more sport nutrition at our stop). I also had a Picky Bar and a few honey stinger chews. We refilled bottles at the top of Skyuka (3:20 into the ride) and again in Saluda (5:30 into the ride). At our store stop in Saluda (around 5:30 into the ride), I had 3/4 Mexican coke and a few bites/licks of Karel's Lemon Pie ice cream. I felt really good throughout the ride and I feel I paced myself really well on the climbs. I felt very confident on the descends and had a lot of fun flying down the climbs. My only low moment was on the watershed descend which came shortly after our store stop. That is pretty typical to feel a drop in blood sugar after a stop, especially when descending and not giving much effort. It actually felt good to push a bit up Callahan mountain - I instantly felt my energy levels go up and stayed strong until we got back home. Alvi got a flat from a nail in his tire a few miles from our house (6 miles away) but aside from a quick stop to regroup at the top of climbs, we had 36 minutes of "stopping" plus 7 minutes for Alvi to fix the hole in his tire.

It took us about 1-hour to get to our first official climb (out of six) of the ride.

Watershed climb - 8 miles
Mine Mountain - 5.4 miles (more descending than climbing)
Skyuka Mountain - 4.2 miles
Hogback Mountain - 3.8 miles
Saluda Grade - 6.6 miles
Callahan Mountain - 1.5 miles

If you'd like to learn more about some of our epic climbs in and around the area, you can check out this blog post that I wrote a few years back. It's crazy that we are still discovering new routes and new climbs. We had never been on Mine Mountain before (but have ridden by the road a million times) and it is now one of our favorites. The road condition was great and after a short climb, there was a very fast and fun descend to take us to the Saluda grade.

With 5 weeks until IM Lake Placid and 9 weeks until we start the 7-day Haute Route Alps, we are having a lot of fun with our training.

On top of Skyuka

And in case you were wondering, out of 30 starters for the Yolomites ride, 4 people completed the entire ride. The fastest was Jeff who finished in 8:55.36 and Kathleen finished in 9:24.22. Mark White, who painted the route, set up the coolers and made the signs, finished the ride at 2am. Talk about grit and determination!

Here are some pics from our adventure on two wheels....