Lake Norman Training Ride

For a while yesterday, this cool cat looked like the only other cyclist Wes and I would see on this weekend's 140-mile Lake Norman training ride. Eventually, we saw two riders heading in the other direction. I didn’t get their pictures, so the cat gets top billing.

The route we took tracks east-west from Chapel Hill to Cornelius. We passed through several familiar towns, including Saxapahaw (this shot shows an old mill, now converted to condos, on the banks of the Haw River) and Liberty, the town where our flèche team narrowly avoided failure.

The route is not too hilly. Before the battery died on my GPS (116 miles), I recorded 5,700 feet of climbing. Most roads are rural, but the run through Randleman is busy, as is a nine-mile stretch on Bringle Ferry, near High Rock lake.

Here’s a photo of the dam.


I also burned 7700 calories during that period, but I more than replaced them with this heaping plate of food at a breakfast/lunch stop in Denton. Wes ordered a burger and about five pounds of curly fries.



One surprise: we hit a bridge out at about mile 30. The DOT had “Detour Road Closed” signs up, but we decided to risk it. This was one of those instances when the road truly was out of commission. Rather than backtrack, we waded through a couple hundred yards of muck and forged a creek with bikes on our shoulders. It took about 10 minutes to clear cement-like clay from our cleats.



The Rest Stop of the Day popped up at mile 120, around 2:30 p.m. After being baked for miles by a merciless sun, we were both parched and nearly out of water. We hadn’t expected to see another store, but came across Atwell’s One Stop.



Check out this great sign (right) on the front door. Don’t see that much anymore.

Inside, Butch entertained us while we polished off icy bottles of K&W root beer and North Carolina’s own Cheerwine. Butch’s store is one of the cleanest I’ve ever been in, and Butch was rightfully proud of it. “The floor gets mopped every evening,” Butch said. “Sometimes it gets mopped twice a day.”

We rolled through Davidson around 3:40 and by 4:15 had our feet up, eating Chex Mix, at the Lake Norman condo of Wes’ in-laws.

We topped that off with an exceptional Indian meal and an evening of engaging conversation at the in-laws’ other home. Among the topics that came up for discussion: ice fishing on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The ride put me over my stated goal of getting in about 200 training miles each week.

As I said, we saw two other riders on our route, but at least two of our rando crew were out on the permanent courses:

* Bob from Virginia beach signed up for the Lake Loop, which circles Kerr/Buggs Island Lake.

* Paul from Charlotte was scheduled to do the inaugural ride of the Siler City Express.

Any ride reports, guys?

I need to give props to Dean, who teaches physiology here in Raleigh. I told him my heart rate was often elevated, probably from dehydration, at the end of these long rides. His advice: take in more electrolytes. I’m garbling what he told me, but the gist is that the salt draws water back into the blood, increasing its volume and making it easier on the old ticker.

So, I took one e-cap early in the ride, and one after lunch. Not sure if there’s a cause and effect here, but my heart rate averaged 140 beats per minute, or about 4 beats slower than normal. However, we didn’t push too hard yesterday, as Wes was making the return trip. (I had to bail to care of some freelance work, but JoeRay joined Wes for today’s eastbound leg.) So time will tell...