Friday Hell of High Country - Boone Roubaix Pre-ride

Today Reid, Matt, and I drove down to Boone, N.C. early to pre-ride Saturdays Hell of the High Country - Boone Roubaix course. We arrived in Boone around noon and made an essential stop first, at Stick Boy Bread Company of course and picked up my racing fuel, 4 cookies and a tomato-basil foccaia.

Stick Boy - Gotta have the Magic cookies!

Inside of Stick Boys.

Afterwards we made a necessary stop at Boone Bike where I had my bottom bracket looked at after realizing my cranks were loose when putting my bike on the rack this morning.

We made the drive out to the course and parked at river company and went and rode the first section of gravel. The section of gravel on the smaller loop is only around 1k or less and has a small left hand turn in it. The first climb on the big loop begins with a gravel section on Carter Miller Rd that will certainly splinter the field early in the race. After the lower section of the 1st climb there's another 2 miles or so of steady climb on 194 before a nice long sweeping decent.

A nice long downhill back to the car and threw the bikes on top to drive to the next section of gravel. The only way to describe Big Falls Church Rd. is Brutal, large gravel with crazy high grades is going to make the fields wonder why they ride bikes and a false peak teases riders with a technical decent before another steep gravel climb.

The Garmin Connect made a few updates Wednesday that allow activities to be embedded in blogs pretty awesome check it out:

PowerData from todays pre-ride.

Of course we worked up an appetite during the ride and had to fill our hunger with some amazing burritos from Black Cat.

Black Cat in DT Boone.

Tomorrow is going to be insane, I'm amped for the race but need a good night of sleep, so more tomorrow!