Cochran Mill

Again... A ride at Cochran Mill isn't usually worth mentioning, but this past April, I had an eventful ride there.

It started out like any other, normal day.

The bike was looking good.

I was feeling just right.

The trail was as glorious as it gets.

Coming back in from the back loop of the Yellow Trail, I ran into Flynn and spun another loop with him, but then crossing back over the creek, we were going pretty fast, and a rock tipped up, and caught my back wheel super hard. I almost crashed, but somehow managed to save it, and I was like: "Wooohoo! Almost went down there!"

We laughed it off until we got back to the lot, and damn. Cracked rim.

I've broken three of these rims now. Twice just by catching a rock wrong, and once where a spoke pulled through. They're not the most durable rims in the world. The last time I broke one, I tried to repair it, and I still had all the stuff, so I tried to repair this one too. I had better success than the previous attempt, but failed in this attempt as well. The price just keeps going up on them too. They were $175 when I first bought them, and now they're $350. Cheap for carbon rims, but still!

I had a spare, so I got the wheel rebuilt in short order, but it was pretty frustrating. Crossing all my fingers for better luck in the future.

Rope Mill and Blankets Creek

Back in April, me and the boyz got together and rode Rope Mill and Blankets Creek. Good god, it was a pain train.

We started out at Rope and just hammered everything there. I felt pretty good, but not 100%, and though I had it, it was a struggle to keep a good pace.

There were almost no opportunities to take pics. Basically, only if we had to stop for some reason.

After shredding Rope, we took the back route over to Blankets, behind the water park, and, impressively, most of us made the kick up to the parking lot.

I was only able to get this pic by falling off the back for a sec.

I want to say that I cracked on the way back to the lot, stuggled all the way back to Rope, recovered on the final descent to the park, and just survived the climb back to the lot.

I need days like that though. More of those.

Cochran Mill

I ride (or more precisely, use to ride) at Cochran Mill so much, that a ride there it's not usually worth mentioning here, but back in April, I had a really good ride there, and I took some pictures, so I guess I'll mention it.

I guess there's not too much to say, really, except that it was a great day. Conditions were perfect:

I was feeling super strong and happy!

And it had rained recently enough that the creek was still raging, but not recently enough to make the trail wet.

It was a perfect day on the bike! I could really use more of those!

Cochran Shoals

Back in April, me and Heather hiked all over Cochran Shoals.

She runs and runs, but rarely hikes, so it was a rare treat to be in the woods with her.

We parked at the Cochran Shoals lot, followed the jogging trail for a while, then hung a left onto the hike-only trails south of the rest of the system. The trails run up and down along the ridges south of Gunby Creek, before eventually kind-of just following the creek back to the jogging trail.

It had been forever since I'd been out there, and the trails were a good bit steeper than I remembered, but not too difficult. We didn't exactly have a leisurely time, but we could talk the whole time.

Here's Gunby Creek itself:

And me, chilling at the creek.

When we got back to the jogging trail, we still had plenty of daylight, and plenty of energy, so we headed towards the main trail system. About halfway to it, I remembered that there are ruins up on the hill to the left that you can't really see in the summer, but are usually visible in winter. So, I kept an eye out for them, and yes! I could see them.

"Do you feel adventurous today?"

"Sure!"

After poking around a bit, we ended up finding a bit of a trail leading up to the ruins, so it wasn't total bushwhacking. But, it was definitely Adventure.

It turned out that the ruins were just behind someone's backyard. From the trail, I couldn't see that there was even a neighborhood there, but up on the hill, you're right there.

It looked like a popular spot!

After that, we still had energy and daylight, so we climbed up to the Cemetery...

...and took some fairly sketchy trails back down to the jogging trail.

By then, it was getting noticeably darker outside, so we started heading back to the car. I remember being chilly and having to crank the heat when we got going.

It's funny... As much as I've explored North Georgia, I've explored comparatively little of the Chattahoochee NRA, and Kennesaw Mountain, despite living right there for the past 10 years. I think I need to get out there more. Maybe I can convince Heather to explore with me.

Dalton Pinhoti

Taking another crack at the backlog. How did my life get so busy? It doesn't feel busy, but then I look up and days have gone by.

Back in, goodness..., March, I rode the Dalton Pinhoti with a really good crew - John, Mark, Marc, Erick, and, amazingly, Scott! Me and Scott have exchanged GPS data for years and years, infrequently run into each other at various events, but never actually ridden together. It was really great to finally get to ride with him.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The day started with eggs and a bagel at the house.

I don't remember how I ended up with wheat bagels. That's not something I'd generally have. I want to say that Indi left a bag of them at my place, somehow... Man, that was a long time ago.

At any rate... After perfect breakfast, I drove my ass up to Dalton and met all of the guys on the side of the road up there, as one generally does when riding the Pinhoti.

We got all dressed up, and struggled to cross the road. There's a big hill, and you have to either cross the road at the bottom of the hill, and ride the wrong way up the road to the trail, or pass the trail, climb to the top of the hill, and then come back. If you try to cross where the trail actually is, then you can get surprised by cars coming over the hill. Or, I guess, more precisely, you can surprise people who are coming over the hill. We ended up doing a mix of both, and then, of course, someone drove over the hill, got super confused, slammed on his brakes, and laid on the horn.

Woohoo! Confusion!

I remember feeling good at the beginning of the ride. The first kick up to the Pinhoti proper is usually tough, but I had an easy time of it.

Not as easy as Scott though!

That would be a trend, all day. I mostly felt pretty good, and could usually push the pace, but Scott was effortlessly faster. Man, he's just so strong!

Sadly, I don't remember too much about the ride, except that it was generally fun, we were moving pretty fast, didn't stop much, and I didn't have time to take many photos.

We did occasionally stop along the route, but very infrequently.

We did stop at Snake Creek Gap, which was the halfway point of our ride.

I made good use of the facilities there.

I want to say that I led the charge back to Dalton, and rode super well until Dug Gap Mountain, upon which I suddenly began cramping and despite having all the energy in the world, just could not keep moving. Pretty soon I was way off the back, and just suffered, alone, for the last 6 miles or so.

It might as well have been 50 miles for how bad it was.

I eventually managed to push through the cramps and felt ok when I got back to the car, but it was embarrassingly bad.

After the ride, we ate somewhere in Dalton. I wish I could remember where, because I remember it being a pretty nice place, with pretty good food. Might have just been Olive Garden or something though!

While sitting there, someone noticed blood on my arm.

I'd brushed it against a pine tree earlier and more or less forgotten about it, in my stupor.

I love riding with those guys, and getting to ride with Scott was a privilege.

Those were the days...

Atlanta Spartan 5K

On March 16th, me and Beatriz did the Atlanta Spartan 5K.

A little over a year earlier, I'd broken a bunch of ribs training for the same race. This year, I was uninjured, and more or less ready for it. I wasn't in as good a shape as I had been for the previous year's race in Nashville, but I was feeling good enough. Let's do this!

I drove myself, B and Dave over that morning, and we gave ourselves plenty of time to park and warm up. We figured we might need extra time because, historically, you had to park kind of far away and walk over. However, that ended up not being the case that day! We found a spot, probably the only available spot, in the lot right next to the start/finish. We couldn't believe our luck. I even worried that we were parked in a volunteer lot or something, but no, it was completely legit. Woo!

The event was in Conyers, at the International Horse Park, which I'd done more mountain bike races at, than I can count, including three 24 Hours of Adrenaline races. Most of the obstacles were set up in the steeplechase area, and the runs were all through the woods on trails I knew pretty well. We were just doing the 5k, which was entirely on the steeplechase side, but the 10k and 15k runs even went under the road, over to the granite side.

Having done one of these before, the vibe was familiar. It wasn't all South African Candy Aisle any more.

Having given ourselves a little extra time to park, that it turned out we didn't need, we had plenty of time to mill around and get ready at a leisurely pace.

Dave and B:

B was racing. Dave was not.

But, that was great, because he was able to take photos of us!

Me and B before the start:

Yeah, looking good and strong.

We had to crawl under some barbed wire and hop over a wall to get to the actual start.

There was a group of ladies ahead of us who seemed completely incredulous at this. I'm not sure what they expected. A few of them began crawling and just pushed through it. The others were like "How I'm gonna do that!?" to the course marshall. "I can't go around?" He kind-of explained how to do it. Plus the rest of their group had figured it out. Eventually the last 2 got through the barbed wire, and their friends helped them get over the wall. I thought they might bail right there, but they didn't. It looked like it would be a long day for them, but hopefully they at least walked the route and tried some of the obstacles.

It did occur to me at that point, that you can either skip or at least do the penalty loop for most obstacles, but you absolutely must do the crawl/wall to the starting line. There's no getting around that one.

Me and B at the start:

I was worried that it would be cold, so I brought my jersey with me, but the sun was out, and I ended up not actually wearing it.

B is on Team Usana, and there were a bunch of folks from the team at the start, so we all took a group picture.

A bunch of them had done many of these before, but for a seemingly equal number, this was their first event.

I want to say that, again, the announcer was just like: "Yeah, just go when you want" rather than doing all of the standard "Spartan, what is your profession!?" speech, but I may be confusing it with the Nashville event. At any rate, we eventually started running. The start was located close to where the start for all of the mountain bike races was, and we ran the same trails for a while.

At some point, we diverged though, and there were some little 4 foot walls to climb over. It's been long enough that I don't remember the exact order of obstacles any more. I do remember that we ran for what seemed like a really long time between obstacles at first, and then towards the end, there were a ton of them in a row.

I'd never done the Helix before. I'd watched videos of it, and it looked easy, but for all I knew, it would be tricky in some way.

Turned out no, it was super, super easy.

The sandbag carry was tougher than Nashville. It went straight up and back down this super steep hill. Climbing was strenuous. Coming back down was sketchy.

In previous years, the weather had generally been pretty bad for this particular Spartan. It was either cold, or wet, or both. This year, it was warmer than expected, the sun was out, and it wasn't going to rain. It had rained either the day before, or the night before though, so it was still a little muddy in places, and stepping in someone else's slippery footprint was something to watch out for.

The Mud Wall was a Conyers-specific obstacle. I'm not sure it exists anywhere else. We had to scramble down a slippery embankment, cross a creek, climb over a chest-high downed tree, and then climb up a cargo net draped over a hill on the other side of the creek.

It sounds way worse than it was. The toughest part was getting safely down to the creek. Climbing up the net wasn't materially more difficult than an A-frame cargo net. The mud was a non-issue. The biggest issue was just people moving slowly ahead of me.

The bucket carry was as awkward as usual, and also involved climbing directly up a hill and back down it, like the sandbag had. So sketchy coming down.

The barbed wire crawl was legitimately difficult. It was super muddy, and the mud was deep. You couldn't just lie on your side and roll. You really had to crawl, and it was as exhausting as it was filthy. There were exhausted people everywhere, who couldn't go another foot without recovering, and you had to navigate around them. I got covered in mud. My shoes got filled with mud. My hands were covered and slippery. It was surprisingly difficult.

I remember wiping my hands on every tree I could until they were dry. I don't remember if the multi-rig was before or after the barbed wire. I want to say that it was after, and that I was worried about muddy hands. My hands were dry by the time that I got to it, and the rings weren't a problem, but the pipes spun! The pipes in Nashville didn't spin, or at least I didn't notice if they did. But these did, it caught me by surprise, and I almost slipped. Fortunately, I didn't, but yikes!. Now I know!

Somewhere in there, we had to run up a long, fairly steep hill, and I walked for a hundred feet or so. That was the only walking I did.

After running through a familar section of trail, with a bunch of tight switchbacks, we popped out in the steeplechase field and the rest of the obstacles came in quick succession. I don't have photos from them, but they included the spear throw, z-wall, rope climb, hoist, slant wall, A-frame, rolling mud, and of course, the fire jump.

I managed every obstacle, except for the spear throw. I'd even gotten it 3 times in a row, in practice before the event. Maybe next time.

I also remember that the hoist was right after the rope climb, my hands were tired, and again, it seemed way heavier than Cody's hoist. I was able to hoist the bag, without tremendous difficulty, but it really wanted to get away from me when I let it back down, and the rope burned my hands a bit.

Done!

It's funny, between podium ceremonies, they kind-of don't care if you get up on stage and take pictures.

We didn't really get 1st, but it's fun to pretend!

I don't remember how well I actually did, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I want to say that I did better than Nashville. I think B did too. The course was a lot harder - the hills were steeper, there was a lot more singletrack, there was more running all at once, and then the last group of obstacles were all clustered one after the other.

It was super fun though. We were both pretty well recovered before we got home, and the drive wasn't exhausting or anything. It might be time to try a 10k.

So, I felt good immediately after the race, but the next day I felt beat all to hell. I wasn't sore per-se, just beaten up, and my legs didn't want to work.

To remedy this, I got on the road bike and spun out to Hiram and back. By the end of the ride, I was putting in actual efforts, so I figured I was recovered. The next day, I took the mountain bike to Cochran Mill, figuring I'd rip some miles, but nooooo, that was not happening. I barely made it back to the parking lot after a lap of the yellow loop. Beaten up was the best way to describe it. The road bike had been ok the day before, but the impact of mountain biking was just too much.

I ended up taking Tuesday off, riding the comet again on Wednesday, then just resting and staying off the bike until the following Sunday.

It was a rough couple of days, for sure!

Simpsonwood

I was signed up for a Spartan Race on March 16th, so between March 10th and 15th, I did a couple of easy rides just to keep myself warmed up, but nothing too tough. Me and Indi also went for a hike around Simpsonwood near her place, one evening.

I looked up a map online, and downloaded it into my phone, but it was pretty difficult to follow. There were a bunch of side trails that weren't on the map, and some of them looked like they were more popular than the official trails.

Classic.

It was a nice place to hike though, and the weather was great. It was warm enough for shorts, but not warm enough to sweat.

After milling around, getting a little confused, figuring things out, and milling around some more, we eventually came upon an "Old Chapel"...

...which, I guess was old in the sense that it was built a long time ago, but not old in the sense that it was in ruins.

There were some proper ruins near the Old Chapel though.

Trilliums were just starting to poke through the leaves, too.

They weren't "everywhere" yet, but there were a good number of them.

We eventually ended up down by the Chattahoochee...

...and we could see people walking on the other side. It would appear that there are trails over there too.

It's funny, every now and then, I realize... I've hiked all over North Georgia, including a ton of off-trail hiking and exploration, but I've never hiked Kennesaw Mountain, or very much of the Chattahoochee NRA, despite both of those being basically in my backyard. It doesn't seem like it would take a lot of effort to expore them either. I really should do that.

[continues not to...]

Indi!

...with her cute little dog hat!

She'd hiked there before and seen lots of deer, but we didn't see many that day until it started getting darker, then it seemed like they were everywhere!

At one point, a bunch of guys on mountain bikes passed us in the opposite direction. I have no idea what the official rules are there re. bikes. I don't remember seeing any signage one way or the other, but I think it's rare that bikes are allowed in the Chattahoochee NRA - Sope Creek being a major exception.

Toward the back of the park, we found all of these old moonshine tanks.

It's funny too, because I had just been describing moonshine tanks to her a few days earlier, but I'm not sure what I described made a lot of sense - especially that they were held together with nails. Metal tanks, held together with nails... How would they seal? But, here I was actually able to show them to her in real life!

On the left side of the park, we found a map nailed to a tree that actually had all of the trails marked on it.

We expected the QR code would go to a website with that same map, but it went to some other site that advertised something else. I forget what, now.

We managed to get a general sense of the major trails in the park, but didn't have time to really explore everything before it got too dark to continue. We talked about going back, but we ended up breaking up a short time later, and I haven't spent enough time on that side of town since then to check it out again.

Sadly, the GPS data that I collected that day was irreconcilable with any map that I had, including the one on that tree, so I wasn't able to do put it on my trails site. Maybe I'll go back some day and do a proper exploration.