Road Riding + Running + Camping + Mtn Biking + Whitewater Rafting + Swimming + Hiking = One Good Weekend...and One Tired Body

    I had a very large training week involving a lot of different sports and disciplines, cramming in a lot of hours on the days between July 14-16. We had planned a whitewater rafting trip on the Ocoee River for July 16, so I scheduled my training around that. I started off with road riding and running early in the week, completing a 65-mile road ride Thursday evening. It was a great ride on yet another hot day. I rode out to Clarksville to meet with the Thursday Night group ride in Kirkwood. The group is basically the same guys from the Tuesday night ride in Sango. Lately they have been pissing me off by changing their start point and leaving early. It made me miss the Tuesday ride this week. The week before I dropped back to help someone that the group had been waiting on, but they decided not to wait once I slowed as they saw it as an opportunity to get rid of me. I'm not sure what I have done to these people, but they sure do try hard to avoid riding with me. So , I was out for a little revenge on Thursday and attacked like a madman several times early in the ride until I got a break going with Bryant Crabtree. He and I would pull away and finish several minutes ahead of the group. He was in the group that left me on Tuesday so I made sure to outsprint him at the end. My Dad had joined us on the ride and then let me draft the car on the way home. I was destroyed by the end of the ride. I needed it though. Haven't had too many hardcore days like that this year.

    Friday brought more training. Actually, it felt more like torture. We are starting a new sports performance program at our clinic and our head trainer, Blake, needed someone to run through his program and critique it. Basically, he needed a test dummy. I volunteered as I could use the sprint work. So we did NFL combine drills. He ran the crap out of me. Short, intense sprint after short, intense sprint. It was awesome! I got to do sprints pulling 75 lbs. on a weight sled and then push a 45 lb. plate along the turf.  The plate push was a long 5 minutes and it smoked my glutes. I was hurting after the 45-minute workout. We are getting in more equipment every day and the program is really starting to take shape. I hope I get the chance to work with some high-level athletes once the program is up and running.

We have tractor tires to flip over and over until your upper body feels like a noodle

     An hour after the workout with Blake, I had a patient come in to do some run training. We only ran 5K, but it was full of sprint intervals. I hurried home after work to load up the car for the drive to Ocoee. We had plenty of time before the rafting trip to drive down on Saturday morning, but I saw an opportunity to get in some camping and an early morning mountain bike ride on the Tanasi trails. We stopped along the way for some groceries and had a flat tire on the car in the parking lot. Then we got stuck in Chattanooga construction traffic. It was after midnight when we arrived at the Thunder Rock Campground and secured one of the two campsites that were still open. I was physically destroyed by the time we got the tent set up. Upon crawling into the tent, it was obvious I was going to wake up to some serious muscle soreness in the morning!

     My prediction was spot on. The morning was brutal. The glutes felt like plywood. I had to get up and move around for a while before I could walk normally. I grabbed a quick breakfast and then it was onto the mountain bike for some climbing. I got in 3 hours of riding. It was the first time I had ridden my mountain bike in several weeks and the first time in months that I've had a chance to bomb some fast descents. It was a good chance to brush up on my skills and get in some mountain climbing. We have no climbs like that at home.

A nice wooden bridge along the trail that parallels the river

The singletrack along the Quartz Loop on the top of the mountain was some of my favorite trail.

Climbing up the gravel roads was fun and good for training

     The trail was perfect and I had a great time. I got back just in time to get cleaned up and make it over to the Ocoee Rafting Company in Ducktown. They gave us the safety speech and loaded us onto a rickety old school bus for the drive down to the river. We were to raft the upper portion of the river, which contains a few Class IV rapids as you go past the Whitewater Center. That section was by far the toughest. It was used during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and features some man-made rapids that can be nasty if you hit them wrong. I got airborne on the last rapid, but managed to land back in the boat. We had a great time and nobody fell out of our raft. It's a good thing because those rocks will shred you like a cheese grater.

Rafts coming down the Ocoee River

    The last section was really cool. It's really swift and deeper than the rest of the river. The guide let us jump out and float the rest of the way down. The water really deepened right at the end and the current lessened. I took advantage of the opporunity to do some resisted swimming. It was the perfect current for my swim speed. I just stayed in place, like a swimming treadmill. It helped my aching muscles loosen up from the past few days of beatdown.

    After the rafting, Shannon and I drove up an old gravel road to hike the Quartz Loop trail around the top of one of the mountains. I had ridden it during my bike ride that morning. It was one of the more scenic trails in the Tanasi system so I just had to show Shannon. I had survived a fun weekend of dangerous activities and then found a way to hurt myself while hiking. I rolled my ankle about a half mile from the end of the loop. It made a loud "pop" and immediately hurt. I had some pain and swelling for a few days, but then it got better. It made me a little nervouse with the Music City Triathlon just a week away. We saw two black bear cubs climbing a tree during our hike. They were only about 20 feet from us. I figured mama bear was somewhere close and would appreciate us loitering around her cubs so we didn't hang around to stare.

     The weekend's activities really kicked my butt and let me know that no matter how I feel some days, I am far, far from being any sort of iron man. My entire body was sore for three days! That was one heck of a weekend. I guess I just enjoy beating myself down because I haven't had that much fun in a long time! And I can't wait to do it all again!