Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Event: OCIN FAST-O 2 - Seven Hills Park - Tata Consultancy Services
 

OCIN_Seven_Hills_Jun_2016_course 1 - Splits

First long ride on my new mountain bike, with my cousin Brian, at Scioto Trail State Park and Forest near Chillicothe, Ohio. 34km, which is about 21.1 miles. Climb is about 500m (?), or 1640 feet. Tour Divide is about 42 vertical miles in 2745 miles, which is 1.53% average. This ride today was 0.31 miles vertical in 21.1, or 1.47% average, so it's respectable. The 21 miles is less than I hoped for, but you gotta start somewhere.

There is some singletrack at Scioto Trail, but it had rained last night, so we stayed purely on the gravel and pavement. This is a ride you can do in wet conditions if you're looking for a place to ride. It's not singletrack, but it's a lot of fun. And some people really like the gravel rides (e.g., Ohio Gravel Grinders)

Started at the NE tip of Caldwell Lake, then up Lake Rd (Forest Rd 3) to North Ridge Rd (2), to the N and E back to Stoney Creek Rd (1), east to Three Locks Rd (paved) to South Ridge Rd (6).

Along this road we came upon a car that had slid off the road into a tree. The driver had walked six miles in flip-flops and gotten help, a minivan. But it was too far gone with that meager front-wheel-drive pulling capacity. I didn't drop the "E" word (engineer), but I did what I could, which wasn't much. I did point out that they should work on pulling the rear up while leaving the front against the tree for safety, and that once they got the rear turned, that it was important to have the vehicle well anchored, because it could release from the tree, and then just continue on down the hill (which was very big and quite steep). In my opinion, it was a wrecker job, but they didn't want to drop the cash, so they went home to call friends with four-wheel-drives.

After going all the way west on Rd 6, we did a few minutes NE on Wilson Run Rd (4) to Cutoff Rd (7) to Hatfield Rd (5). All the way east on that to Airport Rd (a WWII emergency landing airfield, now unused), and west on Stoney Creek Rd (1) to Lake Rd and the car.

I was well-hydrated, but this ride really did me in. At about halfway, we stopped on a long climb for a food bar. That really helped, but about 3/4 of the way done, I was having trouble pedalling continuously and couldn't pedal the steepest sections. Luckily, my orienteering involves a lot of walking uphill, so that was a real relief to my muscles, except at the very end when my quads started to cramp, too.

This is a great ride. It's mostly hard gravel with a few miles of pavement. It's not terribly rough, the gravel on the climbs is firm and doesn't cause problems, and the descents are fast enough to be scary. The ridge top roads are very much rolling hills. It's not like the plateaus around Cincinnati----the erosion has formed knife-edge ridges with many saddles, so it's mostly never flat on the ridges. You can predict which direction on the road is predominately uphill and which is downhill. It's much more fun to do the downhill direction. The vertical relief is about 100m (about 330 ft), but you rarely see all 100m at once (with at least one exception, which I didn't attempt. It was a road I wasn't certain about. I was on it in 2003, but only for a bit at the flat-ish top part. It turned out to be a through road! We drove it in the car to scout it out. It seems to be identical to the other park gravel roads, except it has no road number. Weird.

Most of the ride was in mixed sun and shade. It was shocking to ride out into the full sun. It was so hot in the sun. On most of the gravel roads, it was very comfortable.

My map was quite good, although it's very difficult to tell if a road is up or down except for large climbs/descents. I've got some ideas for that.

On the way out, after a quick scouting drive, we drove right by the "Deadman's Crossing" without knowing it.

C • Remind me... 3