Knoxville Camp part 1.

Good trip to a good friend's in a town just outside of K-ville called Maryville. Some really good quality training. I'll break it down day by day and try to keep it brief:
(author's note- it rianed every day we were there. Every day. Some worse than others, but every damn day)

Day1.
It rained on most of the drive there. We arrived later than we planned, but we got out about 5:30 and put it hard 2hrs w/ some rolling climbing.

Day2.
Roads wet, but only misty precipitation for the most part. This was our big day. 5+ hrs, three mountains, 7200' of climbing.
First climb was the Foothills Parkway. This was ~11miles and not steep. Basically 39x21 or 23 @ ~15-17mph. Great climb w/ super views. Reminded me very much of being on Brown County State Park roads, only climbing about 5x as long.
After descending the parkway you are dumped out at a lake and to the left is the famed Tail of the Dragon. This climb goes over the mountains and descends into North Carolina. My watch stats have this climb @ ~1700' of climbing in ~11miles. It took us ~47min. The Dragon has many switchbacks, so coming down it was way harder than going up up (for me anyway). If you click to the link you can see it's a popular motorcycle road where guys an souped up Ducatis go to ride all out, up and down. 2-3 motorcycle deaths per year on it (scroll down on the linked page for stats), that's how twisty it is.
Once back down off the dragon we hit the real climb of the day. Happy Valley Rd. which leads to a climb to the very top of the next mountain called Sweetie Pie. I couldn't find any good info on Sweetie Pie rd, but the link has some dude's perspective. Here's mine: Josh and Dan have told me it's like our Boltinghouse Rd, only way longer. I didn't see how this was possible; I thought they were exaggerating. They weren't. It's probably 3-5x longer, every bit as steep, but w/ steeper pitches (the dude I linked says it reaches 26%). My watch recorded it climbing over 1000' in less than 2miles. My average speed was 6.9mph for 17minutes (I think Boltinghouse is more like 3 minutes, so time wise it's ~6x as long). This was tough for sure. It's the first time I've thought about getting off my bike and pushing. But in the spirit of training (you have to suffer to get better) I knocked it out. It should be noted too that Sweetie Pie came at hour 4 of 5. And after two 30+min climbs. Yes, it hurt.
end pt 1. Stay tuned...