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06-10-07, 10:14 AM
I rode the English Mountain Challenge (http://www.englishmountainchallenge.com/) century yesterday. This ride has not gotten a lot of attention, so I thought I would post a description to let you all know what it was like.
The ride started in Sevierville, and was mostly on pleasant and scenic low-traffic roads rolling through the pastoral east Tennessee countryside -- nearly perfect riding territory. Weather was pretty good -- foggy in the morning but no rain, and clearing to a pleasant but warm afternoon.
The thing that really struck me about the ride was the frequency of really steep ( but usually short) hills. There must have been a dozen hills in excess of 10%, and several in the vicinity of 15% (if I can steal some time at work this week, I will work with the GIS software and come up with a more obective estimate of how many and how steep).
The real kicker is English Mountain itself. The climb is only something like 4 miles total. This may not seem like much compared to the 20 mile climb (at 4.5%) up Mt. Mitchell (http://www.freewheelers.info/assault.html) or even the 6.4 miles or so (at 9.1%) of serious climbing on the Cherohala (http://www.smwbike.org/cherohala/ccMain.htm), but it is way steeper than either. I don't know what the average slope is because it varies a lot, but several segments are marked (by a ride organizer) as 15%, and the final stinger at the top is marked 22%. I rode my touring bike with teeny weeny gears, and I was standing and struggling on a 22" gear. I had to walk on that last 100 yards or so at 22%. I heard people talking about the "false summit", but it was worse than that -- there is a saddle at the top, so you reach a real summit, only to go down (steeply) and back up to the top again (even steeper).
BTW, there is a full-century and a metric century option that bypass the mountain.
I completed the 109 mile ride in about 9:10, including fixing a flat at about mile 98. By comparison, I did the 115 mile Cherohala last year in 9:30, 3 state -3 mtn (http://www.chattbike.com/events/3_state/3stchlng.htm) (also last year) in about 7:20 (with cramping problems), and the SMW fall century (http://www.smwbike.org/Century/century.htm) in about 6:45 (two years ago).
My biggest complaint about the ride was that all of the people who ride at around my speed wimped out and rode the metric -- I rode about 60 miles by myself after the metric group split off. This seems to be the norm around Knoxville. I did have a few people to ride with at Cherohala, but even at the relatively flat SMW fall century there are few non-macho riders who did the full century. By contrast, I was in the middle of the group at 3-state 3-mtn, so I may be slow, but not that slow.
Support was great. A special thanks to the volunteers who graciously waited around for that last solo lanterne rouge!
The ride started in Sevierville, and was mostly on pleasant and scenic low-traffic roads rolling through the pastoral east Tennessee countryside -- nearly perfect riding territory. Weather was pretty good -- foggy in the morning but no rain, and clearing to a pleasant but warm afternoon.
The thing that really struck me about the ride was the frequency of really steep ( but usually short) hills. There must have been a dozen hills in excess of 10%, and several in the vicinity of 15% (if I can steal some time at work this week, I will work with the GIS software and come up with a more obective estimate of how many and how steep).
The real kicker is English Mountain itself. The climb is only something like 4 miles total. This may not seem like much compared to the 20 mile climb (at 4.5%) up Mt. Mitchell (http://www.freewheelers.info/assault.html) or even the 6.4 miles or so (at 9.1%) of serious climbing on the Cherohala (http://www.smwbike.org/cherohala/ccMain.htm), but it is way steeper than either. I don't know what the average slope is because it varies a lot, but several segments are marked (by a ride organizer) as 15%, and the final stinger at the top is marked 22%. I rode my touring bike with teeny weeny gears, and I was standing and struggling on a 22" gear. I had to walk on that last 100 yards or so at 22%. I heard people talking about the "false summit", but it was worse than that -- there is a saddle at the top, so you reach a real summit, only to go down (steeply) and back up to the top again (even steeper).
BTW, there is a full-century and a metric century option that bypass the mountain.
I completed the 109 mile ride in about 9:10, including fixing a flat at about mile 98. By comparison, I did the 115 mile Cherohala last year in 9:30, 3 state -3 mtn (http://www.chattbike.com/events/3_state/3stchlng.htm) (also last year) in about 7:20 (with cramping problems), and the SMW fall century (http://www.smwbike.org/Century/century.htm) in about 6:45 (two years ago).
My biggest complaint about the ride was that all of the people who ride at around my speed wimped out and rode the metric -- I rode about 60 miles by myself after the metric group split off. This seems to be the norm around Knoxville. I did have a few people to ride with at Cherohala, but even at the relatively flat SMW fall century there are few non-macho riders who did the full century. By contrast, I was in the middle of the group at 3-state 3-mtn, so I may be slow, but not that slow.
Support was great. A special thanks to the volunteers who graciously waited around for that last solo lanterne rouge!