Day 3 Cherokee North Carolina to Asheville North Carolina

I know the word "epic" can sometimes be overused but if it can't be used to describe today then it should probably never be used. It was a 90 mile day beginning with a 20 mile climb in Cherokee. We started at 2000 feet elevation and went to 6000 feet elevation. Then we had an 8 mile descent. We pretty much repeated that cycle all day. The grades are such that we climbed at about 8 mph and descended at 40 to 45 mph. The curves are not technical so I never touched my brakes. I rode the whole day with Ethan Thorman from California. He would pace me up the climbs and then at the summit I would come around him and lead the descent. He would ride in my slipstream all the way down. He had a headlight so he would lead through the many short tunnels. I would follow behind him because I could see his blinking red rear light. His front light would light the road just enough where you could barely see your lane lines. So as I went in to each tunnel I would push up my glasses and just squint to see the lane lines and concentrate on staying about 5 feet behind his blinking red taillight. Several of the tunnels were on descents and we came screaming in to them at 40 mph and then as soon as we exited the portal I would push my glasses back down over my eyes and accelerate back around him to 45 mph.
We repeated this many times today. The descents were so fast that in my biggest gear I couldn't spin fast enough to get any power to the rear wheel. We were on several occasions catching up to cars as they were descending.

It was a very cool day with temperatures between 55 and 70 degrees depending on how far up or down the mountain you were. That really helped me and I felt great all day. Despite all the climbing it wasn't too difficult. The good thing about the climbing is you know you'll have a descent coming up. Several times we would come over the top of the summit and you could look down and around the mountain and see this little road 4 or 5 miles down there where you are going to be and you know getting there is going to be great.

Tomorrow is another day on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We leave for Boone at about 8 in the morning.