Georgia 400K Ride Report

Georgia 400K Ride Report
May 13, 2006
By Jeff Sammons

This was my second year of riding the Georgia 400K. I knocked about 2 hours off my time from last year in part by being a stronger rider and by taking less time at the controls. I can't remember ever being finished before Jeff Bauer on one of these rides!

I enjoyed the scenery and challenging climbs, and even stayed out of my triple ring except for the ascent up "Little Brasstown". It was too late at night, with too many miles in my legs, and too wet for me to struggle up it in my middle ring.

I didn't enjoy the road out of Toccoa though. Robert Hendry and I were stopped by a policeman leaving Toccoa who thought we were crazy riding at night in the rain and asked us to ride on the sidewalks thru town for safety reasons. Guess they were all still sensitive about the accident on the 300K two weeks earlier. Well the sidewalks were in worse shape than the roads, but we complied until we ran out of sidewalks about a half mile later. Cars and trucks were flying by us in the rain and on the wet roads leaving Toccoa, so I was glad to be in a group of five going up this stretch of road. I was relieved to finally make the turn on Antioch Church road.

The other part of the ride I didn't enjoy was the pouring rain, the hail in Dahlonega, and cool temperatures at night. The rain started for us leaving Toccoa and was still going strong at the finish. There was no good place to hide during the down pours and hail, so we just road thru it all. But, I guess this was good preparation for the Cascade 1200K.

I recorded just over 19,100 feet of elevation gain on this Brevet with splits at the controls as follows; 2nd - 4,500; 3rd - 4,300; 4th - 3,500; 5th - 2,600; and 6th - 4,200. The road up to Highlands, NC was 2,600 of elevation gain for the 12 mile climb. Total elevation gain at this point was 12,300 or 65% overall.

For those purest wanting to know which direction on Warwoman Road has more elevation gain, the east to west route on the 300K had 1,080 feet and the west to east route on the 400K had 840 feet of climbing. I did think the stretch on Warwoman Road this weekend was easier than 2 weeks ago on the 300K.

I'm looking forward to the 600K in two weeks!