Tennessee 300K Ride Report

Tennessee 300K Ride Report
April 7, 2007
By Jeff Sammons

It was an extremely cold Saturday morning for the first weekend of April. My wife told me the night before that I would freeze my tail off. The outside temperature gauge on my truck read 24 degrees just before 5:00 AM. Just two short weeks ago we had 80 degree temperatures for our 200K Brevet.

As I drove into Leiper’s Fork for the start of our 300K Brevet, I was hoping the parking lot would be empty and no one would show up. That way I could call the ride off and return home to the comfort of my nice warm bed. But as I turned the corner into the Hillsboro School parking lot, I spotted George Hiscox’s van. Seems he spent the night sleeping in his van waiting for the ride start. Not long there after, Tim Carroll, who drove down from Ohio and John Shelso, who drove over from Memphis showed up. In all, 16 brave soles would start the 300K Brevet that cold Saturday morning.

We left promptly at 6:00 AM, heading southeast in one big group. Not long after the start, Glen Brown had a flat tire and Jeff Bauer stopped to help him change it. Not having warmed up yet, I don’t think I could have changed a flat tire in that weather. The pace was pretty moderate for the start of the ride; guess everyone was too cold to pedal a high cadence. The sun was starting to rise as we climbed up Pull Tight Hill. We stopped at the top to take off excess clothing and to shift fluids. Glen and Jeff caught up with us at this point and we all rode together into Eagleville, our first control.

The control was at grocery store that was staffed by a young cashier named Bonnie. She was amazed as we all entered her store, the first customers of the morning. Unfortunately, there was no coffee to warm us up, so we just stood around for about 15 minutes and tried to knock the chill off. As we left for the next control, the lead group consisted of 10 riders. The pace was still reasonable, so I was able to hang with them, even riding at the front and taking a few pulls.

We rolled into the second control, a Marathon station in Bell Buckle, at mile 60 around 10:00 AM. They had coffee and a small deli inside where most riders stopped for a quick meal. It was here were we would see some light snow flurries. As we left Bell Buckle, we were now headed west and straight into the wind. Our group of 10 riders was still in tact as we traded pulls fighting the wind all the way to the next control.

The third control was an Exxon station in Lewisburg at 96 miles, the half-way point of the ride. Most riders quickly got their cards signed then headed across the street to eat lunch at Wendy’s. We probably spent 45 minutes eating lunch. Robert Hendry, who was still feeling pains from an illness earlier in the week decided to DNF. As we gathered our stuff to leave, Robert called his wife to come and take him home.

The temperatures outside were in the low 40s as we rode out of town. Just outside of Lewisburg, we encountered two short, but steep hills. I made it up the first hill, but didn’t have the stamina left in my legs to make it up the second one. I got off my bike and walked to the top with another rider. After a nice decent, we had about 10 miles of flat riding to the town of Lynnville , but still fought headwinds all the way into town. My legs were really tired from the pace we were riding and I was looking for a good excuse to be dropped by the front group. So when Bill Glass decided to stop for a nature break, I stopped too. Bill, Alan Gosart, and I rode the next few miles together. At the top of the next hill, the front group had stopped so we all rode down Screamer Road and into Mt Pleasant together.

The next control was an EZ-GO gas station on the outskirts of Mt. Pleasant at mile 134. We arrived just as a warm pizza was coming out of the oven. While the pizza didn’t last long, they had a small deli for the rest of the riders to get food. We sat outside in the sun eating our pizza.

The front group was down to seven riders now as we left town and headed towards the Natchez Trace Parkway . There were several small climbs on this section of the route. I got dropped on each one of them, but somehow managed to catch back up. When we turned onto the Parkway, I had forgotten about that long steep climb just off of SR-412 and was summarily dropped again. This time, it took me several miles of hard riding to catch back up, but then I was able to hang with them to them until we stopped again.

Just as the sun was setting and about 166 miles into our ride, we made our next stop at the Gordon House on the Parkway. This was an information control, where you had to stop and record the answer to a question on your Brevet card. Last fall when we did this route, we had warm refreshments for the riders as they showed up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get anyone to man this stop for us this year so we just put on our night riding gear and left. We rode the remaining 24 miles to finish at 8:48 PM.

The balance of the riders finished over the next few hours, with the last two completing the ride at 12:14 AM. The outside temperature gauge on my truck was back down to 25 degrees as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.