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Posts
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Knobscorcher at Tsali is today. If any of you guys make it, I’ll be the starchy fat bastard pushing my bike up left overlook with a purple face. Do me a solid and ignore the tow strap I clip to your bike just till we get to the top of the hill.
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Schwim how did you do? I got a question for you but let me explain my dilema and hopefully someone with Cohutta 100 or ultra endurance experience can give me advice.
I have basically been doing gravel grinders since the beginning of the year. 580 miles and very little singletrack due to the crappy weather. My singletrack kung-fu is not the best in the world when it comes to speed. I tuned my hardtail up to what I consider perfection for gravel roads. Stiffer fork than normal, higher air volume in the tires than I would ride on singletrack over roots, rocks, etc.
I went to Tsali today with that set up and forgot about the changes I made and I was bouncing all over the place. I could very easily reduce my tire pressure and let some air from my fork but than it would not ride as I would like on the gravel roads.
Schwim since you ride Tanasi a lot and you were just at Tsali today help me out with a comparision. The Cohutta starts at Tanasi and what are the trail conditions compared to Tsali. Are they as rooty, rocky and eroded. The erosion really has been bad this year at Tsali. I took my rides on the right and left loop today and kept a combined comfortable 9mph average over the 20+ miles. I was trying to ride it at a pace that I intend to do the Cohutta but I swear my set up sucked and I don’t want to change it otherwise I will slow down on the gravel roads but if necessary I can tweek it a bit.
Sorry about the wordy post.
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Well, I finished, so I’m happy 😀
TBH, it was a comedy of errors for me today. At my very best, I’m not competitive and today I was definitely not at my best. I goofed my neck up yesterday and couldn’t lift my head up, so had to look over my glasses and couldn’t lift the front of the bike over any obstacles, I missed my start and ended up starting 4 min later with the class behind me and I stopped towards the end of left loop to help a guy with a flat and no tube or pump. If I wasn’t in last place at the end, whoever came in after me should be ashamed of themselves 😀
Tanasi has a bunch more gravel road in it than Tsali. Chestnut loop is made up over over 3/4 gravel road itself. On the back end of it(if you’re going anticlockwise), you’re greeted with about a 3 mile or so grindy uphill. The remaining single track is split up like so:
Brush creek is mostly flat and smooth. You can really fly through that whole trail.
Boyd’s Gap is a downhill with a few rocky sections, but you can navigate around it.
Copper road is like a narrow gravel road with one really crappy root section and a couple rocky spots.
Thunder Rock downhill: smooth clay flats with hatchet rock on the downhills. Watch your sidewalls.
Chestnut singletrack: swoopy and mostly smooth. There’s three sections I can think of that are not. One steep rooty run, a loose rock hill and some roots at the start.
Quartz: it’s split into half. Again, anticlockwise, you get a steep uphill with erosion that you dodge, then steady uphill with some exposed rock to the halfway point. For the other half, you get mostly smooth flowy and fast trail till you get spit back to alternate.
Alternate: It’s almost identical to the first half of quartz. It should be, since it’s only about 250ft downhill from it 😀
Riverview: Very up and down. In one direction, it’s not too hard to keep your speed, but if you enter the trail from the end closest to the whitewater center, it’s just an exercise in shifting.
Bear Paw: Roots for a bunch of it on one half. Smoothish with one rooty section on the other half.
As for riding pumped up, When I first started riding Tanasi, I was on a Talon 29er hard tail with a blown fork that had almost no response. While I’d never suggest that setup for anyone, it wasn’t that bad. If I had to choose which trail system I rode with your bike setup, I would choose Tanasi over Tsali I think. All of the endurance-type races that use Tanasi generally start you in the trails, run you along all the gravel forest roads out behind it and then bring you back into the Tanasi trail system.
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Thanks man I appreciate the info!
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