Has anyone here ridden the Blue Ridge Parkway

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Originally Posted by rubysoho

How many miles (average) were you logging each week for training? My main problem is finding access to decent hills.

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I'm not sure. I bike commuted to work ~3 days/week, and would tack on extra miles to a few of them (turning a 15 mile round trip ride into 25 or so). On the weekends, I'd ride Saturday and Sunday, doing 30-60 miles. Our trip on the BRP was 60-80 miles/day, so it was doing back-to-back long rides on varying terrain that was important (to me, anyway). So the long weekend rides were critical. I wasn't so concerned about speed, jut getting out there. Sometimes, I had to throw the bike on the truck and drive somewhere (like that ride up in the Catoctins where I saw at least 1 24% grade :eek: and actually had to walk the bike. That never happened on BRP - even leaving Cherokee.).

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Originally Posted by 7rider

I'm not sure. I bike commuted to work ~3 days/week, and would tack on extra miles to a few of them (turning a 15 mile round trip ride into 25 or so). On the weekends, I'd ride Saturday and Sunday, doing 30-60 miles. Our trip on the BRP was 60-80 miles/day, so it was doing back-to-back long rides on varying terrain that was important (to me, anyway). So the long weekend rides were critical. I wasn't so concerned about speed, jut getting out there. Sometimes, I had to throw the bike on the truck and drive somewhere (like that ride up in the Catoctins where I saw at least 1 24% grade :eek: and actually had to walk the bike. That never happened on BRP - even leaving Cherokee.).

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This is perfect information for me and helps me know how I need to change my riding schedule. Right now I am riding between 30 and 40 miles split between two rides during the week and generally one longer 40 - 50 mile ride on the weekend.

I need to build up to longer back-to-back rides on Sat and Sun. And this gives me a perfect reason to start commuting to work (24 total miles) once or twice a week in addition to the group ride I want to join.

The White Clay Bicycle Club of Wilmington, DE recently sponsored a tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here is a link that one of the participants posted to his photos of the trip. Best to view in "slideshow" mode. The photos are beautiful but would be nice to have a few captions so we know what we are looking at. Here is his posting:

Here's my complete photo collection from Wally's Blue Ridge Parkway
Tour, ending Tues. 6/21:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...8AYt3LRs4Ys2Q5

Jeff, Mark: 055 (slideshow photo #31) shows true bicycle-friendly rumblestrips in South
Carolina. In fact, the white edge line is actually painted over them,
and exit breaks are plentiful.

If clicking on the below link doesn’t work, copy-and-paste it into your
browser. Use the slideshow feature for best results:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...8AYt3LRs4Ys2Q5

Ride on,
-Frank