Canyoneros are training for the Pangea's Nocatee Conquest 12hr AR in three weeks. Saturday, Greg and I packed the bikes up and started at Seminole Wekiva Trail's trail head near 436/434 intersection. Our goal was to find the mythical 5000yr old tree at Soldiers Creek--apparently the oldest bald cypress tree in the US. Here's the route we took:
Google has an app called My Tracks, which tracks your location via GPS. The GPS tracker is mostly accurate, but will lose signal on occasion, rendering the data bad, like distance traveled, avg. speed, etc. The map above was tracked with My Tracks.
Back on topic, we knew we were going to be hitting around 4hrs of biking so we started off at a medium intensity. Even with a lower intensity, we reached a common checkpoint at the exact same time as our previous personal best. This is also with Greg riding on a single speed road bike.
the start, 10:30am
Lately, I've been experimenting with during-performance nutrition. I have introduced a Hammer gel or Gu gel (the caffeinated variety) 45min before activity, three pills of SportLegs, and one pill of SaltStick. The gel is supposed to give me a quick dose of fast absorbing carbohydrates with a little serving of caffeine to jump-start the workout. SportLegs supplement apparently saturates the muscles with lactate to prevent lactic acid from building up as badly. Salt Stick advertises to be an electrolyte of a special formula that equals the ratio of minerals lost during heavy activity. All supplements recommend replenishing every so often during your workout. The endurance workout was going to be pretty taxing on the quads, so it was going to expose the benefits of these supplements, true or not.
On the way there, we rode over many bridges and tunnels.
bridge 1
bridge 2
bridge 3 over I-4
bridge 4 in Lake Mary
bridge 4 in Soldiers Creek
This is the end of the trail...the legendary tree had alluded us. All we saw was this land field of chopped wood and a beaver-like man emerging from the forest to pull a sled of his belongings.
We darted into the forest for a little bit of more searching, but could not find it so we turned around. (apparently, we did not go far enough into Big Tree State Park)
(update) The legendary tree has burned down to the ground :(
In the end, I had experience no cramps whatsoever, not even one onset. However, I had gone through about 6 liters of water during that time. Luckily there was a library and a few water fountains along the trail. This training event has me believing the supplements are actually working as intended. (the next day) I am not sore either.
Distance: 62.52km (38.85 miles)
Total Time: 3hr 25min
Avg. Speed: 20.72kph (12.87mph)
Max Speed: 33.93kph (21.08mph)
Avg. Cadence: 66rpm
(keep in mind these stats are more optimized for endurance, than speed)
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