Day 7: Greenwood, VA - Lexington, VA (8/150)

Today the real climbing started with a climb towards the Blue Ridge Parkway. As its name says this road runs along the Blue Ridge, a major ridge in the Appalachian Mountains. The parkway is truly beautiful! Lots of nature all around and spectacular views into the valleys left and right.

The parkway itself it also not really flat, so there was lots of climbing to do today. Highest elevation reached thus far is 3350ft. Obviously a road like this attracts lots of road bikes. I was asked multiple times by passing road bikers who I was, where I came from, from where I was travelling and to which destination I was going. Really cool to get a lot of questions and positive comments when cycling! The park ranger even pulled me over and commented on the good looking gear I was carrying and wondered about the bike brand. Finally he wished me good luck and warned me for some possible storms later during the day (which fortunately did not happen).

Unfortunately all the climbing did take its toll, my knee started hurting shortly after getting on the parkway. It slowly got worse, no there was nothing else to it than gearing all the way down and climbing very slowly. After I reached the highest point of the day I decided to put on my knee pieces, since they pain was not really going away and keeping my knees extra warm had helped in the past for these issues. The knee pieces did their job and at the end of the day the pain was all but gone. Hopefully is stays away the remainder of the trip....

After the parkway there as one nice descent into the valley. The roads after that were less beautiful, the only thing to mention is that all those roads tends to go up and down like crazy. The difference in elevation could be as little as 50ft each time, but since it was so steep and I was climbing slowly it was impossible to get into a nice rhythm.

The progress was difficult today but still I managed to get some 70 miles on the clock. Since I was so tired when I stopped I though about taking a motel for the night, but eventually decided against it and ended up on a campsite. The motels should be saved for those special situations when everything is working against me and I hate the world, myself and especially my bike :p