Single Speed Epic

It's time to start training for the first race of the year. It's an XXC race. So instead of 20 miles on the Dragon's Back, a very challenging and rough course, it is 35 miles with an 8 hour time limit. It will be an accomplishment just to finish.
To start training, Allen and I decided to ride at Peaksview and do 4 race laps. That's about 28 miles. Start out easy, right? We began at 10:25. The temp was about 30 degrees, so every thing was still frozen. We wanted to see how far we could go without stopping at all. We made a bet, who ever called a break first would buy protein shakes after the ride. After 1 and a quarter laps, Allen finally called a break. We ended up taking 1 break per lap, except for the last lap. We were both shredded by then.
By the third lap, the ice was turning into mud. The fourth lap was a mess. Sticky slimey mud was everywhere. The whole day was done at a medium pace, not slow, but not at race speed either. By the time we exited lap 4, I had nothing left.
It was a great training day. I have not been worked that hard in a long time. I felt very good about myself today. Tommorow we are leading a ride for some people from Roanoke at Candler's. If someone told me that I would someday be using Candler's as a recovery ride, I would have probably just laughed. Soon we will be stepping it up to 5 laps, yea!