Blue Ridge Parkway Cycling Expedition

A deposit is due upon booking. This amount is fully refundable if cancellation is made 91 or more days from the start of the trip. The final balance is due 90 days from the start of the trip. Cancellations made between 60 and 90 days from the published trip start date are eligible for a 50% refund. Any cancellations made within 60 days of the published trip start are non-refundable unless Threshold Academy cancels the trip. Tipping is not expected for any Threshold Academy employees, owners, or staff; however, wait and in-country support staff may be tipped, upon guest discretion.

Our days start early, with first bikes out on the course at 7 am. Faster riders will leave at 8 am. We have rest stops for you with water and snacks every 90 minutes/20 miles. Each participant installs an app on their cell phone, that allows the SAG/van driver to see your location and speed of travel. We make it a point to make sure all riders reach the final destination for the day at 2 pm, so they have time to clean up and eat a group snack at 3 pm. That means that we start retrieving people at 1:30-2:00 pm or so, depending on how far away they are from the finish. Can’t go 80 miles and can only go 40? Not a problem. We pick you and your bike up and make sure you get to the end, each day.

It is somewhat difficult to give a generic answer that is true for all cyclists. All Threshold Tours have a physiological demand built into their agenda and require greater fitness and endurance than a typical week at home. For an ‘average’ rider signing up for a Threshold Tour, we suggest that you aim to be riding 3-4 times per week (indoor training ‘counts’ on this scorecard) in the 3 months leading up to the trip. The cumulative duration of those rides should build up to at least 10 hours per week in the last 4-6 weeks of preparation. You should have at least one session of no less than 80 miles, and you should be building in some intervals or ‘efforts’ of 15-30 minutes duration to 2-3 of your weekly rides. Give attention to your descending skills as well as to your ‘base fitness’ and climbing ability. It is very valuable on any of our trips to be able to descend safely and confidently. If you’d like any more personalized advice on training reach out to either Jeff or Alex, and they will be happy to discuss your own circumstances in more detail. If you need a detailed plan to get your ready, Jeff is a certified coach and available for hire, with a 3-month minimum coaching commitment required.

Inevitably, the answer to this one is going to be entirely down to your strengths as a rider. Stronger/lighter riders may well be content to ride a standard 53/39-tooth or ‘semi-compact’ 52/36-tooth chain set – usually couple with a rear cassette ranging from 11-25 or 11-28. Those of you who find the climbs a bit tougher or prefer to ‘spin’ a gear will find a compact 50/34-tooth chain set more suitable and may opt to match that with an 11-32 cassette to give yourselves a true ‘bail out’ option that will keep you pedaling on even the steepest sections. Nearly 100% of our climbing is at a gradient of 8% of less, so there are no real “get off and walk” sections of the road. If you’re still not sure what will be most suitable for your specific trip and riding style, email us and we’ll be happy to advise.

A key ‘success factor’ in enabling this to happen is that we need all riders in the group to take an efficient approach to all of our rest breaks, meal/café stops and col-summit regroupings. Your ‘job’ during a break period (as well as relaxing, eating, drinking, taking your photos & celebrating your successes) is to make sure you are properly prepared to move on when we ask you to.

On some mornings, we will give ‘head starts’ for the steadier riders in the group, sending them off a few minutes before the faster participants after each refreshment stop or col-summit regrouping. The composition of the ‘lead group’ may vary from day to day (if fatigue starts to play a part) or even on individual sections of the ride depending on terrain (some steadier climbers may be excellent descenders or very strong on flatter / rolling roads). The real key to the success of this approach is collaboration within the group – the faster riders showing some patience in allowing a head start to accumulate and the steadier folks being sufficiently well organized to get ahead when we ask them to. Regardless, we pick up riders and bikes in the early afternoon, to make sure that we all reach the final destination with time to clean up and get in some nutrition and recovery, as there is always another day in front of you.

Every cyclist has their own beliefs, education, and perspectives on nutrition while riding. Regardless of which type of diet you adhere to, you will have a need for a lot of calories on our rides, and we do our best to make sure you get enough to be successful. We often rely on our hotel partners to provide either breakfast or dinner for our riders, and lunch is often addressed by our support team, as we eat from coolers and grocery store purchases at lunch time. If you have special food requirements that can’t be addressed at either grocery stores or hotels, please bring with you what you need (special energy bars or energy drink powders, for example). In general, there will not be stores on our tours that are stocked with cycling specific nutrition. We do spend efforts to keep everyone hydrated, reminding everyone to drink, often.

Jeff is an omnivore and Alex is a vegetarian, so you can ask either of us for additional perspectives.

• Breakfast and Dinners on all days; lunches on most days, with excluded meals clearly outlined upon arrival.
• All lodgings
• Threshold Academy guides’ knowledge and support
• Mechanical support
• Daily route support plus detailed route maps w/ profile data
• Ride support vehicle accompanies Tour
• All necessary transportation and luggage transfers during your trip
• Threshold Water Bottle
• Threshold Academy Cycling Jersey (you will need to provide your size)

• airfare to and from departure/arrival cities.
• alcohol
• food during the day off
• specialty cycling nutrition, like gels, salts, bars and shakes.
• bike rentals
• personal items purchased during the trip
• excluded meals (typically at least a few)

You are going to have a “peak week” in terms of training levels, both on duration and intensity. You need not have “done” a week like the one you are about to do in order to be ready. You need only have done a few equivalent sessions in the weeks and months leading up to a Threshold Tour to be ready. Pacing yourself, especially on the climbs, has no substitute. Although some in the group will attempt to race up the hills and compete for KOM and QOM titles, most people won’t.

Jeff has studied this topic and attended seminars. Without question, the most important factors that you can control to make sure you recover are getting adequate nutrition and hydration and good sleep. We get up early every day, so we encourage and strongly suggest that you are in bed with the lights out early enough to get all the sleep you need. Since you will be training hard, we encourage adding no less than 1 additional hour of sleep at night.

We cannot control what the airline does with its handling of your bike, so it is commonplace for rental requests. We partner with local vendors to provide you a carbon framed bike with climbing, non-aero wheels. You should provide your own pedals, helmet, and riding clothing/accessories. We will provide assembly and basic bike fitting for you. If you do rent a bike, we will ask you to provide three measurements from your current bike to get your seat and handlebars in a near equivalent position before you arrive.

Depending on size, all rides have at least one guide and one support vehicle on the road with you. For rides with at least 5 riders, there will be a pair of guides and a support vehicle. The support vehicle will contain packages snacks, water, basic repair tools and parts to assist you with minor bike repairs on the road.

Our tour pricing is based on double occupancy. We will assign you a roommate of like gender, but we can’t guarantee that we will be able to do so. If we are not able to assign you a roommate, then a tour specific single occupancy supplement will be assessed.

Detailed information about starting and ending times and locations, airport and hotel van transfer locations and transportation options will be included in tour information emailed to you. If you wish to make airline reservations before receiving this information, please contact us for times and locations of your trip start and end.

Each trip begins and ends in or near a town accessible by mass transit as noted in individual trip descriptions. If you wish to drive to the trip start, please review the trip information emailed to you or give us a call for departure times and parking options.

Once you place your deposit, you are agreeing to pay for the cost of the trip, in full, no less than 90 days before departure. Based on when you cancel, you may forfeit your payments.

In the event you must cancel either before or during the trip and are not able to receive a refund from Threshold Academy, travel insurance represents your next fall back. We encourage and recommend the purchase of travel insurance for all Threshold Tours.

Threshold Tours have a minimum number of participants required for the trip to run and the published price. For 2021, we need at least 6 to run the Spain trip, 4 for the Blue Ridge Parkway trip, and 6 for the Pyrenees trip. We cannot currently handle more than 14 riders on any trip.

In the event that we do not have enough participants, we will offer you the ability to pay additional amounts to keep the trip. If a trip is cancelled due to a lack of participants, you are eligible for 100% refund or move your money to a different trip.

In the event we have too many people sign up, we will split the trip into two different weeks, allowing the first who sign up to pick which time frame is best for them. We will always keep the original published week as one of the options. For those who are unable to make either week or who sign up late, there will be a full refund of 100% of the amount you paid.

There will be other high school aged children riding their bikes on our routes. However, children less than high school aged (less than 13 years) are not allowed on our trips.

You will receive a guest confirmation the same day that you make your deposit. An itinerary and info sheet will quickly follow which gives the route and lodging information for yourselves and those at home. A week prior to your trip start you will receive an email about our start meeting location, time and any last-minute information that you will need to know before your first day. Daily briefings while on guided tours are given as well as info guides and daily maps or cue sheets, allowing you to ride with complete confidence that day.

There are 26 tunnels, and none of them have any lights-this part is true. The parkway authorities require that all bikes have lights on them for this section of the ride, so bring a red light for the rear and a white light for the front. The biggest item to remember is to take off your sunglasses as we traverse through them and to put them back on when you are done.