Out west adventure – days 9, 10, 11, 12

Tuesday, Day 9 – Bike shops plus easy canal ride
It turns out that I was really lucky with my Mt Lemmon ride — today when I got ready to go for a ride, I discovered that a front spoke was broken. I had left the bike outside over night so maybe some animal had jumped through – or maybe the tension on one of the spokes just happened to reach the breaking point over night – or then again, maybe it was a gnome. In any case, I biked to two nearby bike shops carrying the wheel, but neither was able to have the wheel repaired by the time we are leaving on Thursday. I dropped off the wheel at the house and then headed out on an easy ride through the canals. By the end of the ride it was over 100 degF – hot!
Playground, shade, and water – I’m pretty sure a sign with those words doesn’t exist in Alabama or perhaps anywhere on the east coast.

Wednesday, Day 10 – Deem Hills revisited
I had so much fun on these trails on Sunday with Uncle Bruce that I wanted to go back at least one more time before we left Phoenix. That opportunity came today on the hottest ride so far of this trip. I got a bit lost missing a turn from one canal to another traveling an additional few miles out of the way. I had already drained three bottles of gatorade by the time I made it to the Deem Hills trailhead. Fortunately, there is a nice restroom / water fountain / shady place so I went ahead and refilled three bottles before hitting the trails. After exploring and climbing to the high point using three different trails, I was out of water again so I refilled one more time before heading back home. By the time I made it back to the house, I had drained all three bottles again – for a total of 9 bottles on a 56 mile ride. That doesn’t even count the water I drank directly from the water fountain when refilling my bottles!
My bike, the desert, lots of mountains, and an irrigation canal with water from the Colorado River all below the Deem Hills high point.

We went to Rubio’s for an awesome fish taco dinner, and then Josiah and I took off on a ride from Rubio’s up the sidewalk to the Thunderbird conservation area where we did some cool trail riding. On the way back we passed a mama roadrunner and her babies running across the road – one of the cutest wildlife encounters imaginable.
Even little guys gotta stay hydrated in the desert.

Thursday, Day 11 – Sedona mountain bike ride to Flagstaff
We left Phoenix today to head up to Flagstaff for the Barn Burner race this weekend. Kristine dropped me off in the canyons of Sedona so I could ride my mountain bike the rest of the way up to Flagstaff. I headed up the Schelby Hill Rd which is a 4-wheeler road over lots of really large rocks. Plus it climbs over 2000 feet so that by the end of the first hour, I had only gone 6.5 miles! At this rate, I wouldn’t reach Flagstaff until midnight. Fortunately, it was relatively flat across the top so that I could pick up speed. Still, it took over four hours to cover the 45 miles, which was a mix of jeep road, 4-wheeler tracks, singletrack, interstate (I-17), paved secondary roads, and lots of gravel national forest roads. The scenery was spectacular and I took a lot of pictures. I’ve included the best three below (the rest are in the gallery at the end of this post) -
View looking down from the Schnelby Hill vista
Super steep gradient on a trail that looks like it is heading to the Schnelby Hill Vista
Singletrack that parallels the Schnelby road

Friday, Day 11 – Flagstaff and the Barn Burner packet pick-up
You know that a race is going to be epic, when your ride to pick up the packet is over 40 miles long! I rode out to pick up my packet while Grandma Sandy looked after the kids and Kristine hiked to the top of the highest point in Arizona – Mt Humphries at over 12,000′ elevation. Earlier in the day, I had biked the kids on the Flagstaff urban trail system. We had lots of fun stopping at a playground along the way.
Josiah on the urban trail at a spot looking up at Mt Humphries where Kristine was hiking at the same time.
Playing on a playground alongside the Flagstaff urban trail

From my bike ride to pick up my registration packet …
Kendrick Peak – one of the tallest peaks in Arizona – the Barn Burner 104 circles the mountain doing 4 laps
Course markings ready to go for the Barn Burner 104 race tomorrow!

Highlight pictures from the previous four days – in reverse chronological order starting from today (Friday, Day 11)

June 1, 2012 at 7:55 pm Leave a comment

Out west adventure – day 8 – Mount Lemmon

Today was another highlight day as I had the opportunity to drive down to Tucson and climb Mt Lemmon. I knew that I had no shot at getting the KOM on the short version of the climb after riding 104.5 miles yesterday and setting a new 25 minute power record taking the South Mountain KOM along the way. So I used Strava’s Explore feature to find a longer version of the climb that went all the way to the very top of the mountain. I figured that I had a shot at it if I just stayed steady at about 250 watts – well below my threshold power.

I felt surprisingly good at the bottom, though, and managed to average 273 watts for the first 7 miles of the climb before the average started to drop – particularly into a headwind 2 mile section of the climb towards windy point. It was dropping about a watt every mile as I struggled to maintain 250 watts. Then somewhere between milepost 15 and 16 up a steady part of the climb, I was looking at my wattage and it was down to 97 watts. I knew that I was still pushing about the same effort, but I also knew I was starting to struggle so I pushed much harder to try to get it back up to 250 watts. But the highest I could get it to was something like 175 watts. Then I realized that something must be wrong with my power meter. I’m hoping it is just a dead battery. This was very demotivating for me as I was relying a lot on the power average to push myself to keep that average higher – but the average started dropping quite rapidly with my current power output hovering around 100 watts eventually dropping to zero watts. So for the last 1200 feet of the first section of the climb and for the entire last section up Ski Valley to the high point, I just kept the elevation screen on and watched the dot get closer to the high point. I tried to use PRE to put out the same power, but I’m sure I had dropped below 250 watts by this time. It was enough, though, as I was able to set three KOMs on the climb – the full monte, and two shorter climbs at the end.

I was not in good shape by the top. I started late in the day (9:48AM) for this ride and had 18 miles of a gradual climb to reach the Catalina Highway where the official climb starts. I had two full bottles and a quarter of another bottle at the bottom – but I was completely out by the top. I did the last steep bit from the Irondoor Restaurant to the top with nothing to drink. Thankfully it was kinda cold at the top with temps in the upper 60s / lower 70s by the top and a steady wind blowing. Cold and very thirsty I asked one person to take my picture and then immediately headed back to the Irondoor Restaurant to refill water and get something to eat. I had only brought $10 with me so all I could afford was coke ($3) and cornbread/honey ($4.50). It was all I needed though as I drank several glasses of coke and doused the cornbread with nearly half a bottle of honey.

Irondoor Restaurant, an oasis in the sky
Cornbread with nearly half bottle of honey already gone

I stopped a couple times on the descent to get pictures, but by this point I really wanted to be done riding. I tried to push the pace on the descent but struggled to maintain 30mph on the flatter section and 40mph on the steeper sections. My max speed was 46mph – a little disappointing considering I regularly hit 50+mph on the steep descents in Birmingham. I kept the temperature screen open on my garmin and watched it rise through the 80s all the way to 101.2 by the start of the bikepath along the Rillito River. Fortunately, there was at least a little bit of shade on the bikepath and the temp on my Garmin dropped down to 98 by the end.

Here is a gallery of all the pictures I took … two of them were on the way up the climb while riding and trying to push 250 watts (the cactus picture towards the bottom of the climb and the rock outcropping next to the road)

May 29, 2012 at 11:22 am Leave a comment

Out west adventure – days 4, 5, 6, 7

Thursday, Day 4 – sunset adventure with Josiah
After a fun hobo dinner over the campfire, Josiah and I set out on a sunset adventure. We took the new trail I found to the Bright Angel lodge and then connected with Hermit Rd, which is open only to shuttles and cyclists. I pushed Josiah up the big opening hill before we took a gatorade break at the first overlook point. Then we continued on eventually making it to Maricopa point, which is closed to cyclists. BUT, as we started walking our bikes along the trail, we realized there was nobody there! So we hopped back on and rode the paved trail all the way out to the lookout point where we got the picture and video below:
Josiah showing the view looking west … note we were able to ride to the edge of the canyon because Maricopa was empty!

Friday, Day 5 – worst ride ever – Grand Canyon to Flagstaff
The views were great, but there was a lot of traffic, and the wind was horrendous. 20+mph steady headwind with gusts up to 50mph. Once I finally made it to Valle, I was hoping for a cross-tailwind, but instead it was just a nasty knock your front wheel sideways crosswind. As the road climbed gradually towards the San Francisco peaks, the wind got increasingly worse. Eventually, going across the Kendrick Park meadow, the wind was sustained at 30-40mph with gusts probably in the 60mph range. It is easily the worst wind I have ever ridden in. The only redeeming part of the ride is that after about a mile or two of descending from the high pt of 8046′, the road had bent enough to give me a tailwind. So I had a fast downhill with tailwind to end the ride. I made it to the Snowbowl climb turnoff ahead of Kristine, so after waiting a few minutes I headed up the climb even though I was tired and out of food. Shortly after starting the climb, Kristine drove up so I gladly called it a day – I had had enough of the wind. The views were great – see these pics from Hermit Rd in the grand canyon and much later in the ride approaching the San Francisco peaks.
View looking west from Hopi Pt at the start of my ride
The San Francisco peaks outside of flagstaff

Saturday, Day 6 – exploring Mummy Mountain and Camelback Mountain in Phoenix
We drove down to Phoenix later in the day on Friday arriving while everyone was at the rehearsal dinner for the wedding. The next morning Josiah and I went for an hour long ride exploring the very cool canal trail and tunnels while Kristine did a 5K running race with her cousin, Kimberly. When they got back, my uncle Jim helped guide me through the canal tunnel system over towards Camelback Mountain and Mummy Mountain where I tried to find every way possible to get high up on the mountains. There were many mansions built into the side of the hill with super long, steep driveways but they were all gated-off private property. Still, the roads leading to the driveway were really fun with several steep sections.
Approaching Camelback Mountain from the west – praying monk on the left
Approaching the “castle” climb on Camelback Mountain

Sunday, Day 7 – South Mountain KOM and North Mountain KOM attempt – 104.5 miles
The ride down Central Ave to South Mountain was relatively easy with a bike lane for most of the way. The route when straight through downtown Phoenix, which was deserted on a Sunday morning. Most of the lights could be timed so that I think I only had to wait at one or two lights. This road takes you directly into the climb. The Strava segment that I had looked at was the one that started at the restrooms so when I passed a parking area that looked like it had restrooms, I drilled it. I was trying to maintain 350 watt average, but after about 5 minutes of this, my average started to slowly come down until I ended up with a time of 24’27″ and a 324 watt average. I saw a sign at the entrance that said “Silent Sunday, no motor vehicles” which probably explains why there were hundreds of other cyclists climbing the mountain. It was motivating for me to always have people up ahead to chase. On the way back down, I explored all the side roads and lookouts enjoying the amazing views.
Right to left – Camelback Mountain, Mummy Mountain, Squaw Peak, North Mountain, Thunderbird, Deem Hills
View of the summit climb on South Mountain from the San Juan side road

Later in the afternoon I headed out to meet Uncle Bruce at the Deem Hills park to go mountain biking. Along the way I climbed North Mountain to see if I could set the KOM on it the same day that I set one on South Mountain. Unfortunately, the climb was far too steep and technical and it was all I could do to make it to the top without putting my foot down – ended up third on the KOM. To give you an idea of how steep part of the climb was – there was one stretch of the descent where I was leaned all the way back off the back of the saddle because I felt like I was going to tip over the handlebars if I hit the brakes too hard or hit a rock. Here are a couple pics of North Mountain:

Approaching North Mountain from 7th Avenue
View from the top of North Mountain looking south towards Phoenix with South Mountain in the distance

I continued on up towards Deem Hills and met Uncle Bruce for some awesome desert singletrack riding. We started out by climbing from the parking lot up to the top of one of the northern peak. The climb was pretty steep in parts – particularly in the tight switchbacks. I was able to ride a couple of the switchbacks but had to walk one or two of the others. The trails were rocky in spots, but not overly technical. You could have fun on both the climb and the downhill. Perhaps the thing that stood out the most, though, was all the different kinds of cactus and cholla with the trails clearly visible on the sides of the hills. After we finished riding, Bruce directed me on a much better route that involved a small climb up Thunderbird canyon followed by some very cool canal trails all the way back to 7th avenue.

Desert singletrack in Deem Hills
Deem Hills north climb, part i
Deem Hills north climb, part ii
The final switchback on the way up the north climb

Finally, here is a gallery of some other pics that I took while riding. They are mostly in chronological order with pictures from the sunset with Josiah first and my rides yesterday last – except for some reason the mountain bike pictures in the afternoon are before the road ride pics from the morning.

May 28, 2012 at 8:30 am Leave a comment

Traveling out west – days 1, 2, 3, and 4

Day 1 – Birmingham to Mt Magazine – 450 miles
We arrived an hour or so before sunset after driving well over 400 miles from Birmingham. The kids were excited to go for a bike ride around the state park loop to go see the sunset at Cameron Bluffs – found cool trail connecting the campground to the overlook. Analise was really brave to ride her bike down a 15% grassy slope. Josiah felt it was quicker just to hop off and run down the slope with his bike. Beautiful sunset (see timer picture below). We had a nice dinner at the lodge and a good night’s sleep waking up to an absolutely amazing sunrise overlooking the valley 2000 feet below. Here is my favorite picture from Mt Magazine:

Watching the sunset with the kids on top of Mt Magazine – Cameron Bluff overlook

Day 2 – Mt Magazine 2x plus drive to Bernalillo, NM – 830 miles
Rolling descent down to Paris – zero traffic, turn around in Paris – rolling climb back up, realize running out of time so pick up the pace before the top. Zip back down the other side to the low point before Havana … turn around do just below AT effort on the long climb back up. Very cool climb, short hiking trail at slow speed up to the true summit – cat 1 climb. Lunch at the lodge – 830 mile drive to Bernalillo – arrive at 12:30AM, asleep by 1AM

Me at the Arkansas state high point after long KOM effort

Day 3 – Sandia Crest plus drive to Grand Canyon – 425 miles
I picked Bernalillo so I could be close to the Sandia Crest climb. The climb started out as beautiful pavement, but then I saw a sign fairly early on that says “unimproved road ahead, local traffic only”. The pavement was great, though, with cool pueblo neighborhoods and fantastic view of the Sandia Crest peak and all the rocky outcroppings for several miles of the climb so I didn’t think much of it – thought maybe it was an old sign … didn’t believe it.
Then I saw another sign that says road closed for winter proceed at own risk. Shortly after that sign the beautiful pavement transitioned into a rocky, dirt road sometimes steep, basically a rouge roubaix style road except continuing on and on forever (7.5 miles of climbing to be exact). I immediately backed off the pace and picked my line very carefully not wanting to flat in such an isolated area. I passed by the entrance to Sandia Cave where there is a picture of a woman next to a sign that said “unsolved murder 1999″. Most of the climb was rocky, but there were several hard-packed non-rocky dirt sections that were fun, absolute beautiful scenery narrow roads. I lost my gps signal a couple times through the canyons.
After 7.5 miles of the dirt road, I emerged onto NM-536 which was nicely paved and had lots of horseshoe switchbacks on the way up to the crest. It was hard to push any harder than 240-250watts. I’m not sure if it was the altitude or the length of the climb? There was a stunning view at the top of the mountains and crags below and Albuquerque stretched out far below. The gift shop is built at the high point with a radio tower armada immediately adjacent. Amazing views.
No way I was going to do the dirt descent, so I headed all the way back down to 536 to the I40 corridor back into Albuquerque where I called Kristine to coordinate meeting her at an exit ramp (#164) from I40.

From the Super 8 to the Sandia Crest high point – almost 5600 vertical feet – new record climb for me

Warning sign with Sandia Crest in the background

Beautiful scenery on the long dirt climb

Amazing view from the Sandia Crest lookout

Day 4 – Grand Canyon – Kaibab National Forest
Woke up early just after the sunrise … rode with the kids in search of the Grand Canyon. I kid you not – we couldn’t find it! It was pretty obvious which way the canyon was, but all the trails that headed that direction (e.g., through the Shrine of Ages) had “no biking” signs. So we headed up towards another lookout but the kids were exhausted by this point, and the hill was kinda steep. I found out later on my mountain bike ride that we only needed to make it to the top of the hill to get to a nice lookout point. So we headed back down to the cafe for breakfast and then the kids walked over with Kristine and her parents to hike to a lookout. They promised me they would take me over there later, and I headed out on a 60 mile mountain bike ride through the Kaibab National Forest.
The trailhead was about 13.5 miles from the campground so I had a bit of riding on the road to do – but there wasn’t too much traffic, and the road was wide. Eventually I made it to the turn off which immediately turned into a dirt forest service road. After about a mile or so, I made it to the Arizona Trail trailhead which theoretically goes all the way down to the border of Mexico. My plan was to ride out 10-15 miles and turn around to get about 20-30 miles of singletrack practice. The trail was kinda cool because it went through different kinds of terrain. It rolled constantly on short ups and downs with only a few longer downhills and uphills. It was mostly non-technical in terms of boulders or roots, but the rocks and dirt on the trail was loose and the turns tight meaning the speed was kinda slow. I’m sure with more practice you could really fly through it.
After about 10 miles of single track I saw a double track road with a sign that said “bike route” so I left the Arizona Trail and headed on the double track which eventually turned into a forest service road. This road alternated between sections that were sandy and others that were quite rocky (basically a flatter version of the skyway epic course). So after another 10 miles of this, I was tired of getting beat up and turned around bypassing the singletrack and instead taking the forest service road all the way back to the main highway.
This time I stopped to climb the cool fire tower, which is no longer used as a fire tower but instead serves as a great lookout where you have an excellent view not only into the grand canyon but also the surrounding area – it was used as a fire lookout at some point in time so you’d expect it to be able to see for miles and miles in all directions – and I was not disappointed.

Arizona Trail trailhead entrance next to the Grandview Lookout Tower

View of the grand canyon and surrounding area from grandview fire tower

View of the grand canyon from “grandview point” – not exactly near the lookout tower

Analise and Josiah were having dirt bike races through the campground and this was their “podium”

This elk spent the afternoon lounging and eating from the trees at our campsite

May 24, 2012 at 7:12 pm Leave a comment

Epic Skyway Epic

Quick summary – 2nd place behind Adam Gaubert from Texas although I did snag the $100 bill for the KOM at the top of one of only eleven Cat 2 climbs (currently) in Alabama. Sometimes the stats don’t do a race justice, but here they are: 60ish miles in just under 4 hours, 8 minutes. I didn’t have a wheel speed sensor so I’m guessing I must have lost satellite a few times to come up under 60 miles. It felt like 100+ miles, though.

Heartrate summary for the skyway epic

2012 Skyway Epic annotated heartrate data

The details – what an amazing job Brent did start to finish with this race. The mass start was creative with all 60+ riders lined up at the end of the boat dock area giving us plenty of room to charge all the way up the entrance area to a grassy cordoned off chute which led into the single track. Adam Gaubert, Jeff Clayton, and Lennie Moon (Team Momentum) entered in the single track in that order. Behind them I believe it was David Darden (BiciCoop), maybe one or two other riders, Ed Merritt (BiciCoop), and then me (Tria Cycling p/b DonohooAuto.com and Infinty Med-i-spa). I was able to keep up no problem through the single track, but Adam and Jeff were destroying the singletrack and had quite a lead by the end.

As soon as we made it out of the singletrack onto the dam, I attacked hard to start to close the gap to the leaders. I passed Lennie and David on the climb after the dam and continued to drive it hard onto Wiregrass Rd (dirt/gravel forest road). After a mile or two, I could see the leaders up ahead and I was closing pretty fast. Once I caught onto the back of them, we entered into a pretty good 3-way rotation going into the bottom of the climb. I took a hard pull and got a gap about 1/3rd of the way up the climb so I drilled it. The climb was long, though, and once we hit the skyway portion of the climb, the road was much rougher and I had problems finding a good line so Adam was closing in on me. Thankfully, the climb leveled out a bit and got smoother shortly before the top so I was able to lock out the front suspension, stand up and give it one more burst to reach the KOM first and grab the $100 bill.

The effort for the KOM really cost me, though, as I was cooked. I stopped to stuff the $100 deep down in my jersey pocket, and Adam flew by me while I was stopped. I got started again and went through the most challenging part of the course at maybe twice the speed that I had gone when I pre-rode the course in February. But Adam continued to put time on me all the way to the turnaround. It looked like he was 30 seconds or so ahead of me by the turnaround. I still had a bottle and a half of gatorade so I just stopped briefly to grab the proof necklace before setting off in pursuit of Adam. I was hoping that I could catch him on the climb so I could follow his line through all the rough sections – but it wasn’t to be. It was awesome as all the outbound racers were shouting encouragement and giving me time splits to Adam. It started out as 30 second time splits, but eventually it went up into the minute or 2 minute range. I believe he had 3 minutes by the bottom of the
descent back down the KOM climb.

I think I kept the gap there until close to the end where he still had 3 minutes at the last aid station. I stopped there to get some cold coke, banana, and water. This was a very important stop because I really couldn’t figure out how to eat or drink during the singletrack sections so I did that last 10 miles with only one or two sips of water. It was in this last singletrack section that Jeff Clayton (Georgia Neurological Institute) came flying up to me out of nowhere. I immediately let him by thinking that I could hop on his wheel and follow his lines. This lasted for LESS THAN 5 SECONDS as I lost it on the very first turn crashing hard. My bars were stuck on the wrong side of the top tube and it took a few seconds to yank them back across the top tube (I’m glad I went with aluminum instead of carbon fiber).

I had already resigned myself to riding as hard as possible to try to finish on the last step of the podium when on the next hill I started to come up on Jeff pretty fast … my first thought was that he must have popped himself trying to distance me, but then I realized that he had a completely flat rear tire. I came around him thinking that he would have no problem stopping to change the tire and then catching back up to me again. So I could never really let up off the pace … but as it turns out, Jeff couldn’t get the tire to hold air so he had to ride in the last several miles on the flat – and yet he still held on for third!

Kristine snagged a few videos … one of me coming out of the final singletrack and another of me finishing a minute or two later and one of Josiah asking if I was in this race … good stuff!

May 20, 2012 at 9:15 pm 1 comment

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Quick reference stats

Anaerobic Threshold:
Power:300 watts
Heart rate:180 bpm
Maximums:
Power:1028 watts (5s)
Heart rate:198 bpm (5s)
AT power estimated by critical power curve in Golden Cheetah, which predicts I should be able to maintain 300watts for 1 hour.

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