All by myself

Just me out there tonight. That's kind of the way it is when it gets cold in Phoenix. I might add here that cold in Phoenix is not the same as cold in the rest of the country. By cold I mean 50 degrees, overcast, slight breeze, and on and off spitting rain. I got to Dreamy Draw and the lot was nearly empty. I didn't see anybody until about mile 5 when a couple of guys coming down damn near ran me off the trail. At my turn around I saw a mother and child bundled up as if they were planning for snow. The woman commented on how cold I must be in shorts, I just chuckled and rode off. Those were the last people I saw. I logged 12.5 miles, 1750 feet, and did it in just over 2 hours. The terrain on this ride is a little bit technical but nothing too crazy. I try not to tackle anything overly difficult when it's just me out there, I don't get hurt often but it's nice to have someone else around when I do. As of now I've been home eaten and showered and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm headed down to ride Casa Grande tomorrow with Star and some MTBR folks. Should be a good time.

Quick spin with Michele

Michele and I hit the preserves this afternoon. I didn't get home from work until 4:00 which didn't leave a whole lot of time to ride before the sun went down and my lady isn't really into riding after dark. We went the normal Michele route plus a little extra, 4 miles, 280 feet, 35 minutes. Nothing else for today, got some things floating around upstairs though, I might be ready to add them to the blog by this weekend.

Riding with the docs

Went out to Dreamy Draw today with three of my pre-docs for a quick spin around the preverves. We were shooting for a 4:00 start time but in typical John and Zeph fashion they were both late. Zeph was the worse of the two offenders showing up at 4:30 putting us on the trail at :20 till. Our late start meant that we wouldn't be able to stay out that late due to the fact that none of us were packing lights and Star is crazy night blind.

We did just shy of 7 miles with 725 feet of climbing in just over an hour including stops. The climb out of Dreamy Draw hurt like a mother today, both Star and I stopped and walked on one of the segments. I felt pretty good after that dropping everyone on the zipper, pretty much all the way to the 40th street lot. We rode up 8 past T-100 at a decent pace then did a bit of a turn and took an unnamed trail back down to the T-100. On the way back down to DD I was following Star and got to witness the finest digger I think she's ever taken. She dropped off a step into a large rock going right over the bars. She hit the ground hard, coming down on her hip, shoulder, and head. True to form she bounced right back quickly looking at the bright side. She popped out of her new clipless pedals without any problem, helping put another fear to bed.

We all went to Chipotle after for dinner and then I got to come home to play with my new toy.

Pemberton Trail

I went out to McDowell Mountain Park today with Star, Michele was going to come along but she wasn't really feeling up to it when we were getting ready to go. I was not feeling all that enthused about riding either since I didn't get much sleep last night and I was ready for my nap before we even got out the door. At any rate the Pemberton stats are as follows: 15.2 miles, 1050 ft of gain, avg speed of 9.6 mph for 1hr 34 min ride time, and a top speed of 22 mph. Even though it wasn't really all that fast, this was my fastest Pemberton time to date. Star really stepped up today and hauled ass, she spent most of the ride ahead of me, far enough that I couldn't see her most of the time. I was able to reel her back in pretty easy when the trail got fast, and that's still to be expected. Her technical skills have a ways to go, but she's coming along quite well.

BCT Trail Day

No ride today, but I still got my workout. I got up at an ungodly hour this morning so that I could help out with the Black Canyon Trail building day. There were about 30 people there with the mountain biking contingent making up at least half our numbers. I left after about six hours so I could get back in Phoenix in time to be on call, but at the time I left we had constructed about 1/4 mile of some of the hardest trail I've ever had a part in building. It was about 1.5 mile hike out to where we worked. There were a couple of pack horses so that lightened the load that each individual needed to bring(BTW, no such luxuries when I was building trail back in my Americorps days). I spent the first couple of hours hauling rock to build up a 15 foot section that needed to be benched up approximately four feet. After that I worked on grooming some of the freshly cut in sections until lunch. After lunch I spent about 1.5 hours working an untouched section getting maybe 30 feet or so done before I headed back to the parking lot and driving the 45 minutes home. Now it's nap time.

Back in the saddle...

I got back on my bike today for a quick little solo spin around the preserves. I only logged 7 miles and 800 ft but I had to work for all of it. It started raining just before I pulled into the Dreamy Draw parking lot but it never got heavy and it ended after only 20 minutes or so. My arm felt pretty good with only a little pain when I was hitting rougher terrain at a higher speed. I was a little surprised at how gun-shy I was at a couple of the more technical spots where I normally do just fine. The Goat Camp incident put a little bit of a scare into me, not because I went over the bars, I do that all the time, but rather it's because it was the first time in a long time that I went over the bars and didn't land on my feet.

I amazes me how long it takes me to build up some semblance of a fitness level and how quickly it all goes down the tubes. Mountain biking is the only thing I enjoy that even resembles exercise, well I guess there is rowing and canoing, but without a rowboat or a decent place to take the canoe that leaves me with mountain biking. I didn't really do anything this week even close to exercise except for a quick 45 minute spin on the stationary bike in the workout room. I'm veering off on a bit of a tangent here but I'm convinced that whoever designed the goddamn seat on that thing had to be some kind of sadist, I couldn't hardly walk straight after less than an hour.

Oh one, oh one, oh seven

Well, no big kick off ride for the first day of the year. My arm still hurts pretty good and as of last night my shoulder is giving a bit of pain. I took a quick spin around the parking lot this morning to kind of feel things out and the pavement was ok, but gravel and curbs not so much. It could be a whole lot worse so I've got my first thing to be thankful for in the new year. I'm just going to call it a week off and see how I'm feeling Saturday. If all is well I'll jump back into it full bore.