So today we did the big McDowell mountain ride, which consisted of roughly 100 miles, including a consistent grade of 2% for straight 9 miles. Part of our group went down to Bartlet lake once we reached the ranger station, however that would have been an additional 28 miles and roughly 4k more feet of climbing.  As I had barely any legs left and felt like the group was always waiting on me to catch up I decided to go down to Seven Springs, which was only an additional 2k feet of climbing.  I actually ended up recovering during that seven springs route before we headed back to the condo, but from the stories from other riders in our group the Bartlet lake climb was rough, desolate and HOT.  I'm happy with my choices, maybe next time I will venture into no-mans land!

Summary of ride - link to data:
103.5 miles
4600 ft of climbing 
5.51 hours of saddle time

A few pics:

So today was just a recovery ride, a time to give our legs a break without actually getting off the bike.  This means staying in the small chainring, staying on mostly flat roads with very little climbing involved, taking in lots of water and enjoying yourself.  

In a nutshell thats what we did, we headed south ended up going through Tempe and rode thru ASU, than into Scottsdale around camel back mountain back towards the condo in North central Phoenix.  Nothing really exciting here, but I hope you enjoy the pics and ride data!

Summary of ride - link to data:
41 miles
1280 ft of climbing (not a optimal recovery ride)
3 hours of saddle time

A few pics:

Today we decided to climb a mountain, well it's not a giant mountain.  I'm not talking about doing 10-14k feet of climbing in a day, no no.  Just a small mountain, 9 miles of constant elevation gain all the way to the top with lots of switch backs on your way up.  Sounds fun right!  Well it was, I've honestly never done anything like that before.  All of my riding has been done in Missouri, which doesnt have a lot of mountains that have this constant elevation gain climbs, its more of a rolling hill type terrain, so you go up 200-400 feet and go down a little and repeat that.  

Our moutain to conquer was South Mountain Park in the southern Phoenix region.  We left from North central Phoenix and headed straight south through downtown Phoenix until we arrived at the base of the mountain.  At this point we are at about 1100 feet of elevation, the top of the mountain is about 2592, so at this point we are about to climb 1400-1500 feet of elevation over a period of roughly 9 miles.  (check out the garmin data here) 

In general I really enjoyed this ride, like I said its something I have never done before.  I wasn't the first one up the mountain, but I wasn't the last either. :)  My legs are definitely tired right now as I type this... really looking forward to an active recovery ride tomorrow!

Summary of ride:
70.56 miles
2657 feet of climbing
4 hours and 17 minutes of moving time

Some pics of the ride:

So today we headed out at 6:30 AM, in a pretty brisk 41 degrees.  This is damn cold for Phoenix, especially when you know its going to heat up so you wear the bear minimums.  I ended up saying screw it and put on my fleece arm warmers, leg warmers as well as a warm base layer and some full fingered gloves, even with all that I was pretty cold.

So why did we leave so early that morning?  Well every saturday there is a group ride, called the BOS ride (Bicylists of Scottsdale).  It consists of about 80 riders, who all look like they've been training for the TDF, seriously everyones skinny as hell, has a 4-7k bike and sporting deep dish rims.  Seriously tho Phoenix is in their peak road season, as the summer is way to hot to do riding, so when we are doing CX and basemiles back home in the fall/winter they are in their road season. When we showed up, I was thinking...."This is going to hurt - I wonder how long I'll hang on before I get dropped - Wow, there's a few girls here who could probably kick my ass on the bike"... obviously I'm feeling really insignificant so the anxiety starts to rise, my body starts pumping in adrenaline and of course my HR is up...great start huh?!?

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Each year a few of our team members get the pleasure of heading out to Phoenix, AZ where our store sponsor has a condo.  I was lucky enough to be able to swing it this year.  I came out a few days later than the rest of the guys, who arrived on Wednesday afternoon, so they already had two rides under their belt (150 miles) by the time I showed up Thursday night.  

The Day 1 consisted of a slow and easy recovery ride for the guys, so this was actually a great start up ride for me as most of my winter training has consisted of being on the trainer or on my CX bike at night on gravel.  I do have  fairly average base, its the best base I could have right now, but its not the worst either.  We ended up doing about 58 miles around the eastern side of north Phoenix up into the fountain hills area and back.  Not a lot of climbing, but we did manage to get in about 1500-2000 feet of climbing.  You will notice that I didnt have my garmin turned on for some of the ride so I had to manually input the mileage and I dont think I updated the elevation gains/losses when I did that so my climbing for that day is a guestimate.

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