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Green Valley!

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sat, 04/18/2009

After failing to make it Green Valley about a week ago due to truly cruel winds, I tried it again... this time - success!

Getting out there was extremely easy, which made me feel good since it wasn't too long ago that I would have thought those 30 miles alone were an accomplishment. I ate a chicken sandwich and some fries and had a liter of Gatorade at Carl's Jr. and after a brief rest turned back up the road towards Tucson. I expected to feel slow having stopped and eaten, and indeed I felt pretty terrible for about the first 15 miles.

Exactly what happened I don't really know. I considered that it might have been dehydration, but couldn’t be sure. I drank 1L of water before leaving and had 1.5L along the way to GV, sweating freely the entire time. On the way back I didn’t sweat so much despite obvious exertion which concerned me – but I couldn’t tell if it was dehydration or the fact that the humidity was in the single digits and the wind had picked up quite a bit. In any case, I consumed massive amounts of water and sports drink and continued on… at about mile 45 things picked up randomly and I felt pretty good for the remainder of the ride.

When I had finally made it back to my apartment, my cycle computer read 59.5 miles... a few laps around my complex solved that problem to make the number a better milestone.  Hey, riding is riding!

Distance: 60.0 miles
Time: 4:16:48
Avg. Speed: 14.0 mph

9-Mile Hill, Fountain Hills

Submitted by tibaal89 on Mon, 04/13/2009

Back in Fountain Hills at my parents place to visit for Easter, it was a good opportunity to go for a ride up there.  I knew the route I did the last time I was up there continued to become something known as '9-Mile Hill' so I thought I'd give that a shot.  From the internet accounts I'd seen of it, the hill was a continuous 2-3% grade rising about 1,300 feet from bottom to top.  For me, this should be a fairly massive challenge!

It really wasn't that bad.  The portion of the ride I'd done before went by very fast and soon I was at the hill.  From the bottom, it was fairly intimidating - it just sort of went up until you couldn't see it any longer.  Once you'd ridden to that point, it still continued until you couldn't see it any longer... and on and on.  I found I was able to climb about 10mph and plugged away without much problem to the top!  w00t.

Distance: 44.3 miles
Time: 3:16:02
Avg. Speed: 13.5 mph
Ascent: 1,650 feet

Green Valley Attempt...

Submitted by tibaal89 on Fri, 04/10/2009

Susan's parents house is in Green Valley about 35 miles from my apartment along a nice road... perfect!  Or so I thought, the weather had other ideas. I didn't last very long riding head first into 35mph winds... longer than I thought, but Green Valley was not going to happen.  The way back was fun though, with the wind and slightly negative grade allowing me to effortlessly ride around 25mph.

Distance: 45.1 miles
Time: 3:14:30
Avg. Speed: 13.9 mph

Mount Lemmon from Home! (not really)

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sun, 04/05/2009

I don't think there's much question that the road up Mount Lemmon is one of the greatest possible bike rides in this area and probably one of the best in the state and country!  I could contain the fascination no longer... Even attempting this was an interesting choice for me since, at 300lbs. and not in very good shape, I generally suck to an amazing degree at any kind of hill climb.  It's something like 16 miles from my apartment to the base, so I figured I'd ride out there to warm up and so that if (when?) I failed miserably to climb anything, I'd still get a good ride out of the ordeal.

I set out going east on River Road... had someone filled the tubes of my bike with lead?  I felt terrible and slow.  This was not going well. Somehow I managed to avoid turning around despite nearly doing so many times and found myself at the "Mile 0" sign. I called Susan to give her my last goodbye and set out.

After literally about 100 yards of riding in my lowest gear (a 36/26 of all things) I had to stop.  Truly, this was not good.  After a few cycles of riding and stopping for a few minutes, I was not even through the first turn... oh boy.

Then, a sign - encouragement sent from above!  An overweight and aparently quite elderly woman rode by me and said hello.  Not far behind came her (I assume) husband who looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 years old... This sort of thing (including a girl that looked like a 14 year old version of Susan on a mountain bike) happened a few times as I sat on the side of the road and drove me to press on.

Soon I was at the Babad Do'ag parking area and vista near the 3-mile point.  A joke by the standards of people who do this sort of thing, but a pretty satisfying accomplishment for me.  The real reward was the way down... gravity likes me, it was insane fun carving out the turns at 40mph. 

Lesson learned: windy roads at 40mph on a bicycle is more fun than 150mph on a motorcycle (and probably more dangerous...)

Distance: 39.6 miles
Time: 2:58:30
Avg. Speed: 13.2 mph

Bike MS: Round Up Ride 2009 - Day II

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sun, 03/29/2009

The night and morning were once again very cold and despite going to bed extremely early, it was not much fun to get up.  I wanted very much to be present for the start of the ride this time and to stay within view of other cyclists during the ride to some extent.  As fate would have it, we were on time... and the start of the event was late. 

Bike MS: Round Up Ride 2009 - Day I

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sat, 03/28/2009

Finally it was here!  Bike MS 2009...  Susan and I had arrived the night before, set up our tent, and slept in the park that was designated as the event headquarters.  We had met up with Heidi and Josh, the rest of the AZFJ.org non-team team.  There was some concern that we might go a little slow since Josh had not been on a bike in a while and was stuck with a mountain bike with fairly ridiculous off-road tires... but as it turned out, he was not the slow one by any means.

Chandler Ride

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sun, 03/22/2009

Still hungry for bike action and with another opportunity to go for a ride in a new place, we set out again from Susan's relatives place in Chandler.  Today I planned a much more ambitious route of about 40 miles (to be a new record for us both).  This was to ensure that we'd be OK a the MS ride in only one week where we planned to do a 35-40 mile ride.

The ride was largely flat until the very far end where it became quite steep and hilly.  We did a few challenging (for us) climbs and turned around to come back the way we came.  I felt great as we began to come back, but soon felt my energy crash.  The last few miles were very difficult and slow but we made it! 

My hope is that this ride and the one yesterday demonstrate that we'll be fine for the MS ride...

Distance: 41.9 miles
Time: 3:14:20
Avg. Speed: 12.9 mph

Fountain Hills Ride

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sat, 03/21/2009

Because we'd be in Phoenix to see the musical RENT and visit her relatives, Susan and I brought our bikes up and planned to ride someplace in Fountain Hills.  I search mapmyride.com for local rides and after ruling out the so-called "tour of pain" decided on a nice route that would take us out of town into some nice rolling hills and nice scenery.

It was a blast!  We've both come a long way... at the end of the ride I felt great and we easily could have turned around and done it again.  The route was in fact very nice.

Distance: 22.8 miles
Time: 1:32:05
Avg. Speed: 13.2 mph

Bike MS Training Ride w/ Cactus Cycling Club

Submitted by tibaal89 on Sun, 03/15/2009

Since Susan and I had never before ridden with a group of cyclists really in any capacity let alone a major event, we thought it wise to go out with a group before taking on the Bike MS event.  There were many training rides scheduled by the MS Society in the Phoenix area, but not so much down here in Tucson... fortunately there was one at least, and we decided to do it.

The only information we had was 7:00am and the address of a grocery store.  We arrived a little beforehand and were puzzled by the complete lack of any evidence to suggest there was a group of bicyclists leaving there soon... no people, no bikes, few parked cars and none of them had bike racks or anything!

After a little bit of freaking out, a huge herd of bikes darted away out from behind the store... DOH!  There was a parking lot on the other side that we weren't aware of, and the 7:00am time was the leave time!  Soon after another group of bikes started to go by and Susan ran out to them.  They waited for us to grab our bikes and we were off!  Unfortunately this glitched forced us to meet breakfast... so it was a hectic and late start with no food in our first ever ride with a group over an unknown course at unknown speeds.  OK!

Fortunately the group turned out to be an amazingly friendly bunch.  They were called the Cactus Cycling Club and the motto "We leave no behind behind!" was most welcome to Susan and I.  The ride was very enjoyable as was the company.  Also, not only did I not die from skipping breakfast - I actually felt really good for the whole ride.  Interesting...

We both agreed that coming on another CCC ride would be a blast and something we must do.

Distance: 26.7 miles
Time: 2:15:59
Avg. Speed: 11.7 mph

River path over and over and over again...

Submitted by tibaal89 on Thu, 03/12/2009

To date the longest bike ride I've ever done was just about 30 miles.  At the end of this, I remember quite clearly, I was exhausted do a disturbing degree.  So, feeling that 30 or so miles is pretty lame as a personal best, I wanted to push on into something more like 40. 

The plan was to run the Rillito River bike path back and forth until I was ready to keel over.  This way I would never be more than 6 miles from my apartment and there would be no giant hills seperating me from home.  If able to make it from my place to each end twice, the total would greater than 40 miles, in fact closer to 50.

The ride went fairly well!  I went to the West end, past my place to the East end, past my place to the West end again, and back to my place for a total of 38.2 miles.  It wasn't very hard and I wasn't too beat up physically at the end, but I'd definitely underestimated the mental strain of the ride.  Perhaps it was the fact that I was riding the same short and generally uninteresting path back and forth... whatever it was, my brain was in bad shape.  Probably should choose something more interesting for next time...

Distance: 38.2 miles
Time: 2:37:23
Avg. Speed: 14.5 mph