Weekend

This weekend we continued building AZ Trail near Highway 83. Bernie, Doc, Carrie and I spent Thursday doing the final layout. Then Saturday about 40 people showed up to tear it up. As usual, we had some good folks on the crews and it was a nice day to get out. I got quite a few miles in as a roaming ‘techincal resource.’ Our planning for where to send the crews was was far from ideal, so I ran around trying to redirect them. We still left a big gap between highway 83 and Old Sonoita Highway.

Trail work continues in January.

Sat. night was Randy’s holiday bash. It was entertaining and Paula had fun. But my ears are still ringing. My endurance is definitely lacking for such events.

On Sunday I rode up Oracle Rd. to Catalina State Park to hit the 50 year trail. I haven’t been out there for a while and I underestimated the pavement to dirt ratio. It only took an hour to get out there, but with the sun setting at 5:20pm, it only left me with a little more than an hour of dirt time before I had to turn around. 4-5 hours is the minimum time allocation for heading up there again.

I kept some weight on the pedals, even through the momentum killing rocks. With the increased pace I almost made it to Golder, but decided to turn back and not risk riding back through town under complete darkness. On the way back I noticed that the old race course trail seems to be coming back into use…..

Awesome day, really. It’s funny that because EL SOL is always out in Southern AZ I relish in the occasional cloudy day. Knee warmers were enough to keep me comfortable the whole time. It’s a tough life here in December Tucson.

41.26 mi (11.25 mi uphill, 11.71 mi downhill, 18.30 mi flat)
2261 ft total ascent (2186 ft descent) – 5.7 % uphill grade, 5.3 % downhill grade
3:15:17 total time (3:11:13 moving, 0:04:04 stopped)
0:04:36 pace (12.9 mph average speed, 29.7 mph max speed)
11.834 difficulty, 54.074 effort

Plans and discussions continue for big rides, travel, and TopoFusion+Motionbased.