Paula’s APC (mine too)

I didn’t think it was a good idea. I had offered to ride with Paula for her first Antelope Peak Challenge. But she would have none of it. The more I tried to talk her into letting me ride with her, the more determined she became to ride it by herself. Pretty soon I knew the wheels were in motion and nothing could slow, let alone stop them.

This is no small loop. The bailouts are few, the services are nil. Heck, often the trail is nil. Everyone gets lost somewhere. Potential for flatting is off the charts. The remoteness is daunting — very few people have ever been on this section of AZT, especially by bike.

It wasn’t that I didn’t think Paula could make it. She’s done some pretty epic stuff on a bike (like, perhaps this, or this). But I’ve always been there, taking care of the wrenching, flat changing, navigation, unexpected mishap — that kind of thing. I think her longest solo ride is her 14 mile commute.

She’s done a couple bike races, but only of the Norba multiple lap sort. The APC is probably not the best first endurance race, but she likes to drink deep.

I set her up with a full kit — stuff usually only I carry on our rides. A pile of tubes, tools, a GPS, tape, first aid kit, chain link (which she ended up giving to another rider), and even a camera, to document the trip. I walked her through the course on TopoFusion, but this thing is so long, so convoluted and so vague that I’m not sure if it increased or decreased her ability to stay on course.

We rode Chad’s dirt route into Oracle as a group.

(all pictures are by Paula, from her ride)

There were two other women out on the course (one was Pirategirl, above). After Oracle the race was on and I did what I usually do — ride hard.

Paula soon found herself alone, watching Antelope Peak in the distance. The Antelope Peak Challenge is to ride to Antelope Peak and climb to the top. One of the neat things about the challenge is that you get views of Antelope Peak throughout the ride. It starts off very small:

It doesn’t get much bigger, even on the gasline.

Even though said gasline seems to stretch to infinity.

The gasline was her favorite part of the ride. She was expecting it to be much harder, rockier and unrideable. In a lot of ways, I agree with her, it is a blast to ride.

On singletrack, Antelope Peak is finally getting larger. She fumbled on one switchback and ended up pinned under her bike. This happened once on our Oregon trip, but I was there to help her out of it. She doesn’t even remember how she got out of it, just that it was not easy and that it hurt.

It was around here that she did some serious extracurricular riding. Per the GPS, she was off route for about 45 minutes, taking side roads that paralleled the course, but were not the course. She started bushwhacking to rejoin the GPS line, but then the GPS line disappeared! This was six hours into the ride and fatigue/bonk likely played a role in the confusion. She panicked for a while. She was right in front of the peak, but knew she needed to go all the way around it on the AZT. But there was no AZT!

There’s Antelope Peak, up close and personal. Note the cholla minefield on the trail in that pic. Not easy to even walk through! You can’t be too paranoid about flats out here.

She always had a thought in the back of her mind that she might be able to climb the peak when she got there. But it seemed so far away and so high. It just didn’t seem possible that she’d even make it to the peak, let alone have the energy and time to climb it.

But she had been focused on it all day, and finally, here it was. It was 2:30pm when she reached the north side of the peak, which happens to be the furthest point from, well, just about everything — the start/finish, highways, civilization. 3.5 hours of daylight remaining, and some 30 miles of unknown terrain to ride. We hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d try to climb it. I didn’t describe to her the best route (there is no trail), or how to find the correct summit.

She decides to climb the peak. Over half the men in front of her had opted not to climb it, and several that did waited for someone who had done it before, unwilling to go it on their own.

I was incredulous when I found out she had climbed it. “That’s the challenge, right?” was her response. “It’s the Antelope Peak Challenge to ride to the peak and then climb it! I had to do it!”.

She made her way through the grass, cactus and rocks, heading to the peak she thought was the summit, but once there it was obvious she wasn’t standing on the highest point (others have made the same mistake). Climbing down from the false summit she got pinned by a catclaw (aka wait-a-minute bush). She literally couldn’t move for a few moments as it “scratched the hell out of” her. She then somehow stirred up a hornet’s nest. One dive bombed her and stung her on the head. She killed it, but others kept chasing as she ran down the slope.

She’s always told me that she is allergic to stings and that they frighten her. She got a goosebump on her head, but pushed on to the real peak.

She described to me, after the race, reaching the summit and simply breaking down in tears. She had been through so much, gone so far, all by herself. And yet here she was, standing on top of the peak.

Awesome.

I talked to her on the phone (Verizon works out there!?) as she had just come down from the peak. I had finished and was eating pizza at the finish line. She kept riding, and eventually her mother and I drove out to the Arch to cheer her into the finish.

It got pretty dark and I started to get worried. She had a headlamp suitable for night riding, but I expected her earlier. She wrapped up the last bit of the Old Pueblo course with a big grin on her face and a tiny bit of light to spare.

Now it was on to the worst part of the entire route — ~7 miles of Willow Springs Road that seems to go on forever, no matter if you’ve been out for 7 hours or 11. It’s tedious, and it hurts.

She finished up strong for a total “on the bike” time of 11:19, becoming the first and only woman to complete the APC. I wish she had a blog so we could hear her version of the story — I know I am not doing it justice.

Paula’s vision quest is far more interesting and remarkable, but I suppose I should write a bit about my ride.

Eight of us rode fast through Oracle, and hit the AZT together. On the gasline Glen and Gattis took the lead, but neither could jump too far ahead without knowing where they were going. I heard cursing behind me at one point and turned around to see both Max and Glen off their bikes. Bye bye time bonus!

I let Gattis lead the crux hill. He cleaned it with style and in about three gears harder than I. I followed suit, making us both the front runners (15 minute time bonus for cleaning the gasline). Glen and I rode the AZT for a while together. He was on me like glue, and wisely so, but I had been sneaking (his words) food out of my feedbag while riding, and he realized it had been four hours without eating anything. When I noticed he was no longer behind me I turned on the afterburners and didn’t see anyone until I came down from the peak. Glen and Gattis had waited for Chad to show them the way to the peak. Climbing the peak was the most painful part of the day, both aerobically and for my knees. They ached for the rest of the graded road riding.

Gattis opted to ride with me rather than climb the peak (he said it would blow up his knees, to which I nodded and smiled). So the ‘race’ was pretty much over (there’s a 75 minute time bonus for climbing the peak). We could now relax (more or less), enjoy the ride a bit and spend some time marking the course. I drew arrows in the dirt and hung flags on the more confusing parts of Painter Boy.

The trail was a great relief, both to the knees and the psyche. I was sick of the road and the headwind before we turned off onto singletrack — though Painter Boy is more vagueletrack than singletrack.. The rest of the 24OP course was quite a thrill. I had planned on riding the bonus lap, but my knees said otherwise.

Gattis dropped the hammer once on Willow Springs and I couldn’t match. I have no doubt that both he and Glen are stronger cyclists. Lucky for me I had other advantages to use against them! I was beating myself up for not keeping Gattis’ pace when I realized that while I was blowing up my knees on the peak, Gattis was at the bottom, resting and refueling…

Another great day on the bike. So happy to have spent all that time ‘out there’, and this route definitely gives you plenty of that feeling.

Results here.