Tucson Camp - Day 5

Today was the "big" ride of the week and it lived up to it's billing. This is no easy ride. The ride headed out of Tucson to the base of Mt. Lemon and then up to village of Summerhaven. The first hour we made our way over to the bottom of Mt. Lemon through the city at a pedestrian pace. After a quick stop at the base we started the climb. I was in a small group of three just behind Sam Mcglone, TJ Tollakson, and two other riders. We started up at a nice easy consistent pace and things just continued up and up and up. This ride pretty much climbs for 24 miles all the way to Summerhaven. This is a long consistent grind. After about an hour I dropped back to a group with Peter Reid and another rider after a refueling stop. Things were going great for a while then I started to feel the unmistakable signs of a bonk. I ended up dropping back about 100 meters for about 20 minutes where I didn't lose any ground and didn't make up any ground. Finally as we neared the Summerhaven I started feeling good again and started to catch the group as we arrived at Summerhaven.

The climb totaled 24 miles and we ascended 6300 feet over that distance. and according to my Garmin we topped out over 8000 feet of altitude. This is really a spectacular ride the roads are beautifully smooth, little traffic and spectacular views. The climb takes you from the desert and cactuses to an alpine forest we even had some snow on the edges of the road. Really great and I understand why it's considered one of the great rides anywhere.

We took a short break in Summerhaven and grabbed a slice of pie at the pie shop. I'm not a huge pie fan but it tasted pretty damn good after 2:50 of climbing.

I was itching to get back on the road as I was getting a little chilled so I headed out (can't get lost just follow the road back down the way we came up). You climb for about 15 minutes before really hitting the actual descent. Just as I was coming back to the true summit a rider was coming up the other direction (this guy was flying up the hill). We ended up heading down together which was wild. We were flying. This is the greatest descent you can literally fly down the entire way without hitting the breaks. This doesn't mean that it's easy. I was on the pedals the entire way looking for more speed and my average heart rate on the descent was just a tick below my average for the climb up. The descent which took me 2:50 to ride up took me just 50 minutes to descend.

There is one section where the road is cobbled sandstone but very rough and as I exited this section I noticed that my garmin was gone. Now I lost my first garmin just a couple weeks ago on a ride so I wasn't going to replace this one just a week after buying it so I turned the bike around and rode back up to the cobble section to look for it. Thankfully I found it.

I hit the bottom of the ride and pulled off to the side of the road to wait for a few other riders for the 10 mile spin back to the hotel. I ended up waiting 25 minutes for the next riders to arrive which included Peter Reid and Garth from Specialized who had raced down from Summerhaven. We did a casual spin (at 22 mph) back to the hotel through Tucson and headed out for a quick transition run.

This was the end of sessions for the week and we capped off the trip with a chat with Peter Reid and and a BBQ with all of the camp attendees and coaches. Overall a great week and I'm feeling energized and ready to keep the training going. I'm going to be posting a few other posts about the trip including my impressions and chats with Sam Mcglone and Peter Reid.