Early Morning South Mountain

Woke up this morning feeling a nice breeze coming through the window. Perfect weather for a ride! Me and Mike met up at the Pima Canyon parking lot at 6AM for the 'hairball-before-work' loop, AKA Mormon-National. The last time we did this one was probably in March or April this year, and I remember it being a lot of fun with a few really nasty spots. Wow, I must have been in awesome shape! I just tell myself that it is the beginning of the season, and that the summer night riding really doesn't prepare you for climbing Mormon. We should have incorporated it into our night rides, even though drops in the dark can be grueling. Oh well, now we'll know what to do next summer...

Starting up the jeep trail is a nice warm up ride, though extremely boring. Oh, and you gotta love those groups of hikers that just spread out over the entire width of the road, emphasizing their right of way. They saw me coming from a mile away, but didn't bother to make a little room. So no "Good morning, how y'all doing" from me there, I just gave them stink eye.

Riding from the trailhead, I couldn't remember the lines that used to work for me on the trail, then when I also lost my momentum in the sandwash, I got stopped up on the very first obstacle. Which really isn't much of an obstacle, shame on me. From there on that was pretty much how the ride went: the climb up mormon wasn't even close to smooth, and I had to stop quite a few times to take a breather, and to decide on my climbing strategy (I seemed to pick the right line, but my leg power is letting me down).

I'll just have to keep trying and trying until this trail stops kicking my butt. I am probably going to practice the technical climbs, descends, and obstacles on the Pass Mtn trail though, less hikers stopping you up. Generally the hikers at Pass Mtn seem to be a little more respectful towards mountain bikers also, most the time even stopping for some small talk.

And again, I didn't get to see Mike's crash, he always manages to crash out of my eye sight. No crashes for me this morning (knock on wood), some close calls though.

We managed to only spend about an hour out there, even with stopping and sessioning a few spots. Sometime I need to come out there with my full face and armor, and try getting up the stairs (see picture). I saw somebody do it this morning, and make it look easy. The world's not fair...