My first solo mountain bike ride

As I posted a while back, I have agreed to be the fourth member on a team for a relay mountain bike race.  Up until last week, though, I had never ridden a mountain bike, on a mountain.  Years back when I was a little kid, we had mountain bikes to ride to school.  But this is completely different.

Last week, I went for my first mountain bike ride with Old Wise One (who you may have seen comment a time or two on some of my postings).  We went out for a 7.34 mile bike ride that was relatively flat.  It was a great ride to test out the bike that I'm am borrowing for this race, and to make sure I could get some sense of shifting and not crashing.

Today, I went out for my first solo ride on the mountains.  There's a new trail somewhat near my house called the Sonoran Trail System of North Phoenix.  From what I read on the internet, this trail has been under construction for the last 6 months or so and is now open.  Not knowing anything about mountains, or mountain biking, I figured this sounded like a good place to start.

I got to the trail at about 8:30 in the morning, and I was the only car in the parking lot.  I preferred this because I figured I'd be going kind of slow and/or crashing, so I didn't need any witnesses of this poor display of mountain biking.

The is the bike I'm borrowing from a buddy of mine (thanks Steve!)

I knew that this ride started with an absolutely ridiculous uphill, and I still underestimated it.  Right out of the gates, this trail climbs about 500 ft in 1.12 miles.  It's pretty intense.  In fact, this ride had a crap-ton of climbing in it.

Elevation profile

This is the path I took, though there were a couple other options.

I started at the little green "play" marker and took the path counter clockwise.  Once I completed a loop around the mountain, I simply turned around and did the mountain in a clockwise fashion.

I only had one casualty along the way, and it really was a minor crash.  I was going up a pretty steep hill and was standing up to pedal (I don't know much about mountain biking, but I think I've learned that standing while pedaling uphill is not a good idea).  At first I though I had slipped out of gear, causing me to lose my footing and fall forward, and subsequently tipping over.  I got up, inspected myself, put the chain back on the bike and continued.  This happened right before I turned around to do the mountain the other direction.  When I got back to my car, I realized that the rear tire skewer was no longer tight and the rear wheel was not on tight.  So my new theory is that when I was pedaling, I somehow pulled the tired out which caused the chain to fall off, and caused me to fall.  Either way, I had a minor fall.

Minor cuts to my left knee from the ground

A couple of minor scrapes on my left leg from the pedal

Another view of the scrapes on my leg from the pedals.

This trail was a bit different from the other trail I rode last week.  I was a bit more apprehensive to go fast on today's trail.  Why?  Well, just take a look at my surroundings...

That would be a painful crash

It's not like the whole course was like this, but there sure were a lot of these sharp little guys out there.  Aside from that, I thought I didn't do too horribly.  I didn't quite go the pace I wanted, but I was riding pretty cautiously.  And, as I found out after I got home and looked up some stats, I did a heck of a lot of climbing!

Elevation gain/loss totals

So during this 12.5 mile trail ride, i climbed 1,670 ft.  That's crazy!  But, I though, how much climbing am I going to be doing for my upcoming race?  Well, according to the race website, 1,627 ft.

Barn Burner elevation profile

So according to this profile, I did the same amount of climbing in half the distance.  It's really tough to actually compare the two courses, but all I'm hoping is that this ride I did is a good training ride for this race I'm doing.

After it was all said and done, this bike ride kicked my butt!  Those uphills were absolutely brutal.  But, it was a really good workout, and I'm definitely going back to ride this trail a few more times before race day (which is only a week and a half away!).