Tuesday Feburary, 12
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| Kevin at the Sram Neutral Race Support in Hotel parking lot |
Our hypothesis was nearly 100% right. The road was passable, but close for ice removal until 1:30 PM. We didn't know this when we planned to leave at 10 AM from Star Pass on the West side of Tucson. Mt Lemmon is on the far East side of Tucson. Kevin had a delay getting a bike from the Sram demo fleet and I needed a quick magnet install for my Quarq power meter. The 40 minute delay worked out almost perfect. We arrive at the base of Mt Lemmon at 1 PM. After chatting with the sheriff's deputies for a bit, we did small loop to kill time and we returned around 2 PM to began the climb in earnest.After warming my hands 5 times on the climb, I had cooled my body enough to limit the effectiveness of sticking my hands down my pants. This was at about mile 19. I told Kevin to go on without me. I would get my hands as warm as possible, ride hard for a mile to warm up, and then start my descent. The plan was to rendezvous at McDonalds. At mile 20-21 (8500 ft), there is a saddle in the mountain. You descend and then climb again. I turned around before the saddle - less stupid. Kevin froze on the saddle descent and wished he turned around with me. However, wanting to represent Minnesota well, he forded on to the turn off - more stupid but huge bragging rights.
Kevin recieved the "Harden the F&$@ Up" award of the trip. Spot on Kevin.
The epic part of the ride was the descent. You have to experience it for yourself but here is a list sensations chronologically by body part. On set of all only took 2 miles of a 20 mile descent. I think the employee as McDonald's thought we were having seizures or nervous ticks when we arrived.
- Hands: cold, numb, hard pain, burning pain, no strength, non responsive clubs
- Face: submerge in ice water, numb, freezing wind whipped tears, hard to see, ice cream headache
- Body & legs: cool, shivering but controllable, shivering hard enough to shake the bike, shivering to shaking uncontrollably
Our Mt Lemmon stats:
Summit: 9157 ft (at the observatory)
Ski Area: ~9000 ft, 26.8 mi
Summerville: ~8500 ft, 25 mi
Gain: ~6000
Tucson Area Map - route from Star Pass "A" to Mt Lemmon "B"
Start to Finish time: 9:20 minutes
Ride time: 8 hours*
Distance: 109 miles
Avg Speed: 13.6 mph*
Stops: lots intersections across Tucson, McDonalds (lunch), road closer delay, Walgree's, nature breaks, hand warming, McDonalds (dinner/warming house).
*(includes nature breaks, traffic stops, and hand warming)
Sorry, We don't have any power numbers to give you. The Garmin 500 on Kevin's loaner bike had a dead battery. I didn't have a speed sensor on my bike, so the Joule wouldn't stay on. I could get current power for 30 seconds from my Quarq but the Joule would time out because it doesn't have a manual start function. the numbers wouldn't be that impressive anyway.
You guys are nuts but awesome at the same time. Ive done that ride many times on a cold spring day, but never in my snowmobile suit, which is likely what you should have had on, plus a full balaclava and sorel boots.
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