Category Archives: Biking

Sunny Sunday

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A sunnay Sunday morning meant it was time for me to stop being lazy and skipping the Sunday training runs. Usually its under the premise of being tired from the Saturday runs. So I strapped in the iPod, loaded up some podcast interviews I wanted to listen to, and hit the regular route.

So I plodded along, normal pace, maybe a bit slower, around Chaparral Lake, and north towards MacDonald, but this time at Jackrabbit Rd, I crossed Hayden, and took the nice paved bike.running trail that goes a bit west of Hayden, took it up until it met the Arizona Canal, took the new path underneath Hayden Road to the new bridge over the Canal, contining East until Granite Reef road, and turned South.

Almost in the last mile a funny thing happened to pick up my pace. As I neared a road crossing, a lady in in orange convertible pulled up to intersect me from the right.
She stopped properly at the stop signm turned her head as if she saw me. Thinking I was in vision, I was rather surprise when she lurched out into the road, cutting right in front of me as she made a turn.

Boy, did a little bit of anger pick up my pace! It’s no big deal, and I apply the same rules I do when biking… I assume every car out there is not going to see me, and will almost aim for me… I call it defensive running/biking to be prepared for that.

Bike In The Saddle

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For the second workout of the week, I switched to the bicycle, doing my commute to work (10.7 miles each way), so two workouts of about 40 minutes each. Since I’ve been questioning my pedometer, I first did the loop I ran yesterday which my pedometer pegged at 5.1 miles… and my bike computer, which I am confident is accurate downgraded that loop to 4.3 miles.

So as is I got 25+ miles biking today. The legs were tight going in, and I seemed to be gearing one lower than I normally do. I think I will chalk it up to the gunrgy condition fo my chain and deraillers, sorely in need of a cleaning.

Biking through Scottsdale is a bit of a dicey ride, especially with all the construction at Scottsdale and Camelback Roads. More than a year ago, they threw fences across the canals (with no warning at the street ends; then they fenced off the corner for the construction of new foo-foo bistros and high rise condos, then they tore up 5th Avenue for whatever, so cross this area has been a minefield for a while.

Mountain Bike n’ Hike

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We’re spending a four day weekend up at our cabin in Strawberry. For my cross-training event today, I took out my mountain bike, and rode out Fossil Creek Road to Forest Road 428 (??), or HardScrabble Road. This is a lovely ride that followed long enough, takes you all the away around Strawberry Mountain into the town of Pine.

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It’s a quiet scecnic gravel road. I took a set of photos with my camera phone (the quality is poor mostly, but serves okay to add to the banner images used on this site). You can view a slide show on my flickr collection Hardscrabble.

Lacking a computer on my bike up here, I carried my Garmin GPS to record the distance, also nice since it does maximum speed and can generate a route map.

The ride out was nice, maybe a bit of a tail wind helping, and not too much effort with the first climbs on Hardscrabble Road. Out at the point where the road marks a hard right to continue, I turned left. The forward direction goes to a private ranch, but the left looked like a challenge of a jeep trail.

It would smoothly past a stock pond, but then turned directly up the cliff. I made it about 3/4 of the way before losing my grip, so I pushed the bike until the jeep trail ended. It looked fairly close to the ridge line, so I ditched the bike in the woods, and followed a smal game trail that continuned upward. It ran out at the base of a basalt cliff edge, but it was easily climb-abie, so I scampered up the 30-40 feet to the top.

And oh what a dramatic view it was, over Deadman Mesa into Fossile Creek, a ride I’d done last summer (a 2000 feet descent). I felt great up here.

It was a quick jaunt down, and a fun descent down the streep gravel. I headed on home, as this was supposed to be a relaxing day out. But oh, once I hhit the main road, I felt out of gas. It was not even pushing too much into the wind, but I was feeling a bi naseous… maybe it was that donaut I guzzled down when I left for extra energy, or maybe it was the 6000 foot altitude, but it was a S-L-O-W ride home, not really championship form.

Still, it was a worthy experience, believe it or not. You had to see that view to appreciate it.

Biking Day

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With a longer run coming up Satirday, I took Friday to be a cross training day and did my 11 mile bicycle route.. I tacked on a few more miles as I wanted to check the pedometer measurement of yesterday’s run against the bike computer, so I began with the same double loop I ran yesterday.

But, Oi! The wind gods were working against me, a mild headwind riding into work, and a stronger headwind riding home.

I had a greta laugh riding east on Indian School from 64th St as there was a new sign posted proclaiing Scottsdale as a “Great Bikeway”– the irony is all of the construction around Scottsdale Road and Camebback have made my route through here an unkknown minefield of torn up streets, un-announced fenced areas, and more than a few detours across curbs and sidewalks.

Oh well, it keeps the ride “interesting”.

A Few Miles at 6000 Feet

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We’re spending a three day weekend at our get-away, a small cabin up in Strawberry, Arizona, sitting just a few hairs under 6000 feet elevation in the Ponderosa pine forest edge of the Mogollon Rim.

Mostly this was a lazy, relaxing time with my Mom who is visiting from Florida, but I got ambitious and ran a 1.8 mile loop on the dirt roads in our “neighborhood”. Wow, was I feeling the elevation in my lungs! But I stick with it, even the last 1/2 mile with 2 painfully sharp uphil climbs.

Bi-Athalon?

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I’m on a roll. Yesterday I relaxed, and limited the morning activity to a walk with the dog. Today I piled it on, relatively.

First, I did my now sort of regular morning run around Chaparral Lake, another 1.8 miles. Feeling Good. In addition, I rode my bike to work. It turned this would be a good test of pushing my body.

It also served well since I had called Michelle at Team Diabetes this week, and got good information on joining this group to train for the half marathon. They provide running coaches and weekly training, in return for me promising to raise at least $1000 for the American Diabetes Assoication to further diabetes research. I felt that by joning a group, I would first be more accountable to stay training (and not find an easy excuse to stop), plus it sounded like a fun group. Michelle told me to stop by their tent as today the Rock n’ Roll marathin was having an event to promote the race, including a 4 mile run. I did not have time to do the run (my Mom was in town and we had some special dinner plans), but I thought I could tack this on my bike commute home (it was some extra miles to the west to get to Indian School and 56th Street).

So I got some trail miles on between work and the park, by taking some of the nice trails through Papago Park (some good single track). I met Michelle, got a packet, and deciide I was game to go.

So today was some miles biking and running. Whew!

Starting With Biking

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This is the week I really decided if I am going to do the half-marathon. I figure if I can do some running and mix it up with biking for cross-training, my body will tell me the answer.

Bicycling has always been something I enjoy and have done the most with in my life in terms of exercise. Starting in 1987, I’ve ridden at least 7 or 8 of the MS Society’s Best Dam Bike Rides (150 miles form Sun City to Parker Dam), and for 2-3 years I was an everyday bike commuter to work (11 miles each way from Scottsdale to my office in Tempe).

My riding has gotten more sporadic, but I’d been getting a few comutes in here and there. That’s a long winded way to say today I did my bike commute to work, felt great, and got my first bit of mileage under my belt, 22 miles of bike training.

And with this, I;ve rolled a new feature into my blog so I can enter my running and biking miles into a custom field, to generate the “Alanometer” you see on the right, which should do a daily display of my training miles.