South Mountain 4×4 – To the towers 4 times followed by San Juan Point 4 times, plus occasional forays back to the ranger station for food and water.  (We should have parked our trucks at San Juan Junction. Doh!) 8,100+ feet of climbing on an 88 mile day. Whew!

April 30, 2011: A crazy day on South Mountain, Phoenix Arizona

I saw a cartoon the other day that shows a guy talking to a cyclist. The conversation goes something like this:

First guy: “I can’t believe you did that ride. What are you? Crazy?”

Second guy: “I did that ride to prove to you it is possible.”

This perfectly sums up conversations I had with a few others after telling them about the cycling feat a couple of us accomplished last Saturday. I rode with my friends Scott and Court up to the South Mountain towers four times in a row, (turning back around at the halfway point: San Juan Junction.) And then we rode out to San Juan Point four times in a row. While not as steep or as long, those rides out to San Juan Point still involved climbing, and believe me, by the time we finished, those little climbs felt like big mountains.

A new Phoenix Ride is dubbed: The South Mountain 4×4

We got the idea to attempt this feat a few months ago, after we had ridden the towers twice, all the way from San Juan Point. On that day, we met a couple of cyclists who had climbed the towers three times in a row. And I have a friend who’s been known to climb the towers four times in a row, albeit without the ride out to San Juan Point.

“Hey, we can do that,” I said to the others. “We should try it someday.”

That “someday” was last Saturday. To add more to the challenge, Scott insisted we also incorporate San Juan Point. Thus, the South Mountain 4×4 was born: Four times to the towers, and four times to San Juan Point.

I don’t know who came up with the “4×4” moniker, but I’ll give Scott the credit.

And I’ll credit the “4×4” moniker for giving us the motivation to do this ride. I mean, doesn’t it just sound cool?

First guy: “Hey, I went out and did the South Mountain 4×4 yesterday.”

Second guy: “Wow! You are awesome!”

And we’re off!

We begin our ride at 6 a.m, leaving from the ranger station in the heart of South Mountain Park. We would come back here from time to time to stock up on water and food:

A view of the towers from the Ranger Station. Those towers were our destination for the day, four times in a row.

My bike is raring to go, right at sunrise.

Scott and Court, my co-conspirators for the day. The towers loom in the background. (You can barely make them out.)

I guess I’ll be going too.

First climb a piece of cake

The first climb to the towers feels easy. The miles go by quickly, though we aren’t riding all that fast. It takes 35 minutes from San Juan Junction. My personal best up this mountain is 27:58 (from San Juan Junction), which I did in 2006. I’ve never been able to duplicate that performance.

The towers in the early morning light, as seen from the cul-de-sac on top.

Scott and Court reach the top for the first time. Can they do it again? And again? And again?

Looking southwest to the Sierra Estrellas.

I’m ready to head down, with “only” three climbs left. Oh, and then on to the San Juan Point repeats.

Déjà vu, all over again

The second time up the mountain isn’t too bad, either. Again, it takes us 35 minutes from the junction. I’ve ridden this mountain many times, and know everything there is to know about each corner, each rise. I am able to conserve as much energy as possible, knowing on each roller just when to shift gears.

After the second climb, we ride all the way back to the ranger station to take on more water and food. And then we turn around and do the climb again, for a third time. This time, I note I’m a little bit slower: 36 minutes (from the junction). Scott and Court reach the top ahead of me by about a minute, meaning they haven’t slowed down at all.

Fourth time is not a charm

The fourth time up the mountain is a whole different ball game. My legs are definitely speaking to me. I arrive ahead of the others, though, as Court has a flat a mile from the top and Scott stops to help. I ride on ahead so that I can take pictures of them coming up. It takes me 37 minutes to reach the top from the junction, meaning I’m another minute slower. Not bad, considering my legs feel like mush.

Looking northeast from the top, down to the Phoenix valley, with Camelback mountain on the left, and the McDowells beckoning on the horizon. If you look closely, you can see Scott and Court coming up the road, (in the lower center right of the picture).

Court reaches the top for the fourth (and last) time, with Scott not far behind.

Scott reaching the top for the … fifth time. (Ha!) He had gone back down the hill a ways and then climbed back up, so that Court could practice taking pictures with my camera. Photo by Court.

And I reach the top for the … sixth time (after a couple of practice runs for Court). I’m glad this picture came out. No way did I want to climb that hill again. My legs, they were a burning. Photo by Court.

On to San Juan Point

We go back to the ranger station another time to stock up on water and food. So far, the weather has been fabulous. Cool for this time of year, by Phoenix standards: mid 60s to mid 70s in the morning and maybe up to 80 by the middle of the afternoon.

We head out for the San Juan Point repeats. Truth be told, if Scott and Court had not been there, I would not have done the rides out to San Juan Point. I was more than ready to call it a day.

View of downtown Phoenix from San Juan Point.

The Sierra Estrellas as seen from San Juan Point.

We accomplish a 4×2

After two repeats, I’m beginning to hate the road to San Juan Point. Though mostly downhill on the way out, and thus uphill on the way back, the ride to San Juan Point actually has climbing on both ends. So these two repeats feel more like four.

We head back to the ranger station one last time to retrieve food and water from our trucks. By this time, it’s apparent I haven’t been eating enough. I didn’t have that much solid food with me, relying mostly on drinking Hammer’s Heed product. My energy is sagging. Riding out to San Juan Point sounds very unappealing. And we’ll have to do it two more times.

Now, those of you that know South Mountain Park might wonder why we didn’t park our trucks at San Juan Junction. That way, we wouldn’t have had to keep making trips back to the ranger station. And the reason for not wanting to go back to the ranger station? It’s then another 1.5 miles of climbing back out to the junction, that’s why. But at the start earlier in the day, this hadn’t occurred to us.

I suggest we do this now. Just put our bikes on the trucks and drive out to the junction, before doing the last two San Juan Point repeats. Technically, we’d still be completing the 4×4, I reasoned.

But Scott and Court would have none of this. Nope. They were not going wimp out! So I had no choice but to go along. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself afterwards had I driven my truck to the junction.

And truth be told, I wouldn’t have done the extra repeats at all, had Scott and Court not been there. They said the same thing about me. Yesirree, we truly were co-conspirators.

So, with each egging the other on, we take off for two more rounds.

On the last repeat, I imagine that my bike is an eraser, and that I’m erasing the route as we go along. After each rise I think, “I’ll never have to do this rise again. Never ever, not as long as I live, ever.”

Ha!

The last time at San Juan Point, after 83 miles and almost 8,000 feet of climbing. Court looks like he’s ready for another loop up to the towers. (Ha-ha!) Scott, … well, he’s ready to pass out.

Actually, that last picture was staged, but the scene did look a bit like that, a few moments before.

Yeah, so I posed for this shot, too. But it truly was the way I felt. (Ostensibly, I was resting my back.) Photo by Court.

I’m glad we changed things up a little

The original plan for this 4×4 was to alternate each climb to the towers with a ride out to San Juan Point. But on the way up to the towers the first time, I had suggested we do the four repeats to the towers first, and then go out to San Juan Point. That way, we’d get the tough climbs over with earlier in the day, when there would be less traffic, cooler temperatures, and less tired legs.

It’s a good thing we had made this change. By mid-afternoon, there was no way I could have climbed the towers another time. No way in hell. The others felt the same.

I knew this ride would be a challenge, but I didn’t expect it to be as tough as it was. I don’t remember the last time I was this completely wiped out, and this is true even considering all the hard rides I’ve done this spring.

An entire century in South Mountain Park?

South Mountain Park, run by the city of Phoenix, is billed as the world’s largest municipal park. The night before we did the 4×4, I realized we’d be riding somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 miles, all within South Mountain Park. I mused that we should go ahead and add the requisite miles to make a century – and do this while staying entirely within the park boundaries. That would mean a 100 miles in one day – in a municipal park. Ha!

However, at the end of 88 miles, there was no desire whatsoever amongst the group to add another 12 miles, regardless of how flat we could contrive those miles to be. So the century-within-the-park feat will have to wait for another day. And truth be told, as fun as it was to try – and succeed – in doing the South Mountain 4×4, I don’t know that I’d ever want to do it again.

A great “tune-up” for the Davis Double Century … and the Triple Bypass

At the beginning of this post I touted the elevation gain to be 8,100 feet. As with all such measurements, it’s just an estimate. Each GPS calculates elevation gain differently, and even with the same device, you can get different numbers depending on what algorithm is used. On the bike, my GPS was showing 8,500 feet of elevation gain. Yet, when I got home and uploaded the data to my computer, it came up with 8,100 feet.

Let’s use the 8,500 feet number just for kicks. Since this ride was 88 miles long, (with the last 1.5 miles being downhill), if you stretch the numbers a bit, you’ll arrive at an amazing statistic: Almost 100 feet of climbing for every mile of riding!

The only other ride I’ve done with as much intense climbing for any significant distance is the Triple Bypass (10,000 feet of climbing, 120 miles.) In fact, tack on 32 more miles to our day, and add another 1,500 to 1,900 feet of climbing, and we’d had done the equivalent of the Triple Bypass, albeit without the high altitude. (The Triple Bypass goes up to 12,000 feet in elevation, on Loveland Pass in the heart of the Colorado Rockies.)

For sure, the South Mountain 4×4 is the toughest local ride I’ve ever done. It served as a great … er … “tune-up” for the Davis Double Century, coming up in three weeks. (Scott will be doing that ride too.) And it also served as great preparation for the Triple Bypass ride in July.

I tell Scott and Court afterwards that they almost did the equivalent of the Triple Bypass, and that they could surely do that ride.

Me: “You should come do the Triple Bypass with me later in the summer. You’re both ready.”

Them: “What are you? Crazy?”