My intention today was to make it down to sedona for a ride. Somehow I got caught up re-wrapping the tape on my road bike handlebars after I got up, and then loaded it on the car around noon (did I mention I got up at 9:00?). Yeah, yeah, late start, I know.

I headed down towards cottonwood, and ended up parking about 4 miles outside of town. I figured I needed a little warmup before attempting the Mingus Mountain climb, but didn’t have time to ride from sedona all the way down and back before dark.

I had never climbed Mingus before, and I’m glad I didn’t try to do the whole shebang from Sedona. It turns out the climb was a lot longer than I thought, but fortunately was never steep enough that I was really blowing myself out to keep the bike moving. I got a good rhythm going for pretty much the whole run up it, and actually felt pretty good (unlike my hungover riding state during yesterday’s shred). I think in the end it looks like about a 13 mile and 3200 foot climb (elevation guesstimated from google earth). I’m not sure my exact time, but I think it was just over an hour, maybe a bit more.

Not bad, especially for the amount of miles I’ve put on the road bike lately (approximately zero).

If you’ve never had the chance, I highly recommend it. Today, my out and back route looked something like this:

View Larger Map
(I think that’s about right. I went up to the mingus mountain park with the camping area, not sure if I got the top of the climb exactly right)

In other news, it looks like the dynamic duo of Bryan Antol and Jim Silverman took top honors in the Dawn to Dusk race down at McDowell Mountain yesterday (scroll down in the link to “Duo Gears – Male” to see lap times). I can’t say I’m surprised. Those mofos are f-ing fast on road bikes, and well, that course ain’t exactly the most technical in the world (not that it would have mattered much if it was).

Maybe I need to start hooking up with them for winter training rides, haven’t had my ass handed to me by their likes in a couple months now.

Like I said, role reversals. The singlespeeder busts out the road bike with gears, and the kings of the road rule the dirt. Just another day.