Mountain Training

Saturday for Memorial Weekend, I took my bike with me down to Tucson, to ride Mt. Lemmon. Dad and I had worked out plans that he would drive as support as I tried to climb a 25 mile hill with 7000' of elevation. I had never attempted such a large hill and it was a concern of mine, if I could do it for my upcoming Big Ride.

We started out Saturday morning about 6:30 and I rode to the 8 miles to the base of the mountain as my warmup before I starting the actual ride up.

I was feeling good and climbing strong throughthe lower switchbacks. Dad had lagged behind to get a coffee and give me a chance to get a headstart and head up the mountain. He thought he would drive a ways sit and wait for me, take a picture or two as I rode by. As it turned out, I was stronger than we had both anticipated and I was making such good time, that Dad didn't really have a chance to read. He would get ahead of me, wait a minute or so, shoot a picture, get back in the car, cruise up to the next sport wait another a couple minutes, take another piture and so forth. We did this all the way upt he mountain.

I told him that I would skip Windy point, but when we got there I was reminded about what a spectacular view it was and how high up we were. I was proud to have felt so strong climbing to this point so we did take couple pics of celebration here.



I kept climbing and from there hit a tough climb up to Palisades ranger station where I had to stop for a Clif bar. This was a tough climb but after some water and Clif bar I was on the roll again. I caught up to Chuck, an older cyclist, who was also climbing the mountain that day. He had done it before and was educating me on the turns and the tricks and so forth of the mountain.

We were near the top and I sent Dad ahead in to the little town of Summerhaven to get fresh batteries for the camera. In that time I turned and headed the last 2 miles uphill to the ski slope. With one mile completed and jsut startignteh second mile, I hit a snow drainage culvert and crashed. Apparently I celebrated too early at Windy Point.

The crash was hard! I sheared off my fork witheh fron wheel still attachd to the fork and not the bike.
I wound up going over the front end and protecting my helmet with the side of my face.
Positive Loss of Consciousness for about a minute. Chuck was right behind me and lookng down at the road when I crashed. He thought he heard a gunshot and looked up to see me and the bike both crashed out and on the ground. He sprinted up to where I was stopped. The gunshot he thought he heard was evidently my fork snapping.

Chuck was tending to me and another motorist had stopped to call 911 when Dad pulled up to the scene a few minutes later. Apparently I was conscious and responsive, but I don't remember any of it. My first real clear memory is opening my eyes and looking up to 4 or 5 faces all staring down at me. Several of them were Paramedics and there were trees shooting up behind them and blue sky. At that point I realized I was on my back and concluded that I must have crashed. Considering that the part I don't remember was: the crash, the call to 911, my dad showing up, the arrival of the paramedics after the 911 call... I estimate that I have memory absenteeism for about 8 minutes. That part is the spooky part.

To shorten the story , they took down the mountain via the ambulance. They actually took me part way down and then transferred me to a 2nd ambulance. Finally down at teh hospital Mom joined us and we waited, for the docs, the Xrays, and all the other things that go on in an ER. It wasn't too bad a wait. 1 CT scan, about 10 Xrays and some bandages later, they let me go with just a broken rigt hand pinky finger.

It was too bad that I hadn't made it all the way tot he top. It was too bad that I crashed but I all in all I am happy and confident in the ride and know that as soon as I heal, I will be ready to set out across America!!!