McDowell Competitive Track Ride

I got up early to go mountain biking today with Ramon and Aaron. Early for me is 8:30am, but I had to get up at 7am to get out to McDowell Mountain Regional Park by 8am. It took a little time to warm up but the once I got riding I felt pretty strong, surprisingly for the lack of sleep. My motivation to get up early and go mountain biking is that I am training for the upcoming Barn Burner in Flagstaff, AZ on June 19, 2010. The Barn Burner is an epic mountain bike race. It is 104 miles at over 7000ft of altitude. My plan is to ride 2 laps of 26 miles each and my race partner Tysen is going to ride the other 2 laps. We have 5 weeks to prepare. If we can ride it under 10 hours, we get a cool belt buckle. I am confident we can finish in under 10 hours.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, but got a little warm by the end of the ride. The trail is in pretty good shape. The south ridge (McDowell Mountain Competitive Track Map) is pretty rocky. We rode a the Sport/Technical connection to the long loop and then the Sport/Technical section again, totalling 13.56 miles. It was a short but intense ride as you can see by my average heart rate below. I felt great at the end of the ride and could have done another Sport/Tech/Long loop with no problem.