How to Make Cycling Difficult? Yoga.

Broken Mesa is a big ride.

There are few climbs in St. George that elude me. Not many, I can certainly count them on one hand, but they do exist. Broken Mesa starts at the top of one I have never cleaned. And in fact, I have only seen one person ever actually make it to the top, one Kevin Foote. I almost cleaned it once on the Fatboy, but I spun out just as I was reaching the top and steepest part.

So as I mentioned, Broken Mesa starts at the top of this climb which doesn’t sound too bad, but this is a loop. We don’t do too much shuttling here at the Alliance. This means that the ride starts at the top of this climb and ends with you pushing your bike up it.

You begin pedaling from a giant water tank. From the moment you begin riding, you are climbing. It’s not steep, at first, but you begin to climb. As you begin climbing you are looking up at a mesa. At some point, you will realize that the mesa you are looking at is not the one you actually have to climb. No, the end goal is the mesa that sits on top of the one you can see. You can’t see Broken Mesa until the dirt road you have been grinding up begins to get steep. Then you can see what you have just bit off. Careful, you might throw up.

The loop starts at the Water Tank, but the trail starts at the water trough. You have just finished climbing the mesa you could see when you started, now you have to climb the Broken one.

Broken Mesa is essentially a trail, er, route over a lava field. Smooth or flowy is not how you would describe it. You begin by climbing up some steep, tight switchbacks that go over lava rock. In many places that rock is loose. In other places it’s just a little too tight to make the turns. So you push and drag your bike up to the top of the mesa.

And then you get to the point, you are in no man’s land right between Pine Valley Mountain and St. George. You can look up to the mountain or down into the red canyons. It’s a pretty awesome spot for gazing about your surroundings. The trail now takes you across the mesa and down into Ice House. This is done over the top of all those lava rocks which, if you have a stiff, long-travel bicycle, you will probably enjoy. It’s laughable at times, but you kind of get a rhythm for bouncing over the rocks. And soon you forget about that god-forsaken road that you just spent an hour grinding up.

And all you can think about is flowers.

This may be because they are everywhere. Or it could be that you are utterly insane and you have no idea where you are because you have pushed past your physical threshold and are hallucinating from pain. I took a picture of the flowers I was seeing so I feel confident in saying it was the former.

And then you hit Ice House and any semblance of this being a trail disappears as your speed picks up and the trail turns into a giant rut. The rut is so bad that there is a secondary trail on the side of that that has begun to get rutted as well. You have two choices: 1. stay on the trail. 2. stay off the trail. It’s basically that simple, the issue is sometimes it’s hard to tell which plan you are following.

Did I mention the road cut? No?

So if you are passing through on I-15 and you look north toward Broken Mesa you will see one road that is coming down toward Washington. You see, Ice House was originally a road that the pioneers used to get to…wait for it…the Ice House. This road cut takes you pretty much straight back down off the mesa. So yes it is a road. No it isn’t easy to ride. The rocks we mentioned before are still there. It’s loose. Every time you ride it, it’s a little different. And it’s steep enough to make you wish you had bigger rotors.

Or you could just ride it on a single speed hardtail like Peugot did.

Once you safely arrive at the bottom (I’m lying there’s now way to really do that, you will break something), you need to turn left. You’re not going to want to turn left. Left will take you directly into that hill we talked about up there somewhere. Because this is a loop and the actual trail sits in the middle of two dirt road sections. You are now on Powerline.

Powerline is sandy and straight. From your entry point you can see the water tank. If this is your first rodeo, you will be all, “Piece of cake. I can see the water tank. It’s downhill, then flat and then an uphill.” Yea, you wish. You go downhill and then uphill. It’s at this point that you realize that there may be a few hiccups along your fairy tale, easy road. By the time you get to that hill where your car is sitting on top of, well, you may be ready to throw in the towel. Which is what most people do, as soon as the road heads upward, they dismount and push their bike with the sweat dripping into their eyes and their calves burning from walking in cycling shoes and pretty much anything else that would suck.

And finally, you are back to your car.

Broken Mesa is a big ride. I can’t think of any bike that would be perfect for the entire ride. For the dirt road, you would want a hard tail. For the trail, a 6″ all mountain bike fits the bill. And the Powerline, a fat bike. Did I forget to mention that the last section is sandy? Well, it is.

I can’t think of any part of this ride that was easy. PJ was hurting on the trail, I was hurting on the uphills (I was on the Enduro). But if we were to try and Make Cycling Difficult, we would need a little more than a 15 mile death march. No, we would need some special ingredient.

I mentioned, in my last post, that I had traded an evening Riding Goose for a Sunday doing Yoga.

I’m gonna interject a little shout out here. KB has been dragging me to Yoga classes for about as long as I have known her. I’m also not going to lie and say I hate Yoga. I actually quite enjoy Yoga, but there has always been something about the classes that I just couldn’t swallow. It was more about working out then pushing one’s personal limits, and definitely had nothing to do with the communion of body and mind. I also must interject that having studied with the International Society for Krishna Conscience when I was in Chile, may have soured me on the idea of paying someone to practice Yoga.  I mean, what kind of experience am I supposed to be having when there is dance music blasting in the background? And then we went to Yoga Soul.

Eric and Rachel are cyclists, that’s how KB got me through the front door. After the first class, I was in. When a Yoga instructor refers to the third eye and can convince me they are sincere when at the end of the class they thank me for sharing my practice with them, yea I’m kinda in.

http://yogasoul.biz/

Shout out over.

So I traded an evening riding for some Sunday Morning Yoga. What I didn’t realize was that Sunday Morning Yoga is not easy. No, it’s two hours of some of the most intense Yoga I have ever seen practiced (granted I’m not exactly a seasoned veteran but…). At one point, KB was turned into a pretzel and they rolled her around the studio. I didn’t have my phone with me or I would have gotten video or at least a photo as it was pretty amazing. I even tried to find the position on the interwebs but all I could find after 2.3 seconds of looking was Warrior One. I’ll get it next time. But after two hours of Yoga and my estimate of at least 200 vinyasas, I was beat. I spent the next two hours eating and sleeping. After which, I was pretty much good for nothing. Here almost four days later and my body can still feel the effects of that class.

To make Broken Mesa really a big ride, do two hours of Yoga Soul Sunday Morning Yoga the day before. Have your entire body be sore. Not only when you move, but to the touch. Then, you might be successful in Making Cycling Difficult.

Yup, Broken Mesa is a big ride.

P. L. and R.