National

National Trail on South Mountain in Phoenix Arizona is a tough trail. The trail is occasionally smooth like this, but is at times strewn with large rocks/bolders right in the trail. I wonder that maybe the builders could have cut the trail to avoid these insurmountable obstacles. Or maybe it's just me...

This was my first ride on National and I made two mistakes:

1. I took a connector trail called Telegraph. It is basically a set of huge stone steps, so I ended up carrying my bike through it for about 15 minutes. I'll not do that again.

2. I ran out of water. Won't do that again either. It's not really dangerous at South Mountain as it is in the middle of a big city so I was never more than a couple of miles from a road, sub division, or mall. Yeah for sprawl (not)!

Here is today's route.