Two days ago I went for a long ride around South Mountain park in Arizona. It's about a 50 mile ride, and it has a tendency to be pretty windy. This occasion was no exception.
As I turned off the highway onto Riggs Rd, which was to be the start of my tempo interval, a massive swirling cloud of dust kicked up in the distance and starting gaining height and speed, heading towards the road! I had seen a couple of smaller cyclones that morning, but they were a ways off, and while exciting, they didn't propose any danger. This was a bit different. I stopped about 100 meters from where the "twister?" (I'm not sure what the proper label is) had made it on to the road. I suppose "engulfed" is a better term for what was happening actually, as I saw a minivan disappear into the dust. There was nothing to do but stop and wait.
I really wish that I had a picture or even a video, but I was a little busy being amazed and wondering if I should look for cover. There wasn't any cover, I was in the middle of the Phoenix desert after all.
Luckily, the swirling cloud hit a large building and seemed to dissipate. At least it ran out of dust to suck up, so maybe it continued on to the other side of the building in stealth. At any rate, I wasn't going to wait around to find out, so I started my interval and put as much ground between me and the site as possible.
Everything has been going great at camp, I've had excellent bike workouts and some very fast runs that I'm excited about. This morning I did the South Mountain time trial, but my Garmin is being finicky and I can't upload the file to find out if I got any KOM's on Strava. Devastating :)
