The Penultimates Cycling Team: Saturday's Ride 8/21

Cucumber lime gatorade, $2. Bananas and water, $2. Taco combination plate, $8. Train ticket, $6. Seventy miles of uphill adventure with great teammates: priceless!

For our last training ride of the season we went big. Something crazy, something out of the ordinary. So we took a ride from Albuquerque out to the east mountains and then north on scenic highway 14 to Santa Fe to catch the Railrunner for a ride back to town. Those not familiar with New Mexico should note that Albuquerque is about 5280 feet in elevation while Santa Fe is about 7260 feet. So it was going to be a tough one! The ride map is here, and pay attention to the elevation (apparently none of us really did.) We also had fantastic weather, gray overcast skies for virtually all of the ride - do not get that very often in the desert!

A brave seven headed out in the predawn darkness including the newest member of our team (welcome Danny!). For the first 20 miles of the ride we went up through Tijeras Canyon and up toward the turnoff for the Sandia Ski area - a grueling elevation gain of 2000 feet. We stopped for provisions and were tempted by heavenly aroma of brisket being smoked by the BBQ place. Jeff peeled off from us to do his yearly ride to the crest and the six of us continued on toward Santa Fe.

Unfortunately, no one really looked at the elevation of the ride closely, and what appeared to be a relatively flat ride before the descent into Madrid, actually turned into a very long series of class 4 and 5 climbs up to the peak elevation of the ride at 7000 ft. (This after assurances by the captain that the worst was over - ha!). But all the work paid off in the exhilarating 8 mile descent into Madrid we we stopped for our second break of the day. Highlights of our stop included noting that we were not the toughest bike gang in Madrid that morning (that would be the actual biker gangs riding Harleys), Italian tourists really love Italian made bicycles, and nothing is better than a general store that doesn't charge an arm and leg to hungry, dehydrated, and smelly cyclists.

The last 20 miles of the trip was more or less uneventful. Just another long stretch of gradual uphills with some very steep climbs up to the junction of I25 and highway 14. But we persevered and amazingly suffered our first flat tire of the whole season within view of the end of ride restaraunt El Parasol. We consumed the best tacos ever created by human hands before a quick ride over to the train stop to catch the 1:39 train south.

We arrived back in Albuquerque rested and ready for our last 10 mile jaunt back to the ride start. We were traveling familiar trails as we headed east on the Bosque trail bypass to join up to the north diversion trail heading south. We had our second flat of the training season about 5 miles from home, but the newbie got the tire changed quickly (despite the heckling of his teammates) and we headed off again. But less that 2 miles later, we got our third flat luckily in a beautifully shady and grassy area on the UNM campus.

All told a great ride, brutal and beautiful!

Ride summary: 72.4 miles, 5 hours 22 minutes ride time, 37.4 mph top speed, back home at 4 pm (but would have been about 30 minutes quicker with less flats and more luck).