My Boulder Racing team planned an early Spring Training trip down to Sante Fe this year, which is awesome because I love this area with its awesome scenery and great food. Ed offered to fly a few of us down in his plane, but with some windy weather in the schedule, I decided to make the quick drive firmly rolling on the ground. Eric Kenney, our coach, had rented this six-bedroom house in the northern part of town for us all the stay at. People slowly trickled in on the first day and we started to see what Eric had planned for the camp. The house was pretty epic and most of us had our own bedrooms with one or two people sharing. Here is Ed, Eric, Jay, and I chilling and taking it all in.
After a good night's sleep, the first day of real riding was upon us. It was a bit chilly at first and we were comparing who brought actual warm weather gear or not. Though some sporadic rain showers were in the forecast, the day generally looked good for what was planned to be a fairly monster ride. The plan was to head North out of Sante Fe to Pojoaque and then follow the Road to Taos through Cundiyo and eventually end up in Truchas and then back. Unaware of what that really would be like, we ventured off eager with excitement.
Epic it was, in the end, but we had some crazy adventures along the way. The first issue was that there had been a bit of flash flooding just up the road near Pojoaque. We were heading down these back country reservation roads and came to a standstill looking at the river flowing across the road. We spent a few minutes thinking through if we could ride through or wade through, but after a talk with some locals we decided to backtrack and find another way. It turned out the other way ended in the same issue, but with Eric in his chase car behind us, we ferried each of us across the river one by one with our bikes hanging on to the outside of his car.
After we got done with the river obstacle, we were starting to head into this beautiful open New Mexico backcountry. The sky was starting to clear a bit, and the temperature was picking up and we were rolling.
Shortly thereafter, we were due for another lesson about New Mexico. Apparently, nobody rides tubes in New Mexico because they have tons of thorns. The above was a common theme for the day as I think almost everyone had at least one flat to change at some point on the ride. It's hard to get too upset about it, though, and smiles were plentiful.
Back rolling again, we rode, and we rode, and we rode on this day. Up at the turn around point in Truchas, it was quite cool again as we had gained tons of elevation, but the little town was amazing. It was almost like something out of history that had been frozen there in that time period. After a few more minutes taking it all in we headed back down from Truchas and enjoyed the steep decent out of town (though it was a bit freezing). For the long journey home, we started to break up and peeled off into ones and twos all just trying to survive the day. It was kind of a maze of roads back but we mostly all got there. I say mostly because a few people got picked up about halfway back and Rachel and I called in a pickup ride about a mile or two from the house! Eric's response was "you guys are literally a mile or two away" and we responded with "Yeah, but we can't make it!". He arrived with the car and breakfast burritos from town within another ten to fifteen minutes and we gladly took a ride home.
All in all, we finished the day with 4:46:00 of riding, 73.4 miles, 6,000 ft of climbing and 256 TSS. Due to the spotty connectivity of my bike computer in the New Mexico back country, it might have been even more than that (with the exception of the time). Our legs were toasty, and we had nothing to do buy shower, recover, and eat some great food together as a team. What a perfect day!
