“The Crown Jewel of the New Mexico Endurance Series”

Wow. What a rough day. Incredible trails, don’t get me wrong, but in the end, it was just a little much for what I was prepared for last saturday.

I knew there would be a lot of climbing, with an elevation profile like this:

I also knew that I had been a bit sick the week before, and so I wasn’t in tip-top form for the race. Despite these obvious obstacles, I rolled out friday afternoon, and arrived in Santa Fe at a somewhat reasonable hour on friday (for once).

Raney and I made it up early on saturday, filled the guts with coffee, the backpacks with food, and the bottles with water and headed down to the Second Street Brewery to meet the rest of the crew. People started filtering in, and by the time all was said and done, we had a nice round 40 people start the event and everyone rolled out.

Immediately the hike-a-bike started. We hiked, we pedaled, we repeated. I was definitely not feeling on my game, but kept pushing through all the on-again off-again pedaling nonetheless.

Was the 34×17 gearing a bad idea? Probably. Would I have walked any less? Doubtful.

We took a couple breaks to rest the feet, feed the belly and enjoy the scenery.

The climbing continued, and we pushed onwards towards the top of santa fe snow basin. It was a long morning, and I kept looking at the GPS thinking “Have we really only gone _____ miles?” the whole time.

Finally, at 6 hours into the ride, we hit the top of the radio towers at the snow basin and (thought) that the climbing was over for a bit. At 6 hours, you would think that we would be a good bit into the 65 mile total. Alas, the gps read 28 miles and 7500 feet of climbing. No wonder it was taking so long.

Mike mentioned that there was a good overlook after the next little section of trail, and so we pushed onwards from the towers to make it to the overlook before a lunch of hard salami, banana chips, and fig newtons (which, by the way, was an amazing lunch).

Just for good measure, there was a bit more hike-a-bike before lunch (we headed to the top of this peak).

The extra mile or so ended up being worth every bit for our lunchtime view.

We started the long descent back to lower country after that, and although it was downhill, we didn’t make up a whole lot of time. Several sections of trail, although exciting, looked more like a talus field than a discernible trail. We both went down a couple times, once resulting in a near miss with a barbed wire fence for me, and once resulting in mike knocking the wind out of himself.

Again, the trail would have been pretty sweet, and an great technical challenge, but in the current condition that we were both in, and the number of hours down on the bike already, it was somewhat of a fight for survival for the first part of the descent.

The second portion of the descent yielded a bit and we started to enjoy some incredibly fun, flowy trails an some spectacular views yet again.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the bottom of the major descent, we were staring down the barrel of another several thousand feet of climbing, and about 15 more miles of riding. Sitting at 8 hours, we decided to pull the plug and take the road back up and over from the bottom of Rio En Medio. The beer was calling, and our legs were screaming.

We rolled back into town just under 9 hours, with 9,000 feet of climbing and 52 miles under our belts. I’m a bit disappointed that I pulled the plug, but at the same time, I think it was the right decision, especially since my sickness came back with a bit of a vengeance this week and I’ve only been on the bike to commute to work yesterday since then.

Congrats to the 17 who finished it, including Jonny Fox who did it on a singlespeed (in just under 12 hours, ouch!), and the 2009 winner, Brad Hunt who busted it out in 8:45. That’s a pretty incredible time. Full results are up here.

Nice work to everyone who came out for it, and I can’t wait to get back to santa fe to ride some of those killer trails again, maybe with an easier gear….