Santa Fe Century Bike Race

This past weekend I went on a fifty mile ride through Santa Fe as a participant in the Santa Fe Century. My buddy Aaron Torres wanted to ride the 50 mile loop section. He's been training a lot up in Los Alamos with his friend Cody.

My buddy Aaron and I have been friends basically since our freshman year together at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. Down in Socorro, we would occasionally work out at the gym together. However, we always worked on computer science problems together. Aaron encouraged me to ride the 50 miles with him, and I did.

I left Albuquerque around 6:30 a.m. to make it to Santa Fe before 7:30. The entire race had the feeling of a carnival. I believe there were around 3,000 rides. My estimate is based on the highest rider number I saw, which was 2,900. There could have been more and I just missed them.

Getting all set to ride was very easy. The organizers were friendly and helpful.

There were bikes and bicyclists everywhere.

Cody

Aaron Torres

The University of New Mexico Computer Science Department gave me this shirt. I felt out of place not wearing spandex.


This was a welcomed sight.


This was at the first major rest area. It was in a nice little town called Galisteo.


The Ulrichs were quite the hospitable hosts in Galisteo. They were making food as quickly as possible keeping all the hungry bikers fed.

Quite the spread!

This was the only unpleasant portion of the ride. We were on the shoulder of Interstate 25.

Aaron's Parents at a Restaurant after the Race

My Buddy Aaron Torres

Aaron's Coworker Friend Cody and Mrs. Kaylee Torres - Aaron's Wife

I had a lot of fun and am very glad I did this ride with my friend. We paced with each other for all except maybe the last eight miles, in which Aaron pulled ahead of me to finish about 20 minutes sooner. All of his training in the mountains of Los Alamos paid off! I'm too used to my flat bike commute. My total time was about five minutes over four hours. Cody pulled ahead of us early, and finished almost an hour sooner than I did.

I still haven't decided if I will do the 65 mile Albuquerque ride with him or not, but I am leaning more towards doing it.

I was hit by a truck while biking.

Today I was biking from my work to the University of New Mexico and I was hit by a truck. I had the right of way, since I was going straight and the lady in the truck pulled out in front of me, but I consider force = mass * acceleration a stronger law than that of right of way. Either way, I'm not too messed up. Here are a couple of pictures of everything that's going on.

My spokes may require some truing.

Nothing is broken luckily!

My friend Oleg was nice enough to bring my laptop, my cell phone, a bunch of chargers and hang out at the hospital for a bit. Thanks Oleg! Now I can work on some cool stuff instead of joking around with other messed up people at the E.R.

Downhill biking with Jeremy

Today Jeremy and I took the ski lift up Sandia mountain to ride our bicycles down. Jeremy has a monster downhill bike, while I have a Trek mountain bike. My bike held up well, but I need to greatly improve on my balance, judgment and confidence on a mountain bike. My legs and cardiovascular system are in good shape from road biking, but I don't have the mountain bike skills yet.

Initially, Jeremy and I loaded up our bikes in his truck. His Toyota Silver Tacoma has an aftermarket bike rack in the back, that he installed, which allows for a bike to be supported through the front fork. Simply quick release the front tire and put the fork in the supportive bar and you're good to go.

After we drove up the mountain, I purchases two one-lift tickets for us (yesterday was Jeremy's birthday.) The process of getting up the mountain is identical to that of getting on a ski lift, except that the lift operators take the bikes and place them on empty lift chairs with big hooks on the back. The entire trip up the mountain takes about half an hour, and involves riding through a beautiful forest during the summer.

Once we made it to the top of the mountain, Jeremy and I began riding a trail that appeared to be the easiest trail present. After about thirty minutes, and a number of extremely difficult to navigate ('technical') rock formations in the trail, I recognized a scenic vista from two and a half years ago death-hike up the mountain, and thought that we must be wrapping around the mountain instead of going down it. I mentioned this to Jeremy, and he replied "You know, I thought this was awfully difficult for the easiest trail..." We began to push our bikes back up the trail we were riding when we encountered a hiker that corroborated our belief in taking the incorrect trail. Later, we saw a sign marking the trail as a wilderness area, closed to bikers. Whoops. After about an hour of pushing our bikes, we made it back to the ski lift drop.

I'll upload some pictures of injuries I sustained during our foray into the wilderness.

The correct trail basically connected up with the wilderness trail, but in the other direction. This trail had almost no rocks compared to the wilderness and was much, much easier to ride. Most of the trail was about twice as wide as a mountain bike and fairly packed dirt.

One of the coolest things about biking down the mountain was the alternation between grasslands and forests. Most likely, this was due to the fact that the grasslands were cleared for downhill skiing, as opposed to some naturally forming phenomenon, but the entire layout was very pleasant. The trees were tall for New Mexico, with pines standing 50+ feet tall. Whenever I would take a shortcut avoiding a winding path down the mountain and simply head straight down (to catch up the Jeremy) the grass was up to my chest. This made consciously avoiding obstacles in the grass impossible, but the ground tended to be very smooth. We spent close to an hour and a half riding down the mountain, with the trail only being 9 miles long. Jeremy waited numerous times for me to catch up, but overall I feel good about the ride and my speed, especially for a first trip riding down a mountain.

Bike Ride to Los Lunas from Albuquerque

My friends David, Oleg and I biked to Los Lunas from Albuquerque today. Unfortunately, my bike received a massive flat tire. We were luck that the flat occurred very close to Albuquerque (I had patches but the hole was super big - I'll post a picture of the nail soon.) We took the bus back from the river trial to UNM.

I'm pretty happy with this image - especially considering it came from a camera phone


Oleg, David and a small portion of my finger

After my patch job didn't hold, Oleg and I tried to ride two to a bicycle. Unfortunately, people in Kazakhstan have become affluent enough for everyone to own their own bicycles. As a result of the increasing affluence, the population is unable to balance as a passenger. The above destroyed shoe is a direct example of this phenomenon. Luckily, Oleg was completely fine after his foot was violently sucked into the tire.

Here is a link to our current status. It will be updated as we continue to go further south. In total, the ride was 49.9 miles (80.3 km) total according to my bike computer.