Energy

According to MapMyRide, I burned over 2000 calories during my 60-mile ride and nearly 2500 calories during my 70-mile ride (a loop to Los Lunas and back). That sounded so incredible, that I did a quick estimate of how many calories I consumed while riding... On the 60-miler: some fruit & nut trail mix, gatorade and peanut-butter cookies. It's possible that that added up to 900 calories. But on the 70-miler I only had the trail mix, so more like 400 calories. Apparently most of the calories for these rides get eaten in the days before and after the ride.

The photo is my new perfect bike food: trail mix with pretzels mixed in for extra carbs and salt. I tried eating runner's goo when I trained for a marathon, but it gave me a stomach cramp which defeats the whole purpose of the terrible tasting stuff. So I stick to real food.

Wordless Wednesday (because I meant to post this yesterday)

60 Miles

How to plan a 60-mile bicycle ride: Think of a place that seems far away that you can bike to. Map it out and realize that it isn't actually 30 miles away, then find a circuitous way to get there to add mileage. Make sure there are a few good hills along the way.

So here's my 60-mile west side hill climb ride. Starting at my house (the green circle), I went to the Bosque Trail at Central. Headed south along the trail to Rio Bravo. West to Paseo del Vulcan. North to Route 66. West along Route 66 until I hit 30 miles, and then do it all in reverse. This got me 60 miles and 2000 feet of climbing, on a 75-degree sunny day with just enough breeze to keep things interesting.

Apparently, the West Mesa is indeed a mesa... riding west out of Albuquerque, you will first ascend the mesa by climbing the infamous 9-mile hill. I did this on Rio Bravo/Dennis Chavez. Now if you keep riding west (as I did along Rt 66, aka I-40 frontage road), you will eventually drop off the west end of the West Mesa into the Rio Puerco drainage, home of the Laguna and Acoma Pueblos. The Laguna Peublo has built the Route 66 Casino there (marked by a coffee mug on the map), and a gas station where I was able to re-fuel with Gatorade and peanut-butter cookies. Rt 66 dead-ends a few miles past the casino, so you can't go further west without getting on the interstate or taking dirt tribal roads. At this point, I turned around and went back the way I came.

From Paseo del Vulcan (on top of the West Mesa) south of I-40, looking east. I could see downtown Albuquerque (the camera phone does not capture landscapes very well).

Looking east near my turn-around point, 30 miles from where I started. The massive white building on the right side of the road is the Route 66 Casino. Sandia Mountain is still visible on the horizon, but downtown Albuquerque is hidden by the West Mesa.

The Long Training Stretch

Some people think that a marathon or a century ride is hard to do, but the truth is that training for the event is much harder than the event itself. On one day in May, I will ride 100 miles. However, throughout April I should ride 500 miles altogether and do other workouts in training. This is the part of the training that I like to call "all the pain, none of the glory".

At this point, I start scheduling around training. Last week, I was at a 4-day conference (without my bicycle) and was obligated to get in my weekday training by skiing during free hours in the afternoon. And I had to maximize my 3-hour ski workout by skiing telemark through the deepest Utah powder I could find on gnarly black-diamond slopes. Fortunately there were no chairlift lines to slow me down. I certainly felt like I got a workout, but I did not get much sleep during the conference, since I chose to ski during nap time. Seriously, the conference gets started with breakfast at 7am, takes a long break in the afternoon, and then runs until 10pm every night.

Unfortunately, I missed my group training ride this weekend due to the conference, so after catching up on some sleep this morning I had to do a 60-mile ride on my own. I'll blog about that next time.

Thank you!

Thanks to a successful bake sale at UNM yesterday and all of the generous friends and relatives who have been sending me donations for the past several weeks, I have raised $2255.49 so far for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I set out with a goal to raise $2010 by the end of March, and am very thankful for everybody who helped to make that happen!

Team in Training sets a fundraising minimum for me, which was $1850. That is 4 times the cost for them to train and send me to the bicycle race; so that no more than 25% of the money is used to sponsor me, while the remaining 75% goes directly to cancer research and patient support. This means that every dollar donated above $1850 goes 100% toward cancer research and patient support. If you have not donated yet, your donation would still be very much appreciated.

(If you are reading this on my actual blog site, you may notice that the "thermometer" on the sidebar does not show the $2255 amount. That's just because several checks are still being processed, but they should be on there by the end of next week.)

Heeler Monsters (in the Gila)

For Spring Break, we decided to head south to the Gila Wilderness for some backpacking. Sunday night, we camped at the Railroad Creek campground in the Black Range only to wake up to a bit of snow.

We were pretty sure that if we headed west to the Blue Range, we could find a lower-elevation hike with less snow. After consulting with a Forest Ranger, we were convinced that even if we got our car down the 6-mile snow-covered dirt road to the trailhead, we wouldn't hike far before being buried in snow. He suggested that we hike the classic Catwalk Trail for a few miles instead. Which we did, but noticed that the weather was great and there wasn't a snowflake in sight.

So, on we went to the Pueblo Creek Trail in the Blue Range Wilderness (it's across Hwy 180 from the Gila Wilderness). Here's a rough map of our path.

I forgot to mark the start, but it's the upper-right corner of the loop. We started south along the Pueblo Creek Trail, set up a camp along the creek, then continued the next day and following the Tige Canyon trail to the west. This trail ended after a couple of miles, but we just continued hiking west along the creek, crossing frequently until the canyon sides got too steep. At this point, we realized that we really were not on a trail and we needed to climb up to the ridge to find the network of trails on the Arizona side of the wilderness (that straight white line is the state border).

So we started going uphill, stopping for the night before continuing on a strenuous uphill bushwhack in the hopes that we would cross an official trail. As luck would have it, we reached the ridge exactly at a trail intersection with a sign, telling us that we were 5 miles from the Pueblo Creek Road that we needed to get to.

We thought we'd cruise along the trail, but there was all that snow that the ranger had warned us about! Not only did it slow us down, but it also made the trail invisible. We managed to stay on the trail with some work, and spent the third night uphill from a creek. The last day was a pleasant mile north to the road, then 8 miles east along the dirt road back to the start. Along the road, we actually saw a car and talked to the people in it (they showed us a cliff dwelling that we nearly walked by without noticing). That was our only interaction with people during the four days in the Blue Range.

36 Miles

This is the halfway-point on last week's ride. It's the overlook at Jemez Dam. Fun ride!

Thanks to all the wonderful people in my life that have donated generously! I am getting close to my fundraising goal which is a great feeling.