Today I biked: 70 miles (all the hardest parts of 140 mile course), 8000+ climbing.
Cumulative I've biked: 14 biking days, 1023 miles, 56000 feet.
This is probably the hardest day of the entire trip. Everyone was very nervous. At least the weather was good, though really cold to start. In the two previous years that the trip has run, both times the Taos day was horrible rainy weather. In 2007 there was even hail! Naturally, we left the breakfast place in Pagosa Springs at the crack of dawn around 7 (Trek Travel had arranged to get them to open up early at 6 am). The temp was below freezing and we were all under-dressed. I have plenty of warm kit, but failed to put it on. I had my regular fingerless gloves, only a single layer of shorts and jersey, with leg warmers and a windbreaker. I thought I was going to die from the cold. The route starts out winding up through a mountain valley, so we didn't really see the sun for over an hour and I wasn't warm until my trip timer read 1 hour 41 minutes (in fact, the LCD display was dead due to the cold for the first hour). There was frost in the fields. It was one of the only times I was thankful for climbing. The few downhill segments were tortuously cold! Going up is less wind and you're working hard.
At the end of the first long gentle climb of about 20 miles we crossed into New Mexico. There was no state line sprinting competition this time! Within the first few miles of New Mexico, I was in my accustomed position of dead last. Another 15 miles in I jumped in the van and shuttled up first to a lightning fast lunch and then to the bottom of the day's big climb. This is a section of Highway 64 leading up and around the Brazos Cliffs. The climb is 9 miles apparently straight up peaking at a little unnamed saddle at 10481 feet.
The climb took me over and hour and a half with lots of sections under 5 mph. Pathetic, but at least fast enough not to fall over :-). Right before the very last hairpin turn is a scenic pullout. The view was incredible. No, I mean the most incredible view I have ever seen. I took pictures but they just don't even begin to give it justice. As I pulled into the turn off, I was actually crying like a baby. I guess the beauty of the view, the music in my headphones, and the incredibly arduous journey up the wall of the mountain was just emotionally overwhelming. I sat down on the edge of the precipice in a meditative pose and gazed out over the infinite waves of multi-colored forest and distant mountains and cried and soaked it all up, embarrassed by my gushing so I didn't look as other bikers passed me on their way to the final summit (and the waiting van with lunch #2). I must of sat there for 15 minutes until I was back to something like normal.
Then I went and ate lunch #2 and continued on. It's amazing the calories you have to ingest to do all these miles day after day. We calculated that today's 140 mile, 10000 feet, 10 hour day required close to 10000 kcal of food input. Compare that to a very active man's diet of maybe 4000 kcal/day. Eating enough has become a real chore, believe it or not. We are eating constantly, constantly.
There were yet more climbs which I finished, but then I was just exhausted and caught the van into the hotel, covering on the bike just half of the total route mileage. Amazingly, there were only two dropouts for the day. Everyone else made it in before dusk (barely).
Taos is beautiful, as is the 5-star resort hotel, as is the fact that we have a whole entire rest day tomorrow!!!
Happy biking!
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