Alan’s Coast to Coast Cycling Adventures: Day 14: Albuquerque, NM to Santa Fe, NM

Distance: 67.66 miles

Elevation gain: 4,895 feet

Avg speed: 12.6 mph

Max speed: 42.7 mph

Moving time: 5:22:27

First of all, a note from yesterday. At the time of yesterday’s ride, particularly during the downpour, I thought to describe it as Infantry weather. For those of you who served, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about - “if it ain’t raining, it ain’t training!” Am I right? I want to give a special shout-out to my fellow lizards from first platoon. You know who you are. Once a lizard, always a lizard!

Now on to today’s ride. Today was the polar opposite - the weather could not possibly have been any better! Comfortable temperature, light wind, clear blue skies - it doesn’t GET any better than this!

Just like yesterday, I tried heading out early so that I could get settled into “my pace” without feeling any need to try to keep up with a bunch of riders faster than myself. I’m here to enjoy myself, not kill myself! Anyway, it wasn’t very long before the pack caught up with me and passed me. Although it wasn’t exactly what I envisioned, I think I did a pretty good job of sticking to my pace today.

Albuquerque is on low ground relative to its surroundings, so it wasn’t long before we were climbing. There was a long gentle climb heading east on Menaul Blvd before we turned onto the bike path that ran parallel to Tramway Blvd, followed by MORE climbing once we turned onto Historic Route 66. One nice thing about today’s route though - NO FREEWAY MILES! (No flats for me today either.) Hopefully this will be the start of a trend.

We eventually started heading northeast along Route 14, continuing to climb. At the top of that climb we had a “RAG” stop to take a few moments to recover from the climb before a short downhill, followed by yet another climb. At the end of THAT climb (roughly 10 miles later), we had our official SAG stop of the day, which of course was followed by a descent and MORE climbing. Finally we were treated to a long, steep downhill segment which led us to Madrid. (No, not THAT Madrid - we didn’t go THAT far today! 🤣)

Anyway, during the morning briefing Paula had mentioned that the town of Madrid would make for an excellent lunch stop. And, as luck would have it, I arrived in Madrid right around noon! We knew the climbing for today was not over though, and that the steepest gradients of the day would be found in the run-up to Santa Fe, so rather than a lunch stop we decided to make it a coffee and snack stop at a wonderful little coffee shop in Madrid called Java Junction.

Some of our group assembled for coffee

After coffee, we continued the Madrid descent before beginning what amounted to a sort of “stair-steppy” climb into the Santa Fe area. Along the way we passed what looked from a distance to be a garden of giant origami statues or sculptures. Well, I passed it anyway - by that point I was ready to finish this last bit of climbing already. I took a couple of pictures of it from afar, which do not do it justice:

Fortunately, a number of the others DID choose to stop, and got some MUCH better pictures of it:

Anyway, after all that climbing, I ended up stopping for lunch about 3 miles from the hotel before finishing the ride, only to have to wait over an hour for our rooms to be ready! Such is life….

Well, tomorrow is the second rest day, a time for me to reflect on the trip so far and the trip yet to come (as well as certain mundane tasks like getting my laundry done, washing my bike, and catching up on sleep). Although I managed to keep up with my blog posts for these last 5 riding days, I’m sure I’ll come up with SOMETHING interesting to say tomorrow - stay tuned!

And of course, it just wouldn’t be a blog post without a collection of some of my favorite pics of the day:

I saw a number of these and thought they looked interesting. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who did, as this was someone else’s picture, courtesy of our photo-sharing group.