24 Hours of Enchanted Forest
I’m happy that my first post back after my bike-car collision six weeks ago is from New Mexico where I am getting ready to race 24 hour mountain bike nationals near Gallup, NM. Everything has healed up great including my jaw, but I’m still being super careful with a limited chewing diet. I split the 1400 mile drive up into two days doing 1000 miles the first day to Amarillo, Texas and then 400 miles the second day to Gallup, New Mexico. Wouldn’t want to cross such a vast chunk of the country without doing some riding, so I stopped for some riding adventures along the way.
A ride down Texas memory lane – Tuesday
I met my wife during the summer of 2001 when I was volunteering in the Mercy Ships IT department outside of Tyler, Texas. Two years later after a long distance relationship, we were married in Wisconsin and then moved to California. So driving across the country is not something new for me, but it sure brings back tons of memories. I did a nice two hour easy ride around Van, Garden Valley, and the Mercy Ships headquarters remembering back to that summer 13 years ago. Although I did go hard up Moon Hill trying to get the KOM figuring that surely someone had made a segment, but my 37 mile ride didn’t match up with any segments on Strava! Imagine that – 37 miles of segment-less territory in East Texas. I did create two segments – one for Moon Hill and one for a road through some oil wells. Towards the end of my ride, I almost biked right past my friends Heather and Michael Drown who still work for Mercy Ships and were just finishing up a VBS planning meeting at the Garden Valley Bible Church. I saw them in the parking lot, though, and stopped and said hi for just a few minutes before finishing the drive out to Amarillo … Texas is big!
Amarillo Cross Fun – Wednesday
I just purchased a used cross bike and brought it with me specifically to tackle a climb in Albuquerque, New Mexico after the 24 hour race – but I also wanted to get some training on it for some upcoming ultra cross races … where I’m hoping to move up one step on the podium for the overall series by the time it wraps up in late November. I was looking for some good dirt roads with some hills using Google Maps even before leaving Alabama when I stumbled upon a street view image of some sort of bike park. So after sleeping in, I decided to go explore it on my cross bike. There was a few sandy spots where wider tires would help, but otherwise everything was totally rideable. Plus, there was a cool powerline paved trail running north of town that I also got to explore before hopping in the car to drive 400 miles across pretty much all of New Mexico to do my first pre-ride of the 24 hour race course.
Enchanted Forest Night Ride – Wednesday
I arrived just before sunset, but by the time I got everything ready to ride on my mountain bike it was just past sunset. The wildlife was amazing at that time of day even on the drive up from the interstate. Lots of cows running across fields (and the road), lots of deer, lots of bunny rabbits, one cool hawk (or owl), and not much else. I checked around with a few people who were already at the campground and found out where to head to find the course. I rode by one of the volunteers who was putting up the last of the arrows for the course, so it was completely marked by the time I started my ride at 8:30PM. I rode the first half of the course with no light under a rising full moon and lots of afterglow from the sunset. This was good because with the white dirt/sand trail the line to take really stood out. Eventually though it got dark enough that I was afraid I would miss an arrow so I used my light at its lowest setting. I wasn’t exactly flying, but I had no problem negotiating the entire trail with low setting. It was awesome riding in the dark under a full moon with a tall pine forest surrounded by nothing but the occasional deer or rabbit scurrying across the trail. I ended up my ride at 10:30PM back at the campground which was eerily silent with most everybody already asleep.
Enchanted Forest Day Ride – Thursday
I headed back out to the Ciobala National Forest to ride again today in the daytime. The trails are just amazing – super fast singletrack – you could probably big chainring the whole course, but there are a few places where it’s probably more efficient to dump it down into the little chainring. The primary difference between the singletrack here and what I’m used to riding is how smooth the course is — very few rocks and even less roots. Plus, a lot of the trails just go straight for a long time instead of lots of tight turns trying to maximize trail distance over a smaller area. It really is the perfect course for a 24 hour race – fast and fun, I think the time will just fly by.
Gallup Exploring – Thursday
I mapped out a Cat 2 climb using terrain view and satellite view up to the towers shown in the top half of the instagram pic above, but when I was doing the climb I discovered that a lot of the roads on the map were private, so I had to turn around. Still, it was some beautiful roads and the moon rise over church rock was amazing. The tailwind on the way out was incredible … I was going 37 mph on a flat road at one point with at least a 30 mph tailwind. Thankfully it had died down a bit by the time I was heading back later, but it was still tough just riding along a flat road straight into the wind. Can’t wait for tomorrow!
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