New Mexico Parking Lot Ride

There’s a disturbing trend starting here. As you may recall from my prior post 11 Miles Around The Parking Lot, I’ve been known to ride around a parking lot to accomplish my training goals in an efficient way. Today was, in a way, no different. Coach had instructed me to get about an hour in the saddle during my day’s driving out of Austin into New Mexico. After over 9 hours behind the wheel, I was only too happy to jump on the bike and open up my legs with a short ride. The challenge was finding a decent spot. I’d considered taking a diversion off the highway, but decided against that so I could get to Durango in as short a time as possible.

When you are driving along a major freeway, there aren’t too many options for a quick ride. Hence the parking lot. I chose to stop at an information center just across the New Mexico border, so it was actually a pretty nice spot.

Unfortunately, it was a very small parking lot, so I was really going around in circles on this one. I did get a few quizzical looks from folks in the info center, and one young couple asked me what the nearby mountain bikes trails were like. HaHa.

It was approaching sunset, my favorite time of the day, so it was actually a reasonably enjoyable ride. I did a few sprints to open the legs up, but could feel the elevation difference, having gotten to 4000ft by that time. A small taster of the riding at elevation to come. My total elevation gain for this ride was a massive 147ft. But it was a tough 147ft (OK, maybe not…)

Total distance covered – 10.3 miles

In a parking lot

Again

What Was I Thinking!