McBRAAM Stage 8: Albuquerque, NM to Santa Fe, NM...."Why was that hard?"

902 miles ridden.
37,940 feet climbed (that's 7.19 miles of upness)

After two really long days on the road, and a short ride on the menu, we slept in today. Rolling out at about 9:15, we thought we were in for a typical 4 hour Saturday ride. But due to unfriendly winds, a stubborn piece of metal that gave me yet another flat tire, and a bunch of short but steep rollers that took their toll, we ended up with a 5 hour ride with an elapsed time of 6.5 hours. So much for a Saturday afternoon nap. And yes, by now my fingers are shredded and bandaged from tire changing.

For you fellow cyclists, my brand new Gatorskin tires are proving to be very overrated. We've had 7 flats between us, and I am SO done pulling debris out my tires and changing them. So, I made an emergency run into a local Sante Fe bike shop and bought some Mr. Tuffy tire liners that will accompany me the rest of the way.

Walking out of the hotel room today, we saw hot air balloons drifting overhead. Turns out, today was the first day of Albuquerque's hot air balloon festival. I wonder if I could sky-jack one of those to Savannah?

About half way, we rolled through a little miner town of Madrid. It was quite festive, lots of folks meandering about (yes, in cowboy boots) on a lazy southwestern Saturday. I was feeling lazy, but couldn't afford to be at this point in the ride as we had more climbing to do.

At this point, you might be wondering about how I'm feeling after having ridden lengthy rides 8 consecutive days. A week ago, I was wondering about this too. All in all, I feel pretty good. This kind of activity takes an immense amount of extra energy (which is why on some nights I just can't think straight enough to even write a blog entry). We're burning between 2,000 and 3,500 additional calories just while on the bikes each day. Our metabolisms are so jacked up that we're constantly hungry, and within an hour of a full evening dinner, we're hungry again. We're trying to not lose weight, but that's hard to do at this activity level. We can't load up on high calorie junk food because it provides no nutritional value. We just can't Snicker our way across the country. So, we try to eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, consume easily digestible food during the ride, and finish with a high protein and high carb dinner, avoiding simple sugars.

I had soreness in my legs days 2-5, but the soreness has gradually subsided each day. That's completely unexpected because the soreness subsided while riding 124 and 144 mile days. Is my body acclimating? Maybe, we'll see. We aren't sleeping any longer than usual, but we've both been sleeping like dead men. Each day is different, but my overall energy has been pretty constant. Our weather has been perfect, hardly a cloud in 8 days, so we don't want to take a rest day if we don't have to. A rain out may be the only way I take a rest day if my current sensations hold.

Looking back, I think Stage 2 from Palm Springs to Blythe, the 136 miler in the high heat, took a lot out of us, and it took a couple of days to recover. Cooler temps at higher elevation have helped.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1219990084
https://www.relive.cc/view/1219990084

1 flat tire...enough is enough!
7 hot air balloons spotted.
1 massive serving of spaghetti bolognese half eaten (the second half is a bedtime snack.)
5 stars given to Piccolino Italian restaurant in Santa Fe.

Hotel: Quality Inn, 4 of 5 stars (roomy, nice and great breakfast).
Restaurant: Piccolino, 5 of 5 stars (best restaurant of whole trip!)