Open Range
This ride reminded me of the scenery in the movie (and the unfenced cows)… plus I hear Kevin Costner owns a bunch of land in this area.
We needed to do a long ride to get ready for the Ruidoso Century. I thought we’d head south through the Res towards Cloudcroft, but Klaus and Karen voted to ride to White Oaks instead. It’s sort of a ghost town… a few dozen people live there and some old mansions from the gold mining days are still up. They figured that since it was Harley weekend, there would be fewer hawgs out that way. So we headed out through Nogal and Carrizozo. When we turned off the highway towards White Oaks, it became obvious that we weren’t going to be avoiding any motorcycles. Wave after wave passed us… but we had no idea what the occasion was. When we finally got there we could see that they had a big outdoor party going on! Looked like fun, but we only stopped to get more water, since we had another 40 miles to get home.
I thought we would come back the way we went, but Klaus and Karen both wanted to try taking the dirt road back that connects to the highway north of Capitan. I think this was ~15 miles of rocky dirt, but frankly I don’t remember. It was nice scenery almost devoid of humans… but like riding a jackhammer. It’s amazing what you can ride on with skinny tires, provided that the dirt is packed down pretty good… and the recent rains ensured that.
It was a great day with perfect weather. I felt good, especially my back. Klaus and me raced up Angus hill at the end… this is a 1.5 mile climb at ~8% grade that goes from the Bonito creek and tops out right were we live. He won… even 310W power wasn’t enough!
The Century itself was another story though. I know now that I was getting sick at the time, but didn’t feel too bad… yet. We took off in the mass start at 8:10 am. It was only 49 degrees, but sunny and calm… and we got “warmed up” pretty quick. A couple miles in there was a 1 mile climb that averages ~10%. I figured I’d have no problem staying with the leaders on this, but with Klaus pushing the pace at the front, I ended up getting gapped at the top. My “superior mass” allowed me to catch up on the descent, and I continued this pattern for the first few hills. On a couple of the descents I hit over 55 mph. We had a group of I think 9 guys riding together for the first 20 miles or so, then there was the long climb heading east towards Capitan and I was dropped again. Klaus was nice enough to wait for we and we chased back to the group before reaching Capitan. Oddly 4 of the guys pulled off there (I don’t know why). 3 went ahead and Klaus hung back with me. Even though we were still riding hard, the “race” was basically over. On the way back from the turnaround I got a flat, which took a few minutes to fix. Not long after that we were joined by a couple riding a tandem… and going very well! They pulled us into the wind until we hit Airport Rd, and then we decided to stay with them til the end.
It was another nice day… not nearly as windy as last year, and we had a tailwind at the end which is always nice. Klaus and me finished 4th and 5th in 5:37. The first finisher was at 5:22, so we weren’t too far back. Pretty decent pace considering ~10k ft of climbing. I’m sure Klaus could have stayed with the leaders if he had wanted. Next year I hope to be in better shape (and not sick!) so we’ll see.
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