Look out, El Tour- I'm coming back.

I just registered to ride in the El Tour de Tucson again this coming November.  111 miles (two more than it was last time I rode it!) of fun with 8,000 of your closest friends.  This time I'll know what to expect, I'll be coming from a higher elevation, and (hopefully) I'll be in better shape and ready to rock it.  I had an absolute blast when I did this ride in 2010, and I'm already looking forward to the excuse to hang out with my buddies in Tucson for a few days before and after the race.  And this gives me extra motivation to keep up my mileage over the summer and through the fall.  I've already got my eye on a few more bike races between now and then that should help along the training momentum as well...

Fieldwork, fieldwork, and more fieldwork.

I've been in the field pretty much non-stop since mid-March.  It's been fun, but it's been exhausting.  I've been living in hotel rooms in small towns and watching lots of bad television.  Granted, I've made up for it by having lots of really great weekends back at home, but, I'm glad to finally have a few weeks back in town and in the office until the madness starts back up again.  Here are some random photos from my recent few months of fieldwork.

(I still don't like the way photos with captions look in this setup, but I don't know how to change it.  If only I could do a little slideshow setup for each post, where you could flip from photo to photo with a button...)

Surveying in the snow.

Guess we're not going to survey today.

This thing is almost 4 feet long.  I found three of them.

Tarantula!

Gallina country.

You may not be able to tell, but that big mound of dirt and rocks is actually an 800-year old tower room.

Crazy, twisted dart point.

This ceramic sherd was refashioned into a pendant.  Cool.

Rio Grande Gorge

An Apache metal arrow point and historic glass bead.

At least it was a pretty place to get the truck stuck.

... and then we had to get the truck unstuck.

There is cool old stuff around Taos.

Santa Fe (Half) Century

Last weekend, Josh and I rode the Santa Fe Century.  I had originally wanted to do the full 100 miles, but as the race got closer we both realized that 100 miles was a little bit too ambitious for our recent training levels.  I've been in the field so much lately that it's been pretty hard to get in very much riding, so I decided that I'd rather do well and feel good about riding 50 miles than be miserable and push myself through 100.  We met up with a few cycling friends, caravanned up to Santa Fe early in the morning, and started out.

The Santa Fe Century isn't actually a "race".  There is no official timing and no official start time.  It's very well run and organized, but also very laid-back.  This year there were about 3000 riders total, including the 100-mile, 50-mile, and a 25-mile course.  Everybody shows up and starts whenever they want to.  This kind of setup is really great for me, because it means that there are always people both in front of and behind me at all times.  I really hate feeling like I'm out on a course all alone during a race, and that never happened at all during this ride.

This course was a lot harder than we expected.  Very hilly.  I'd been riding quite a bit prior to the race, but I hadn't ridden more than 35 miles in months, so this was a little bit of a stretch for my fitness level.  I started off strong, got into a groove, and even found a small pack of guys to draft off of for ten miles or so.  Then the hills started.  I hit the first half of the course really strong, and pushed up all of the hills harder than I should have.  So, halfway through the course, I was hurting.  My lower back and my saddle were not happy.  But man, this course is beautiful!  I can only imagine that the full century ride is even prettier.

I stopped at a couple of aid stations for water and stretching, but otherwise just plodded along.  I rocked the first half, and survived the second.  I had hoped to finish the 50 miles in less than 3 hours, but in the end I finished at 3 hours, 11 minutes.  If I had been just a little bit better trained, I would have easily met that goal, and considering that my back was bothering me like it was, I'm pretty happy with how I did.  And I beat half of the guys from our little group of riding friends!  (Small victories- I'll take 'em.)  I would happily return and do this ride again next year (hopefully the full 100!).