Atalaya Mountain in August

Atalaya Mountain - the 'watchtower' in archaic Spanish

MTB on Atalaya this morning. Clouds and a supervillain fog-bank up on the summit ridge were my prize. It's a fine morning when you can sip an IPA at breakfast and know you're good for it.

This morning's climb followed the blue route.A lot of obvious work on the trail from this month's maintenance crews. Bless those folks. Lots of volunteer trail days on the fall calendar.


View Atalaya Mountain Trail - Santa Fe, NM in a larger map
Related Posts:
 - Early Morning on Atalaya
 - Picacho Peak - Climbing the Ladder
 - Moon Mountain Trail

Cycling's Grand Tour comes to Colorado - The US Pro Cycling Challenge

The US Pro Cycling Challenge kicks off today, a week long stage race through the Colorado highcountry. This would be year three of the event. I'd love to get up and check out some of the racing someday but the whole taking care of a toddler and having a job thing remains a bit of an obstacle for me.

Stages kickoff from Aspen, Crested Butte, Gunnison, the Springs, Breck, Vail, and Boulder. Many of the teams riding this tour are Grand Tour teams, BMC, Cannondale, Saxo-Tinkoff, etc. Riders focusing on the upcoming Vuelta won't be riding (Horner, Sagan, Quintana, Contador) but the entry list does include Teejay Van Garderen, Ivan Basso, Jens Voigt, Michael Rogers, Ben King, and Tim Danielson. Follow the racing via live-tweet with @Cyclocosm or on Tumblr at Cyclocosm.tumblr.com

Here's a looping vine of a wicked crash from last month's Tour of Utah. Garmin-Sharp's Phil Gaimon clips a side road marker and is launched into space at 40+ mph. Fractured his hand but appears to be on the team entry list for this week's Pro Challenge. Umm - Holy Shit!! The guy gets up from that spill... only to run down the hill to fetch his bike!! I think back to this summer's World Cup and the image of grown men rolling around on the ground sobbing about their shitty haircuts, and I shake my head disapprovingly.


Related Posts:
 - The Tour was Better with Armstrong
 - Santa Fe Century and Gran Fondo

La Luz Trail Run 2014 - Results

Via the summit tag board

Official race results haven't been posted just yet, we'll link to them when they are. Colorado's Rickey Gates (5 time member of the US Mountain Running Team) and Jon Severy (CU alum - Go Buffs!) showed up to run and both motored up the trail with a quickness. In the women's field, Rachel Cuellar cleared the field and added to her seven previous titles with another stellar win.

From yesterday's tag board, the unofficial top ten:

1. Rickey Gates (CO), 1:21.32
2. Jon Severy (CO), 1:22:12
3. Kris Houghton, 1:25:16
4. Dustin Martin, 1:26:10
5. Stuart Lisle, 1:26:50
6. Salvator Perdomo, 1:30:16
7. Tony Clement, 1:31:35
8. Marc Esposito (Santa Fe), 1:31
9. Tom Mescall, 1:33:19
10. Rachel Cuellar, 1:34:24
11. Andrew Hahn (?) 1:35

W1. Rachel Cuellar, 1:34
W2. Brandy Erholtz, 1:35
W3. Erica Baron, 1:39

Race day photos and comments streamed from Twitter are up here.


Related Posts:
 - La Luz Trail Run (2014) - Live Blog
 - La Luz Start List (2014) - Pre race comments
 - La Luz Trail Run (2013) - Recap



View La Luz Trail Run - Albuquerque, NM in a larger map

La Luz Trail Run (2014) - Live Blog

The stairs of infinite sadness

La Luz, it's here once again. Now in its 49th year. Driving down with Leigland at 5am. A fair number of Santa Fe runners in the field this year which is something grand to look forward to.

The start list is no longer available, but when reading through it last week I recall Kris Houghton looks to defend his title up front. Simon Gutierrez is out, but Rickey Gates of Colorado is in. Gates is very good. Jesse Armijo and Dustin Martin look to be at the start as well. Jesse's back from injury; don't know much about Dustin's current status.

Erica Baron was originally wait-listed but I believe will be on the starting line. She is the one to beat in the women's field. Uncertain if Alexandra Darling will defend her title.

Additional pre-race comments were put up here.

We're going to use Twitter once again to post updates, photos, and results as the morning unfolds. The news feed below will capture traffic tagged with #laluztrailrun, anyone can post to the feed using the tag.

Bueno suerte y hasta la cumbre.

#laluztrailrun Tweets
Related Posts:
 - La Luz Start List 2014 - Pre race comments
 - La Luz Trail Run (2013) - Live Blog
 - La Luz Trail Run (2013) - Recap



View La Luz Trail Run - Albuquerque, NM in a larger map