Santa Teresa Time Trial

Every once in a while you need to work on speed. One way is interval training -- occasional blasts of speed during a ride. We did this a few times this year on the Tuesday night Beginner Intermediate Group (BIG) rides. We would ride on some low-traffic rides as a group and every so often go at maximum speed for 45-60 seconds.

Another way is to talk your friends into a time trial event. We did this on an El Paso Bicycle Club ride last Saturday. The ride offered two time trials -- a 2 1/2 mile climbing segment and a 10K flat segment.

We rode up to the intersection of Artcraft and McNutt Road (Artcraft actually is called something else at that point -- I think it's Pete Domenici Hwy. McNutt is also known as NM 273). There's an area just west of the intersection where we regrouped. Riders were sent off one by one at 30 second intervals for the 2 mile climb, with the finish line another 1/2 mile away. Most of us did this in 9-11 minutes.

Then we rode south on Artcraft (Pete Domenici) to Columbus Road (it's 2 1/2 miles south of the intersection with Airport Road. About 1/2 mile or so west on Columbus there's a start line marked on the roadway. The road also has 2.5K, 5K and 10K markings. We did another time trial to the 10K line, using the same procedure. It took most of us between just under 16 minutes to just under 18 minutes on this very flat course with very little traffic.

Afterwards, we rode back to Pete Domenici Hwy and rode to the border crossing to get a few more miles in.

For an unofficial time trial like this, the easiest way is to just let each rider keep track of his or her own time. If you get a volunteer with a car, you can have that person synchronize a stopwatch (most cell phones and iPods have that feature) with a volunteer at the start line. The volunteer in the car can drive ahead to the finish line and record when people finish. This also has the advantage that the car can carry any extra gear (water bottles, saddle bags, clothing) that riders want to dump to lighten their load on the time trial.

Doing something like this every so often helps monitor how you're doing as far as speed and encourages you to keep doing intervals occasionally on other rides.

The map below just shows the two time trial segments.