I Finally Found My Ramp!

Well, since I qualified for the State Championships in Las Cruces, and discovered that the route was flat except for an on ramp onto the highway and then that ramp in reverse on the turn around, I have been scoping out ramps all around Albuquerque.  I like to practice.

However, I could not find a suitable ramp.  And when I did, I could not find a suitable time to ride the suitable ramp!  I wondered if Sunday or Saturday mornings, really early might suffice...but I never did quite figure out how I was going to ride on an 8 lane highway and turn around and get off it!  So, I did nothing.

Finally on this past Friday afternoon, I spotted my ramp!  It went across the freeway, but was a part of a pedestrain walkway...and it had a steep ramp up and over and then another ramp on the down side of the freeway that would enable me to do hill repeats.  Did I say hill repeats?  I had banned those little words from my vocabulary.  Here are a few pics of the ramp.

Here's another view.....

 The orange brown is the ramp...it is quite long...on a slowly increasing grade until it pitches sharply up as you can see in the first and second  pic.

And another view....

It was very interesting how I had to get to this ramp.  I had to wind  in and out of  neighborhoods and  apartment  complexes and ask people how to find the "pedestrian walkway."  It is along the South Valley side of 1_40.  Once I found it, I noticed that there was plenty of room to park and it seemed like a reasonable neighborhood.

So, wish me luck,  Early Monday morning, I  will do my first trial run over the ramp and back and see how many I can do.  Then I can work at  increasing my efforts week by week and incorporate this into the rest of my training!    I don't know whether to say "OH! JOY or not!"  Will  keep you posted!