Ah, springtime. Flowers, gentle rain storms, lambs, easter eggs, fluffy bunnies.

Or, you know, if you’re in northern New Mexico… Snow. Mud. Hail. High winds. Temperatures in the low 30s. The faint possibility of a rainbow.

This past weekend I dropped Macky off at the airport so he could head to the UK for the next two round of the EWS. Then I headed up to Santa Fe for the second round of the New Mexico Enduro Cup. I love New Mexico races — best people, best beer, best trails. And usually the best weather, too, although this weekend was a notable exception.

This weekend, the mountains unleashed a fury of very un-springlike behavior. I was planning to pre-ride on Saturday but instead I spent most of the morning huddled in my un-insulated van (think walk-in refrigerator), brewing coffee with my Jetboil (with the windows open, no carbon monoxide poisoning for this girl, keep your hair on), and generally waiting to see if anyone else was going to attempt to brave the conditions.

Eventually the race director, David Saenz, volunteered to shuttle a few of us up to the top in his side-by-side, with the idea that we would give the course a look-see and help decide whether the race was do-able. The side-by-side venture was awesome, although arguably more terrifying than the ride down. The consensus — the transitions would be muddy, but the trail was still a blast. The race would go on (two hours later and minus one stage).

Here’s something to note about mud in New Mexico. It’s called adobe and they make houses out of it. Which should really be enough of a clue that, hey, here is something you probably shouldn’t ride your bike through. But, of course, I thought I knew all about mud after Rotorua and I wasn’t even scairt. In fact, New Mexico mud and rocks, compared to Rotorua mud and roots, hardly even qualify as slippery. After the pre-ride I was thinking, these trails aren’t 90 degrees steep, there are like four roots and besides, this is the desert, and things dry out in twenty minutes, so what the hell is there to worry about? I don’t even need mud tires.

I was half right. The trails did dry out pretty fast, and I definitely didn’t need mud tires for the race stages. My Vittoria Morsa was the perfect front tire for the slightly slick, slightly loose turns. However, I had failed to take into account just how muddy the fireroad transitions were going to be. And by muddy, I mean six inches of New Mexico’s finest adobe-making clay, which it turns out, doesn’t discriminate between forming a brick for your house and forming a brick inside the rear linkage of your bicycle.

This is where my tire choice came back to haunt me. That’s the problem with having a rad tire sponsor like Vittoria — they have the perfect tire for pretty much everything, so if you’re not using it, it’s your own damn fault and you have to live with the knowledge that the perfect tire is sitting back in your van while you’re unclogging the rear-end of your bike with a tree branch. This made me pissy and sad, and I hadn’t eaten enough either, so I pretty much spiraled into a state of doom all the way up the second transition (which was effectively a two hour hike and you all know how I feel about hiking).

I chose to run a 2.4 Goma on the rear for a variety of reasons, partially because it’s been my go-to tire for a year and I love how it corners and brakes, and partially because it was already on my bike and my bike mechanic was on a plane to England. The problem was that there was’t much clearance between the tire and linkage with this set up. I mean, to be fair, there is plenty of clearance for normal situations. In fact, there is plenty of clearance for most extreme situations, too. There just wasn’t enough clearance for New Mexico fire roads after a three day storm. So, this happened, like every three feet.

LESSON LEARNED. Not all mud is created equal. When it comes to desert clay, forget traction and shedding (I didn’t see a single tire shedding mud this weekend), and think about clearance. Because, if your wheels won’t turn, traction is sort of a moot point. For those who care about these things, given a do-over, I would probably run a 2.25 Goma or a Mezcal III on the rear. I would keep the Morsa on the front because even though it clumped on the climbs, it was awesome for the race stages, which weren’t nearly as muddy.

I definitely had some low points in this race — to be honest, I’m not sure I was fully recovered from Moab, driving back to Taos, helping Macky pack and getting up way too early way too many days in a row. I just felt tired and sloppy and annoyed at the weather and my tire choice. I let myself fall apart a little bit, which is something I’ve been working on, but clearly I still have work to do. That said, it was still a pretty epic day on the bike, and I was smiling by the end of it. Now, I can’t wait to get back to ride the trails in Glorieta again, although I am crossing my fingers for dry conditions.

Oh, and I won a growler (!!!) and got to shred with some very fast, very supportive and generally awesome ladies. So, that’s rad.