Last weekend I made the trek to Mino Clavero, about 3 hours outside of the city, for the Vuelta Altas Cumbres, an 84km race that started in Ambul, climbed several thousand feet over the beautiful sierras and descended into Mino Clavero on rocky trails and gravel roads.

I got a good idea of how hard this race was going to be in the first few kilometers, which naturally were straight up hill. I had decided to wear my heart rate monitor, a decision I now question. It’s a little daunting to see numbers like 198 in the first 15 minutes of a five hour race. Macky is going to comment on this and say I should have warmed up, so I’m going to go ahead and lay out my excuses. This is how bike racing in Argentina goes:

Wake up at 7. Or 7:40…
Shuttle to the start arrives at 8. More like 8:20.
Loaded and reading to go by 8:15. Errr 8:40. And wait, so-and-so forgot to put his bike in. Make that 8:50.

We didn’t get to the start until 9:30, leaving me half an hour to look for bathrooms, discover there were none, find a suitable patch of forest and arrive at the largada (start line) with approximately two seconds to spare. But really, it’s a five hour race, who needs to warm up?

Me, it turns out, especially when the first three hours are subida. Aka, going up hill. I spent the first half hour of the race wanting to die and wondering what happens when you exceed your calculated max heart rate. Like, okay, 220 minus my age is 199, so does that mean I’m one bpm away from dropping dead? Is this like the tree-in-the-forest-paradigm? Like, if my heart rate goes over 199 and I’m NOT wearing my heart rate monitor, do I still die? Is this all in my head? And if so, to quote Dumbledore, does that make it any less real? Please leave any thoughts on this matter in the comments section.

After the first half hour, I realized that I was still alive and began to enjoy the race. The scenery was sublime–the road curved through green pastures, wound around giant boulders and hugged tightly to the edge of a rocky mountain face. I passed men on horseback in full gaucho get-up and startled several herds of horses and cows as they ambled across the road. Every now and then we would pass through somebody’s yard (begging the question of how long it takes them to get to anything remotely resembling civilization) and the whole family and a passel of goats and farm dogs would be out cheering.

The bajada started on a rough, rocky trail for several kilometers and then turned back into a gravel road for another 40 kilometers of harrowing descent. The hair-pin switchbacks on rutted gravel were a bit nerve-wracking but the view was marvelous–I could see Mino Clavero, our destination, about an hour and half before I got there. All in all, a good day on the bike.