June 2008
Fierce Cycling Competition
by Phaedra Greenwood
For three years in a row, Jason Quenzler has won the State Championship for the New Mexico Off-Road Series in the expert 30-39 (age) category. “It wasn’t easy,” he says. “The competition is fierce.”
Since 2002, Quenzler has done some serious mountain bike racing. He is now 37 and married, with a three-year-old daughter. His home base is in Albuquerque, but lately he finds himself commuting back and forth between Albuquerque and Sydney, Australia as a business consultant for Six Sigma Consultants.
Even in Australia he has to train eight to 10 hours a week to keep fit. “I use a ‘less is more’ plan. If you train with higher intensity and shorter duration, you gain more than if you went out and rode for four hours every day,” he says.
In 2008, Quenzler became a USA Cycling Certified Level Three Coach. He is currently the mountain bike team captain for Mountaintop Cycling based in Albuquerque. He recently completed a 24-hour, four-man-team relay race in Tucson, AZ, which was different from what he was used to, he says. He rode six laps in 24 hours. Each lap is 16 miles and takes about an hour and ten minutes. His team took second place, competing against 133 other teams.
Typical mountain bike races are called “cross-countries,” he says. One of his favorite races is the Frazer Mountain Madness event in his home territory of Taos. “We started at 9,000 feet in Taos Ski Valley and climbed up along the Wheeler Peak Wilderness boundary to 11,200,” he says. “It was September and pouring rain. The trail keeps going up and up for about four or five miles and tops out at 11,000 feet. Then we do three laps at altitude before coming down.
I was battling one of my friends and teammates for the state championship,” he says. “But it’s more like you’re battling against yourself, not letting your body break down, making sure you have the right fluid and food intake. That’s a key part of the training.”
Another difficult race is the Pajarito Punishment in Los Alamos. It’s 28 miles at an altitude of 8-9,000 feet which takes about three hours. “It starts at Pajarito Ski area, runs down through lower subdivisions and then back to the ski area.” The last eight miles is all uphill,” he says. He’s done this race four or five times and won it once, two years ago.
But the hardest race he has ever taken on was the Cerro Vista Challenge back in 2004. It began in Angel Fire, went up over the mountains and ended in Sipapu—57 miles with 7,500 feet of climbing. “It took six hours. Now that was painful,” he says.
He tries to maintain the right balance between family, work and cycling. His wife, Joli Quenzler, does a fair amount of recreational cycling herself, he says. “But the competition and level of fitness achieved in competitive cycling is what keeps me on my bike. For me, cycling is a way of life.”
If you know anyone who’d make a good profile for this column—including yourself—let us know at sespinoza@enchantment.coop.
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