style · Oct 28, 2026 · DAILY TRANSMISSION
Albuquerque’s Treadheads Made Bike Season’s Finale a Skull-Glitter Parade
Day of the Tread put costumes, long miles, gravel, and adaptive cycling in the same joyful lane.
A skeleton on a bike has places to be
Picture a bicycle rolling past golden cottonwoods with a skull-painted rider aboard. Somewhere nearby, another person is grinding through a 100-mile route. A third is doing a 4K walk. This was Albuquerque’s Day of the Tread, and it happened October 24 and 25, just before Halloween.
For its 20th year, the event turned the city’s end-of-season ride into a full costume parade with muscles. Riders moved through Old Town, the Sawmill District, and the Rio Grande bosque. A bosque is the wooded land beside the river, and in fall it brings the leaf drama.
The whole thing had a beautiful lack of chill. Decorated bikes, music stations, themed recharge stops, a costume contest, bike valet, and a post-ride TreadFest at Sawmill Market gave the miles some proper theater.
Serious cyclists, meet the weirdos
Day of the Tread offered Sunday road routes of 6, 12, 18, 23, 47, 55, 66, and 100 miles. Saturday brought the Bosque Bone Shaker Gravel Grinder, where gravel routes mixed dirt and other surfaces. That’s a different beast from a neat little neighborhood cruise.
Yet the event makes room for people who want to ride far and people who want to show up in a witch hat. Its own name for this crowd is “Treadheads,” including riders and costumed people who cheer at recharge zones. Frankly, that’s the correct use of civic energy.
Organizer Mark Gundlach said about 2,300 Treadheads had registered for 2026. The event began with roughly 300 participants. It has grown, but it hasn’t sanded off the strange parts that made it memorable.
Halloween meets Día de los Muertos, with handlebars
Day of the Tread is openly built around both Halloween and Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Those late-October traditions overlap on the calendar, but they bring different imagery and meanings. The event frames itself around that seasonal meeting point rather than pretending a plastic pumpkin is a whole personality.
Past editions have included witches, pirates, Superman, sugar-skull-inspired looks, and bikes turned into wild little sculptures. This is style with spokes. A helmet can be sensible and still have fake flowers glued to it.
The costume is not an interruption to the athletic event. It changes the feeling of it. A hard ride can be lonely; a hard ride with a skeleton ringing a cowbell at a music stop feels like a town decided to join you.
The party has somewhere real to go
The event supports the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation and its programs for physically disabled children and young people. Those programs include adaptive recreation: cycling, wheelchair basketball, boating, archery, and camping.
Its adaptive-cycling work uses equipment such as handcycles and recumbents. A handcycle is powered by hand cranks instead of foot pedals. The program aims to build endurance, independence, and access to the outdoors, and helps participants prepare for Day of the Tread.
The event’s 2026 sponsorship materials report $54,220 donated to more than a dozen New Mexico nonprofits in 2025. The same materials report more than $1 million donated to New Mexico organizations across its first 19 years. Those are organizer-reported numbers, but the purpose is plain enough: the goofy spectacle helps create more ways for people to move.
A city ritual with mud on its shoes
Plenty of cities have charity rides. Plenty also have Halloween events. Albuquerque threw those ingredients into the same cauldron, added autumn river woods and gravel, then asked everybody to dress louder.
That’s why Day of the Tread lands beyond the usual fitness-event bubble. You can chase 100 miles, walk 4K, volunteer, cheer, or make your bike look like it escaped from a craft-store nightmare. Everyone gets a role in the rolling scene.
By late October, the light gets sharper and the riding season starts to feel temporary. Albuquerque answered that feeling with costumes, wheels, and a bunch of people refusing to exit quietly.
SOURCES FROM THIS TRANSMISSION
Home - Day of the Tread ↗Day of the Tread - Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation ↗Day of the Tread returns to Albuquerque with rides for all ages ↗Outdoor Recreation & Races – Human Resources ↗DayoftheTread_8.5x11_Brochure_2026_Jan21 ↗