An hour before the sun rose on Bogotá, before the daily tasks began piling up and before the cars and fumes took over the streets, Carolina Sarmiento pedaled her road bike into the frigid darkness.
The 32-year-old accountant joined a pack that continued picking up other cyclists as they rode along a highway toward the mountains east of the city.
“This has got to be a lot of love for cycling,” she said. “I mean, who gets up when it’s this early and this cold?”
As it turns out, a lot of people do. At an altitude of 8,500 feet, Bogotá is cool year-round and especially bitter before sunrise. But more than 100 spandex-clad cyclists arrived by 5:30 a.m. at the city’s eastern edge, congregating at the foot of Monserrate Mountain to set off together on a 5.9-mile, 1,800-foot climb.
In the bicycle-crazed, early-rising capital of Colombia, pre-dawn group rides have become popular among cyclists looking to exercise before work or school. The group rides offer an added layer of protection that’s especially appealing to cyclists rattled by crime in recent years.
They make steep ascents into the Andean hilltops, or altos, surrounding the city. They draw dozens or hundreds of cyclists — virtually all of them men — and sometimes reach 35 miles per hour, earning themselves the name of “trains.” Start times and locations are posted online for anyone to drop in, and regulars say they’ve developed strong friendships with other riders.
At Monserrate Mountain that morning, a popular group called El Tren del Verjón met for its twice-weekly climb to the Alto el Verjón peak. Somewhere in the tangle of flashing red taillights and sculpted calves and thighs, Juan Carlos Ochoa, a 53-year-old salesman, was eager to take off.
“I like the adrenaline I feel when I ride with so many people,” he said. “A lot of them are faster than I am, and that motivates me.”
Road cycling has long been a popular sport in Colombia, second only to soccer. But it has surged in the last decade, as three of the country’s top riders have made the podium in the Tour de France, said Kevin Daniel Rozo, a sports anthropologist in Bogotá who has researched the country’s cycling culture.
Those cyclists give Colombians a reason to be proud of their country, Mr. Rozo said. “Especially after the height of drug trafficking in the 1980s, it’s been very important to create a national identity based on positive images,” he said.
The first rays of light broke from behind the mountains as the cyclists climbed the first mile toward the hilltop. Most were out to exercise before work, but also because it’s common in Colombia to seize the day. A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2023 concluded Colombia was the earliest rising country in the world.
“It’s not so much that we like getting up as it is that we have to,” said Juan David Quitian, co-founder of El Tren del Verjón. “Otherwise the day gets away from us.”
Up the hill, police officers waited at key turns, with two more patrolling on a motorcycle, an effort to address the frequent bike robberies in Bogotá.
Ruben Darío Peña, a 44-year-old truck driver, said he rides a modest aluminum-frame bike when he’s alone and saves his flashier carbon fiber frame for the train.
Mr. Peña started riding in 2021 to get back in shape after the first year of the pandemic. He lost more than 30 pounds, he said, and he also quit smoking and dramatically cut back on drinking. “It’s been a radical change,” he said. “I was having problems with alcohol, and trading the beer for my bicycle has been a way to love myself.”
Ms. Sarmiento, the accountant, also took up cycling in 2021, in her case seeking relief from depression and rumination. On advice from her therapist, she went out on her bicycle one Sunday, and slowly embraced the male-dominated sport of road cycling. She now rides four mornings a week.
On the ride, she basked in the scent of the eucalyptus trees lining the mountainside road. In between long breaths in and out, she heard hummingbirds and woodpeckers chirping with the dawning day.
After 49 minutes of vigorous pedaling, Ms. Sarmiento reached the top of Verjón hill, and she was greeted with high-fives from a dozen fellow riders. They drank coffee and steaming hot sugarcane tea and ate cheese rolls and guava paste snacks.
“The overthinking is gone,” she said. “On my bicycle, I feel calm.”
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