Mike's Bike Blog

After my 48 hour waiting period I joined the Southwest Cycle Sport team ride on Sunday. It was quite fun to get out after 2 days off and with the drama of the past couple days behind me. We did the southwest route heading out on Bee Caves Rd to 360 to MoPac to William Cannon and then looping through the neighborhoods and coming back out on MoPac/45. When we reached the turn around point we headed back down MoPac. I was sitting about 3rd or 4th wheel behind Peter who was pulling the train along. From the back Jeremy, the current Cat 4 Time Trial champion and on his wheel was John. They passed us like nobodies business. I pulled out from the train when I saw that nobody was going to even attempt to catch the express train. I gave it a good hard effort to catch John's wheel. Luckily I got on and was pulled along at 32 mph. Towards the end John got burned up and dropped out what there was of Jeremy's draft. I moved up to Jeremy's wheel. After a little bit he started to slow up a tad and I moved ahead, that delusion of grander lasted all of 10 seconds as the headwind and the hill just sapped any bit of strength I had and Jeremy passed me back. We finished up the last .4 miles at a more sane pace and waited for the rest of the crew.

Some numbers of interest, when I was bridging the gap to John and Jeremy my max watts was 1052 and averaged 895 watts. Sitting in the draft I averaged 32.3 mph and 293 watts.

The other fun part of this route is the hills on Lost Creek Road. Only John and Greg from the group decided to partake in the hill joy. Not sure about Jeremy, he dropped us all on Southwest Parkway betting everybody back to the start. Everybody else opted for the easy route back to Bee Cave via Barton Creek Blvd. My strategy is to bomb down the hills getting a gap so I can ride up at my own pace. I made it almost to the top of Lost Creek before John caught up to me.

The 48 miles was a good way to get back into the swing of things and as always it's fun to ride with the Southwest Cycling Team.

For Monday Jeff and I decided to meet up in Bastrop to ride through the state parks. It's been almost 2 years since I rode through the park and that was part of Pedal Thru the Pines. You can't ask for better scenery and the hills are great. In fact the total climbing was 2917.98 feet for the 30 miles we rode. I must say this time through the park was a lot easier than what I remember. Jeff showed up sporting his snazzy Bike Pure jersey, very impressive.