Mike's Bike Blog

For my Sunday ride I was looking for a good option, Austin Cycling Association (ACA) had 2 rides the Krause Kruze and the Pfinally Pfluggerville. The Krause Kruze promises a lot of hills so of course I was very interested in this one. However, I've been having some shifting problems and while I've been doing some intervals this week on the 3 sisters the chain would slip. I figured until I could get it into the shop I shouldn't go out of my way for hills. That left the Pfinally Pfluggerville. The start location turned out to be relatively quick to get to via 45, about 20 minutes from my house so that was an added bonus. To put the route into perspective it is billed as flat to slightly rolling farmland. I have ridden on a few of the same roads we would be hitting during the Ronde Von Manda race.

At the ride start there were quite a few people, one of the more attended ACA rides I'd been too. Most everybody was doing the 47 mile route, I on the other hand wanted to throw down the 67 mile route at a steady pace of 70% of my FTP so about a 20 mph pace. There was one other rider doing the 67 mile route and he was going to be going slower, but said he'd try to keep up. The 47 and 67 mile routes ride the same route for about 25 miles, the 67 mile route takes about a 3 mile diversion before the water stop in Coupland.

After a 15 minute warmup with the group I picked up the pace and quickly dropped the guy who was doing the 67 mile route with me as well as everyone else. Not that it matters but the other 67 miler was a Tri guy. I would look back at turns to see where everyone was at. It appeared that the ride was splitting into 3 groups, a faster 18-19 mph group a medium group and a slower group, not sure how fast the last 2 groups were going. Then there was me off the front.  Since I was off the front by myself I figured I'd get in a good session of sweet spot training in. I concentrated at holding my power at 90% of my FTP for the next hour. At this point I rode away from the group and instead of being a 2-4 minutes ahead of the fast group I was getting 3 or 4 miles ahead. I didn't see them again till Coupland at the watering hole.

When I was pulling into Coupland the 47 miler fast group was just getting into the gas station that was the pit stop. The other 67 miler said he was going to only do the 47 mile route. I decided to join them on the 47 mile route so I could get back home a little earlier, plus I wasn't sure if there was any water stops on the rest of the 67 mile route and it was getting hot and I knew only 2 bottles wouldn't cut it. It was fun to ride with them, I knew one of them and had ridden with Bruce several times on Sunday with the Austin Road Riders group. I chatted with the Tri guy who was suppose to do the 67 miler. In fact I rode with he and his wife on another ACA ride, the Perdenales Pedal (not the same Tri guy from that ride though).

There was no organization to the paceline, for the most part we rode 2 up with 6 or 7 in our group. There really was no sharing of the work, whoever was at the front would be up there pulling for however long they felt, The hills would reshuffle everyone. I tried to keep my speed constant at 19-20 mph so i was the first one up and would soft pedal till we regrouped. I would try to pull as much as I could and I think I did a good job of pulling everyone at a 20 mph pace.

At mile 44 as we were  going down a small hill (29 mph) the tri guy goes flying by me. Instinct takes over and I'm like oh hell no. I kick it in and grab his wheel. I start to pass him as we start up the next roller and then I go into overdrive and fly up the hill and totally leave him in the dust. At the top I think how big of an ass I must have looked and felt a little bad.

When we got back to the parking lot as I was putting my bike away one of the guys that was in our group came over and introduced himself. He asked if I was on a club or team and said how inspiring it was to watch me ride away from everybody at the beginning and to watch me ride up the hills. That made my day so I stopped feeling bad about chasing down the tri guy.

The course is really good, very low traffic once you get out of Pfluggerville, which takes about 5 minutes. I would recommend this ride through the rural farmland. And it is flat, I used my small ring once or twice and that was only to stay within a power target zone. I rolled with standard cranks and a 11x23 cassette no problem. It is a fun route.