Mike's Bike Blog

If you're familiar with the Austin bike scene you'll know what the Tuesday Nighter is, but for those of you not familiar it is the local World Championships, the hammerfest ride. It's not a real race, no prize money handed out, no photographers, no follow cars and no wheel trucks. It's just the opportunity to make your buddies suffer. The Tuesday Nighter has lost a little of it's luster over the past couple years as the roads had deteriorated, the suburban sprawl has reached out to the once country roads that  now see a steady stream of traffic on them. The potholes aren't a problem any more as most of the course has been repaved and the traffic is low on a Sunday.

As if we don't have enough options for a Sunday ride Austin Bikes has put a new spin on the Tuesday Nighter. They have introduced their version named SUMO (SUnday MOrning) which meets at 9am at the shop and departs to the Tuesday Nighter start line for a 10am unofficial start.

This past Sunday I made my way down to Austin Bikes to partake. I've never done the Tuesday Nighter on Tuesday so I wasn't too sure of the course and what to expect. There were some familiar faces in the group though. As we were waiting for the roll out a group of AT&T riders were discussing about Scott who was en route to the start. They good hearted banter was about how he would probably get lost. The statement was made that Scott mainly rides Parmer because that's the route he knows and won't get lost on. We had a good laugh ribbing him in his absence while we waited.

We meandered through downtown Austin making our way to the start. There were a handful of riders waiting, we rolled up to wait a few minutes for the 10am start. As we were waiting I looked back to a rider behind me and see he is popping the top to a Red Bull. I tell Chuck this is not a good sign and we both figure we'll be dropped before we can even get clipped in. Luckily for the first lap the group stays together for the most part. A few riders seemed to have formed a small breakaway a few minutes ahead of us. Or dare I say the A group had separated from the B group.

On lap 2 on the hilly section on Thaxton Road the group slowed as we negotiated the incline and a small crosswind. I got caught out of the protection of the pack as I was to the left of everyone and was unprotected from the wind as the pack organized. I was about to slow down and drop to the back and get into the group when a rider broke away and was going to try to bridge up to the group that was ahead of us. It sounded like a good plan and I was positioned well to attack as well. I quickly caught my fellow attacking rider and passed him. This left me all by myself to bridge the gap. I was making progress but I was quickly burning out. Just about this time Scott passed me and I grabbed his wheel. We each took pulls as we made our way to closing the gap picking off a few riders in the process.

We had the last few riders within our sites and would catch them in about 40 seconds at our current pace.  Then everything unravelled, Scott was pulling but instead of making the right turn on Old Lockhart Road the people we were chasing continued straight and so did Scott. I shouted up to Scott that I think we missed our turn. We came to a complete stop and looked back as the chase group rounded the turn onto Old Lockhart Road.

We turned around and tried to catch back on. At this point the wind in my sails had gone out, we never could quite catch back on and I slowly started losing Scott's wheel. The gap was only a few seconds between me and Scott but I couldn't close it down. On Old Lockhart we caught a couple riders that were off the back as well, however they didn't make the right turn on Nuckols Crossing but continued on Old Lockhart and so did Scott. I followed Scott trying to put more of an effort in to tell him we missed the turn and finally caught him but we were way off course and near William Cannon Road. Since we missed the final lap we decided to just head back to Austin Bikes and call it a day.

The SUMO ride is a great ride near race pace, just be careful on whose wheel you follow. I told Scott I'd give him a few weeks of learning the course before I come out again.