After 2 previous successful rides of the Burnet-New Braunfels-Burnet, I was looking forward to this year's ride. A few reasons
The weather was going to be favorable. Temperatures ranging from 40s to 70s
The wind was not going to a huge factor. Well, wind is always a factor (especially on day 3 if it is blowing briskly out of the SE), but at least there was no forecast concerns.
The large number of riders who signed up. Riders from all over the country were coming to Austin.
Familiar friends were riding
The ride event started on Friday March 19th. I went over to the Super 8 on I-35 which is where most of the riders were staying and where Jeff had arranged for packets to be picked up. I arrived to the hotel and had to pleasure to meet Luke, Misha, and Ian who were just getting their bikes set up to ride to the store. I got my packet which contained a large format BNBB sticker, a KN95 mask, and a cloth mask with the Texas flag on it. I stopped in the office and got permission from the clerk to park my van at the hotel the next day.
I left the hotel and returned to my home. As it was a sunny day, I laid out a blanket on the driveway and brought my bike out for a through cleaning. I took the wheels off and used a brush to knock a bunch of built up crud off the inside of the fenders. I then used Simple Green to wipe down the rims of the wheels, the spokes, the hubs, the frame, the fork, the bottom bracket, and the rear rack. I found a lot of dirt and grime to be cleaned off and felt the bike looked real good after I finished cleaning it. I even added a little Armor All to the tires to give them luster.
I had debated going back over to the hotel to join in the pizza eating party, but my pizza order from Shorties was a bit behind schedule and I opted to just eat the pizza alone at home while I finished getting everything organized. I put together PBJ sandwiches, bags of cookies, and 3 bottles of Ensure Plus in the freezer. I got my bottles out and ready. I packed 3 extra sets of gloves on the bike. I planned to start the ride with my heavy gloves + liners. I would then move to the middle weight gloves and finally to the fingerless gloves. I made sure to have arm/leg warmers just in case it got cold. For the morning's start, I layed out my knicker length bib, an extra pair of shorts (for doubling up on padding), a cotton t-shirt base layer, a long sleeve base layer, a wool jersey, a lightweight waterproof jacket, reflective vest, reflective ankle bands, booties to go over my shoes, and chemical toe warmers to start the day with. I loaded up my helmet, bags, bike, and pump into the van so that part was done.
I ate my pizza, drank plenty of water and tucked into to bed early after answering a bunch of text messages from the group asking questions. A particularly funny thread was the question of good bars within easy reach of the hotel. I. mentioned BD Rileys. Russ chipped in with Drinkwell and Workhorse -- even if I thought these were not easy walking distance. Ah well.
Early Saturday morning, I woke up when North Carolina Ian posted a message causing my phone to emit a notification, .Turns out my alarm was about to go off so I just got up and made coffee, got dressed, filled my bottles, and opened the chemical toe warmers to let them warm up. I made sure to pick out something to eat in the car. I finished getting dressed, grabbed my bottles and phone, and headed to the Super 8. I later noticed I had forgotten to grab one of the 3 bottles of Ensure Plus from the freezer. In the car, I used my asthma inhaler to ensure my lungs would start clear.
At the hotel, there was the usual hustle bustle of riders and bikes. I said good morning to several people and made sure my Garmin was turned on and ready. We rolled out right at 6am and spirits were high as we made our way south and west through Austin. I had a nice conversation with Misha who was from NoVA. I shared with her that I had lived in Alexandria as well and then found out Misha had also gone to high school in Richmond just like me (though at a different high school).
Soon enough, we hit the first big hills and as has been typical for me in the past few months, I fell to the back of the pack and struggled a bit with my breathing. It wasn't bad enough to need my inhaler, but still, I felt my breath was ragged and my heart was racing. I worked for about an hour to get my breathing back under control. I knew that once things settled down, I would be able to get back in my normal groove.
The early part of the day 1 ride passes through Paleface Ranch. At the first control, I stopped and only used the bathroom. I debated a taco, but decided to skip that as I was not hungry yet and I was behind all the rest of the riders.
The next place to reach was Marble Falls, I stopped just outside of town to take off layers and take care of business. I then mounted up and did the big descent into the city. While descending, my Garmin decided to freeze up. When I got into town, I stopped to reset the Garmin and get it going again. I did not stop there and kept riding towards Burnet. At mile 75 would be the 2nd control. Mormon Hill Rd always is a challenge for me. I stopped about half way along the way and pulled a half of a PBJ sandwich out of my handlebar bag and ate it. I then found the stretch of road that was mostly caliche and gravel where the county was in the process of repaving. As I got near the end of that section, I saw Russ on the side of the road working on his bike. I knew that Russ was capable bike mechanic and super fast. I just said hello and kept rolling figuring he would catch up and pass me at some point.
I reached the Valero in Burnet just as all the riders in the main group were preparing to leave. Jeff asked me if I was with anyone (I said no) and he pointed out that California Chris and Texas Ian were not quite ready to leave and I should ride with them. Thus begins tale of what happened the rest of the day. Let's start with showing the Garmin data from the day.
There are several interesting things to note. First, speed at the beginning of the day was good. You can definitely see at the left hand side of the graph that the peaks/valleys and average speed are all better earlier than later in the day. That is not unexpected. Fresh legs for sure are a good thing. The troubling thing to note are the large blocks of time of no progress towards the right hand side of the ride graph.
Now that I was riding with 2 other riders, every time I made sure to communicate clearly our stated goal of getting sleep. As we left each stop, I reviewed our plan for how long our next stop should be to stay within budget. However, it's easy to say this and harder to do it when you have issues. Both of my fellow riders had issues. Ian suffered from nutritional issues causing long recovery times and a big reduction in speed. Later in the day, Chris had a GPS failure which meant he needed help to navigate the course.
Below are my estimates on the control times. Problems started at the services in Florence where things were definitely going wrong for Ian. Because we stayed extra time in Florence, I wanted a slightly faster lunch stop in Jarrell. I wanted Bartlett to be a 5 minute ice and go stop. In Rockdale, a huge amount of time was lost dealing with the course detour change due to a bridge outage and the phone conversation and text messages to get the detour information.
It was in Rockdale, where Russ had caught up and we left as a group of 4 riders. As we left Rockdale Chris lost his GPS. As we rolled down TX-487, I could see Ian dropping away and eventually even Chris fell back. I decided holding Russ' wheel was not going to work. Russ pulled away just before the turn at 486 and I dropped back to regroup with Chris and to make sure I had Ian in sight. I told Chris we were not going to chase Russ.
From the chart above, I count 17 times when bikes were stopped. Here is a breakdown of my best guess of activity and time.
2:43-2:48 Paleface control
4:17-4:20 clothing change before Marble Falls
4:39-4:40 Garmin reset
5:01-5:03 Eat/bio-break on course
5:50-6:05 Burnet control
7:14 - foot down
8:28-8:41 Florence
9:33-10:02 Jarrell control
10:58-11:18 Bartlett
12:00-12:01 foot down - talk to fast riders about Rockdale detour
13:41 - missed turn, check cue sheet
13:47-14:20 Rockdale control, phone calls, text messages about route change, regroup w/ Ian, Russ
15:57 - check phone for directions to TX-1331
16:41-16:45 foot down, caffeine, ibuprofen, bio-break
17:01 ???
17:45-18:04 Taylor control, regroup w/ Ian
19:46-19:48 traffic light Parmer
We overshot our budget at Florence (target 5 minutes, actual 13), Jarrell (target 20 minutes, actual 29 minutes), Bartlett (target 5 minutes, actual 20 minutes) , Rockdale (target 10 minutes, actual 33 minutes). In Jarrell, I had originally planned for 25-30 minutes, but since we overshot at Florence, I made a mental decision to chop some time in Jarrell. Some extra time is expected to be lost, but we overshot 55 minutes at stops. I count my lucky stars we had no issues with flats or mechanicals that would have made things worse. By the time we reached Taylor, I was just thinking to get all 3 of us in safely and was no longer concerned about time budgets.
As we got back to the hotel, we found that Chris could not get his hotel room key to work. While he went down to the lobby for help, I started thinking about how it would play out. I was still thinking I was waiting for Ian to return so I could give him a ride home. I figured that I might get home by 4:30 with little or no chance to shower, sleep, and then get up to return for 6am rollout. At this point, I just decided it was a bridge too far. When Chris came back, we chatted about this and I carried my bike back downstairs and loaded it into the van making sure to leave room in the. van for Ian's bike. It was at this point, I pulled my phone from the bike bag and found a message from Ian saying he was riding directly home and abandoning the brevet. I then had to negotiate with an Austin police unit that was blocking my exit and I exited the parking lot and made my way home.
At home, I felt defeated. I took a shower, skipped eating, drafted a note for my wife telling her that I was done with the ride and not to wake me. I then went directly to sleep and slept soundly until 7:30 am. I woke up to have a cup of coffee and then at the urging of my wife, had a look at the cue sheet for day 2 to see what the control close times were. Without much enthusiasm, I got myself dressed, bottles prepped. You know it was bad because I put my bib shorts on inside out. with the pad on the outside. Ha! I fixed that and got in the van to drive over to the hotel around 8:30 and parked. I got the bike set up with bags and bottles. I then turned on the Garmin and started the day 2 route. I had a panic at about mile 5 thinking I had left my phone in the van. However, I found I had stuck my phone in my jersey pocket and all was well. As I rolled along, I started thinking about how the rest of the ride would play out. I was hours behind the other riders. I would be riding into the day and night all alone. I wouldn't expect to finish until around 1am Monday. I would then have to negotiate the planned 4:30 or 5:00 start time for Monday (a weather event was predicted for Monday night and everyone was hoping to beat the weather). It all sounded bad. Noone to ride with -- especially at night is not fun and can be dangerous. I don't ride these things to be miserable. I ride them for fun and camaraderie. I stopped at about mile 22 and took off layers and changed gloves. I then climbed up Southwest Parkway and stopped again at mile 25 having heard my phone go off with a notification. I found a text from my wife to check on me and another text from Amy from hours before when she was at mile 22. At that point I just decided enough was enough. I called home and arranged for a pickup.
I picked up my van where I left it and drove home. At home, I showered, watched a little March Madness, ate leftover pizza, and generally felt dejected. I then took a nap and woke up when I heard my wife return from choir practice. I had just sat down to watch Wanda Vision when the phone rang with an urgent request from Amy who was in New Braunfels and looking for a rescue. I grabbed a water bottle and a towel for Amy to sit on and headed to the New Braunfels control. Not the way I hoped to be arriving on Friday when optimism abounded. I was able to find Amy and get her and her bike back to the hotel in Austin. All the way back we shared stories of how things had gone and decided that both of us had bad day 1 stories and that things went horribly south for Amy on day 2 when her legs went dead and she started having the headache and shivers (which she thinks is a side effect of the COVID vaccine).
In reflection, the silver lining was being there as a volunteer to help a rider in need. To be there for Ian and Chris as well. If I had stayed on course, Amy would have been stuck in New Braunfels with no way to get back to Austin and her hotel room. Maybe that was the divine plan for me in the end. The universe sometimes knows better than we do what our destiny is meant to be. I could just be unhappy at how I failed to get this year's ride done, but maybe I should be thankful instead. There will always be next year and a chance to try again.
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