The final big ride on the calendar for 2021 is the annual brevet of CDB (Crawford Dimebox). This brevet was new in 2015 and on paper it looks like it should be a piece of cake. There are no major climbs. There are familiar roads. There can be favorable conditions no matter which way the wind is blowing. But as all randos know, the best plans can be ruined by things you can't control
Let's turn back the clock to 2015 and read what I wrote about that first version. It's remembered as the year of rain and mud.
600K in the books. 38 hours 22 minutes.
DNF? Had heard of this happening to many a rider, but this has never crossed my mind until I sat shivering in a convenience store with other randos in the early hours of Sunday morning. Should I abandon the 600K? I could just pedal the last few miles to the hotel and then pack it in. I thought about it, but in the end and with strong support of friends, I finished both day 1 and day 2.
Click! Friday night, a nice group meal at a restaurant in Georgetown. We got to meet some of the out of town guests and have a nice big meal to fortify ourselves. The weather was the main topic at the meal. We saw the rain chances. Noted that the heavy rain was expected to arrive after 1AM on Sunday. Everyone thought we should aim to be done with the first day before the significant weather hit. Ah, good intentions.
Click! Saturday morning. Day 1 started well enough. A strong ESE wind, and the occasional periods of very light rain were our only concerns. The temperature was warm, but we carried gear for later in the day when temperatures were expected to be cooler. We had a large group for this ride including some out of town friends (DanD, GaryG/Dana, Mike, and special guest star Vinny). 3 flat tires and some wind were the main challenges early in the day.
Click! Saturday afternoon. Mud. Mud, mud, and more mud. Bikes covered in mud. Riders falling down in the mud. I flatted once, and then again. I switched out one tire for a new tire. The other tire then flatted. I ran out of tubes. I borrowed a tube from a fellow rider. I prayed that the rear tire would hold. And try changing a flat, in the dark, with a tire coated in mud. No fun.
The rain started to fall and the wind velocity increased. We turned south from Crawford, TX (famous for being near the ranch of former president Bush) to head toward Jarrell and eventually Georgetown. The wind was howling and gusting at 40 to 50 mph. And then the rain came driven by the heavy wind. One rider reported being knocked off their bike in the cross wind. I fought to keep my bike on a straight line but frequently found myself pushed from one side of the road to the other. As if this wasn't enough, the cold front hit us and the temperature dropped 25 degrees in less than a minute. We put on every thing warm we had and struggled south. The cold wind and rain blasting us. Roads covered in water. Creeks and culverts full to overflowing. Signs of lightning in the sky, but no thunder.
We limped into Jarrell a few hours later. I could no longer feel my hands or work the shifter on the bike. The group sat shivering in the Jarrell Town Center convenience store. We bought coffee and hot cocoa to try and warm ourselves. up. We pulled out more layers from our bags and steeled ourselves to ride the last few miles back to Georgetown. I wrang the water out of my balaclava and put on leg warmers under my rain legs. I put on arm warmers under my 2 base layers. I put on my heavier gloves (ha!). All the way back to Georgetown, I could squeeze my hand and water would come pouring out of the glove.
Click! Only 17 minutes of sleep. We arrived to the last control for day 1 around 5am with only 2 hours to get ready for the start of day 2. 350K done, 250K to go. I contemplated the DNF but decided that it was better to continue and get it done. Denis' K-Hound was to be celebrated on Sunday. Dana would also celebrate a rando milestone. I didn't want to miss that. I spent most of this time getting the bike organized and ready to ride. My roommate Jeff agreed to let me sleep 15 minutes while he got organized. He generously let me sleep 2 extra minutes. 6:40 AM came too soon. Jeff and I both agreed that we would extend our hotel reservation another day so we could plan to come back at the end of day 2 to shower and sleep. I pulled out all my winter gear to wear. I used this mainly because it was dry. Gloves, booties, and base layers from day 1 were fully soaked. I put on thick wool socks and then put my feet into wet shoes. I put on dry thermal booties. I put on a dry jacket and put my rain soaked rain jacket on the back of the bike for later. I put on wet leg warmers. We rolled out of the hotel and into the early morning of day 2.
Day 2 found the air chilly, but the rain had stopped. Two riders abandoned and so our group was smaller than at the start of day 1. Thankfully, Sunday was less windy and mostly dry. Our biggest challenges on this day were lack of sleep and the need to eat to refortify ourselves. A small group of randos joined us doing a 100K pop that coincided with a portion of our 250K route. It was nice to have friends along to talk to and share tales about the previous day with.
We finished the 600K at 9:22 PM on Sunday. so happy to see Peter waiting for us. I was glad to be done. We took our group photo. We handed our signed cards into Peter. We limped back to the hotel. We were glad to have a warm room and beds to sleep in. I showered, struggled into my compression tights. Set the alarm for 2 hours. Slept like the dead.
You read that and say, wow! It couldn't be like this 2 years in a row could it? Well, the next year was a different story with similar troubles. Here is my ride report from 2016.
Wow, it was certainly an interesting couple of days. I had been thinking that this year's version of the CDB 600K could only be better than last year. And, in many ways, it was a better brevet. Certainly the weather cooperated. We had cold, we some light rain, but no mud and no torrential downpours. All in all, good riding weather. However, we had a number of challenges on day 1 including mechanicals in the group and a discovery that the only 1 person with a loaded route on the Garmin (me), had somehow gotten an older version of the route. So, we spent a lot of time comparing turns on the Garmin cue sheet with the printed cue sheet. This brevet features long stretches between controls and so we spent some time at each control getting fixed up to survive the next stretch. While we had hoped to get back to the hotel for at least 3 hours of sleeping, this was not in the cards. We limped in Sunday with barely enough time for 90 minutes off the bikes. We fought the urge to ride slow on Sunday morning because we knew we had to reach the Thorndale control before it closed. 2 other groups of riders joined us (1 doing a 100K that would follow us out to Thorndale and Gary Kanaby who rode the full day with us on the new 240K permanent). Garmin news was better on Sunday because Byron Welch had been able to downlod the new version of the route and we benefited from his device giving us correct and timely turn by turn directions. I had given my dry cue sheet to Jeff Newberry at the start of the day, so I was dependent on the other riders to make sure I stayed on course. We pushed hard to Thorndale and arrived with an hour to spare. Once we reached Thorndale, we could relax a bit and not push so fast. The big challenge later in the day was wind. The wind picked up over the course of the day and we only benefited from the tail wind for a few stretches. In particular, we were fighting a stiff headwind much of the way back into Georgetown when we were most tired. Because we were all interested in finishing sooner than later on Sunday, we opted to push past Lexington services on the return and spend only a small amount of time in Thrall. My body eventually revolted against the lack of real food and I spent the last 2 hours of the ride fighting nausea and hoping I wouldn't fall apart before the finish. Over the whole 2 days, we only had 1 flat tire and of course it was near the end of the ride when we were cold and beat down. I heard Jeff's bike make a noise that he said he didn't notice, but a few miles later, he announced his rear tire was flat. He must have picked up something that punctured the tube near where I heard the noise. I am glad to be done. Thanks again to Peter Nagel for putting together a beautiful course. Thanks also to my fellow randos for being there and being strong -- even when I wasn't. 38 hours 32 minutes was our finish time (and oddly this was 10 minutes slower than last year's memorable ride).
So, that was the 2016 story. In 2017, I did not ride this brevet. Maybe it was because I thought it was cursed? More likely I was simply not around to enjoy the fun. I seem to remember this particular year went well. My memory is that this was AaronR's first 600K and Jeff was making sure he got through it. Lucky for them, everything went better.
Flash forward to 2021. There was no CDB in 2020 due to COVID so 2021 was the first time since 2019 to ride this brevet. There were only 3 riders signed up to ride the 600K: myself, Jeff, and Amy. We met for dinner on Friday night to review the cue sheets, look at epic ride (for the weather) and talk about where we would stop for meals. We at dinner at Frankie's in Georgetown.
We all agreed that we should take advantage of the southern wind on Saturday to try and bank some time. Our goal was to average 12mph which would put us back at the hotel for at least 5 hours off the bike. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to discover the water was turned off. The hotel said the pipes were being worked on and that service would be restored within the hour. That was not the case. When the water did turn back on, our toilet sprung a leak and flooded the floor of the bathroom. Before we left for the ride, we reported the problem to the front desk and they said they would take care of it. We have stayed at this Days Inn before. But the hotel is suffering badly from maintenance issues. The bathroom door was off alignment and could not be shut. This may be our last time to stay here.
The ride started at 6am. The weather forecast called for warm and windy. Temps would range from a low of 60 to a high of mid 70s. No heavy gloves or winter gear was needed. We all had on summer gear for pretty much the whole weekend. Before we rolled, we had a moment to capture our optimism.
As expected, the first part of the route was favored by tail wind and easy roads. We made good time out to the first service stop at Rogers, TX. Along the way, we chatted about things including the fact that I had lost a jacket on a section of the road we were riding.
After Rogers, we continued along to Rosebud. In years past, we had found there was bridge construction that created problems for us to reach this control. Fortunately, this year we found no problems and we fueled up at Cefco for the windy push to Troy. The sun came out in full force and layers were removed and sunscreen applied. Winter in Texas is full of surprises.
Amy and Jeff rolling along Texas roads.
It was indeed a windy stretch to reach Troy. Fortunately, we knew that when we left Troy, we would turn north again to head to Crawford. My right knee started acting up as we departed Troy and I pondered why one knee was hurting while the other felt fine.
We made great time up to Crawford. Jeff had called ahead to confirm the cafe would be closed. So, we brought food with us to eat. It felt good to be at the turnaround with our average speed about 13.7mph. We knew it would be a windy return back to Georgetown. At the control, I bought a bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola, but the store had no bottle opener. I went outside and found a nice family pumping gas who did have a bottle opener to help me out. As is sometimes the case, they asked about our ride and were shocked to hear how far we had ridden and how far we had left to go. The man pumping the gas pointed out it would be dark when we arrived in Georgetown. Yup!
We departed Crawford with 2 hours of daylight remaining. This was the first time for me to leave this control with daylight. We stopped a few miles outside of Crawford and I raised my saddle a bit to see if this would help with the knee pain. I was willing to try anything to make it less painful to pedal the bike. Jeff and Amy said they thought my leg extension showed my saddle was too low so I raised it a hair to see if that would help.
A couple of hours south of Crawford, we finally found a quiet road to stop on and put on our night gear and turn on our lights.
As we made our way south, the wind abated and we made better time than planned on our way to Temple. In Temple, we found the road construction that had hindered us in previous years was all done. A nice 4 lane road with smooth surface and a bike lane greeted us. We rolled through the outskirts and reached the intersection with all the restaurants. Our plan had been to eat at Burger King, but the dining room was closed. We rolled next door and found Taco Bell was open. While TB is not my favorite, Amy and I found an option we could both enjoy. The last thing I wanted was an upset stomach. We enjoyed real food and indoor seating. The temperature was cool as we left the restaurant so everyone put on jackets and knee warmers. I was wearing knickers so I was already set.
We rolled through Temple and eventually arrived to the outskirts of Belton. The official control was in Belton but since we had stopped in Temple, we opted to skip this store and continue on towards Jarrell. As we rode south, my knee continued to be a problem and I also started to feel tired. Jeff wanted to skip Jarrell, but I lobbied for a stop as I needed to get some caffeine and Amy need to use the facilities. I also bought a bottle of OJ for the next morning. The 16 ounce can of Mountain Dew perked me up for the final miles.
We left Jarrell and rolled on towards Georgetown. We arrived to the hotel at around 11:15PM which was great because it meant we would have ample time off the bike. The banked time earlier in the day paid off. I showered, drank a recovery drink, and then put ice on my sore knee. I set the alarm for 6AM with our plan to roll out by 7AM on Sunday. It was no problem to fall asleep and I slept soundly the whole night.
Day 2's route would carry us south and east out to Dimebox. On Sunday, we would be joined by GaryG who was riding the newly created 240K brevet that is the same as Day 2 of the 600K. Also, we would find some 100K riders doing the route between Granger and Thorndale. There was a little drama at the start of the day as again, we found some riders had different versions of the route on their Garmins.
Navigation issues resolved, we rolled to Granger where we found Tucker and Peter (100K riders).
The group rolling along towards Thorndale.
In Thorndale, we said goodbye to the 100K riders and we continued the longer brevet(s). The ice and rest had helped my knee and things felt pretty good as we rolled away from Thorndale. The wind was challenging but we arrived in Lexington in good spirits and fueled up for the push into Dimebox. Jeff took advantage of the F'Real machine.
In Dimebox, we rode into town and captured a picture at the big dime in a box.
We then hustled back to the big new convenience store at the intersection with TX-21. Here I ordered 2 kolaches to go with the chocolate milk. Good calories to help with the windy stretch back to Lexington.
The route back to Lexington went smoothly. Jeff was in front and made sure the pace was comfortable. We decided to skip services in Lexington and push on to Thrall. Now that we turned NW, the wind was much less of a factor and we rolled along well making up time. Our average had dipped to 11.4, but we raised it up to 11.9 by the time we reached Thrall. We had a nice long stop in Thrall and then mounted up for the final miles into Georgetown.
The only problems on the final stretch was the construction on Weir Rd (FM-971). The road is all torn up and there is no shoulder. We had to just make our way with cars piling up behind us until we reached the spot where a shoulder was again available. Thankfully no honking or irate drivers. We rolled into the hotel tired. My knee was screaming when in the sitting position so I spent a lot of time in the last miles standing on the pedals. At the end, I was glad to be done. The pain was only on the bike so I dismounted and walked to the room to shower and dress. One last photo for the record books. Our finish time was 38 hours 15 minutes. Picture perfect!
All the photos from Day 1: https://photos.app.goo.gl/D7bdFbZtz4D8aGxY6
All the photos from Day 2: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rx2s1BZibXkmESdg7
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