Quest for K-Hound 2021

Last year was pretty much a bust for me. The perm program shut down. Brevets cancelled. No long rides to build upon. I felt grateful to end the year with a few kms and the perm program back in action. I know a bunch of stalwarts - including my friends Jeff and Amy - pushed hard to K-Hound last year despite the odds. They rode 400 after 400 after 400 building up to a successful result. Truly amazing.

2021 started out pretty good for me. I had the usual rides at the start of the year including a few 100Ks and a 200K and a 300K. Then as the season warmed up and the longer rides came in, I started having more and more trouble with asthma. I started, but did not finish the Suspend Belief 400K and then had a bad experience with the BNBB 1000K. You can read my posts about these events by visiting my blog and looking for those. Fortunately, my doctor was able to help me find a solution and the new medication I am using re-energized me and helped me return to the bike with a new confidence.

As Q4 2021 grew close, I saw that just riding the normal amount of rides would not get me to the 10,000K target I needed for K-Hound. I started plotting scenarios to see what rides I would need to get me to the finish line. The final month of this year has been especially busy with holidays, but I still managed to find time to get some rides in and now I am now within one 100K of finishing K-Hound.

Starting 12/19, I have ridden 4 rides to help me get my total kms up. It started with Rudy's 2 Step on 12/19. This is my usual 100K training perm that features a lot of steep hills. I started this ride at 4AM and battled a north wind, cold temperatures, and rain. Fortunately, when I rode this route again on 12/24 - it was a much warmer day with the much more friendly south wind. On 12/26, it was time to finish my Rouler award. The brevet was on the calendar for anyone who needed the 125K. It turns out, I was the only one so I rode it alone. The wind was the main issue on this ride and I had to work hard the last 20 miles to finish.

This week, I took off a day of work and drove up to Georgetown to join my friend Amy for the Rock Dale and Ice 208K permanent. The night before the ride, I got some text messages from Amy

Having decided it was legal, I loaded up the existing course in RWGPS and asked the tool to reverse the route. This process works about 90% of the time. Once it finishes, you have to go back and add any custom cues and check the generated cues to make sure they are all valid. You also should have someone else review the route. GaryK did this for me and noticed a glitch at the start where the tool had added about a mile of roads that were not part of the original route. I went back and fixed this and the route was again matching the distance of the original route. In reverse, we got a bit more climbing, but the route was already pretty flat so this was not a big deal. I loaded the new course into my Garmin and printed a cue sheet as backup.

We started our ride at 7:30 AM. GaryK and Patti were at the same starting point to do a different ride so we took some pictures with our friends. A new rider Jeffrey showed up to ride but discovered he had forgotten his helmet. Amy had an extra helmet but Jeffrey felt it was too small for him. He did offer to take our picture though.

Amy and I rolled out and wound our way through the neighborhood to reach Williams Dr which would lead us to the first control in Andice. It felt odd doing the route in reverse and at one point, we got confused by a cue and had to stop and see how to get from where we were to the correct turn. The wind at the start of the day was coming out of the southwest. It was light at the start and we had no trouble reaching Andice. The store was not yet open and we did not need to stop so we pushed on for the next services in Jarrell. We now had a cross tail wind and we made excellent time. Along the way, I was able to share the updated route with Amy via a Garmin to Garmin device transfer. It was good to have us both with the map loaded.

We reached Jarrell and decided to skip the Town Center store and instead visited the older store that was on the route. I bought chocolate milk and Hostess doughnuts here. I am not a big fan of doughnuts, but this is a low cholesterol choice and it's been growing on me recently. Amy had a taco from the Berry Creek store and ate that. We then mounted our bikes and pushed on to Bartlett. We opted to stop there because it was the last place with services until we reached Rockdale. It's only 32 miles, but it would be much longer if we had skipped Bartlett. We were riding strong so we took a few minutes more at the store. I had some chips and a Dr. Pepper here.

We pushed on to Rockdale and found the wind to greet us as we turned south towards the control. We were glad to stop and refresh ourselves. We found the Christmas decorations that were just being started the last time we were here were still up and looking good.

In Rockdale, we had covered 81 miles of the route. This left 45 miles for us to ride to finish. Bolstered with this knowledge, we mounted the bikes and headed east towards Granger. It was in this next stretch where we found the weak cold front had pushed through. The wind was no longer out of the south, but was now blowing from the north. We had to work a bit into a cross headwind to reach Granger. The temperature also kicked up and I drank a lot more in this 31 mile stretch. When we reached the store, we were both glad to dismount. I bought and drank a full liter bottle of water. I found an ice cream in the case that only had 10mg of cholesterol and enjoyed eating cold, delicious ice cream. We were almost ready to leave when a train came through town. Amy said she was glad to have a few more minutes to rest before we finished the ride.

Leaving Granger, we had about 14 miles to cover to get back to Berry Creek. Our goal was to finish before it got dark. We got that weird deja vu feeling again as the roads were familiar but the hills were backwards. On the normal route, we fly down some hills that now presented themselves as climbs. The opposite was also true so we got some boosts from some downhills as well. We rolled into the final control with the sun sinking to the horizon. We loaded up our bikes and then bought Topo Chico in the store to celebrate our success. We were also treated to a beautiful Texas sunset.

Tomorrow, December 31st, my goal is to finish that 100K and get across the finish line. I wish to thank everyone who has supported me. It's been a struggle, but the light at the end of the tunnel is near.

All the photos I took from the ride: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1ki6mDSV5NN9zuqZ7