It drizzled at the start, but everything was dry about 30 miles in. Most amusing was receiving a text message from the MS Society while standing at the starting line in the rain stating “We are monitoring the weather and wet conditions may be possible.” That became the running joke all weekend whenever it rained.

The first 20 or 30 miles of this day flew by because Houston is so flat. The next 20 miles had some mild rolling hills. I volunteered to ride with some newbies on our team and make sure they made it okay while their faster friends took off on the hills, but in the course of trying to teach them how to use the gears on the bike to make the hills easier, I ended up dropping them a couple of times. I was riding strong into lunch and made it there by noon – my friend Lloyd with the MS society said I looked better riding into the lunch break than I looked at the same point in the October ride.

However, as you make your way closer to Austin, you get deeper into the Hill Country. I started the segment after lunch with two full water bottles and rolled into the next break point out of water and very thirsty. By about this point, the batteries on the Garmin had ran down (I forgot to charge it before I left) so from this point forward, I could only guess how far it would be before the next breakpoint or what my speed was. I filled up and went on another 6 miles or so to the next break.

Now the hills were really kicking in. I rolled in out of breath, filled up, rested a bit, and headed out of the breakpoint.

It was 12.3 miles to the next break. This was the segment I heard others on my team plan to skip. As I rolled past the SAG tent, I decided that maybe there was a good reason to sit it out. As the van took me to the next breakpoint and we drove up the hills, I decided I made a good call.

After a trip in the air-conditioned van, I could make the next 19 miles on my own. It was hilly, but not as bad as the others. It really helped when we hit Fayetteville that pretty much the whole town came down to Main Street and cheered us on. I rolled into La Grange about 4:30 or 5:00, got a meal & a shower and called it a night.

There are some definite advantages to riding on a mattress store’s team. Namely, Sealy was a sponsor, so we had beds to sleep on inside the tent. (We left the plastic on the mattresses so they could be donated to charity after the ride.) It took me a few minutes after lights out to get comfortable, but once I was, I was out and slept through the rainstorms overnight.

Route mileage: 82.7
Miles completed: 70.4

Day 2 – La Grange to Austin

By 6:00, the rain had reduced to a drizzle and the fairgrounds were a mud pit. Laura’s cousin (who got me on her team) decided that she wasn’t up to riding to lunch in Bastrop and strongly recommended that I join her and several others in a truck up there. She’s done this ride several times, so I took the advice. As we went up that long steep hill, I was grateful. The truck let us off about a mile from lunch. Lloyd told me I looked great as I pulled into the lunch stop. I told him I should have since I sagged it.

Out of lunch, it was back to the hills again. On the one hand, I missed having a bike computer because I wanted to know where I was. On the other hand, it was nice to not pay attention to how fast I was going and just ride what I was comfortable doing. It was a long stretch to the next break (14 miles) so I stopped a couple of times to catch my breath, but I managed my fluid consumption well and stayed hydrated.

Next breakpoint was 8.6 miles away. Again, with the hills, this was a long 8.6 miles. I was pretty fatigued by the time I made it there.

The final breakpoint had a party atmosphere. Everyone could see the end in sight and was happy, if tired and sore. Whoever owned the land was selling barbecue. I almost bought some, but decided that if I ate too much I might not finish. Onward.

About 3 miles to the end, I was stopped at a stoplight and clipped out. (I have shoes that attach to my pedals.) I bent over to grab a water bottle (I was really tired so I was shaking a bit) and lost my balance and fell over. The shoe that remained clipped in had its cleat twisted out of position and I couldn’t get it back into place. I decided that I hadn’t ridden this far to get into a van, so I rode with the jacked up shoe (and some blood dripping down my leg) anyway and rode across the finish line.

I wasn’t the only one on the team to have issues at the end. One of the girls I had been looking after the day before had something break on her bike a mile from the end and the bike marshals couldn’t fix it, so she walked in. Laura’s cousin, who finished earlier, saw her, and gave her a bike to ride across the finish line with. Awesome.

This was a great experience, and the most difficult ride I’ve ever done. I couldn’t have done it without the team. I helped others, and they helped me. That’s what it’s all about. Thanks to all who supported me and donated to end MS. If you didn’t donate, you have about a month left to click here and help.

Route mileage: 77.9
Miles completed: 31.9

Total route: 160.6
Total completed: 102.3

Not bad.

I made it through the Fort Bend Education Expedition, although I didn’t pull off the 79 miles.  It was a seriously windy day, and either the sign telling me where to turn for the long route blew down or they took the sign down a little early.  Either way, I missed the turn and wasn’t too upset about it.  54.55 miles, and I finished in time to shower and take Laura to the Bayou City Arts Festival.

[I ended up buying a poster at the festival - the Dawgs of New Orleans... it's cute, it fits in with the decor of the house, and the artist signed it for Quincy & Nikon.  It's off being framed now, and it will end up in the living room when I repaint.]

I had thought about doing the Space Race this past Sunday, but things have been so busy lately that I decided that I would be happier driving out 290 to take bluebonnet pictures instead.  I’m off to DC tomorrow through Saturday and then off to Vegas from the 14th to the 26th.  I will be doing gym workouts while I’m away because I don’t want to lose momentum right now before Tour de Cure at the end of May.

Coming up next: Fort Bend Education Expedition (79 miles). This begins and ends at the high school right by the house. It looks like the long route will go through a good chunk of the Great Escape route. If I can hit the turn at 26.2 miles by 10:00 AM, I can do the 79 mile route. If I miss the turn by that point, I think it’s either a 50 or 60 mile ride. I think I can pull it off if the winds are calm.

There are 9 weeks remaining to the Tour de Cure, which rides from San Antonio to San Marcos to Austin. Donate here.

The Bike MS Ride to the River is October 3-4.  Donate here.

They’ve changed the route from San Antonio – Corpus Christi with a killer 80+ mile first day to a ride from San Antonio to New Braunfels and back.  It looks like we’ll be riding slightly different roads on the return, and there is a 30-ish mile extension you can do on the first day to make it a century.  Every year I say to myself that I should do the 100 miles, but I never could finish the first day the last two years.  So, my goal this time around is to finish the first day before they close the course, and if there’s sufficient time, I’m going for the century loop.

I did something smart a couple of weeks ago when they first announced the new route and date.  The overnight will be at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort, so I snagged a hotel room.  I checked yesterday right after registration opened at 10:00 to see if the rates had changed and it was sold out.  Obviously, Valero and the other corporate teams have booked the place up.  I’m glad I have a room!

But the nice thing about returning to the starting point is that it makes it much easier for me to do this ride.  I don’t have to take a bus from Houston – San Antonio and then another bus from Corpus to Houston or arrange to put my bike on a truck.  I can just drive up to the Alamodome, park my car, and then when I return, load up and drive home.  Nice.

The training is ongoing; I already have the Tour de Cure coming up in May, and I’ll keep riding beyond that to stay in shape for Ride to the River in October.  My first big traning ride for Tour de Cure is the Fort Bend Education Expedition, which is a 79 mile ride that begins and ends about 2 miles from the house the last weekend of March.

Donate here for Tour de Cure. (American Diabetes Association)

Donate here for Ride to the River. (National MS Society)

Clear Lake to Friendswood, to Alvin, to Santa Fe, to Dickenson, to Webster, to Clear Lake. 44.6 miles.

I did well – hit 21 MPH on a 3 mile sprint down Cemetary Road – and was brought back to earth when a pack of racers passed me doing 30 without breaking a sweat. Still, if I were in a school zone, I would have gotten a ticket, and that’s pretty cool.

Day 1 – San Antonio to Beeville

The team was to meet at 5:30 AM so we could all get a photo before the start and get a chance to meet in the morning.  Unfortunately, the El Tropicano didn’t start serving breakfast until 6:30 AM, so we were all living on Power Bars for the first half of the day. (I loved the El Tropicano – it’s a funky retro hotel – but their staff was clearly not ready to handle our group.  The front desk had it together, but the food and beverage staff were overwhelmed.  I’d stay there again, just not with a group.)

The start was pretty uneventful, as the entire road was closed off, so there was plenty of room at the front to get up to speed without getting run over.  Unlike last year, I stopped at all of the breakpoints and kept the water bottles full.  The headwinds were kicking in before lunch, and the hills didn’t get any easier, but I stayed just ahead of schedule until lunch.

I got plenty of comments on our team jersey.  Most team jerseys look like someone puked up a few cans of paint on them; these were all black with white text and a retro look to the front.  One cop riding the route recognized the hospital as where a colleague who was recently shot was treated and he marveled at the care that was given.  I told him that while I didn’t work there, I’d pass his gratitude on to people who did.

After lunch, the road between Falls City and Karnes City (10.9 miles) was just as bad as I remembered it.  The hills are long and steep and the winds are nasty.  I bonked last year on this stretch of road, and I had a good deal of trouble here again.  About 2 miles outside of Karnes City, I ran out of water.

I knew that the rest stop had to be close, but when I saw a convenience store with riders lying on the pavement in front, I decided that I really didn’t want to wait to get water.  I bought two one liter bottles of water, and decided that I would enjoy the air conditioning and take advantage of the kitchen table and chairs in the middle of the store.  After finishing a liter of water, I decided that I felt human enough to push on and left.  Within two blocks, I could see the rest stop.  I’m still glad I stopped – *my* rest stop had air conditioning.

At this point, I was definitely behind schedule, and it was increasingly clear that making it all the way to the finish in Beeville before the course closed might not be in the cards.  I pushed on another 24 miles, stopping at the next three breakpoints and decided that I’d just go as far as they’d let me.

The hills rolled on, but it was the wind that really held me back.  Just as I’d get up around 12 MPH, another gust kick in and take me down to 8 or 9 MPH.  At 5:50PM I hit the second to last breakpoint at Pettus and was told that if I couldn’t finish in 10 minutes, I’d need to get on the bus here.  Beeville is 10.2 miles away.  I got on the bus.  As much as I really wanted to cross that finish line, I can’t complain about doing 86.8 miles in a day.  It’s still a personal best, and I earned every mile.

Once in Beeville, I collected my luggage and headed to the team tent where I was greeted with cold water and some great food from Fire Wok in San Antonio.  I ate a lot, but I needed it.  We had the option of either sleeping in the team tent or in the gym or a classroom hallway.  I opted for the gym and got one of the last spots on the gym floor.  Special thanks to the physical plant workers who saw me dragging my duffel bag and gave me a ride on their electric cart.  After a shower and a change of clothes, I headed back to the team tent for a cold beer and a massage (did I mention how well Warm Springs takes care of its people?) before heading back to the gym for some sleep.

Day 2 – Beeville to Corpus Christi

Although we were told that “due to Hurricane Ike” they would only have cold breakfast items this year (no eggs) they did have lukewarm sausage Kolaches in the cafeteria.  However, Team Wells Fargo next door had breakfast tacos and they were willing to share with their neighbors.  Thanks guys!

People were riding like idiots this morning.  I’m not sure if it was because the roads were narrower or because people were tired, but there’s no excuse for people to be riding four abreast and then for fast pacelines to try to overcome them… or the girl who kept passing on the right and calling “on your left”… and when there’s construction and you’re told to ride single file, that means that everyone shoul ride single file, not for two pacelines to try to overtake each other with other riders on the right.  I passed at least 4 wrecks before the first breakpoint.

I knew from last year that we were pretty much done with the hills but the wind would kick our butts today, probably after the second breakpoint.  Well, the wind kicked in about mile 18 before breakpoint #2.  I kept it slow, maxing out at 10 MPH.  I recall seeing the sign at a breakpoint reading “7 miles to lunch” and thinking that it would be a very long 7 miles…

Somewhere along that stretch of road, I was passed by a group of 4 or 5 riders.  Since the wind wasn’t going to make things any easier, I opted to tuck into the end of their paceline to get a little break from the wind such as it were.  I wasn’t getting much of a speed boost – we maxed out around 12 MPH – but it beat pedaling alone.

However, we weren’t out of the construction zone yet.  The girl two riders ahead bumped into a barrel and went down.  That took out the woman behind me.  I threaded the needle between them and their bikes (although I got a slight cut and bump when my leg hit the handlebars of one of the bikes on the ground) and stayed upright and could safely stop.  We helped clean each other up – one rider was a nurse and had some clear bandages from 3M that were like skin (breathable, too) – and made it to lunch.

I rode out of lunch with a teammate and we hung together for ahwile until I needed to pull off the road for a breather.  A diabetic rider who had stopped to check her blood decided that I was riding a good pace and asked to ride with me the rest of the way, and so we did.

There’s only two breakpoints after lunch (the first 7.7 miles, the second 8.8 miles, then 10 miles to the finish) but with the wind you can count on about an hour’s travel time between breaks.  But the last breakpoint in Portland is my favorite, hands down.  You roll up to the high school and find cheerleaders in the median yelling for you.  Once in the parking lot, students are everywhere, offering you water, offering to hold your bike, offering you ice and fruit.  They’re happy to be there, they just want to pump you up, and at the point where you’re just completely fried and barely know your own name, you feel like saying thank you isn’t nearly enough. I need to figure out the name of that school, because they deserve a letter or something…

Onward we go.  As you make the turn out of the high school’s neighborhood, you’re back on the causeway and you can finally see water.  That made all the winds worthwhile.  New this year is crossing the Harbor Bridge.  I certainly didn’t set any speed records going up – that sucker is steep!  Coming down, I was doing about 25 MPH while riding the break.  Others were doing 30+.  However, the finish line is at the bottom of the bridge, so I tried to keep it slow so I wouldn’t wipe out making the turn – plus we were getting crosswinds.

Scuttlebutt on the road is that this was the last year for Bike to the Beach and next year we’ll be doing some sort of a ride in the Hill Country.  I’d hate to see this ride go away, as much as I hate the headwind and that stretch of road between Falls City and Karnes City.  But I’ll be back for 2009.

Thanks again to all who donated and to those who gave the team SAG support.  Next up: The Wurst Ride in Texas.

Note to self: the Buc-ees in Alvin doesn’t want our business. 

There’s a new bike on the way, a new finish line, and this time I know just how hard the road to Beeville really is.

Care to help? Donate here.