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General Category >> Ride Reports >> River Roll to Up A Creek Sports 205k permanent
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Message started by Bud_Bent on Dec 13^th, 2008, 9:26pm

Title: River Roll to Up A Creek Sports 205k permanent
Post by Bud_Bent on Dec 13^th, 2008, 9:26pm

Greg and I rode the River Roll to Up a Creek Sports 205k permanent today. We left from Davis Drive, just south of Green Oaks in north Arlington, at 7:30 am. The route quickly gets on the bike path along side Green Oaks, between River Legacy and Village Creek, heading west, then takes some city streets to Gateway Park, goes through all sorts of stuff at Gateway (including carrying your bike up and down stairs at one point), finally getting on the Trinity Trail, and following it all the way west until it ends. It then goes to Benbrook lake, following the park road on the west side of the lake, then heads west to Aledo, does a loop to Willow Park then south on FM5, circling back around to Aledo, then takes the same route back to the start.

On a good day, this route would be slow, because of all the park and bike path stops and turns. But today, the wind was brutal, and I didn't think Greg and I were ever going to finish it. There were lots of scary moments from the cross wind, and at one point going downhill while headed south on FM5, 11 mph was all I could manage.

There is nothing to block the wind in the Aledo area, and every time we topped one of the hills there, the wind was just incredible. Headed north, coasting down one hill southeast of Aledo, I reached 45 mph. That's faster than I coast down either Texas Plume or Goatneck Hill. It wasn't the steepness of the hill as much as the tailwind. But when we had to climb that same hill against the wind later in the ride, it was one of the toughest stretches I've ridden in a while. I was at 4 mph much of the climb, but I did reach the top without stopping.

The traffic on parts of this route, particularly FM1187 just east of Aledo, and FM5 just south of Willow Park are so bad that I won't be in a hurry to do this route again. Of course today's wind made the traffic even scarier. The finishing touch for the ride was when Greg flatted just three miles from the finish.

In spite of the fact that we were in and out of all the controls fairly quickly, it took us 11 hours and 44 minutes to complete this ride today. I finished with 129.1 miles. My on the bike mph average was a blazing 14.0. But we survived another epic adventure, with no major disasters and equipment in tact. Thanks, Greg.

Title: Re: River Roll to Up A Creek Sports 205k permanent
Post by aikigreg on Dec 14^th, 2008, 12:33pm

I agree - this one gets scratched from the repertoire just from the traffic! I seriously thought I was going to die a couple times.

My perspective was a little bit different than Buds because I welcomed the hills with open arms - it meant I was going to be slow enough that I could HOPEFULLY have conrol of the bike for the next couple of minutes. Though even that wasn't guaranteed when you had continuous wind speeds of 26mph and gust up to 42mph according to weatherunderground. There were times when I was whining about the side winds being nasty only to realize it was a headwind knocking me around and THEN the sidewind hit and nearly knocked me off the bike. Sometimes you had to let the sail effect carry into the oncoming lane just to stay upright and not go down. Oh, and I developed a bad case of Pickl syndrome as well - had to brake down every single hill and keep it to 15mph, otherwise winds picked up and made things worse. ;)

My max speed was also 45 MPH, on the one wind protected big hill i Aledo that we had to ride back up. Which was a bear - just standing up to stretch almost knocked me over. I dunno how we did this one, seriously. Ah well, two more tough months to go and the r-12 is in the bag.

Bud was phenomenal today. 4400 feet of climbing, at least two 20+ percent hills, and he was spinning and grinning the whole way. I had to do the walk of shame up them both.

If you decide to do this route, don't do it if you have the potential to be caught in the dark. Those should have been nice easy miles and were instead terrible thans to bad road surface. Sure enough I hit some enormous pothole and Pinch f*****. Which certainly helped add to our total time, but we spent 9:15 minutes on the bike, and we hustled at the rest stops. the rest of the stopped time was just dealing with bike path route stuff and clothes changes

Ah well, Bud was great and cheerful company, and he did his fair share of adding to the wind gusts. What more can you ask for? Thanks for helping me get this month out of the way, Bud!

Title: Re: River Roll to Up A Creek Sports 205k permanent
Post by Kwijybow on Dec 14^th, 2008, 3:37pm

I've always heard this one was *interesting* sounds like you guys made it a bit more *interesting* by going on a super windy day. Glad you sailed through "relatively" unscathed! Did I mention how nice Honey Do was ;) I didn't do anything but run errands. I had some interesting sail effects with the Tour Easy fairing. Definitely *interesting* to have the bike accelerate away from a deal stop without pedaling!

Take Care,
Nelson.