Orny's Cycling Journal

Rosedale Rookie

2026-03-31T15:57:08Z

The Rosedale Ride is an annual fundraiser for Austin’s Rosedale School for students with disabilities. While previous editions began in Austin, this year they moved it half an hour out of town to more rural Taylor, TX. I had never done this early-season metric century before, so I decided to check it out as my first organized event of 2026.

It was cursed. I mean, the ride itself was fine, but I suffered one mishap after another. Nothing too serious, mind you, but a dozen of them… So many that I’m structuring this ride report entirely around my pratfalls, with a brief reflection from a broader perspective at the very end.

Typical central Texas farmland

So what went wrong? Let’s start with the weather. After eight straight sunny days with highs exceeding 87°F, my ride never got above a temp of 63°. Chilly enough that this spokesmodel for cycling sandals donned socks and regular shoes, a baselayer, arm warmers, and a windbreaker! The sky was socked in with heavy clouds that never cleared, instead dropping a few isolated raindrops on riders partway through the course.

But worst of all was a cold north wind that blew steadily at 15 mph gusting to 21. It made the first third of the ride a slog before riders turned eastward, only to discover that the wind had shifted with them toward the northeast. We fought against the wind for about 70% of the ride.

But I’m getting ahead of my narrative. My problems began as soon as I parked the car. Somehow while donning my cycling kit, I managed to lose my cell phone. After considerable searching I enlisted another rider to try calling my phone number so that it would ring, only to realize that it was still silenced from the night before. At the last minute, I realized that it had somehow fallen down into the back of my bibshorts, where it was comfortably nestled between my cheeks! Good thing I had yet to jump onto my saddle! But that delay flustered me and put me under time pressure to get registered and line up for the start.

Not having time to go through my usual preride routine, I started noticing problems as soon as we rolled out. First was that my bike computer was displaying no heart rate data. That wasn’t a huge surprise, because my HRM had been complaining about low battery for days, and I was just waiting for it to run out completely before changing it. So its time had come, and I wasn’t going to bother fixing it until I got home. No heart rate data isn’t the end of the world.

But what would be the end of the world is having no power data. It seemed like my bike computer decided that if it couldn’t connect to my HRM, then it wasn’t gonna connect to anything at all. So the first few miles of my ride were spent fiddling in my Garmin’s menus to manually reconnect my power meter pedals, then again to connect to my electronic shifters.

At that point I thought everything was settled. I was wrong. A couple hours later, I noticed that my phone had made a couple notification chimes, but nothing had come up on my bike computer, and another light bulb went off. I had failed to open the Garmin Connect app on my phone, which meant I wouldn’t get phone notifications during my ride. Or weather updates. Or a lot of other useful information. So I spent another few minutes soft-pedaling while I opened the app and got that connected, too.

After 55 kilometers and more than two hours fighting the headwinds, I pulled into our second water stop in Granger and went to record my usual rest stop voice notes… but my phone’s screen was frozen. Unhappily, it refused to respond, and I could neither reboot it nor power it off without screen input. While not having voice notes isn’t the end of the world, I worried about what I would do if I couldn’t rely on Google Maps for the drive back to Austin!

Granger Dam reservoir on a grim day

Next, as I approached the third water stop, I started feeling a pain in my inner thigh, as if it was rubbing against something sharp with each pedal stroke. As it become more intense, I felt down there and discovered that there was a hole in my bibshorts. At the rest stop, I found the culprit; the hard plastic hook-side of the Velcro attaching my saddle bag to my seat post was sticking out, and had abraded my bib shorts. It had torn clean through them and started abrading my inner thigh, had ripped through my skin and muscle before opening a hole in my femoral artery, whereupon I died from blood loss. Well, maybe not that last bit, but after 16 thousand pedal strokes it sure hurt a lot, and now I have to throw away an otherwise good pair of $200 bibshorts.

After all these minor mishaps, I started getting jumpy, questioning every rattle coming from the bike as it traversed the rough roads of Texas farmland, vowing to hand-check every bolt after I got home.

But Pæthos held together and I completed the 100 kilometer course in 4h8m, which is very respectable given the pervasive headwind, with an average power of 151 Watts.

But lest any of us thought all my mishaps were over… When I packed up and drove off, our 2009 Accord started flashing a “check gas cap” warning. Yeesh! So that was my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

But stepping aside and reflecting, I’m still glad I did it. It was great to introduce myself to another popular local event. This one has a generally nice, flat route that briefly runs alongside the Granger Dam reservoir. And it’s a good season-opening metric century to build up a little training stress to start the year. For all these reasons, I was glad to have ridden it.

But from a course perspective, it was extremely similar to the Red Poppy Ride and the Fire Ant Tour. These events are all held in the flat farmlands north and east of Austin, presumably because the organizers think cyclists prefer avoiding the lumpier Hill Country to the west. However, they’re really only exchanging hills for brisk headwinds, which are just as physically demanding. So I’ve come to expect windy conditions on these rides, while casting a more interested eye toward any events being held to the west of here.

But despite the cool weather and misfortunes, I’d say Rosedale was a good ride and worth a place in the annual ride calendar.

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Adamant

2025-06-18T18:41:59Z

Saturday’s Fire Ant Tour was an important ride. Most importantly, it was the longest ride I’ve done since my heart surgery back in March, and since my stroke last October. In fact, it was my first metric century since my solo PMC ride last August, and my first organized event ride since the 2024 Fire Ant Tour, a full year ago! On top of all that, this was my final opportunity to test my readiness before registration closes for this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge.

I’d already missed several other opportunities for long rides this spring, which I talked about in my previous update. But this post is about the ride I completed, so with all my hopes for a post-op recovery pinned on this event, how did it go?

Enjoying the scenery while earning mah kibble!

Looking strong crossing the line after 100 km.

Showing off a hard-earned finisher's medal.

The lead-in to the event was unsettled, in more ways than one. The weather was a little iffy after a week of scattered thunderstorms. In addition to my general health questions, I wasn’t sure I’d trained sufficiently. Then my final equipment check found a gouge in my rear tire that necessitated a swap back to an old tire I’d kept around.

I had concerns about the course, too. The organizers had tweaked the route, making it the event’s third different course in as many years. And at the last minute riders were warned that the local DPW had just resurfaced one of the final roads on the course with universally-hated chipseal.

Nonetheless, riders set out at 7:15am. My plan was to conserve energy by keeping my effort level moderate, around 130 Watts. And I closely monitored the estimate of my remaining stamina that my Garmin bike computer provided. In the end, that all worked out very well.

I also wanted to concentrate on fueling and hydrating more than usual, with mixed success. I managed to down a couple chocolate chip cookies at the rest stops, but completely forgot to take any of the electrolyte supplements I’d brought.

Having learned from previous editions, I’d expected challenging weather, specifically, hot and very windy conditions. The morning began with ideal conditions: 22°, with overcast skies, and no wind to speak of. As the sun climbed, the clouds gradually burned off, temperatures jumped to 30°, and the wind picked up, coming out of the south at 20 km/h and gusting to 31. But that was still kind of benign as compared to previous years.

The route began with a familiar 40 km loop, which went by quickly due to strong legs, light winds, and moderate temperatures. That was followed by a new 40 km out-and-back on FM 215 that illustrated how much impact the wind had. With a tailwind on the northbound leg, I averaged 123W for 47 minutes; but returning against the wind, I had to average 126W for 65 minutes to cover the same distance. Despite sustaining more power for an additional 18 minutes, I went 7.3 km/h slower heading south!

After nursing it home for the final 20 km, I crossed the finish line at 11:50am with 101 km under my belt.

The ride was a little challenging, mostly because I just wasn’t fully trained up for that distance yet. But thanks to the weather I wasn’t quite as thoroughly wiped as I’ve been in previous years. Taking into account my comeback from stroke and heart surgery, as well as my incomplete training, I was extremely happy with my performance.

Most noteworthy, this has cleared the way for me to finally register for my remote Pan-Mass Challenge ride, confident that I can at least put in a creditable performance to “earn” my sponsors’ donations for cancer research at the Dana-Farber. The scary part is that PMC weekend is only six weeks away, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for fundraising and long training rides… Yikes!

I can’t finish this ride report without covering the rest of my day. After happily completing my first cycling event in more than a year, I picked up a very nice finisher’s medal before heading back to Austin. After the drive home, I filled up on fresh strawberries and some Ben & Jerry’s mint Oreo cookie ice cream, followed by two trips to our free and shockingly uncrowded neighborhood swimming pool (after a thunderstorm caused that interruption). It was one of those idyllic, self-indulgent summer days that you dream about.

I hope that sets the tone for the rest of the year!

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