LIVESTRONG Challenge Report

Now that running season has started, I have let my biking lag a bit but wanted to do one more charity ride for the year ended. Even though I do not like how the Ride for the Roses has been changed to the LIVESTRONG Challenge and the entry fee has been raised and priced some folks out, I still believe in the cause and thought it would be a good ride to end the biking part of my year.

Normally coming into a ride like this I would be on the bike 4-5 times a week and do mileage close to event mileage. But I have let my biking lag and instead have been running about 4 times a week and only riding once or maybe twice weekly, with top end mileage only reaching 20 miles. And boy howdy I could feel the lack of riding during the LSC.

Now onto the ride...this year the event was held out in Dripping Springs instead of NE of town like it usually is. This was a blessing and a curse all rolled into one. A blessing because the ride was 100 time prettier than in the past, instead of flat farms that went on forever we were treated to great scenery, plenty of streams, tons of trees for shade, etc.

The curse was instead of relatively flat riding we were treated to hills, tons and tons of hills. The ride this year certainly lived up to the Challenge part of the name and was very similar to the Nutty Brown Throwdown in terms of rollers, and rollers, and hills, and more hills, and then a few more rollers added in for good measure. I was told that there was about 4-5k feet of elevation change on the 65 mile route.

Besides all the hills and wind I had a pretty uneventful ride, which is always nice. Averaged about 18.5 mph. Met Carri and Coby at the finish line, had a post race beer, and through incredible support of my friends and family raised $1,000 for the LAF. All in all a pretty good start to a Sunday in my book.