Bike Ride with Julian

On Friday, July 31st, I joined my daughter’s English friend Julian on a great bike ride through the countryside south and west of Stuttgart, Germany. It truly was a beautiful ride; within minutes of leaving his house in the village of Vaihingen we were riding through lush green farmlands and forests, quite beautiful to my eyes, which are used to seeing the brown of summer in Texas. The weather was absolutely perfect when we left at one-thirty in the afternoon, with a temperature in the mid seventies, and no wind. (In Austin, according to my information, it was over 100F (38C) on that day, with scorching winds at about 10 miles per hour (16 KPH). No one in his right mind would be on a long ride in Texas in early afternoon!)

Julian and I rode along beautiful bike paths and through charming little German villages for most of the way. Here are some of the highlights of our tour:

• Rode though and near the Naturpark Schönbuch and several other Nature Parks.

• Stopped in the village of Mauren to view an old monastery, and also to decide if we wanted to return home or continue for another ten miles, adding a loop to bring our total mileage from 30 to 50. We decided to continue, of course.

• Stopped in the picturesque old walled village of Weil der Stadt for some good German pastries and coffee.

• Rode through the American Army base on the outskirts of Stuttgart. Not exactly the scenic highlight of the tour, but somewhat interesting for me, since I know a few people who have worked there.

At the end of the ride, we returned to Julian’s flat, and his charming partner Julie, who is a nurse, took care of the bad cut on my leg, which I received in a fall about half-way through the ride. I certainly appreciated her professional cleaning and bandaging job, which was far better than I could have received anywhere else. Thank you, Julie!

For more pictures of the ride, find the link on the garminconnect web site under export and select Google Earth. When Google Earth opens, zoom in on our Garmin-marked path and look at the pictures along it. I especially like the pictures from Weil der Stadt.

Hike along the Good Water Trail around Georgetown Lake

This afternoon I hiked about 2.5 miles along the Good Water Trail from the trailhead in Cedar Breaks Park to the Crockett Gardens. I was intending to hike with the Austin Hikers Meetup group. However, about the time I needed to leave the house a heavy rainstorm (complete with lightning and thunder) started up. So I put off the walk for several hours, and finally did it solo.

I made it to the trailhead about 1 PM. It was a very nice crushed granite trail at the start, and gradually changed to a single dirt track (today it was a mud track) through the woods. My hiking boots did not do very well on the ice in Colorado last winter, but they worked well today. Here is the Motionbased account of the path I followed:



The trail was still very wet from the previous rain. Here is a picture of some of the flatter sections of the trail.

After about two and a half miles I came to some old farm ruins called Crockett Gardens; a short distance away was Knight Spring. Here are some pictures of the farm ruins.

Follow this link for more information about the farm.

Here is a link to all the photos. (Sorry for the poor quality. My good camera was on the fritz so I had to use my cell phone. The sky was too bright, so I was pointing and shooting without seeing what was on the display.)

Race Report - Howdy-DU Duathlon

Today I ran the Howdy-DU duathlon at Berry Springs Park near Georgetown, Texas. It is a perfect location for a duathlon, with a running trail one and a half miles long and smooth roads for bike racing, with the added benefits of little traffic and few hills.

Today's race started at seven AM with a short speech from the race director. Then we were off. First we did two loops of the running trail in the park. The trail consisted of concrete, dirt, board walk, and rock.

I started out at a fast pace: about a 9 and a half minute mile. After about a half mile I started thinking that I had better slow down, since I had a long way to go before the race was over. So I slowed down to about an eleven minute pace.

The next part of the race was the bicycle ride. It took about a mile to get my legs working. They don't like going from running to biking. Especially my hamstrings; all I could do was press down on the pedals. If I had ridden the first lap as fast as I rode the second lap I would have averaged close to twenty MPH. (But of course I didn't, unfortunately.) It was a nice course.

I made a major mistake at the start of the bike ride. I was planning to grab a couple of Cliff Bars from my equipment stash at the change point, and eat them while I rode. I had them ready at the transition to put in my back pocket; I just forgot to do it.

The second three mile run started out well, but about two miles into the run I was regretting not having taken my Cliff Bars. I ended up walking about half the last mile.

I am still trying to get my Garmin to give good results for a multi-sport. I set it up for simple distance and time run. I recorded the entire race, which is better than what I had last time, but it doesn't show what I am doing at each stage of the race. Another thing to work on...

In the end, I won third in my age group. The results can be found here.

Here is the Motionbase account of the race.

Wednesday Night's Bike Ride at the Veloway

I went to the Veloway last evening for a bike workout, as part of my duathalon training. I was not able to get anyone else to come with me -- my usual biking buddies were preparing for the fourth of July weekend. (Some are getting ready to travel and others are doing parties.)

So I had ridden about one lap when I noticed that a rider whom I had passed earlier had started wheel-sucking behind me. Then, when we started up a hill, he fell behind. So I slowed down to to let him catch up, and we started talking. He turned out to be Lyman Grant, Dean for Arts and Humanities at ACC, a good friend of Light and Bob German.

Lyman started biking about two months ago and is planning to ride in the Hotter'n Hell Hundred towards the end of August. He has been training on the new tollway out east of Austin. It sounds like an ideal road for riding. He says the traffic is light, shoulder smooth, and the hills are not too bad. His longest ride so far is a little over fifty miles. Way to go in just two months of riding!

When we parted I told him that my group would normally ride on Wednesday nights about 6 PM and he was welcome to join us. I also told him that over the next month we might not be meeting too regularly, what with vacations, travel, and other summer things. Hope we meet up again; Lyman's abilities seemed about the same as mine--a good riding buddy.

Here is my Motionbased charts:



I have not been very good at posting my exercise for the last week. Larissa has been visiting and I have changed my schedule so that I am running in the morning. I do a lot better when it is cool, I am rested, and I have eaten breakfast. Here are the morning runs I've done:

Sunday's Bike Ride

Today Daniel and I rode twenty-eight miles north along Parmer Lane. What a great ride--the temperature was in the mid seventies, with almost no wind. We started from the Avery Ranch subdivision shortly after seven AM and we rode for about two hours, only stopping at stop lights and when we turned around to head back to the start point.

We decided to turn around several miles after we crossed Highway 29. The land had become very flat. It was farmland, with corn growing off to the sides. We went for about a mile in this terrain. Then suddenly we reached a large valley and the road dropped away for what appeared to be several miles. Since we had only planned on going 15 miles each way and we were approaching that mark, we decided to turn around a mile early, giving us a 28 mile total instead of 30.

After we finished the ride, we retraced our path in the pickup. Since this is all new road and it is not on Google maps yet, we wanted to see what the hill we avoided was like, and what was at the end of the road.

The road continues for seven more miles and ends at RR 2338, about four miles from Andice and about seven miles as the crow flies from Florence. Ten years ago, who would have thought that I would be riding my bike to Florence! That was the last major town before Killeen, which is the home of Fort Hood. My perception of distance has changed significantly since I first began riding my bicycle.

On a future ride, we will have to extend our route into Florence. Maybe we will even make it to Killeen someday.

The ride north:


Exploring in the pickup:

Hot Ride at the Veloway

Daniel, Stan and I rode about nineteen miles at the Veloway this evening and it was hot! The hottest ride of the season, about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit at the start, according to Motionbased.

Here is the Motionbased report:

Monday Night's Trail Run

Daniel and I ran at Bull Creek Greenbelt this evening. We started at a new location in a small parking lot at the intersection of Spicewood Springs Road and Old Spicewood Springs Road. The trail was beautiful. We took a single track trail up along the tops of the cliffs. Occasionally we could get a wonderful glimpse out over the Texas Hill Country, but generally the tree cover was too dense to allow seeing very far. This was okay by me; the more trees that were between me and the sun, the better, since the temperature was in the mid nineties.

The first half of the run was over part of the same path we took last week. But where we turned down towards highway 360 last time, today we continued following the trail. Eventually, we hit a new road that had been bulldozed into the side of the hill. It was tragic; one moment we were in the thick woods, running along, and then suddenly we were in a rough road cut out of the forest. At this point we turned and headed back for our pickups.

We still have not found a trail to get down from the cliffs to the main parking lot at Bull Creek Park. We will have to continue searching next week.

Here is the Motionbased account of the run.