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LiveStrong Ride

85miles through the Hill Country last weekend at the LiveStrong Challenge Ride here in Austin. Great time of the year to ride out to Wimberley, towards Blanco and back up to Drippin' Springs. Not much "racing" going on this year since only ~20 of us did the long route and LA & friends took the "short-cut" for 65miles. Last long ride of the season in the books.

Texas State RR

Last road race of the year, finally 2 weeks earlier than last year when we still raced 100mile RR in mid-October! Well, as usual, a small P/1 field of maybe 25-30guys (?) made for a tough 4+hrs on the bike in Ft. Hood. Racing solo here in Texas, I jumped with the moves which had the right guys & numbers and that was the case quite a few times. After some re-shuffling it came down to a group of 8 or 9 guys and instead of waiting 'til the very end I decided to go with ~15miles to go. Long way out, but I thought at least I don't have to deal w/ all the sure-to-be-happening attacks/counter-attack's etc. After "the wall" I had a minute gap and things looked fine. But I knew that would be very, very odd if nobody comes up. Sure enough, Brant Speed, G. Skinner and Logan Hutchings came up a few miles later and with maybe 3-4miles to go it was a group of 4.

Logan killed it yet again, and added another 1st place to his Texas results list for 2011. He got me in the sprint and I rolled in second ahead of Brant. With the rules of USA Cycling, Logan got the first place cash but wasn't eligible for the jersey and I got that jersey this year. I would have like to win the race outright but Logan was - again - the strongest in the final dash to the line.

photo: Lee McDaniel