Yesterday it was time once again for what is now the 6th LBJ 100 bike ride. This is my 3rd. Conditions were a lot like last year – except not quite as photogenic. In fact, if you link through to my write up from last year much of those notes hold again for this year. The ride is well planned and I’d say logistics were even better this year. Gone was the crazy late registration tent a half mile from everything else and there was less fiddling around at the beginning of the ride. There were intros, a short talk by Luci and then we were off in waves. At the end of the ride, they also had people driving out to the north instead of through the finish line like last year. Maybe people just did it wrong the last couple years.

The price had gone up to $55 for late registration – a price I still maintain is too high for these kind of events. Skip the shirts and water bottles. Keep everything else. At least they had shirts for late registrants this year though.

Sausage and beer at the end of the ride. Same sausage arrangement as last year. Gone was the potato salad and instead there was mounds of corn plus some cole slaw with cranberries in it. Actually the combo worked pretty well. This year in addition to 3 beers from Pecan Street Brewing there was also Lobo from Pedernales Brewing.

I did the same route as last year too. In both cases I wanted something between the 42 and the 62 miler so I did a little mixing and matching of the routes to come up with my 54 miler alternative. I haven’t had a lot of time in the saddle this year so the 54 miles was plenty. I hit a wave of fatigue around 40 miles into it but it wasn’t too bad. If you click thru that link to the route you’ll see you do a bit of climbing before hitting mile 41 and then it evens out and is mostly even down hill toward the end. There’s also a handy rest stop about 8 miles from the end.

Wild flowers were not as prevalent this year. I didn’t even bother taking pics. Click thru to last year when they were in abundance. The pic below is maybe 10 miles into the ride along North Grape Creek Rd. Here’s the google street view of that spot.