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Home→Bicycling News→Texas Bicycling News Digest April 5th 2016

Texas Bicycling News Digest April 5th 2016

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Another Serving of Texas Gravel, The Castell Grind 100k – Race report, Photos and 100k Full Results

www.cxmagazine.com


Riders can choose between the 100k Full Grind, the 75k 3/4 Grind or the 50k Half Grind, with the 100k field being the deepest. When asked about the field size, Drost told us that “[q]uality versus quantity has always been our focus so the race will probably never be huge. We want to maintain a manageable roster and the town has limited resources so we are very careful to grow slowly and preserve the integrity of the course and feel of a small town, grassroots event. I would say roughly 400 is an amount we are comfortable with at this time.”
The largest Castell Grind field to date took to the start and faced a course that is essentially a figure 8, a south loop and a north loop that nearly intersects at the start/finish and neutral feed area in the tiny town of Castell. Like …

https://www.instagram.com/p/BD0emR0Hu0N/

A Spring Ride at Dinosaur Valley State Park (DVSP)

Cleared2land forums.mtbr.com

Perfect weather this weekend to re-visit one of my favorite trails. I think I covered every trail at least once. 20.5 miles Nice spring ride.

Fort Worth bicyclist killed on North Freeway

By Domingo Ramirez Jr. www.star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH – A bicyclist killed near Interstate 35W during the weekend has been identified as Jacob Waganer, authorities said Sunday.
Waganer was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:17 a.m. Saturday, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s website on Sunday. He died from blunt force injuries to his head and neck, but the manner of death is pending, according to …

Cycling studio expands, other pushes back opening date

by Laura Furr www.bizjournals.com


Ride Indoor Cycling plans to open its second Houston-area location this summer.
The indoor cycling gym will open its new studio in The Woodlands’ Hughes Landing this June at 1950 Hughes Landing Blvd., Suite 1500.
The gym will host full-body workouts for all fitness levels through 45-minute cycling sessions. It will also sell its own line of activewear.
Ride opened its first Houston location at 548 W. 19th St. in the Heights last year. The Austin-based company also plans to …

Program Update – Spring racing and leader’s summits are in full swing!

NICA www.nationalmtb.org

Nearly 3,000 student-athletes from over 200 schools across NICA’s NorCal, SoCal, Texas, New York and Alabama Spring Leagues are all competing now and will complete their season by mid-May. Gearing up for Fall seasons, 12 (yes, 12!) Fall leagues are hosting Leaders’ Summits.
High school and middle school mountain bike racing is in full swing! As winter begins to thaw in some parts of the country, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) spring leagues are …

I am including this article because it opens our eyes to how the media may be influenced by advertisers. Should we not take what we read as the real news?

Staff Opinion: VeloNews, Shimano tangle over media control

by Marc Sani www.bicycleretailer.com

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif. (BRAIN) — It’s been quite a clash pitting the industry’s most powerful company, Shimano, against what is arguably the best competitive cycling magazine and website in the U.S. market, VeloNews.
That clash stems from an article written several days ago by Dan Cavallari outlining what VeloNews readers could expect from Shimano’s newest upgrades for Dura-Ace. And those upgrades are substantial.
But for those of us in the media — whether consumer or trade — dealing with Shimano is a challenge.
Shimano’s most frequent comment to almost all questions or issues of substance is “no comment.” Or it’s a carefully crafted statement generally devoid of substantive information that would directly address a question of substance.
And so when Cavallari asked Shimano to comment about his research on the changes in Dura-Ace, he was …

Lawson is a Texan hitting the big time in Europe. He rode well today in the Tour of the Basque Country. I watched the race.

Craddock gets chance to fly at Basque tour

By Andrew Hood velonews.competitor.com


GENT, Belgium (VN) — Lawson Craddock is hoping to be a major protagonist this week at Spain’s Vuelta al País Vasco (Tour of the Basque Country). Getting chances to lead in races like the Basque tour is why he switched to Cannondale in 2016.
Still only 24, Craddock is already posting impressive results in his third year at the WorldTour level. The Texan was sixth at Critérium International and rode into the top 20 in every European stage race so far this season, including 16th in a hotly contested Paris-Nice.
“It’s a brutal race that takes absolutely no prisoners,” Craddock said in a team release. “It’s been a …

Meeting tonight for bicycle, walking master plan

By RICK KELLEY www.valleymorningstar.com


HARLINGEN – Whether it’s on bike or on foot, metro planners in Cameron County want to know how we get from Point A to Point B when we’re not driving.
The Harlingen-San Benito Metropolitan Planning Organization will hold two open houses to solicit public input to help determine the direction of its Bicycle and Pedestrian master plan.
Tonight’s meeting is in La Feria at Bailey H. Dunlap Memorial Library, 400 S. Main St. It begins at 6 p.m. and will last until 8.
Wednesday’s meeting is …

Driver charged in bicyclist’s death after collision

By Dale Lezon www.chron.com


A woman has been accused in the death of a bicyclist following a traffic collision last month in south Houston.
Elvia L. Coronado, 44, is charged with intoxicated manslaughter in connection to the death of Mollie Walker after the crash about 7:50 p.m. March 22 at 8900 Almeda Road
Police said Walker was critically injured in the …

SicloVerde

www.greensatx.org

Saturday May 7, 2016
SicloVerde is an urban bike ride and walk event that tours several of San Antonio’s community gardens. Everyone may choose from various tour options. The 2016 routes are still being mapped. The 2015 SicloVerde offered a 5k walk or ride, a 10-mile ride, and a 17-mile ride.
Participants will gather at …

Long Promised Road

By Bob Elias www.crazyguyonabike.com

Day twenty nine – Bracketville to Del Rio: How do you spell “Del Rio”?
Tuesday April 5, 2016, 30 miles (48 km) – Total so far: 1,536 miles (2,472 km)
Cheryl has a different (higher) standard of what constitutes minimal acceptable lodging than me, so we stayed in Del Rio (pop. 44,000) rather than Bracketville (pop. 1,700) vs. last night. She found a very nice reasonably priced motel, the Whispering Palms Inn. The owner is a bicycle enthusiast named Bob. I opted to ride back to Bracketville on my old friend US 90. Flat, but a bit of headwind (character builder), and nice wide shoulders paved with lousy chip seal. Just another day not in the office.
We met for lunch in Bracketville at Mamacita’s. Local, but just okay. I had planned to ride west out of Del Rio for a ways this afternoon, but by the time we got back to Del Rio, it was after 2, and on the warm side. Looking ahead, it is 2 days ride to Sanderson, the next town with any realistic lodging options. We discussed and decided to …

Pop-pop T Goes West – Then East

By David Tatman www.crazyguyonabike.com

Fort Davis To Marathon: Does The Wind Ever Stop?
Tuesday April 5, 2016, 53 miles (85 km) – Total so far: 1,269 miles (2,043 km)
This morning started out as one of the 2 or 3 most gorgeous mornings yet. The sky was clear, no haze, no breeze and the temperature was in the low 50’s. – just about perfect riding weather. The road though still rough was basically flat with only small rises. Another one of those mornings were its just a great feeling to be alive and enjoying nature.
The first 24 miles into Alpine was uneventful but as the morning went on the winds began to increase. Luckily into Alpine the wind was a crosswind. Alpine is a nice small college town with about 5600 people. Sul Ross State University is located here, named after former Texas Governor and Civil War General.
Stopped at the local bike shop, first bike shop since El Paso. Picked up a …

Escaping Winter : The Other Half of the Southern Tier

By Zandra Bainas and Steve Marsh www.crazyguyonabike.com

Day 27 – Amistad Lake to Fort Clark Springs (Bracketville): Slowing Down
Monday March 21, 2016, 76 km (47 miles) – Total so far: 2,264 km (1,407 miles)
Zandra really has no voice at all today, but in the morning is otherwise feeling fine enough to go on to Del Rio. Incentive for today is a hot breakfast when we reach town, as we start off our morning with a single cold “Cool Mint Chocolate” Clif bar each. We unfortunately do not get very far from our camping spot, maybe oh, 10 feet or so, when Steve checks his rear tire. It’s flat. Very flat. But…it’s probably a slow leak, so he just pumps the tire up and we go to pay the camp fee. The tire is still inflated after leaving the nice warm office (12°C at 8:45 am), so we head out on the road into the …

Day 28 – Fort Clark Springs to Camp Wood: An Easy Day
Tuesday March 22, 2016, 79 km (49 miles) – Total so far: 2,343 km (1,456 miles)
Waking up at Fort Clark Springs is the first morning that we have seen dew on the ground since last year! So far this trip it’s been either too dry or too cold for dew. We’ve decided to go out to Subway to have breakfast and possibly pick up a sandwich for lunch.
As we pack the bikes, it turns out that everyone’s bicycle had a flat – 5 flats and everyone dealing with them differently! We decide to defer fixing the issue by just pumping up our tires, since we know from yesterday we both have a slow flat which makes the tire flat overnight. Ramsay, the young man cycling west, has both front and back tires flat, and is resorting to a soap bath on the tube to try and find the problems. He would really like to ride a Surly, but can’t afford one at this point, but certainly eyes Zandra’s bike wistfully. The other two young ladies are riding identical …

Day 29 – Camp Wood to Leakey: Up One Hill and Down the Other Side
Wednesday March 23, 2016, 50 km (31 miles) – Total so far: 2,392 km (1,487 miles)
It’s a pretty relaxed morning, with enough time to let the sun dry off the tent fly and make a quick breakfast. We head into Camp Wood which is only a few miles away to suss out a spot for a second breakfast. We find a small Mexican restaurant open, and enter in to find murals decorating the walls. Mexican breakfast plates make excellent cycling breakfasts, being on the large size, tasty, and fairly inexpensive.
We head out for the main part of today’s cycle ride. We are thinking of another short ride today, where we will do one hill – an up, a ridge, and a down – and stop in Leakey. As we leave Camp Wood we start seeing a lot of motorcyclists coming into town, presumably for their breakfast as well. It turns out the road we are on, #373, is a …

Day 35-37 Austin and Return
Tuesday March 29, 2016, 13 km (8 miles) – Total so far: 2,779 km (1,727 miles)
Day 34 The next morning, we struggle awake to find that Michael has made us morning coffee and oatmeal – truly a touring cyclist’s breakfast! He even offers his car if we need it to get ourselves organized as we need to get bike boxes and some boxes for our gear for the plane! We thank him, but since Zandra is a bit concerned about the insurance coverage, we decline the use of the car :(. We do stay a bit longer getting ourselves organized by using the wifi to set up our destinations. Zandra was a bit reluctant to stay more than one day at Michael’s as we only made a request for one day and thought it would be a bit off to switch our request so late though Steve thought Michael would be fine with it. In the end we decide to stay at an AirBnB place not to far from the downtown, which is also on the way past both …

Southern Tier eastward 2016

By Luba Agranovich www.crazyguyonabike.com

Luba: beautiful Hill Country
Wednesday April 6, 2016, 47 miles (76 km) – Total so far: 1,492 miles (2,401 km)
Today we really rode in Texas Hill Country! Cheryl warned us about hills being, actually, mountains. I thought: we did mountains in California and New Mexico, so this would be nothing to us. Well, it was not nothing. There were three steep climbs that were going up and up and up. But the downhill… This could only be compared to roller coaster ride. But we were smarter today and left early, so we managed to do most of the ascent before getting too hot. The road surface was super rough only in the beginning, but then it became smoother until Bandera County that …

An Englishman in America

By Rob Lee www.crazyguyonabike.com

Apr 5: To Fort Davis
Tuesday April 5, 2016, 83 miles (134 km) – Total so far: 2,883 miles (4,640 km)
Today was a day of two halves. Quite literally the morning and afternoon were completely different!
I managed to get an early start, away from the motel at 7.30 AM. It was a steady climb out of Presidio. You could look over your shoulder and see the (far larger) city of Ojinaga just over the Mexican border. The climb went on and on. I knew I had to climb from Presidio at around 2’600 feet to Fort Davis at around 5’000 feet. And indeed the climbing was …

Tom Goes West 2016

By Thomas King www.crazyguyonabike.com

Day 37 – Leakey to Bracketville, TX: Leaving the Hill Country and beginning the Rio Grande Valley
Tuesday April 5, 2016, 70 miles (113 km) – Total so far: 1,665 miles (2,680 km)
We passed the 100th Meridian the traditional demarcation, to the west evaporation exceeds precipation on an annual basis. So the rivers just carry runoff from mountains faraway otherwise they are seasonal or dry washes. In other words its getting hotter down here, but still spring.
58% of the distance through Texas! I had a mile long 10% grade, about 700′ of elevation right out of the town Leakey. I managed to pedal all the way up. Speaking of Leakey, Deb and I had fun looking at the signs in Leakey such as the Leakey Motel – I wouldn’t want to stay there.
Then the route dropped down with hills up and down all day so it took me almost 6 hours on the bike to get the 70 miles in …

Hillacious Bike Tour Coming This Weekend

www.lampasasradio.com

Third weekend in-a-row for a big county event.
Coming up Saturday, it’s the bicycle crowd coming to town. Lampasas will be the start and finish site of the (almost) all-in-county bike tour. Vision Lampasas, along with the Chamber of Commerce and LAFTA are planning their SECOND annual bicycle tour. It’s not a …

WALDEN RIDE: What a difference a day makes

By ROBIN WALDEN www.whig.com

http://www.whig.com/assets/walden-flat-new.jpg
Monday, April 4: Kerville-Schreiner State Park to Pedernales State Park, Texas
90 miles
4,500-foot climb
1,737 total miles
This greeted me this morning as I walked out of the bathroom at the State Park. It was going to be a great day!
We had a bit of trouble getting out of Kerville and then Michael had a flat, his ninth.
Michael gets the prize for the most flats. To …

Texas Bicycling from Twitter

https://twitter.com/GWCChuck/status/717432483462180864

New Events Added to Texbiker.net Calendar

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