I got my bike racing fix today watching the LE SAMYN DES DAMES and LE SAMYN from Belgium this morning before setting out on my slower bike ride. The men and women rode several sections of cobbles. My challenge would be wind and chip’n seal roads. Not quite as bad as the cobbles.

Today’s route was a variation of yesterday’s route adding 8 miles to it. Using RideWithGPS.com to plan the route took several tries to get above 20 miles. The route plan came in at 22.3 miles. I rode north along US77/US83 to Loop 499 turning to the east. A nice tailwind helped me get to Loop 499 and hung around for a short time on Loop 499 as I made my way almost to the airport where I turned left onto FM 507. This put the wind at my back biking north to FM 508 or the Combes Rio Hondo Road. The wind was now coming from my right as I rode east. There some trees in places to interfere with the wind but the homes were far enough back from the road to not provide much wind relief. The big right turn onto FM 509 put me square into the wind. The turn-by-turn information on the Bolt computer showed at least 6.8 miles to Business US77 and turning away from the wind.

Wind and road surface on FM 509 punished my legs. My speed slowed to 8 – 10 mph. A couple of times I thought about going to an easier gearing than the 35×15 I was using but I stayed with them. In the video I tell about the road surface changing to asphalt removing half of the difficulty. Around that time a dog sprint happened and I tell about that in the video too. Nothing like a strong headwind and a dog sprint. Only thing worse might be headwind and going uphill with a dog chasing.

FM 509 bent from the south to the southwest giving me some relief from the wind. At Business US77 I turned right for the final miles. Now the right shoulder was chewed up from asphalt removal moving me close to the white lane line but traffic was forgiving allowing me space. Camelot Drive was my turn left leaving the chewed up shoulder but back with the strong side wind. The finish was near and I stopped the Bolt computer at 12:56 PM ending the ride. My legs were glad.

Before the ride I did some research on previous Jalapeno 100 rides. I found my blog post from February 16, 2008 recounting my ride in the Jalapeno 100. The wind was brutal. Riding the Jalapeno 100 Wind Tunnel. I rode the Jalapeno 100 two times I think when it started on South Padre Island. That was before I had a GPS bike computer for it to show up in my computer logs. I’ll have to look in my paper bike logs.