Austin Family Vacation - Day 6

One of the last things that we had to take care of on this Austin trip was a bike race!  We decided to haul all four bikes on the trip with our new hitch for the minivan.  This let me (Brent) keep some sanity and get out for a few rides and also this race that I had found on a Thursday night called the Driveway Series.  Here is Zach (with Lorna and Rylan) in amazement that all these guys show up in lycra and ride around in a circle in his own city.

This turned out to be a fairly rough race as it was smoking hot (~90+ degrees) and super windy!  It was a combined 3-4 race and there were about 60 guys that showed up.  I wasn't sure how this race series was going to go so I ended up a bit in the back at the starting line which was a huge mistake.  With this much wind, when they blew the whistle to start, the front row just took off full throttle.  I had anticipated that this was likely but was hoping it wouldn't be like that.

We were quickly all single file and red lined almost immediately with people just peeling off left and right.  This meant that every gap that formed had to be closed, which into the wind is a very difficult task.  After about 10 minutes, a group of about 12-14 guys got a gap and I was in a second chase group of about 8-10 guys.  The front group put a little bit of time into us, but essentially we held even with them but could never close the gap with the wind.  Here we are coming through for one of the laps with the chase group.  After a while they pulled our group which I was a bit bummed about but I almost set a 5 and 10 minute all time power record in trying to hang on!

In the end, I think I was 20th out of 60 which made me feel much better, but I didn't see the results until we had returned home.  Here is Gavin and I after the race.  Great course and what a fun time in Austin for some tough racing!

I was beat, so we headed over to a must-eat Italian restaurant in Austin (Mandolas) that promised to provide some amazing food.  It didn't disappoint, and we sat out on the patio and had a great time!  This was, unfortunately, our last day and we would have to get up the next morning to start the 13 hour return journey.  We are so thankful that we could finally make this trip happen, and we really had an amazing time.  Huge thanks to Zach and Lorna for lending us their guest house and providing good food and company all week!