Houston Ride: Tuesday/Thursday West End Ride (Death Ride)

Most of my training is done alone because I feel I can really concentrate on the correct intervals and duration.  Sometimes I get really bored and want to ride/race with people on the weekdays.  In Austin, there was always the Tuesday Nighter, a great group ride that would leave from downtown Austin and then race around a neighborhood with okay amounts of traffic for a couple of hours in the evenings.  People were conscious to be home before dark. The West End Ride in Houston is a little bit different.

At 6:00pm at the picnic loop of Memorial Park  a group of racers meet to have fun and train hard.  The idea is to go fast with a friendly atmosphere, keeping the aggressiveness for the cash and points prizes on the weekends.  (There is also a group of slower non-race recreational riders that leave from the picnic loop at 6:30pm. ) The route changes during the summer, and two fast loops are done around the course in the link here. 

The ride (also known as the Death Ride in the summer months) is mostly in the setting sun light and the dark, buzzing through traffic in downtown Houston. I have grown accustomed to riding in the dark with my commute to work, but I was not prepared for this.  The whole ride/race was a frenetic dash around downtown Houston, sprinting from stop light to stop light.  The ride isn’t the greatest training ride, but is quite entertaining.  We cruised the downtown streets, going fast enough to catch the “green wave” of stop lights with the cars around us.  I wanted to work hard, and got to the front to take hard pulls, continuing to look behind me at the group, because I had no idea where I was or where I was going.  It was a combination of holding the wheel in front of you, but not sticking it too close so you could still avoid the potholes in the dark.  After cruising downtown Houston, we took neighborhood streets back toward the Memorial Park area.  Somewhere along the way there was a sprint up an overpass (Westpark Rd), which I was oblivious to until it was too late.

I made it back home in one piece, not exactly sure what to think of the crazy train that I had just taken part of.  I laugh thinking about the amount of trust I put in total strangers for that ride, rocketing along at 30 mph 12 inches off the wheel in front of me…. in the dark.  As I mentioned this to another rider, he told me stories of people who had concussed themselves or broken limbs after hitting an invisible pothole or crack.  I think I might wait and do this ride some more during the summer, where the ride can be completed before the sun sets.

Click here for the Garmin Ride file.

I enjoyed the ride, but I might be a little too risk averse for it.  It also felt good to go fast, as this was the first really hard efforts I had made since coming back from Jamaica.  I am still not feeling all the strength I had before we left.  It’s crazy how fast fitness leaves you!  This weekend I will be racing at Lago Vista with Bill Fiser.  He had a great result  two weekends ago (won the sprint for 7th) and we should do well.  Exciting!