The Hills of the Forestburg Loop

Don T and I drove up to Forestburg this morning and did a loop that he learned about via his Gorilla Multisport training group. From Forestburg, we went northwest to Montague and then took FM 175 north to Nacoma. After a short break, we headed east on FM 1956 to Capps Corner and then turned right on FM 677 into the hills. We crossed through Saint Jo and continued on FM 677 until it met FM 455 back in Forestburg. We finished the 57.55 mile route in 3 hours and 40 minutes for an overall average speed of 15.6 MPH.

Route map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://pages.andrien.com/ForrestburgLoop2008-05-3157mi2888ft.kml

It's been a while since I've been on a bike ride where I was just aching to see the finish line - last year's near-century ride at Waxahachie comes to mind. Well, today's ride was another one of those days!

As you can see from the elevation chart, we went up a mountain from Mile 37.5 to Mile 42.5. And there were a several other fairly steep climbs for the last 6.5 miles of the ride - including the last big push back to Forestburg and our starting point. So that made the finish very painful.

Another sign of how the day went was our speed. We had a very fast pace (averaging 21+ MPH for the first 20 miles) up through about Mile 37 as we turned south at Capps Corner. Then, it all went "downhill" - as we were met with a very stiff (15+ MPH) wind coming out of the SSE. Even when we were pedaling on the flatter portions it was tough to go much faster than 16-17 MPH.

Another factor making the "end game" difficult was the rising temperatures as it was nearly 95 degrees as we got back to the car at noon. The heat combined with the hills ensured a fairly high heart rate for the second half of the ride. So even though my overall average heart rate of 149 BPM was lower than last week's Burleson Honey Tour's 155 BPM, today's ride was definitely tougher.

Luckily, hydration was not a problem even though I was sweating like crazy. With two Polar insulated water bottles in the cages plus my AeroDrink mounted on the tri-bars, I had nearly 60 ounces of water with me, which was just enough for the ride. However, once I got back to the car, I took in about another 44 ounces of fluid immediately - 20 ounces of Accelerade and two sodas. So refreshing ...

The Forestburg loop was an excellent ride. Low traffic and great hill training. The roads were mostly chip-seal, but it was fairly well worn down so the ride wasn't too punishing. I look forward to doing this route again when I am in better shape! :-P