Dripping Springs Route | Squadron Summer Group Ride

June 26, 2026

Austin, Texas. June 2026

Summer Group Ride To Dripping Springs

The thing about our group rides is that all of us race, and someone always has a race coming up.. so the pace can vary, and it's almost always into the the spicy end. While we enjoy the scenery and chatting it up, we're also working on dialing in our nutrition, hydration and salt intake.

A lot like a long race course, some days conditions vary drastically. There are big climbs, fast descends, sometimes rain, and a crew on wheels to look out for. This trains a heightened awareness to look out for cars, and any road hazards that could cause a puncture or crash.

These are social, but purposeful rides. They’re a chance to catch up, share training updates, and enjoy the ride together, but also another opportunity to prepare for race days.

Hit The Road

The route starts in downtown Austin. Early in the cool morning temps with some easy miles getting out of the city. This route has a nice warmup built into it. The legs and heart rate ramps up nicely into mile 10. Which is helpful, because this is where the big climbs begin. There's big elevation gain going out west of Austin. These early climbs can be costly later on if they're pushed through too hard, it was best to play it safe so early on and save the legs for later.

Open Road Heaters

Once out of the big climbs Miles 20 - 30 were open road heaters. Race pace zooming. Well fueled and fresh legs called for some hard race pace miles somewhere over 20 miles per hour.

Surprise Gravel Segment

Miles 30 to 40 were hill country terrain. Wide open lands and barbed wire fences. Far away from the city with plenty of space on the roads. At mile 40, our wide open country road turned to dirt. There were caterpillar construction rigs parked off to the side from construction work during the week.

We paused for a moment seeing construction going out past the hill. We couldn't see where it ended. Already past the halfway point of the ride, we were too far in to turn back around.

On freshly tuned triathlon bikes, rocky gravel miles are risky. A couple of us spun through carefully, while the other athletes chose to pick up the bikes and walk it a few hundred yards over the hill to see the terrain. This was the point where it was best to tough it out on the bikes and ride through the dirt patch.

Right Back To It

Construction was finally over and we were back on solid road. We were able to get back into our aero bars. the legs were fresh and ready to push it again. Time to cook it up, temp wise and pace wise. The next 10 miles were an all out effort, being a few hours into the ride, we were all running low on bottles.

Dripping Springs Pit Stop

It was time for a pit stop. We made it to Dripping Springs, the pit stop.. a Walgreens ? We don't always stop at fancy coffee shops. Sometimes it's just the next gast station on the route so that we can all load up on water. This time around the crew needed a few carbs and a few drinks. Shaded Walgreens parking lot it is.

Survive The Home Stretch

Miles 50 - 60 was the home stretch. The heat was cooking us up. We were riding through big climbs at hard paces, very scenic miles however, through both highways and quiet back roads.

Back On Home Turf

Mile 70 put us back on home turf. Familiar Austin roads. Coming up from the south of the city, it was only a couple of miles up to downtown. With the skyline coming into view. And Lady bird lake back in sight. 73 miles total. It was time to recover, until the descision was made to do a run off, mid day, on the lady bird trail.