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Ashley and Zube turn Cruz Rodriguez's hard-earned Ruidoso 70.3 into the heart of an August update spanning Tour de Big Bear, Jessica Flores, summer podiums, service, and the races ahead.
The PRT Monthly Ride Report is the official monthly podcast of Padyak Racing Team, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit cycling organization in South County San Diego. Each episode brings the latest from the PRT newsletter to life with updates on road racing, crits, track, multisport, juniors, women’s riding, team events, volunteer opportunities, sponsor spotlights, and the community work that powers our club. Whether you race, ride, volunteer, or support the team, this is your monthly connection to the people, events, and mission behind PRT.
Ashley: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Padyak Racing Team Monthly Updates—and this time, we really mean back. The July episode just landed yesterday, so if it feels like Zube and I never left the room, that is because we practically did not. Think of these as companion rides. July was about finding your way home and staying connected through the middle of the season. August is what happens when summer turns the heat all the way up and the season hands you something harder than the day you pictured. There is a race that did not go to plan, a mountain weekend that became a test of judgment, and a club full of people proving that a difficult day can still be a valuable one. So, yes, we are back quickly. But August has its own story, and it is a good one.
Zube: It really does. The phrase I keep coming back to is the race I needed, because Cruz Rodriguez used it to describe his Ironman seventy point three in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and it ends up describing the whole month. You have athletes learning in real time, people knowing when to keep pushing and when to turn around, teammates cooking breakfast, fixing flats, volunteering on the roadside, and encouraging somebody into their first race. Meanwhile the competitive calendar is very much alive: the Racer Cup is tightening, the multisport team stacked podiums at Solana Beach, the Chula Vista Challenge is coming, and PRT racers are preparing for the Dick Evans Memorial in Hawaii. August feels hot, honest, and very human. Nobody is pretending every effort is perfect. The energy comes from what people do next.
Ashley: Let us go straight to Ruidoso, because Cruz's account is unusually candid. The week before the race, he could not get quality sleep. His Garmin showed his heart-rate variability dropping, and he felt worn down before he even reached the start. Then the swim began at about seven thousand feet of elevation, and within minutes his breathing was out of control with his heart rate hovering around one hundred seventy. That is frightening in open water. But about eleven hundred meters in, he finally relaxed. His breathing settled, his stroke smoothed out, and he found enough rhythm to finish the swim in fifty-eight minutes. Seventy-five athletes were pulled from the water that day. So even before the bike, the meaning of success had already shifted from executing a perfect plan to staying calm enough to keep moving safely.
Zube: And, and the race kept asking him to adjust. Mechanical problems stopped him twice on the bike and cost more than ten minutes. He felt strong, but the data afterward showed another gap between perception and reality: he thought he was holding his target of one hundred ninety-five to two hundred normalized watts, while his actual average was one hundred sixty-six. Then the missed second bottle of fuel caught up with him. He entered the run underfueled for nearly two hours, and every hill became a negotiation. He felt dizzy. Every aid station was less about racing and more about finding a way to continue. He finished in six hours and thirty-eight minutes, far from what he had imagined. But that is the brave part of his story: he did not hide the bad sleep, the pacing mistake, or the nutrition miss. He studied them. That turns a rough result into something the whole team can learn from.
Ashley: What moved me most was where Cruz landed after replaying all of it. He said no athlete outgrows the basics: sleep matters, nutrition matters, pacing matters, adaptability matters. And then he widened the frame. He thanked his family for the early mornings and race weekends, Mario Valdes for his leadership, and his teammates for the friendship, accountability, and shared miles. Mario finished that same very difficult race in five hours and twenty-three minutes, eleventh in his age group, while Cruz was fifty-eighth in his. Those are two different race days, but they belong to the same team story. Triathlon looks individual at the finish line, yet almost nothing about arriving there is truly solo. Cruz called Ruidoso the race he needed, and I love that he made the lesson available to everybody instead of treating it as a private disappointment.
Zube: That same mix of effort and judgment showed up at Tour de Big Bear on August first. Dan Mahaffey rode the seventy-mile route with Ed Sarinas, Rob Bernhard, and friends, starting in the cool air around Big Bear Lake before the day climbed toward eighty-nine degrees. Ed flatted near Fawnskin, and Freddy and Kristin arrived at just the right moment to help get him rolling. Then came Highway eighteen, Rim of the World, Snow Valley, Baldwin Lake, and finally the seven-and-a-half-mile climb toward Onyx Peak. At the last aid station they filled bottles, loaded up on ice, and somehow enjoyed a baby back rib—which might be the most audacious climbing fuel in PRT history. Then they headed uphill in eighty-eight-degree heat, with riders scattered across the mountainside looking for shade.
Ashley: And about three miles from the summit, Ed decided to turn back rather than risk overheating. I want to sit with that, because endurance culture is very good at celebrating the person who keeps going and sometimes not nearly good enough at celebrating the person who reads the situation clearly. Dan offered to descend with him. Ed told Dan to continue and said they would meet at the finish. That is teamwork without drama: care, a smart call, and trust. Dan reached the turnaround and made the long, rough, hot descent back through those relentlessly hilly final miles. Then everybody returned to the cabin, where Freddy and Lerma had another meal waiting. Honestly, the breakfast, the roadside support, the flat repair, and the food afterward feel as central to the weekend as the summit. The ride was hard; the hospitality made it a PRT memory.
Zube: There is a funny companion piece to that called careful who you ride with, and it absolutely nails how a club changes people. You might join a Saturday ride because you want company. Then you discover the person beside you is a Category One racer, an Ironman athlete, or a state, national, or world champion. Your heart rate goes somewhere you did not know it could go—and the worst part is, you love it. Pretty soon you are training for your first race. Then one day, you are the person lifting somebody else's pace. That is the welcoming side of ambition. The Wednesday Chula Vista Coastal Hills Loop, the Saturday Donut Ride, and the mixed-pace Border Loop are not just recurring calendar entries. They are the places where riders absorb confidence from one another, one slightly-too-fast wheel at a time.
Ashley: Jessica Flores is such a great example of what can grow from that environment. She joined the newly formed multisport squad about three and a half years ago, won a state championship in the international-distance triathlon in her second season, and was named PRT's 2025 Female Athlete of the Year. But her impact is not only results. This year she directed the kids event during the JKC Memorial Hunte Parkway Road Race weekend, working with other members to give young riders their own experience of race-day joy. And outside the club, she has spent more than fifteen years building Aerial Revolution, her cirque-style aerial arts studio, where beginners and professionals learn another kind of athletic confidence. That combination—competitor, organizer, business owner, mentor—makes her a perfect August spotlight. Strength can look like a podium, but it can also look like building a place where somebody else discovers what they can do.
Zube: And that development thread connects naturally to Source Endurance. Adam Mills and the coaching team have worked with PRT athletes for years, including leading the annual Big Bear Molina Camp and talking with junior athletes about development pathways. Adam's clients have earned thirty-five national championships across eleven disciplines, which is a serious body of work. Coach Taylor Warren, who works with multiple PRT athletes including juniors, was recently assigned by USA Cycling to coach and direct junior race camps in Europe. So this sponsor relationship is not just a logo on an event page. It shows up as coaching, education, and access to a much larger pathway. The next Big Bear Molina Camp is October second through fourth. After hearing both the Ruidoso lessons and the Tour de Big Bear story, a focused mountain camp led by coaches who care about the details sounds especially well timed.
Ashley: The road-racing side is heating up too, even if the recent supported races drew smaller PRT numbers. The team still produced strong results through the Manhattan Beach and Costa Mesa block, and the Racer Cup top four are suddenly packed together. Gael Sosa leads with one hundred thirty-three points. Sergio Lugo is only five back at one hundred twenty-eight. Amelia Conkel has one hundred twenty-five, and Luigi Tarantino has one hundred twenty-three. Ten points cover all four riders. That is wonderfully tense with plenty of season left. Next, the Dick Evans Memorial on August twenty-third takes PRT to Oahu, with support for shared accommodations and a junior field for riders sixteen and older. Racing in paradise sounds glamorous, sure, but it is also a meaningful investment in getting athletes—especially developing riders—to a start line they might not reach on their own.
Zube: Multisport has its own surge. At the Solana Beach Sprint Triathlon, Jessica Flores and James Wersal each took second in their age groups, while Morgan Stilwell won both her age group and the overall duathlon. Next comes the Chula Vista Challenge on August sixteenth, the second race in the local tri-series trifecta, with PRT Multisport represented in the medal engraving. Then the San Diego Triathlon Classic arrives in September and Mission Bay in October as the state championship. The team also introduced a new multisport cup that rewards both participation and podium performance across duathlon, triathlon, running, and long cycling events. I like that balance. It gives the high finishers something to chase, but it also says that consistently showing up matters. A first race and a first-place race are different achievements, and a healthy team finds ways to recognize both.
Ashley: The service calendar is not taking August off either. July's Adopt-A-Highway cleanup got the road cared for, and the next one is Saturday, August fifteenth. Members who attend earn two volunteer hours, and the practical reminders matter: mark yourself Going so the team can plan, then log the hours when the work is done. Dzuyen Tran also raised a smart point about employer-sponsored volunteer programs. Some companies will recognize volunteer time with funds that can be directed to a nonprofit, and PRT itself can be the designated organization. So a couple of hours picking up a roadside can create a second layer of support if your employer offers that benefit. It is worth asking human resources. This is classic PRT: race one weekend, clean the route another weekend, and keep finding ways for one person's effort to multiply.
Zube: There is one more story I loved because it is about returning to the bike on completely different terms. After surgery in February made sitting on a saddle impossible, Freddy Lindo kept up a rigorous physical-therapy schedule and worked back toward a July trip to Sweden. Friends set him up on a gravel bike with a saddle he could manage, and he rode every other day, including favorite routes toward Baldersnäs and Håverud. The longest day was only twenty-five miles, and that word only is doing a lot of work—because after surgery, twenty-five miles with friends is enormous. Then he went to Paris for stage twenty-one of the Tour de France, found a spot near the Arc de Triomphe, waited for hours, watched the race sweep through, and even ran into his niece Meredith in the crowd. Recovery turned into adventure, not by skipping steps, but by respecting them.
Ashley: That might be the quiet rule underneath every August story: pay attention to the day you actually have. Cruz had to race the body and conditions he brought to Ruidoso, not the perfect version from the training plan. Ed had to read the heat on Onyx Peak and make the right call before the summit. Freddy had to rebuild around what his body could tolerate. New riders have to accept that the fast wheel beside them may change their idea of what is possible. And Jessica keeps showing that development is not a straight line from beginner to champion; it loops through leadership and back into creating opportunities for kids. None of that is less ambitious. It is a more durable kind of ambition, because it leaves room to learn, adapt, and come back stronger.
Zube: And the immediate calendar gives everybody a place to put that energy. Qualified athletes head to USA Triathlon Nationals in Milwaukee on August eighth. Adopt-A-Highway is August fifteenth. The Chula Vista Challenge is August sixteenth. Dick Evans in Hawaii is August twenty-third. Then September brings the San Diego Triathlon Classic and Santa Cruz seventy point three, while the Big Bear Molina Camp follows October second through fourth. For the weekly rhythm, Wednesday's Coastal Hills Loop starts at eight from Starbucks on Central and Bonita, the Donut Ride rolls Saturday from Coronado at seven or Stardust Donuts at seven thirty-five, and the mixed-pace Border Loop leaves Trek South Bay at eight. Check the live event calendar, RSVP Going, and hydrate before you think you need to. In this heat, planning is part of the workout.
Ashley: So that is August: back almost immediately, but not repeating July. This month is sharper, hotter, and full of lessons earned the hard way. If your race goes perfectly, celebrate it. If it exposes every basic you need to revisit, learn from it. If somebody beside you needs help with a flat, a bottle, a meal, a first race, or the wisdom to turn around, be that teammate. And if you are the one having the hard day, remember Cruz's bigger point: we cross finish lines individually, but none of us gets there alone. Ride smart, log the volunteer hours, cheer for the athletes headed to Hawaii and the multisport crew lining up in Chula Vista, and keep a little room in the plan for the race—or ride, or lesson—you did not know you needed. See you out there.