Singlespeeding the 2025 Texas Showdown (Slowdown) Series

Words by Tyler Reynolds, photos by Ben Corda, Nathan Khalsa, Ariel Marlowe, and Maxwell Johnston

If you’re anything like me, you might find yourself thinking about what races you might attend for the upcoming year. You’ll ask yourself, Should I do the road? Gravel? Mountain? How far should I ride? Should I climb into the mountains or stay at lower altitudes? Hot weather? Cold? Deserts? Forests? Why not all of them?

The Texas Showdown Series (TSS) is a three-race series spanning the great state of Texas. With several distance options, the routes let you pick your level of suffering, then apply it to every riding condition and terrain. Having just completed my best imitation of survival on 300 miles of the Arizona Trail Race, I elected to race the TSS in the mid-length category, Slowdown, to try my hand at single-speed ultra-distance racing.

Starting the series in spring out of Point-Blank, Texas (because, of course, this town is called Point Blank), the East Texas Showdown winds through familiar piney forest roads just north of my home in Houston. This race is notorious for heavy rainfall in the days leading up to the start and during the event. This makes it one hell of a muddy party on two wheels. With 10 minutes until liftoff, I sat atop my very tired Trek 1120, enjoying the moments of pre-race anxiety while taking a look around. What I noticed blew my mind and set the course of the entire TSS. Looking around at people’s bike choices, the usual suspects were found. Gravel bikes. Mountain bikes. Neat, a tandem! Tents. Go-fast setups. Survival mode setup. That guy packed his entire house. Whoa, is that a 36er?! A fifth of whiskey strapped to the side of a fork. One guy is already crushing a beer. Wait… what?!?!

Referring back to the “pick your own level of suffering” option, each race offers a Lowdown distance, aka a rolling party. These participants are in no rush to go anywhere and enjoy maximum fun. Talk about pro slow! In the pre-race speech, race director Patrick Farnsworth commanded his audience to leave life’s nuances behind, “For today, we ride our damn bikes.” The group of like-minded lunatics I stood among followed that command, and I now see, they did it with the volume turned to maximum! Party on. The Slowdown route is +/- 300 miles and enjoys 11,000 feet of glorious, muddy climbing. Having a singlespeed, drop-bar mountain bike turned out to be the move.

Blasting past people stuck in the mud with mechanical issues, no traction, and a rigid ride was wildly entertaining until we got to the road, and the favor was repaid. Great, there goes the whiskey guy… did he just show me his freaking nipple?! After endless miles of ohh-ing and ahhh-ing at beautiful and rare East Texas forests, open farmland, and dirt (mud) roads, evening rolled in quicker than expected. It was up to participants to decide where they would stop for the night, if at all. That said, the TSS sets up recommended camps along all routes, which become evening hangouts for like-minded people. This alone is worth the price of admission. True to the beauty of ultra, all walks of life cast aside their differences to bunker down as one tribe, emerging by morning as friends for life. It is a rare and beautiful experience to be part of.

Day two on route saw drier roads and faster speeds. I consumed more than my weight in gas-station ice cream to roll across the finish line in second place in singlespeed. Let’s talk about the finish line for a moment. This entire event was an absolute riot, and the finish line was the icing on my gas station ice cream cake. A crowd of people howled and cheered for every finisher. Best of all was a well-earned big hug from race director and new friend, Patrick Farnsworth. With the race completed, I enjoyed food from the host of the race, Bullet Grill house, then set out to find the whiskey guy to commandeer what was left of his bottle. There wasn’t any.

East Texas Showdown, Complete

With East completed, I wanted to show up in a big way for Central and West. I wanted not only to finish but also to win single speed and be in the top five overall. I doubled down, picked up a faster bike, employed coach Brian Freeze, and discovered UnbrokenRTR. Now supercharged and with something to prove, I found myself in Castell, TX, at their fantastic general store, listening to the town mayor tell me a story of a rooster and a fish procreating. In disbelief, I blinked twice, and it kicked in. I was at the Central Texas Showdown, and I was about to ride my damn bike 300 miles and 15,000 feet up through hill country. Party on!

A repeat of the ETS sendoff occurred. Patrick said some stuff to get me fired up, the whiskey-toting, nipple flashing guy made his appearance, and we were off. This time, equipped with a singlespeed swapped Trek Checkpoint, I took off like a fish fleeing a rooster, and did my best to get ahead of the pack. While the route is mostly paved rural roads, the first section is chunky gravel. I was in a daze, trying to keep colleague and friend Stan behind me, where he belongs, when I suddenly realized I was in the lead pack. Gravel turned to road, and I settled into the aero bars for the long, relaxing journey up and down hill country’s beautiful countryside. Miles of Texas Longhorns, beautiful rolling hills, historic structures, ranches, and maybe five cars passed by like a dream. A dream that I was abruptly woken from by a brutal 20-mile-per-hour headwind for about 100 miles! I put on a Texas-sized effort to get through it and tried to stay ahead of Evan Lee, my singlespeed rival hot on my tail.

Looking at the radar, comfort from the wind was promised in the town of Comfort, TX, where I would make a right turn, and at least have a crosswind for a while before turning right again in Kerrville. Then some easssssyyyy cruising miles back to the finish line with a 20-mile-per-hour tailwind. Except I forgot this was the Texas Showdown Series, and Murphy is ALWAYS along for the ride. Exiting Kerrville into the night, single speeding for my life at 90+RPM, or at least trying to get the heck away from Evan, I waited for a tailwind that did not come. Instead, the sky opened, Zeus himself appeared, and I found myself row-row-rowing my bike, not so gently through the flooded central Texas backroads with another headwind of, you guessed it, 20 miles per hour. Though the northbound section was a bit easier, the winds, sideways rain, blinding lightning, pelting hail, and a jar full of fireflies I call a headlight made progress slow.

Somewhere around 1 a.m., in the final beautiful section of gravel leading to Mason, I was faced with the first of several high-water crossings. While these were pretty fun and adventurous, the poor conditions made them challenging to navigate, as some were not simple crossings but required me to carry my bike 200 feet upriver. To add to this, the black river bottom is made of the slipperiest rock in all the land. Once passed, Murphy had one final trick up his sleeve.

Around 4 a.m., with the storm behind me, I fell asleep while riding. I startled awake when my front tire struck something in the gravel and blew the bead. With much struggling, I was able to shove a bunch of grass and other nonsense into the tire and continue until coming across a low-downer who gave me a tube. Party on. The route was more of the same beautiful and challenging terrain for the 40 miles remaining between me and an epic welcoming party back in Castell. I did not know at the time, but apparently, I had finished first place singlespeed and first place overall! Take that, Stan. I get my well-deserved hug from Patrick and set out to find the whiskey guy.

Round Three

Who’s ready for round three?! The final and most challenging race of the series took place just three-ish weeks after Central. Ten hours drive from ETS and somehow still in Texas, the West Texas Showdown is based out of Terlingua, at the intersection of nowhere, and you’re gonna need a bigger map, dude. This desert landscape is home to all my least favorite plants, snakes, spiders, and more. Basically, everything you touch wants to poke, sting, and grab at you. Don’t even look at the plants, or you’ll be picking cactus out of your skin for weeks. My route was a 300-mile, 16,000-foot-gain mountain bike race that is not for the faint of heart.

The race is equal parts paved road, soft sandy gravel roads, and some of the most challenging singletrack that you can find in an ultra. Pre-race pep talk, check. Nipple guy (wonder what he’s going to do about the cactus?), check. Ti Esker Hayduke, check. Let’s go. Ten miles of paved mountainous road in, you enter Big Bend State Park and are made aware of the Type II fun your foreseeable future is going to be. It is immediately apparent who here are mountain bikers and who are not.

For the next 70 miles, you will battle the blazing desert sun, limited opportunity for resupply, plenty of hike-a-bike, and zero downhill. The overgrown trail will leave you lost, bruised, and bleeding before it allows you to emerge. It is like the desert demands to know if you are worthy of passage before it is finished with you. This is where you go to see what you are made of, and this is just the first section of the race. Once back on paved road, you are once again heartbroken to realize that the paved road is anything but relaxing. High winds, exposed, and a 60-mile-long climb that lasts deep into the night become a war of attrition that takes out several riders.

Even more so in my case, singlespeeding with a sustainable cruising speed of around molasses, I do everything I can to keep my never-wavering competitor, Evan, behind me. Around 151 miles in brings you to beautiful Pinto Canyon and 20 miles of relaxing downhill. Except it isn’t. Patrick has figured out a way to make the downhill section one of two a brake-roasting, white-knuckled, don’t you dare look at that jaw-dropping vista or you’re flying off a cliff decent. This is followed by even more mind-numbing miles of road. Desperately turning the cranks again at 90+ RPM, trying to stay away from Evan, I contemplate the life choices that led me to this moment. Finallllly, at mile 207, the exclusively Spanish-speaking border town of Presidio appears like a mirage. Apparently home to the spiciest freaking burritos in the world, Presidio is the second and final resupply on course. I wish Stan were here to burn his mouth on a burrito with me.

I resupply and bid the town a solid hasta luego. Good news, 30 miles of hot, sunny, gravel road climbing is now all that is in between you and the preceding 20 miles of Arizona Trail-type downhill singletrack hell. Party on, TSS. Said singletrack is equal parts horrific and beautiful. The unimaginably steep and rough singletrack rewards you with some of the most spectacular desert vistas in the US and will stay with you for life. Once at the bottom, the 50 miles of road and singletrack are anything but easy, which sums up this race as follows. It is a race that will test you. It will not compromise, and it does not care about your feelings. It will keep you in its claws until the very last foot has been earned.

With 0.1 mile remaining, I find myself pushing my bike up what I can’t believe is another freaking hill, only to crest it and find Patrick and friends, screaming at me through a bullhorn. With finish line hugs, first place single speed, and the first and only triple star completion secured, I crawl into a ball to go to sleep, too tired to go find the whiskey guy. Party complete.

The 2026 Texas Showdown Series kicks off in March with the East Texas Showdown. Registration is open now. Learn more here.

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