Another Weekend, Another Giro, Another Hurricane

Saturday's Giro was big and pretty fast, and as I had planned I made some big efforts and finally limped the 7 miles home. I've been feeling a little better in the sprints, for whatever that's worth this time of the season. When I got home, I ate a couple of leftover finger sandwiches that we took home from a Psychiatry lecture at Tulane on Friday, sat down to watch some TV, and promptly fell asleep for a few hours. Sunday's ride was smaller and mostly slower, probably because of the strong Northeast wind that was whipping up the lake and promising a hard first half. I ended up off the front a few times just trying to keep the pace from slowing down too much, as the group kept getting into conversation mode. Howard kept surging at the front, messing up the sweet circular paceline we had going on the way out. He was aided in his efforts by one of the triathletes. Naturally, every time one of them would roll off the front at 30 mph, somebody would have to go after them. They they would blow up, the paceline would go past, and then it would slow back down. Such is life in the weekend training ride!

Meanwhile, The Brother was in the middle of Hurricane Jeanne in Orlando. The rain and wind caused some flooding at their house that soaked some of the carpet, and of course they lost power for quite a while. I called after dinner and found that they had gotten their electricity back, so that's nice, but a housefull of wet carpet is a real pain any way you look at it. They had already ripped up a bunch of carpet and thrown out the soaked carpet pad. I think The Dad is in Ft. Walton this week dealing with his flooded house. I think we've all about had it with hurricanes for this year, and I'm really glad nothing hit us here in New Orleans.

I've had a couple of people ask if I planned to change the results of the Tour de La since this year's winner tested positive for EPO. That doesn't seem quite right to me, however. The test was in February and our race was in June, and of course there wasn't any testing done at our race, so it's a pretty big leap to assume the rider was still using or benefiting from the supposed EPO use (and that there wasn't anyone else in the race who had used disallowed drugs). I'll have to think about that one. I'd always prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt rather than risk making a false accusation.