Working at the Back of the Pack

The arrival of a little cold front this morning brought with it a stiff North wind that was blowing the levee group around all morning. It was one of those days when it seemed like you were always riding into the wind and never with it. Things started out nicely enough, but five or six miles out some of the big dogs got to the front and the pace started to ramp up. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but this morning the crosswind made it just about as hard to ride at the back as the front.

At some point I dropped back after taking a little pull - all the way back - and when I arrived found little in the way of shelter. So, for most of the ride out to the turnaround I was stuck on Carey's wheel, scrounging around for a bit of draft, hugging the three inches or so of asphalt to the left of his rear wheel. To make matters worse, somebody a few riders up was short-circuiting the paceline, so we weren't in the rotation any more. The pace was fast enough that the idea of riding up the windward side of the paceline to get in nearer the front wasn't really an attractive option, so I was basically stuck at the back battling both the wind and the edge. Not fun.

Kenny, who had missed the group, had time trialed up to us, catching right about the time things picked up, and Givo, who had already seen her patients at the hospital and was squeezing in a ride before her exam, was up there in the rotation with the big dogs who were hammering into the wind at a rather uncivilized pace. After a while I saw her dropping back behind me and I knew she was in for a rude surprise. It may have looked like "the back," but once you got there you quickly realized that there was no "back." At least not in the "sit in the draft at the back" kind of way. The next time I looked back, she was OTB along with some other victims of the crosswind.

We picked everyone back up on the return trip, though, and even though it was still a crosswind battle it was a little easier. I suppose it was partially due to a little bit of occasional tailwind and partially due to the fact that some of the guys who had been pulling all morning were starting to feel it. I did a lot more work on the way back, so I got my money's worth of training out of the ride anyway.

As I rode home from the levee I noticed that it had gotten quite a bit colder than when I had started. I think the temperature had dropped around eight degrees in the two hours that I was riding.

The worst thing about these cold fronts is really my commute to work, which has me headed in a mostly Northward direction. I was definitely feeling my quads as I climbed the overpass, standing on the pedals in my Bass loafers, button-down shirt and tie, and with my messenger bag over my shoulder loaded with a thermos of real coffee and all the other usual junk that I haul back and forth to work every day.