The Threat of Rain

Perhaps it was the overnight threat of rain, or maybe just the fact that a few of the usual morning riders were on their way to Utah for a ski vacation (must be nice, eh?), but the group was pretty thin this morning. The weathermen had been making guesses about the currently unpredictible meteorology, and although the roads were a bit damp and the levee rather foggy, the early morning radar indicated that all the real weather was on a track well north of the city. I was excited to finally be able to go out in the morning wearing only a single jersey, but since I had a meeting scheduled for 9 a.m., my ride was going to be shorter than usual today. It turned into a nice steady paceline out to the short ride turnaround, after which the rest of the group continued ahead while John and I turned back. I spent a lot of time on the front riding a steady pace of around 22 mph all morning. Realdo was out there somewhere. He had gone by while we were waiting for the group to show up, saying that he needed to be back by 8:00. I was shooting for something more like 7:45 and so I never saw him again, although I'm sure that if I had continued on with the rest of the group we would have run into him somewhere around the grain elevator.

So Charlie sent out an e-mail about the Tuesday/Thursday training races moving to Wednesday. It will be interesting to see if that gets a better turnout next week after we shift to DST for the summer. The training races are good for - you guessed it - training, so I really do hope we see enough riders to make them better race simulations. I'd prefer to have these twice a week, but last year it seemed like every time I hustled around to make it out to the lakefront on Thursdays, there were never enough people to have a real race and it just turned into a fast training ride, so in effect, there was already only one a week, at best. Regardless, Charlie's e-mail seems to have provoked a few nostalgic replies being sent to the NOBC and LAMBRA lists. "I remember my first training race . . ." One thing about the training races was that it almost always came as a shock to new riders just how fast the group could go. Guys would think they were in pretty good shape and would come to the training race all full of bravado and then get shot out the back of the pack like the spent shell of an automatic weapon within the first few miles. The good ones kept coming back until they figured it out and became truly competitive.

Bicycle racing can be a very harsh experience for the new guys. No big group to fall back into, nobody holding your hand, and no beer and pasta at the end - just the sight of the last rider in the paceline disappearing up the road and then it's just you and the sound of your own tires.

Well, I've still got a long backlog of items on my "to-do" list and in fact that little list on my PalmPilot grew by a few items during the meeting this morning. I should learn to keep my mouth shut at these meetings! If you write something on your palm pilot but you don't sync, is it really there???

The Smell of Summer

Summer is getting so close I can practically smell it. Or maybe that's just the West Bank I smell because of the South wind? Anyway, it was above 60F this morning and although I went out wearing arm-warmers, they didn't stay on too long. I had gotten up a little early, so I stitched a little boot into one of the nicer used tires that Robin had brought over and put that one on my rear wheel. We had a a baker's dozen on the ride this morning and the pace was pretty good. Over the last five miles or so I dropped off the back a few times to do some short jumps back up to the group. The warmer weather always makes me frisky!

Malcolm Schuler e-mailed me about a gig of photos yesterday that go back all the way to Rouge-Roubaix. Some are really awesome and hopefully I'll find some time to get them up on the website soon. The one above shows some of the lead riders cresting one of the killer hills on the last dirt road section around 80 miles into the race. If you look carefully on the larger version (click the image) you can see a rider falling in the gravel.

Long Levee Ride

It was still down around 51 F this morning, but felt much warmer than yesterday. The combination of a much lighter wind and a clear sky that promised sunshine must have helped. I was also trying out my new DeFeet UnDeflector (isn't it great having friends with DeFeet sponsorship?) It worked great. Finally a high-tech version of the old newspaper-under-the-jersey trick!!

There were a good 17 riders out this morning for the long ride and although the pace stayed quite fast all the way out, I don't we lost anyone who really wanted to stay with the group. The return trip was actually quite civilized, even though the pace stayed pretty fast. Somebody must have been short-circuiting the paceline up near the front because the rotation was limited to maybe four riders for a long time. Eventually I pulled up alongside the guy in front of me just so I could get out in the wind and get my heartrate back into training effect territory.

A few of the guys are still trying to figure out a way to do a Wednesday training race series without getting all tangled up in USCF permits and insurance and all, but as I explained earlier that's really not possible any more unless you want to be bait for the personal injury lawyers. Maybe we'll get an official series off the ground some time around mid-summer. We shall see.

Quite busy at work today and more yet to do, plus an interview at 7 p.m. that one of the local riders is doing with me as part of his communications class. I made sure to set that one up at P.J.'s over on Maple Street!!

The picture above is from the 2-person time trial (just posted some new photos, BTW). This rider from the University of New Orleans club says that the pins are his trademark.

Riding Again

After finally getting to sleep around 1 a.m. last night, I was looking forward to being able to ride again this morning. I headed out a few minutes early, went about two blocks, and fired the retro rockets so I could go back and put on a pair of tights. The skies were grey, the temperature was just above 50 F, and there was a strong wind blowing out of the West. At 6:40 a.m. there was nobody in sight at the pumping station, so I rolled along into the wind by myself until Rob and John came up from behind with "Young Dan" showing up shortly thereafter. Rob and I pulled side-by-side for a while, but I was having motivational issues stemming, no doubt, from my dashed expectations of warm sunny weather, and dropped back behind John for a while to contemplate his rear wheel. Rob continued to plug away at the front for a long time, pulling us through the headwind at a blistering pace of maybe 20 - 21 mph. After the turn-around, though, we were soon spinning along at 27-28 and after a while we picked up Robin. It seemed like kind of a hard ride to me, though.

After four days off the bike I was feeling none too sharp today, but I know it'll pass. Robin stopped by and dropped off an armfull of used tires collected from Todd's shop and elsewhere, so hopefully there are a few in there that I can squeeze some more mileage out of. Even better, the Easter Bunny stopped by while I was out of town and dropped off some goodies on her way to NC, including a bottle of Cabernet that may well get opened tonight! Thanks Easter Bunny! I'm feeling particularly dragged-out today and would seriously like to go home and take a long nap, but it's not looking like I'll be out of here before 7 pm.

Meanwhile, Charlie called looking for teammated to go over to the ColdSpring road race in Houston on Sunday. Looks like a possibility if I can do it without taking the whole weekend. Houston is about 5.5 hrs each way, so it's possible. There's also more discussion about moving the training races to Wednesdays, which is fine. The problem comes in when they start talking about charging an entry fee and having prizes, at which point somebody is in charge and liability issues start to present themselves. If somebody wanted to promote a weekday series like that, and he had a little sponsorship to cover prizes, he could probably make a few bucks. At any rate, I wouldn't want even the appearance of being responsible for such an event unless I had at least a USCF event permit and everyone was signing the release form. There's just on "in-between" any more when it comes to putting on bike races. Either you do the whole shebang with insurance and officials and follow cars and communications and all that stuff, or you just don't do it.

Arrangements for the NCAA gymnastics regional championships in Salt Lake City the weekend of April 9th are moving along quickly. The Wife has determined that she has sufficient frequent flyer points to cover one airfare, and her boss has offered to use some of his to cover the other. One of the team moms has a relative with a condo in Park City that we can apparently use for the weekend for something like $100, and if we split that maybe four ways, that will be a very sweet deal. So it would basically come down to car rental and food which MIGHT put it within my budget.

The good news? It doesn't conflict with Tour LeFleur this year!! Now I'll just have to see if I can find some kind and short soul in Park City or Salt Lake who can lend me a bike for a couple of days.

Airborne

Greetings from Northwest Flight 860, Minneapolis to New Orleans! I just downloaded a big cup of Starbucks coffee – black with five sugars – so, “fair warning,” this may be long and rambling.

It was a busy, if somewhat disappointing, weekend. This afternoon we departed scenic Iowa City for the always relaxing and calm little Cedar Rapids airport around 2:00 p.m. I like this one-concourse airport out in the cornfields of Iowa. All of the ticket agents and TSA folks are relaxed and friendly and just dying for somebody to talk to. When we showed up at the ticket counter to check our bags, we had to ring a little doorbell to summon the ticket agent who emerged smiling and refreshed-looking. How nice is that?

It’s now 8 p.m. above Minneapolis and just a few minutes ago we finally worked our way to the front of a line of over a dozen planes waiting for runway access, so we ended up taking off for N.O. about half an hour late. The sky was full of landing lights and the taxiways were full of loaded planes. Situation normal for a holiday Sunday evening. There’s an enormous guy in the seat directly behind me and he’s been snoring rather loudly for the last half-hour, but otherwise it’s a typically quiet late evening flight on a half-empty airplane. I like these kinds of flights, actually. We’re heading south, of course, and out the left window I am watching a full moon rising above the wingtip. One of the planets hovers above it in the East. The view from the cockpit must be spectacular.

The GymHawks struggled and fought their way to a disappointing 6th place at the BigTen conference championships last night, but it was apparently still good enough to qualify them for Regionals. That means another unplanned trip to Salt Lake City in a couple of weeks, assuming we can figure out how we can afford it. Last night’s meet had a large contingent of Iowa fans, including practically all of the team parents, and we were all sporting our bright yellow and black T-shirts and pom-poms that The Wife and one of the other parents had arranged for everyone to have. The team got (again!!) a lousy rotation, starting on Beam and ending with a “Bye.” It’s best to start on Vault and end on the final rotation on Floor. The Daughter, normally a rock-solid beam worker, came off of her sheep-jump a little out of line and ended up taking a fall. Unfortunately, one of her teammates also fell, so the team had to count one of the bad routines, which pretty much put them a good eight-tenths behind from the start. Not good. They battled back admirably and had quite a good bars rotation, but would have needed to “hit” on everything else to get up to third place where they belonged. The coach was not a happy camper. The meet ended around 10 p.m., and we all headed for the nearby Old Chicago restaurant and bar (where they have a pretty decent beer inventory, BTW). “Table for 22, please.” We were e surprised to that the cover of the event program featured a stylized photo of The Daughter, so we scooped up a few extra copies.

This morning I got up early and rode the hotel torture machine for 45 minutes or so while The Wife went to Wal-Mart (on Easter Sunday morning, no less) and bought a fresh Turkey and salad stuff, after which we checked out of the hotel and headed over to “the house” where we were greeted by a pair of ducks that eagerly waddled right up to the car as we pulled in as if they had been waiting for us. So we made Easter dinner for The Daughter and one of her teammates, which was rather nice actually, and them bagged the substantial leftovers, stuffing them into the packed-solid refrigerator that the five roommates share. I also left her a pair of my arm-warmers, since she’s been wanting some in anticipation of the warmer weather.

The weather this morning in I.C. was really nice and it warmed up from 27F to about 45 really fast because of the clear skies. Quite a contrast with the day before. I spotted a number of roadies out on training rides and wished I were one of them. I could take little comfort in the three hours of uncomfortable, boring, and nonproductive exercise bike time I got during my FOUR FULL OFF-BIKE DAYS!

Hopefully the weather will be nice tomorrow morning in N.O. so I can get back on the bike. There is talk of switching the local informal training races from the traditional Tuesday/Thursday schedule to a Wednesday schedule as soon as DST starts. Should be interesting to see how that works out. I’m not looking forward to the workweek though. I will be trying to pull together a big complicated piece of a research/training proposal on very short notice because the key faculty member has been in Africa the last couple of weeks and will be arriving back in town today (hopefully). Plus I have to negotiate our way out of a rather sensitive collaboration SNAFU with one of the local HBCUs, and somewhere in there find time to find a co-presenter for the upcoming NCURA regional meeting.

That big coffee has had its usual effect on my kidneys and now I’m anxiously waiting for the stewardess to get the drink cart out of the isle. I’m glad that this little Sony VAIO laptop that I brought on this trip has a nice healthy battery. It’s still showing almost two hours of run time left, which is pretty impressive considering it’s been running at least an hour and a half already today. I switched it to “maximum battery life” mode about half an hour ago. I just wish I could convince it to recognize my antique USB CompactFlash card reader so I could check out the 100 or so photos I took at the meet!

Big Ten Day

So the Big Ten conference championships are tonight up here in IC and the breakfast room at the Baymont Inn is packed with parents sporting their college T-shirts and passing around gossip about who's injured and which coaches said what to whom and that sort of thing. The Wife got up at 6 a.m. to go to the grocery because a couple of the moms here decided that the girls, who are staying at the Sheraton in "downtown" Iowa City, needed a special breakfast. Not that they couldn't just walk out the door an pick from a dozen breakfast places, you understand.

We spend yesterday doing taxi cab duty, picking up and dropping off The Daughter and various teammates all over the place. I pumped up tires on The Daughter's Cannondale, which is on her trainer in her room, and also aired up the tires on her clunker downstairs and one of her teammates mountain bikes. The latter was a bit of a problem because someone had apparently ridden it extensively with a flat rear tire and so the tube was all bunched up inside the tire and the tire wasn't seated properly on the rim - none of which I noticed until I blew the tube out. So I had to make a trip to the local bike shop for a new tube for that one. Last night we had dinner at the Iowa River Power restaurant, which is in an old power plant along the Iowa River with a view of the old dam. The food here is pretty good, and the service surprisingly so, but it's a bit pricey for my taste. Anyway, it was one of those team parents things, so we kind of had to go. The weather is supposed to warm up to a positively balmy 45F today and there's some sun peeking out from behind the clouds, so that's encouraging. I spend another 45 minutes on the torture machine in the hotel yesterday evening dripping sweat and generally being uncomfortable and overheated, even though I was keeping the effort level relatively low.

I'm not exactly sure what we're supposed to be doing between now and the meet this evening, although I'm sure The Wife will fill me in with that usual "I told you all this already" look. Iowa will have Live Scoring on the hawkeyesports website tonight for those who are interested. Of course we all have to wear our official yellow and black Hawkeye T-shirts tonight. I will probably try and get some photos for the website in case I never get any from the official photographer. Apparently the team actually still has a reasonable chance of qualifying for Regionals if they have a decent meet. That'll likely mean another expensive and last-minute trip to, I think, Park City Utah. Don't really see being able to afford that trip, and I'll be rather pissed off if it means I have to miss one of the two full weekends of racing down here next month, but of course I'll probably end up going and missing a race as usual.

Change in Climate!

The flight(s) up to Iowa City seemed rather long this time, due I'm sure to the woman behind me who was coughing the whole way and the unhappy baby a couple of rows up who cried, or to put it more accurately, screamed, nearly the entire flight. The Wife was blissfully unaware of most of it, working on a piece of a quilt and listening to her iPod the whole time. Every now and then I would have to give her a nudge because she would start singing along with the music and people would start looking.

We arrived in Cedar Rapids under cloudy drizzly skies and the rain continued steadily all afternoon and evening, occasionally turning to big chunky snowflakes. We went over to the Arena where the Big Ten Championships will be held tomorrow evening and helped out a little, but mostly watched the team do a light workout.

I tried a number of time to contact a couple of faculty members who I need to speak with right away, leaving even more voicemail, but I guess they have skipped town or something since Tulane is on Spring Break. I'll have to try for e-mail later today.

I did manage to get in about an hour at the hotel "fitness center" which consists of one of those lounge-chair type exercise bikes, two treadmills, and a rack of dumbbells. Naturally it is situated next to the pool in the most humid possible location. Despite the fan, I was drenched with sweat after half an hour of moderate exercise on the bike and my knees ached a bit from the odd position. I don't know how they calibrate the effort levels on those torture machines, but when I selected the "Hill" workout, level 6 felt like a weight-lifting session more than a bike ride, and I can't imagine anyone being able to turn the cranks at level 10 or 12 or whatever the limit is. Periodically I would have to lift myself up off my butt. It is not a good idea to design exercise equipment where the user sits with his full weight directly on a joint that is one of the ones being used. What were these people thinking? I would have thought by now that I'd be seeing some sort of spinning type bike in the hotel exercise rooms, but I guess they're too cheap for that.

I got an I-10 report from GiVo last night. She's on her way to N.O. from Tucson to pick up some stuff she left here and then is heading up to N.C. for a while to do a couple of rotations. Nice timing, I must say. Charlotte is going to be real nice during the next month or two.

Well, got to go give The Daughter a lift to class this morning, and then we're pretty much on our own until evening, I think. I sure wish the sun would come out!! It's about 35F and raining, I guess.

A Good Day to Ride

Clear and warm today with a moderate breeze. I was up early today, probably because the sun's coming up earlier and the skies are clear for the first morning in quite a while. There was a small group on the levee and we cruised out at 21-22 mph in a double paceline, doing more talking than training. We were half-way back before I realized that a number of the guys had decided to ride out to the "dip." I mean, they stopped at the normal turn-around and all, but I guess then they decided to go a little longer and those of us headed back never got the word. Anyway, it was kind of a relaxing ride today. The air is thick with oak tree pollen right now and there was a bright green coating on all the cars. It will be like this for a couple of weeks until the oak trees drop all their flowers and start growing their summer leaves. I love this time of year.

I just wish I could breathe during it!

Results and Points

This morning's levee ride was pretty fast! The weather was nice except for the overcast skies and light fog, and Rob was obviously looking for a hard ride. Most of the way out we were going 27-28 mph and although I was feeling a little sluggish, I hung in. At one point there was something up the road and the rider ahead of Rob stabbed his brakes. Rob kind of plowed into his rear wheel or something, burned a little rubber off of his tires, but luckily nobody went down. On the return trip we started out kind of easy for a while, but soon we were back up around 27 mph. Toward the end of the ride we could see one of the levee police cars cruising ahead of us at about 20 mph, so we decided it would be unwise to blast past him and everyone slowed down for the last few miles.

So I finally got the LCCS points rankings updated. That took a really, really long time since I had to figure out which people were riding on one-day licenses, which weren't, and which were riding out of category. Not to mention the fact that I needed to get confirmation from Brett about how all of that was supposed to be done. I hope they are more or less correct! The NOBC moved up in the rankings this week quite a bit, due of course to the relatively large turnout we had for a local event. The next big event is the mid-April Tour LeFleur up in Jackson, Mississippi. I sure wish they would put up the event details on the website!

I also spent quite a bit of time today formatting the results of the Rouge-Roubaix road race for uploading to the USCF database. Their database deals with everything as text, so all of the times that are in Excel "time and date" format have to be converted to plain text with a handy-dandy little formula that I made. Then, when they are uploaded to the USCF computer, it spits back a list of errors which are usually names that are spelled incorrectly. All of those need to be corrected before finally hitting the "submit" button. There are always a few riders who don't get their results reported because I can never find them in the USCF membership database, either because they somehow snuck in on expired licenses or because their penmanship is so bad that the best guess as to the spelling of their names is so far off as to be irreconcilable with the USCF list. Sometimes it's probably because they bought or renewed an annual USCF license at registration and it didn't get noted on the start list. Always renew online folks! I have three annual license forms from last Saturday that are still in a folder and I'll probably be well into next week before the USCF gets them in the post-event packet I have to send them, and then who knows how long it will take for someone up in Colorado Springs to actually process them.

Although it's nice to have all of that stuff out of the way now, it was only possible because I put off a number of things at work that will now absolutely need to be done tomorrow because I'm off to scenic Iowa City on Thursday.

Fun Fast Weekend

Friday afternoon I left work an hour early and went out to the TT course with Robin to mark the start and finish. I drove while Robin motorpaced so that he could use the computer on his bike, which was set to measure kilometers, to mark the finish. After that, we discovered that the portable toilets had been put in the wrong place, so we had to muscle them up onto the trailer and drive them around to where they belonged, all the way fighting off mosquitos the size of small airplanes. Luckily, the toilets were still unused and we didn't get any of that smelly scented stuff on us!

Saturday morning it was up at 4:30 a.m. to load up the Volvo with race stuff. Realdo arrived right on time and we were off to the TT course about 40 minutes away. Registration started at 6:30 a.m. and we went nonstop as fast as we could registering riders until well after 7:30. Luckily we had some great volunteers helping out. There were about twice as many riders as I had expected, and we ran out of one-day license forms because there were a lot of local triathletes and other riders who don't race a lot who were attracted to this fun and non-threatening event.

One local rider who reads this blog stopped by the regstration desk and handed me a new inner tube! I guess I do get a lot of flats! We ended up with 79 two-person teams registered. I changed quickly into my riding clothes, grabbed the bike and rode to the start line without a warmup. 30 seconds later, Robin said "GO" and we were off. Realdo pulled for the first mile while I tried to warm up, and when I looked down we were going 29 mph. With the light tailwind, we were going between 26.5 and 27 most of the way out, with a few occasional spurts up to 28. Realdo was incredibly steady, and since he's about a foot taller than I, every time I would finish a pull and drop back it was like sitting down in a soft easy chair. We zipped around the turnaround neatly and had to ease up a bit on the way back because of the headwind, although we still held 26-27 most of the way, surging up to 30 or so by the finish.We ended up with a 55:33, which is a pretty decent time for a couple of guys who haven't trained for this sort of thing. Realdo is a real classy rider who's raced all over the place and it shows. I didn't have much time to relax, though, because as soon as I finished the 40k time trial, I had to go work on the results. Dan and I spent the next hour and a half typing in names and club names and start times and finish times. It was really hard to read the LCD screen outdoors, and that made it go even more slowly, but we got everything done pretty quickly.

Our time was good for 6th overall and 3rd in our 35+ age group. The winning time was a 52:50, which was pretty damned fast. So we won $20, which we spent at the gas station Subway Sandwiches on the way home!

After I got home it took me a couple of hours of solid work to get the results up on the website. We should have some photos later in the week. I still have a couple of hours of work left on that to update the LCCS points.

Sunday morning I could hear thunder as I awoke, which wasn't very reassuring because there was a local parking lot criterium that day. Luckily, the rain stopped around 7:30 and all the races went off as planned, although turnout was low. I had to make a quick trip back to the house because the promoter forgot to make any copies of the official release forms. Luckily I had some left over from the day before.

I rode the Cat. 1,2,3 race that started around 1:00 p.m. and it was a lot of fun. Despite the small field, it was very animated. Malcolm Schuler put up a $20 prime for the first lap, and one result of that was that Mike Corcoran and Renaldo were off the front by the second lap. Since most of the pack was on either Mike's or Realdo's team, nobody chased until Rob Konrad took off in pursuit about a lap later. This was one of those "shoula coulda woulda" things for me. I knew I should go with him, but I hesitated for a moment because I didn't want to end up pulling the whole pack up to Renaldo, who I figured could beat Mike in a sprint. The whole NBO team started trying to shut down the pack. I guess they were figuring on having Noel win the pack sprint, but even so I wasn't figuring on Mike being able to get better than second in the break, maybe even third. It did, however, force me to do a lot of work at the front, including a few small attacks to see if maybe I could split off a smaller and more manageable group, but it was not to be. Meanwhile, my teammate Branden, who I was figuring to do well in a sprint, was feeling bad and ended up dropping out. Much of the time I was working at the front, it was in an effort to force the NBO guys to work so that Branden would have a better shot at the finish. Oh well! So I dropped back for a while as the breakaway started coming up behind us on the short 0,5 mile course. Just as they were about to lap us, I attacked once again just in case I could split off a little group that could latch onto them as they went by, but then ended up just getting in with the pack and waiting it out for the sprint. So the rest of the race I did what I could to help Realdo out by going to the front when he would get stuck out in the wind up there.

Toward the end of the race I noticed that something felt kind of mushy when I would get up off the saddle. As I found out after the finish, my front tire was slowly going flat. I guess I had about 40 psi in it by the finish. But low tire pressure wasn't my only problem at the end.

For most of the last three laps, Eddie Delgado stayed at the front riding tempo with me on his wheel. It was sweet. When we hit the back stretch on the final lap I knew riders would start coming around, so I was ready for it and got a good wheel going into the second to last turn. Right at the apex of the turn, Rob comes in on me hard and cuts me off against the pylons. These things happen in criteriums. I had three choices: hit the pylons (and crash), hit Rob (and crash), or hit the brakes (and maybe crash). I chose Door Number Three and of course when I touched the brakes in the middle of the turn at around 25 mph my rear wheel broke loose. It was only my strong desire to avoid road rash, and my latent gymnastics abilities, that kept me off the pavement. Realdo was behind and to the right and had to ease up too just as the sprint started. Amazingly, he not only recovered, he powered past about four riders in the final 100 meters and won the race. He also won a couple of primes along the way! I was impressed. Anyway, I still managed 4th place, coming past Noel who eased up at the line.

It was a lot of fun to have two races in town on the same weekend. Everyone liked the crit course out at Zephyr stadium, too. To me it actually seemed a lot like riding on the track because none of the turns were very technical and it stayed pretty fast.

Now if I can just find time to get the paperwork done and the LCCS points posted, I can get back to my paying job for a few days before I have to leave for Iowa on Thursday. Man, I wish there was a race there next weekend!!

Finally Friday

The sun is out and it is finally warmer after a cold start to this Friday. Yesterday one of our club members who had planned on teaming up with Realdo for the 2-man Time Trial tomorrow was sick and so at present it looks like I will be riding. It should be fun, although it is kind of tight to be both working the race and racing in it, but then it's not like I haven't done that before. Realdo and I will just start first so that I'm back in time to work on the results, assuming I don't suffer too much cognitive impairment as a result of trying to keep up with someone who has a whole history of European racing, including a couple of Olympics, under his belt. Still, I take some comfort in the fact that he's much taller than I, so at least I'll be getting significantly more rest. Of course I haven't ridden on my aero bars since last year. I'll just dust them off and clamp them on tonight and hope for the best!

We did a nice easy ride this morning with four or five riders - typical Friday. It was really nice, though, to have lots of sun and very little wind rather than the other way around.

I realized this morning that we didn't have any one-day license application forms. The USCF says they sent them and that they should arrive at my house today. So I asked them to fax me one so I can make some copies just in case. Never got the fax, of course, so I'll have to call 'em up again shortly. We still need to run out and measure and mark the course, too. At least the weather is looking OK for tomorrow and I did manage to get the LCCS results posted this afternoon, and I have a bunch of entry/release forms on hand.

More Work than Play Today

It was cold this morning, at least by "March in New Orleans standards," and very windy as well. Naturally, that meant a smallish group up on the levee for the 6:15 a.m. ride. Since the group was also running a bit low on horsepower, it also meant we would be turning around at "the dip" rather than going all the way to the end of the bike path. With cloudy skies, the strong Northwest wind, and the pervasive dampness in the air, the ride this morning felt more like work than play. We were down around 20 mph - sometimes slower - most of the way out. Jeff and Ronnie were out off the front for quite a while on their TT bikes practicing riding together for this weekend's 2-man Time Trial. Ronnie turned around early though and headed back. Jeff said something about him being depressed after accidentally deleting a few thousand songs from this Mac while rearranging stuff on his iPod. Oops!

Lots of stuff I need to think about and do before the race on Saturday. I certainly need to get a ton of batteries so that the megaphone and stopwatches are in good shape, plus there are release forms to print out, numbers to sort, start lists to organize, spreadsheets to test, printer drivers to download, etc. I decided to use the little bitty Sony Vaio laptop I have at the office that we keep for when people travel and don't want to lug a full-size laptop around with them. It doesn't have an internal CD or floppy drive and lacks some of the usual accessory connectors, but it sure is light! At least I'm reasonably sure it won't crash on me in the middle of doing results!

You knew it would happen

Rained heavily all night and woke up to soaking wet streets and cold, humid weather. I'd spent the night at my mother's place dog-sitting and cleaning out the refrigerator to make space for food for one of her neighbors whose husband passed away yesterday (everyone brings food when someone dies). So anyway, there was no ride for me today. I should have known, of course, since I took Monday off. You knew I would get rained out one day this week.

Hey! The USCF has swung a deal with LaQuinta hotels and Baymont Inns for 25% off for USCF members and I might actually be able to get some mileage out of that since there's a convenient Baymont Inn near U. of Iowa and I'm heading up there later this month for three days. The Great Balded One called me from Brookhaven to make a few corrections to the website for the Mississippi Gran Prix, which is looking like it will be a good event. Of course he's starting to get nervous about turnout around now. I also went out with Brooks to check out the criterium course at Zephyr field today. Although it will be basically a big rectangular course in a parking lot, the road surface looks real good so the only issues will be marking the course . If it's windy, I'm sure there will be guys trying to eschelon on the wrong side of the traffic cones and then they will all try to squeeze into the one section of actual roadway on the course. It could get ugly, but without barricades all the way around, that will be the best we can do.

Work has been remarkably heavy lately, but that's better than when it's dead around here. Hopfully the weather will be OK tomorrow morning so I can get back in the saddle because at my age I start gaining weight within 24 hrs of my last training ride just by breathing.

It appears right now that The Daughter's University of Iowa team might actually be able to qualify for the Regional Championships as a result of the convoluted way in which qualifying is determined. The actual methodology used results in a "Regional Qualifying Score" that is used for ranking, but also factored in are the number of teams in each region who rank above a certain position nationally. As far as I can tell, the system is completely unsusceptible to normal methods of analysis, making it almost perfect for this sort of thing. Anyway, the downside there is that we would have to make another expensive trip which is definitely going to cut into my inner tube budget!

Where'd Spring Go??

After a couple of days of decidedly Spring-like weather, I woke up this morning to what felt a lot like November. Not that it was particularly cold, but the skies were full of those low-hanging unsettled grey clouds and there was a gusty wind blowing out of the Northeast. As often happens under such conditions, there was only a skeleton crew out on the levee for the morning ride. Although we would be plagued by crosswinds much of the ride, there was definitely a bit of a tailwind component on the way out, but for some reason only a few of us seemed interested in embracing it. After Robin chastized me for surging from 23 to 24 mph when I took a pull, a few riders came through and next thing I know we're doing 25+ and the group has split. It was just Big Richard, Luke on his TT bike and me the rest of the way out, and as it turned out all but The Donald had turned back early. Quite a nice training ride anyway, despite the gloomy skies and buffeting wind.

I got another phone call a few minutes ago by a triathlete asking if his Cervelo TT bike would be legal for this weekend's 2-person Time Trial. It's kind of funny how the Tri guys have re-defined the term "road bike" to mean exclusively a bike without aero bars. Despite the fact that they don't seem to understand that for USCF events a "road bike" means a bike that isn't mountain bike or a recumbent, they have all somewhere heard about the much more stringent UCI bicycle specifications and are now totally confused.

So I'm still waiting for the info I need to finalize the LCCS standings, which is damned frustrating, and when I talked with Robin yesterday he informed me that he had not yet received the USCF event permit for Saturday's race, so I'm about to call the USCF to find out which crack it, and our $100 check, fell through.

I wrote up a race report for The Racing Post on the recent Rouge-Roubaix race and sent it along to the editor. I almost never actually see the publication, which is based in Texas. I presume some of the New Orleans shops must get copies, but since they went to a new format last Fall they haven't figured out how to put copies on their website. I think I'll write Christian and tell him he needs to at least put up a list of shops that get paper copies, though I'm sure he'll just suggest that I send him the $15 subscription fee instead! Anyway, here's a teaser:

"I hear a crunching sound to my left as Frank Moak looks down at his derailleur which has exploded and calmly says “I’m done.” Three riders lose traction and are off their bikes running up the hill. I’m over on the right in the tire track stuck behind a couple of riders who I’m afraid are going to lose it at any moment. A group of four or five riders shoots past up the hill on my left but there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’m in my lowest gear and all over the bike, riding very ugly as I try to keep enough weight on the rear wheel to keep moving. I see a photographer up near the top of the climb documenting the agony. I latch onto the back of a little group of six or seven riders as I come over the top and this group is definitely not throwing in the towel. I am having serious trouble now on the climbs and almost lose it in the loose gravel."

A Day Off

Yesterday afternoon The Wife called to say her flight from Austin had gotten screwed up royally and she would not be arriving until around 11 p.m. Apparently the person who had made her online reservation had selected the wrong month for the departure date (i.e. the 13th of April rather than March), which explains how they got such a low fare!! The result was that she had to rent a car and drive from Austin to Phoenix to catch the only flight back with an available seat and basically trash the return trip ticket and buy a new one-way ticket. As they say, "haste makes waste." Anyway, the flight was further delayed, so by the time I picked her up from the airport and got home it was nearly midnight and my lack of sleep had really started catching up with me.

When the alarm went off this morning, it didn't take me too long to decide it was time for an extra hour of sleep and a day off the bike. I'm hoping the rain that is expected tonight will be over by the time I go out to ride tomorrow morning, but I probably jinxed myself by taking a day off.

I've about got the LCCS points rankings finished, except that I am still waiting for some critical USCF license information from the Rouge-Roubaix promoter. Our 2-man Time Trial is this weekend and I want to have all of the rankings out well before that. Of course, the 2-man TT is kind of wierd and there is some uncertainty about what to do with mixed-category teams. If there's a team with one Cat. 5 and one Cat. 4, it is clear that they race in the Cat. 4 race, but when it comes to awarding LCCS poins, it doesn't seem right to give the Cat. 5 points toward his Cat. 5 ranking (after all, he had help from a Cat. 4 rider) and it doesn't seem right to give the Cat. 5 points in the Cat. 4 ranking (since he's not a Cat. 4), but there are those who want to do that because they are after the team points. I think we created a monster when we started doing the team points rankings. Anyway, IMHO, mixed-category teams should not qualify for points at all. The Cat. 4 LCCS ranking isn't a Cat. 4,5 ranking, it's a Cat. 4 ranking.

I'm having trouble with laptops at home lately and am rather concerned about using either of them for the 2-man TT results. There's another laptop here at work that I can probably use if it isn't travelling this weekend, but I will have to install a printer driver for my printer at least.

Springtime Weekend

I was up early on Saturday and on the road to Auburn by 6:30 a.m. I had borrowed my mom's Saturn which is only about six months old and was looking forward to a relaxing drive. You can imagine my surprise when I hit the cruise control button about ten miles out and nothing happened. It was dead. Nonfunctional. Broken. I stopped at a gas station to see if perhaps it was something simple - a loose electrical connector or vacuum line, but there was nothing obvious, so I spent the next 5.5 hrs monitoring the speedometer. At least the weather was great and the traffic was thin. The meet went OK, but the Iowa team is really battered this year. There were only nine girls in the lineup out of 13 team members. The rest are injured. The Daughter, in fact, is really too injured to be competing on her ankle, but the team is too thin to spare her right now. I hung around after the meet and went to dinner with the team at the home of the Auburn coach and then The Daughter and I went out for a cup of coffee near campus.

I headed out around 9:30 p.m. and arrived back home around 3 a.m., so I got about three hours of sleep before heading out to the lakefront to meet the Giro ride. When I hit the lakefront I was greeted by a sad sight. A pickup truck whose driver was probably drunk and showing off by driving on the slope of the levee had flipped over on it's side into the parking lot. Apparently one girl was killed.

It was windy this morning but that didn't stop a large group from showing up in the warm weather. On the way out, we cross a drawbridge with a metal grating at the top. It was a little bit wet from the morning dew, so most of the group stopped to walk across - there have been some bad crashes on that thing in the past. Well, a few guys at the front didn't stop and worse yet they didn't wait for the rest of the group to catch up. The rest of us waited for everyone to regroup and by the time we started to chase the lead group was a little speck about a minute and a half up the road. The chase stayed pretty disorganized most of the way out. Every time the pace would get up to 28 or so the chain would break about six riders back and everything would slow down until the stronger guys went back up to the front. Three steps forward; one step back. We did make up some ground, but never caught the lead group that contained Jay, Brett and Noel amoung others. The return trip stayed pretty fast too. I rode back from the lakefront nice and slow!

It is suddently Springtime here in New Orleans! All of the Azaleas and Camelias in my front yard are in full bloom, the temperature is 74F, and there is a nice breeze blowing the oak leaves around. The Live Oaks like the one in front of my house and all along my street are beginning to flower, and when that happens in the Spring the trees drop all of their old Winter leaves. It is practically raining oak leaves today. I swear they drop more leaves in the Spring than in the Fall.

Anyway, I am way overdue for a nap!

Long Week

It's been a long week, but I just e-mailed off the document that's had me busy the last couple of days and it's definitely time to throttle down. The office has been empty except for me for the last half-hour. Everyone bailed out early today.

The morning ride was surprisingly windy and it made me work a little harder than I was expecting to on a Friday, which is probably a good thing. Kenny showed up when we were on the way back. I suppose he's en route to Austin right now for the Primavera race. Now there's one race that I've always wanted to do but never quite got around to it. La Primavera is about the same age as our Tour de Louisiane, and I remember teammates going over there to race back in the early 70s. The Tour de La is actually the oldest continuous stage race in the country, which makes both races de facto classics, I guess.

I'm looking forward to a nice quiet drive up to Auburn tomorrow morning. I'm one of those people who just likes to drive, especially on the highway. I never seem to get tired of it. Too bad I never got the chance to take many cross-country road trips like my family used to do when I was a kid.

Who knows, maybe I'll end up being one of those KOA motor home people in my old age!

Once I get the promoter and Chief Ref. from last weekend's race to clear up some USCF number confusion, I'll finally be able to get to work on the LCCS points standings, but it's looking like it may not be until Monday that I can do it. We shall see.

Crunch Time

Things at both work and play seem to be stacking up like a logjam this week and it is looking like it will be a long night at work tonight putting together a long capabilities statement for a grant collaboration that was supposed to have been done already by someone else. When I finally got a copy of what that person had done, I just shook my head. The best part is that, like many Mac users, this person decides to put headings in a font called "Apple Chancery." Brilliant choice for a collaborative document. The other 97% of computer users will therefore see some default Courier type of font. On top of that there's this ongoing issue with an inter-university collaboration that is causing some grief due to extraordinarily poor communication and it now has to be fixed after the award has been made, so there will be rebudgeting issues and retroactive payroll issues and a healthy dose of mistrust all around.

It was much cooler this morning - in the 40s - and although there was initially a smallish group for the levee ride, it eventually swelled to a reasonable size, which was good because it was pretty windy. I wasn't able to do the whole long ride today because of work, but as it turned out nobody else really wanted to ride the whole distance either so the group fired the retro rockets at "the dip," which got me back home early enough. That was nice, because I had not been looking forward to turning back early and then having to deal with the wind all by my lonesone on the way back.

I got the complete Rouge-Roubaix results from Shane this morning and got them up on the website around lunchtime. Three people e-mailed or called right away about mistakes in the results, but unless it's just a spelling type of error I'll have to refer them to the event's Chief Referee so he can investigate. Next, I have to go through all of the results and look up a bunch of USCF numbers that the promoter should have recorded and update the various spreadsheets that track the LCCS points, and then finally upload the results, along with a few modified web pages, to the LAMBRA webserver. I'll try and do that tomorrow, but this grant proposal will have to take priority for now, so we'll see how that goes.

Now I've got to go run over to the dentist to get my tiny little $700 crown glued onto what's left of one of my teeth. At least it won't be painful, except for the part where I have to listen to my lonely dentist try to engage me in conversation about football or something while various dental implements are hanging from my mouth.

Looks like I'll be making a solo drive up to Auburn AL on Saturday. It might turn out to be rather relaxing, assuming the old car cooperates. The meet is Saturday afternoon, so I might just stay around for dinner and then make the 5 hr drive back at night, stopping of course at every coffee machine along the way. I might at least be able to make the Sunday morning Giro ride that way, although if I'm too tired to drive I'll have to bunk in at whatever roadside motel I find.

Home Alone

Dropped The Wife off at the airport this morning at 5 a.m. to catch a flight to Tucson where she is working a meeting through the weekend. On the way back I dropped off about a thousand meeting flyers that we had spent a few hours working on (sticking on mailing labels and stamps) at the post office and still had plenty of time to iron a shirt before heading out to the training ride.

The 4:15 a.m. alarm sure had come fast, though. I guess I should have gone to bed earlier but I was fooling around with three laptops last night, none of which are quite fully functional. My usual workhorse Gateway has been sick lately and keeps freezing up. After some experimentation, I am beginning to suspect a device problem, specifically the modem or associated software, since it seems to occur only when I'm online. More research will be needed on that one, however. My usual backup laptop, an old Pentium 2 Dell that lacks a battery and functional charging system (after a co-worker spilled a cup of coffee onto the keyboard) and was rescued from the office a couple of years ago, suddenly stopped listening to the keyboard in mid-sentence a few days ago, so everything seems to work fine except that I can't type anything at all despite the fact that device manager doesn't indicate any problem with the keyboard. So after laptop number one locked up on me and laptop number two wouldn't let me type, I booted up laptop number three - The Daughter's old Pentium 2 Compaq from high school - which works OK except that it's very slow and you have to fiddle with the display sometimes to make it work (bad cable I guess) and the power cord connector on the computer end is bad and only works if you force the cord to bend in a specific direction, usually accomplished by wrapping it around the display a certain way and being careful not to move it. If there had been a fire at my house last night they would have found my charred remains tangled up in computer power cords and phone lines beside my bed. At any rate, I apparently have a very hard time accepting the demise of electronic devices. (Yeah, well OK, I know that probably extends to bike components and tires as well.)

So this morning's ride was cool enough for long tights but otherwise fairly nice, although the sun never managed to peek out from above the wall-to-wall cloud cover. Apparently the big surge in speed toward the end of yesterday's ride had been instigated by our visitor from Penn State and a couple of the guys were talking about that. Personally, I didn't have a problem with it at all since it was right at the end of the ride and it's always fun to kind of blow it all out at the end. I think Andy had brought us up to something like 34 mph before pulling off. Imagine that. A bike racer who likes to go fast. This is a surprise??

Anyway, all was good this morning until we were a few miles from the playground on the way back when I noticed my front tire going soft. I was in denial, though, and refused to look at it for a while until Clayton or Jeff said something about it. It was going down pretty slowly, though, so I made it to the playground before it bottomed out. Robin, whose Mercedes mini-van always seems to have a mini bike shop in the back, helped me change the flat and had even brought me a used tire with a nice slash in the sidewall because he knew I could sew in a boot and probably get another couple thousand miles out of it. As I rode home I noticed that the computer wasn't picking up speed any more. I guess the pickup got moved when I was fixing the flat.

Lots of action at work this week should keep me pretty busy. I was here 'till after 7 last night trying to sort a rather messy little inter-institutional grant collaboration controversy that could threaten some earmarks that we're working on for next year. The conference call about it this afternoon should be very interesting!

Pretty. Pretty Windy. Pretty Damned Windy!

A cool front blasted through yesterday afternoon dumping tons of water on us but leaving in its wake beautiful blue skies, moderate temps and a brutal North wind. The old legs weren't complaining very much as I rode out to meet the group for the long Tuesday ride. The turnout was a little lower than usual with maybe a dozen riders. The going was tough, especially on the way out with a strong and gusty crosswind much of the way. Rob was doing his own thing today, shooting off the front periodically to hammer out some longish intervals, then retreating to the safety of the wobbly back.

A visiting rider, Andy Munas from the Penn State cycling team was with us today on a bike that Robin loaned him for the duration. Penn State has one of the older and more established cycling teams and Andy turned out to be a quite capable rider. Toward the end of the ride things ramped up really fast for a few miles, taking the speed up to the low 30s and predictibly shattering the paceline about a mile before Jefferson Playground. At one point Rob pulls off at about 30 mph and gets a little irritated that Andy doesn't come around to take his pull. The problem was that the shifter on Andy's bike was sticky, as Robin had noticed yesterday in fact, and for a while he couldn't get it to downshift so he was spinning his ass off in something like a 53 x 17. Andy tried to explain but Rob had his earphones in and didn't hear a thing I guess and rode off into the sunrise. On the way home I took Andy for a little tour through Tulane campus since it'd be a shame to be in college and visit a city without checking out the local campus.

I'm hoping to get the complete results from Rouge-Roubaix from Shane some time today so I can work on getting the LCCS points updated. This weekend is up in the air for me since I'm supposed to be going up to Auburn for one of The Daughter's gymnastics meets and I haven't worked out exactly when I will have to leave. I'm sure I'll be able to get in a ride in the morning, but it will probably have to be earlier and shorter than the Giro.

I wonder if there's a group ride in Auburn on Sunday morning??

A Few Rouge Pics

Just to hold us over until we get some of the good ones. These were taken mostly by Kevin whenever he had a chance in-between feeding teammates. I took the ones at the hotel where the food was.

http://www.gnofn.org/~nobc//2005/images/rouge_rjl/rouge_rjl.html

I went out for a nice easy ride on the levee this morning with Joe and Robin. Robin was trying out a loaner bike he put together and was about to drop off to the guy from Penn State who is in town for a few days. I hope he rushed out and got in a nice ride this morning because the bad weather moved in here around 2:30 and it looks like lots of rain for a while. My legs are a bit sore, but they've been worse, so I think all will be well in a couple of days. My shoulders and upper back sure got a workout from my honking up the hills and doing all the body english needed to stay upright in the gravel yesterday. I uploaded the 20k TT results from a couple of weeks ago to the USCF Results and Rankings system. As usual, there were about ten mismatches between names and uscf numbers. I sure wish people would write legibly on their entry forms. It would save a whole lot of time. When I submit results, the system returns errors for all of the incorrect names and license numbers, so then I have to go look them up in the database and make the corrections before it will accept the file. BTW, the USAC has a new flash intro page on their website, which is a royal pain in the ass since clicking the "skip intro" link doesn't seem to work until it's loaded most of the page. Just for the record, I HATE flash intro pages on websites. I didn't go to the USCF website for entertainment. I went for information. So get the blasted flash stuff the hell out of my way, please.

Rouge Survivor

This year's Rouge-Roubaix lived up to it's reputation. The front half of the A race missed a turn and added a couple of bonus miles to their 100 mile race. Meanwhile, in the B race, one rider was broadsided by a deer (or a doe?) and knocked clear across the road. He got up out of the ditch and finished the race. Rob K. ran into a rider who had crashed by dropping his wheel into a crack in an old wooden bridge, breaking off his fork in the process and ending up down in the roadside ditch like Jan Ullrich. Frank Moak, after flatting in the A race and chasing back with the help of a couple of teammates, got all the way to the last dirt section when his rear derailleur exploded, getting tangled in his rear wheel and ripping off the derailleur hanger.

We started with about 65 riders in the A race and within a couple of miles of the start we were already going 29 mph. Things were still together when we hit the first dirt section at mile 25. The pace started out fairly reasonable- around 22 mph - but gradually increased. At mile 30 we were still in the gravel and I looked down at my computer which was reading 30 mph. It was definitely the fastest I've ever gone on dirt! The pace stayed brisk and when we hit the second gravel section around mile 65 I was near the front. The steep mile long climb at the start of this section split the pack big-time, and after a very hard but very disorganized chase a few of us who had lost a bit of ground finally regained contact with the front group which was itself chasing a solo rider who had escaped in the dirt.

The front group was down to about 16 riders by the time we hit the final and most severe dirt section at around mile 80. This section starts with a nearly impossible climb. A number of riders were quickly off their bikes. I was kind of stuck behind a couple of riders on the right side of the road who were climbing a bit slower than I would have liked. A string of five or six riders when flying up the climb on my left while I struggled to stay upright in the loose gravel at a speed of maybe 5 mph. My quads were screaming by the time I lumbered over the top but I was able to hang onto a small group of riders for most of the rest of this section, nearly getting dropped a couple of times in the hills. Finally, I hit the asphalt after letting a dangerous gap open between me and a group of four ahead. Chris was with me and helped a lot as we worked to close the gap. Our group of six would stay together for most of the remaining 10 or 12 miles, coming apart only in the last mile or so as a few of the stronger riders attacked.

I was pretty well toasted by the end, but a 12th place finish in this race is pretty satisfying for an old guy like me. I think I went through the equivalent of about 10 gel packs of Hammer Gel, but only about two bottles of water. The rest of the team did pretty well - I think everyone finished. My legs will be hurting tomorrow for sure and I think that an easy day or two is definitely in order!

Ridin' da Rouge

Heading out momentarily with Branden to scenic St. Francisville, a couple of hours up the river from New Orleans. Rouge-Roubaix starts at 8 a.m. and the weather is looking real nice. Nice weather could be a problem for some of us, though, because if it means that everyone wants to go hard and fast from the start, things will surely disintegrate early, making the last 25 miles even harder. Anyway, I'm all stocked up on HammerGel (the Orange flavor is my favorite), and should be OK with my two water bottles (one big, one regular) for most of the ride. After that it will be either dehydration or handups from kind strangers! As they say in AIM land,
g2g

On the Rooftop

It was kind of an odd morning today. First, I got up thinking it was Thursday instead of Friday, and by the time my brain got around to updating its calendar I was already dressed. Since we ride 25 minutes earlier on Thursdays, I had some time to kill and so the trash got put out early and the dog got fed early. When I first opened the door I was surprised to find that it was really quite foggy. Wasn't expecting that. If it's foggy at my house, you can bet it'll be twice as thick at the river, and it was, but at least the wind was negligible (which explains the fog, BTW). There were seven or eight of us this morning and we did a real easy ride, stopping once to fix a flat (mine) and another time to fix a sticky derailleur. Naturally I had to listen to people make fun of all the patches in my inner tube, but seriously, it is just plain wasteful not to patch and reuse those things as long as you can. I mean, I wouldn't generally use an old patched tube for racing (although I have been known to do so), but for training wheels used on the levee, why not?

I'm starting to think about Rouge-Roubaix and wondering what surprises it will hold for me this year. It looks like we will have a few riders racing it this year, but not as many as I'd like to see. For most riders like me, the first goal for this race is not to crash. The second goal is not to flat (very sketchy wheel support and only for the main group). The third goal is not to get dropped before the last dirt section. The Fourth goal is not to get lost, which can easily happen on this course if you get dropped, and the final, often unattainable goal, it to finish with one of the first two or three groups. Goal 1 is largely in the hands of fate, and Goal 2 is too, for that matter. Goal 3 will require an adequate stash of HammerGels and Powerbars to avoid bonking and the common sense to use them wisely. Goal 4 requires having a map in your pocket just in case and not being too bonked to read it, and Goal 5 requires, well, an Act of God and perhaps the lighting of a more than a few candles!

So after a morning training ride during which the fog hardly ever lifted, leaving me with wet shoes, useless glasses and water dripping from my helmet, it's now a rather nice day down here at the curious bend in the river that I call home. The photo above is the view from my rooftop office on Canal Street, looking down toward the French Quarter, which is why you don't see any of the big buildings of the business district (they're all well out of the photo to the right.). The whole French Quarter has very strong restrictions on building heights and such since it's an historic district. In the very lower right corner you can see the traffic on Canal Street, where luckily they never quite got around to digging the canal that was originally planned. If you look closely at the larger version of the image, you can just make out the steeple of St. Louis Cathedral to the left near the river. Some years ago we had a criterium through the French Quarter and raced straight across the front of the cathedral on the flagstone. It was a blast! Maybe some day somebody will manage to put together another crit there. This particular bend in the river is called Algiers Point and we're looking kind of downriver, which in this case happens to be more or less to the East. Indeed, people often joke about being able to sit on the levee at the French Quarter and watch the sun rise over the West bank!

Nearly Normal

It was cold and raining most of the night, continuing into the morning, so any thoughts of getting out on the road were completely washed away well before sunrise. It's always a little bit strange for me when I miss my morning training ride - even stranger when The Wife gets picked up for an early meeting and I have the car too. It means that I can pretend to be nearly normal, which means wearing nicer clothes, driving to work with one of those bug insulated cups of coffee, and not arriving with windblown hair that looks like it's seen better days. It's still cloudy and misty around here but if the forecast holds true it will gradually clear and give us a few days of fine weather. Guess I should go register for Rouge-Roubaix.

P O W E R !!

Not me, my bike computer. I finally got a replacement CR 2032 for the old ErgoBrain which immediately restored all neurological function, leaving only a mild case of amnesia - it forgot what time it was, but remembered all of the other settings. I guess this is about the fourth battery it's consumed. Wish I could get replacement parts for the deteriorating carbon-based unit in my head!

The temp was actually down in the upper 40s this morning and we had a nice steady paceline ride this morning up on the levee. On the way back we resorted to a circular (aka double) paceline so we could deal with the relentless crosswind. A good but uneventful training ride.

There are some photos from the races in Texas last weekend that the Herring guys, decked out in their spiffy new jerseys, raced in. In fact one is the TxBRA Featured Photo. There are a bunch more at:

Team Bicycles Inc.

Pictures by Jimmy

There was a story on wwl-tv.com about the triathlete who crashed on the levee last weekend when a dog chased her down. Broken teeth, bitten-through tongue, cut lip, facial lacerations, broken wrist, and broken bike. Probably the same stray dog that took Joe F. down last week in the same place. The SPCA is now out on the hunt. I don't know exactly what it is, but those triathletes sure seem to crash badly. I guess if you're going fast on aero bars on a bike that has most of the weight on the front wheel it's hard to go down gracefully.

It was kind of hectic morning after I got back from riding. I had promised I'd look over The Daughter's Genetics Lab Report first thing, so that took a little while. Just as I hit the "Send" button on that, Frank called with a problem setting up the Active.com listing for the upcoming Mississippi Gran Prix. While I was talking to him I got a couple of call-waiting beeps that turned out to be an "emergency" up at the congressional meetings going on in D.C. today. Sharon and the President (of Tulane) had a meeting in five minutes and wanted a listing of the top five NSF grants, so I fired up the laptop again and got it from the NSF database so I could e-mail it to her handheld. Took about seven minutes though.

Damn, I'm good.

Looks like I'll have to commit to Rouge-Roubaix soon. I'll have to see if I can get a ride up there so I don't have to leave The Wife stranded all day.

One of Those Days

Man, for some reason I was just not feeling very strong today. Once the morning group coalesced around Jefferson Playground, Jeff and Ronnie shot past the group on their TT bikes with Ronnie on the front. I started to chase, kinda, but they were flying and when I looked back for help there was just air, so I eased up until the group, which had been caught off-guard, caught up. At first there wasn't a real concerted chase, but after a short while a gap opened and it was just Rob and me. That's when I knew I was in for a hard ride. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I hate anything that even looks like I'm being dropped, but I wasn't feeling too hot this morning at all. So Rob was doing a lot of the work and I was just pulling through to give him a break; trying not to let the pace slow down too much, which wasn't so easy since my computer was running so low on electrons that the LCD was just a grey blank rectangle. Even so, we were not making up much ground on the aero duo that was a good 40 seconds ahead of us. It wasn't until we were well out of Jefferson Parish that they seemed to ease up a bit and we finally caught. Rob said later that he was pretty impressed with Ronnie's speed on the TT bike. Personally, I was pretty impressed with Rob's speed on the road bike. So I guess people are starting to think seriously about our upcoming 2-person Time Trial.

Although it seemed like there was little wind on the way out this morning, by the time we were half-way back it had picked up considerably, and naturally it was in our faces. The group stayed mostly together, although there were usually just a handful of guys rotating at the front with the rest content to hang on. I would take a few pulls in the rotation and then drop back for a rest every now and then. When the pace would get too fast, the guys in the recovery line would just kind of stay there so eventually the last guy would take his pull and nobody would come through for a while while the riders reshuffled themselves into a revised paceline. Donald seemed to be kind of keeping an eye on the front and whenever it was in danger of splitting he would pull things back together. Eventually I started feeling better, but I just don't know why all cylinders didn't seem to be firing this morning. I think three people asked me if I was doing Rouge-Roubaix this morning. I guess the answer is still "probably." If you want to find the Rouge-Roubaix website, just Google on "stabbing yourself in the forehead with a fork." It's usually the first hit! One of my writeups on the race is on the Baton Rouge Cycling website.

Sounds like fun, huh?