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???