Bit of a Hard One

Yesterday afternoon I had every intention of making it out to the lakefront for the Wednesday training race. Since I have to ride the commuter back home, change clothes, jump on the racing bike, and then ride the 8 miles out to Lakeshore Drive, it means that I have to leave work no later than 5 p.m. in order to make it out there for 6:00. At 5:45 I was ready to go, but when I looked out the window to the West there was a huge black cloud dumping rain on much of the Western part of the city. I checked the online Doppler radar, but it wasn't much help. These thunderstorms weren't moving, they were just appearing and disappearing at random all over the place. Looking out toward the lakefront from my 25th floor perch, it looked dry, but the thunderstorm was definitely threatening to expand in that direction.

So at 5:00 I decided to go. As I crossed over the interstate on the Broad Street overpass, I could see the line on the pavement where the rain started - maybe four or five blocks away. Sure enough, as I turned to the West onto Fontainebleau Drive the rain started. It was light at first, but as I got closer to the house it got heavier and by the time I was a couple of blocks away I was dripping wet and splashing through puddles. Ah, yes. This is why I have full fenders on my commuter! The rain continued for quite a while, and my 5:30 window for making it out to the lakefront in time slammed shut in my face as my thoughts turned to "what's for dinner?" As it turned out, there were about 15 people out at the lakefront and although they did get rained on, they had a good training race anyway. Dinner was chicken gumbo with okra, by the way. When I asked this morning if it had rained out there, Tim replied:

"It rained depending on where you were on the Lakefront. It pretty much rained the whole time, some spots were real windy and stormy, and some spots there was a slight mist. It actually was pretty fun, and we had a nice turnout considering the conditions. There were a few no shows. So Randy, since you didn't make it out yesterday evening to the training race, does that classify you as a fair weather rider?;)"

So anyway, this morning's long levee ride had a decent turnout too. Courtney and I stayed on the front at an easy pace until Rob couldn't take it any longer and went flying past after we passed under the bridge. Things ramped up quickly at that point and it was a pretty fast and hard ride today from my perspective. Toward the end, Donald, who had been conserving on the way out, launched a couple of little attacks, so that was a nice workout. With the combination of heat and early morning humidity, I went through my lone full water bottle before the end and arrived home thoroughly wet and dirty from the combination of sweat and water spray from the other bikes.

Checking the results of the USCF Masters National Championships, currently being held in Park City, Utah, I saw that area rider Frank Moak, aka "The Great Balded One" placed 20th in his age group, which is pretty impressive. It looks like it's a really hard course with some top-level competition. I'm sure he'll be riding the criterium later in the week too. I noticed that one of the Memphis Motor Werks guys made it onto the podium in his road race, and one of the Texas guys not only won, but got his finish line photo plastered all over the USAC website. All his jersey had on the front was "San Jose." I hope all of those potential sponsors who didn't sign up see that! Anyway, the USAC website has been ridiculously slow lately. I looked up the results from the 50-54 age group (mine) and saw a lot of familiar names. Some of these guys have been racing as long as I have, but at a consistently higher level. In the 50-54 field was Wayne Stetina and Kent Bostick, for example. I'm pretty sure they both have a whole box full of national championship medals. Bostick was on the Olympic team a few years back. George Heagerty finished pretty far back - I wonder what happened there. Tom Bain, with whom I shared the podium some years ago at Masters Nats, is George's teammate, and he was 5th. David LeDuc was in there too - I think he won nationals once or twice at least. Judging by the finish times, it looks like most of the group stayed together.

Ridin' and Railin'

This morning I tried to sneak in a few extra minutes of much-needed sleep and ended up leaving the house a few minutes late. Just as I hit River Road, I saw John climbing the levee and followed him up the access road maybe 30 seconds back. We were about two minutes late and the group was already out of sight down the road, so we rode a little 2-man Time Trial together at a moderate pace. Along the way we picked up a recumbent that tagged along behind in our draft as we took our long pulls at 22-24 mph, and when we slowed to meet the group on its return trip the lowrider guy thanked us for the ride. Throughout the ride there was a huge black line of clouds hanging low around the city, but somehow we avoided the rain.

As we got back to the pumping station I split off and started down the access road to River Road and then realized that there was a train at the railroad crossing heading the same direction I was. I shifted into my lowest gear and climbed back up the levee in the foot-high grass, but never quite caught the group again. Both they and I were racing the train, trying to make it to the next crossing first. As it turned out, the train slowed down considerably and I had plenty of time to cross ahead of it at the Corps of Engineers facility. The weather was still looking sketchy, and in fact I ended up riding to work in a light drizzle; an extra pair of pants in my bag just in case.

As usual, there's been some controversy about the LCCS points. The Tiger Cycling club in Baton Rouge had three junior women and one master 55+ rider at the district road races and one of them can't understand why they don't get LCCS points for that, despite the fact that there's no such class in the series. I wrote a long dissertation about how the LCCS worked, but I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other. The problem is that the LCCS just has a "junior" category that is not broken down by gender, but the USCF district championships are supposed to have separate races. Anyway, the bottom line is that under the current LCCS rules there are no points for junior women unless they decide to ride with the junior men. There are only three of them, all sisters, who as far as I know have never raced before. I think someone told them that if they all went out and bought USCF licenses and rode their races (basically all by themselves) then they would get a lot of points for their club. Somehow that doesn't seem quite right to me.

So the weather is looking like typical Summer around here. There are lots of big cumulus clouds scattered about and it's anybody's guess where, when and if it will rain. The weather forecasters are clueless when it's like this so they just rubber-stamp every day with a 30% chance of rain. I'd love to make it out to the lakefront for the training race this afternoon, so I hope the weather cooperates.

Much Mo' Bettah

Considering how sore I was Monday morning, I was a little surprised how good my legs felt today. They felt much better, although I still had some lingering lung issues. As often happens when I ride hard under very hot and dry conditions, every time I would take a really deep breath, my lungs would hurt and I would want to cough. By the end of the ride, though, even that seemed to have disappeared.

Trying to ignore the blatantly obvious lesson from last weekend, I have still not broken down and dismantled my shifters. One reason, of course, is that once I take them apart, it will likely be a few days before I can get all of the necessary parts for a proper rebuild, which means I won't be able to ride the bike for a while. I could always go ahead and order everything ahead of time, and in fact that's what I will probably do. In the meantime, though, I'll do what I did last night, which was to spray liberal amounts of Triflo into the blasted thing.

So this morning I started out with that lovely Triflo smell (amyl acetate, I think, aka "banana oil") wafting from my handlebars and little drips of it occasionally appearing on my fingers as it continually oozed out from the underside of the shifters. Anyway, they were working well enough. The smell of Triflo always reminds me of my graduate school days when I used a lot of amyl acetate to dissolve the plastic that I used to coat tiny electron microscope grids so I could get the bacteriophage DNA to stretch out nicely on them. I still miss being in the lab.

The long Tuesday training ride was missing a few of the usual workhorses today, and as a result the pace was rather civilized. Fast, to be sure, but under control. Matt C. flatted on the way out and Robin and I stopped to assist so the group wouldn't have to stop. Robin got it fixed pretty fast and we rode moderate paceline until we met the group just as they were getting going after the turnaround. Although I was still being cautious, I was pleased that my legs seemed to have recovered quite a bit from last weekend's punishment, and I was having no problem taking my pulls as the group motored along at 26-27 mph. There was a near-disaster this morning as the group made the swing down the levee at "the dip" where the bike path drops down to street level to bypass some pipes. Somebody must have eased up suddenly as the line went through a little "S" curve and the next thing I knew there was one rider flying down the levee on the grass. Luckily, he neither hit any immovable objects nor slid out. This all happened near the back of the group and the riders up front never knew about it so they just kept pounding back up the levee. The rest of us eased up for a moment to see what had happened, but when I saw the gap opening ahead I told Matt "looks like the statute of limitations has already run out on this one." We had to chase pretty hard to close that gap, and I don't think the rider who did the little "Lance Armstrong" thing down the levee ever regained contact.

Back at work we interviewed five people yesterday for an editor position we currently have open. Three were good, one was OK and one was kind of a dud. IMHO, the position is somewhat mis-titled, as this person will likely be doing a lot of other stuff and not a whole lot of what one would normally think a "senior editor" would do. We've got another whole batch of resumes to sift through and another round of interviews to schedule before we narrow it down to three or four to call back for more in-depth interviews. This is the first time I've ever had to interview people who have degrees in things like English and Journalism. The really interesting thing about it is how many of them had glaring grammatical errors in their cover letters. One would have to take that as a bad sign for a position with a title containing the word "editor," right? I have threatened to ask each of them to spell Ophthalmology just for kicks.

Yes, yes, I know I'm throwing stones from a glass house, but I never claimed to be an English major!

OTB at Hodges - The Hell of the La.

The infamous Hodges Gardens course lived up to its reputation this weekend, reducing otherwise capable cyclists to dehydrated cramping lumps of expressionless meat. I should know. I was one of them.

Arriving at the course around 1 p.m. after a 5-hour drive, I spotted a space underneath the hay shed near the start where there was a bit of shade. Although a number of our key guys were missing, by the time everyone arrived we had a decent-sized contingent of NOBC masters, and the combined 35+/45+ field comprised about 25 riders. For a course in the middle of nowhere with dangerously bad asphalt and a reputation for abject brutality, this was a pretty good showing.

I immediately discovered that I had left my water bottles at home, but scrounged around and found a couple rolling around in the car. All bike racers have two things in their cars: water bottles and safety pins. I did a little warmup spin and didn't fail to notice that Russ W. was looking particularly psyched for this race. I also noticed that I was not, but often I get more into the race after it has started, so nothing to worry about there, right? We watched the end of the Cat. 5 race in which our teammates took 1st and 2nd, and then lined up in the sweltering heat for our start. We were due for nine laps of punishment on this course, which basically means nine climbs of the "big hill." This course is all about the big hill that comes up once every 5.4-mile lap. There have been times when I've looked for to those climbs and the inevitable attacks that they provoke. This was not one of those times, but nonetheless I was feeling OK and was ready to respond to whatever the other guys might throw down. Well, throw down they did, and on the very first time up the hill. The initial part of the climb was brisk, but not too bad, but when we hit the false-flat section I had a feeling something was about to happen. Sure enough, Russ attacked hard. I went with it, along with a few others, coming over the top I guess in the top 4 or so. As we rounded the curve everyone shifted into the big ring. Well, almost everyone. You see, when I went to shift, the lever would not budge! The combination of dry air and accumulated grunge must have played havoc with my shifters, and as the lead riders pulled away, I was left fiddling with my shifter. Finally I got it into the big ring, having drifted half-way back through the string of riders. Up the road were two riders who were pulling away and I could hear Russ on his radio encouraging his teammate to keep the pressure on. The rest of the pack seemed to be in a state of shock and confusion, not having expected an attack within the first three miles. A couple of my teammates came past and made sure I got their wheels. I remember Russ being at the front of the group letting the gap open between the two escapees and the pack. He could see that I was struggling and radioed ahead to his teammate, telling him to punch it. I started to chase, but I knew what was about to happen. Once the gap had widened enough, Russ jumped hard to bridge. I wasn't surprised and tried to go with him, but couldn't hang on. All this time I'm conscious of this awful unfamiliar noise coming from my bike. The rest of the pack started to come back together finally, but there was little effort being made to mount a serious chase.

I started looking for the source of the noise and discovered that my rear brake was so loose it was about to fall off the bike. The caliper was literally bouncing back and forth off of the rim. I thought perhaps the bolt had broken, and fearing that the whole thing would end up in my rear wheel, I dropped back where I wouldn't kill anyone if it did.

As we went through the feed zone, I asked Jason, who was feeding us after having just won the Cat. 5 race, for an allen wrench. The next time up the hill, I went to shift down to a small cog after the climb, and found that now the rear shifter was locked up. Geez! I was really about to just hang it up at that point. I guess it was the third time through the start/finish that I got the allen wrench and dropped off the back in order to try and tighten the brake bolt. It took forever - I probably should have just stopped and gotten off the bike to do it - and by the time I got going again the pack was pretty far ahead and the brake was rubbing lightly on the rim. I chased the all the way around the bottom of the course and made up a lot of time the next time up the climb, and then, of course, couldn't shift into anything smaller than the 19 tooth cog. Well, that was it! I was about ready to just quit at that point, but as I went past the start/finish Jason was there handing me up a cold water bottle, so I just settled down into an easy pace.

Every time I would come up the big hill and try to shift back down to a small cog, the shifter would hang, leaving me with a choice of either the 23 or the 21. If I kept fooling with the shifter sometimes it would eventually work. After a while, I tried spraying water from my bottle into the lever, and discovered that once it soaked in a bit the shifter would start working again UNTIL I got up to the top of the big hill. Over the remaining laps I gradually caught and passed a few riders who had blown up and ended up finishing 9th. Both the break and the field ultimately shattered before the finish. Thanks to Jason for all the water bottles. I would definitely have quit without them! Now I just needed to decide if I wanted to even start the Cat. 1,2,3 race the next day. That evening as I was eating dinner with Shane, I saw Woody and asked him if he had any spray lube, which luckily he did, so later that night I straightened out the offending brake caliper and sprayed the hell out of the shift levers. They were still sticky, but seemed a little better.

Sunday morning felt nice and I decided to go ahead and register for the Cat. 1,2,3 race with the intention of doing maybe five or six laps of the 16-lap race, basically for the exercise. At the line there were only 14 riders. Rather sad, actually. Things started out OK and the shifters were baulky but mostly functional, so I hung in until there was an attack the third time up the hill that strung things out rather badly. I wasn't really interested in going with any breaks, since I had my eyes set on that cold Coke waiting in my ice chest, and as we came over the top a little group of five riders formed. The real race was up the road, so this little group cruised on for a while, eventually dropping first one rider and then me. Having done this race before, I knew I'd never finish at their pace anyway. After a few solo laps, I eventually got together with Josh from Baton Rouge and Woody from New Orleans. Both were in pretty sad shape like me, so we kept it easy with no more of a goal than to finish. It wasn't easy. Thankfully the officials had taken on the task of feeding me water bottles! We lost Josh a couple of laps before the finish. By that time Woody and I were climbing the big hill at maybe 5-6 mph. and struggling to maintain 17 on the rare flats. I hadn't put the bike in the big ring for over an hour. On the second-to-last lap we could see one of the riders ahead of us walking his bike up the hill. When we caught up to him he said he had been cramping up on the climb. He stayed with us for a little while, but when the road flattened out a little bit he rode off, intent on snagging that placing, I guess. On the last lap we could again see him walking up the hill. So I guess we accomplished two things. We didn't have to walk up the hill, and we weren't last!

Last Minute Plannin'

Well, whuddya know! I have internet access this morning. The mail server is down and Tulane's main webserver is down, but I can still get to the web. A big "nice job" to the Data Services techies for not leaving me bound and gagged today.

So I guess I'll drive the old Volvo out to the middle of nowhere, aka Hodges Gardens, for the La./Ms. district championship Road Race. With the Masters races on Saturday and the categorized races on Sunday, it's hard to find anyone who wants to stay both days. I saw Amy and Brandon this morning and they're heading up Saturday morning too, so maybe we'll link up and spring for a hotel room at the scenic Emerald Hills Resort across the street. Maybe I can even convince another person or two to make the trip. Hodges Gardens is really, and I mean really, in the middle of nowhere, about 15 miles North of Fort Polk, which was most certainly located where it is because the Army figured it was so far in the middle of nowhere that the neighbors wouldn't mind the daily bombardment from the tank artillery. That means that Hodges is actually on the outskirts of nowhere. There are only two reasons why we keep having the road races there. The first is that the course has a series of three hills that are guaranteed to split the field up. The second is that it's all on private property so it's relatively easy and cheap to hold a day and a half of races there. Unfortunately, the course is so hard for people to get to and the terrain is so difficult that the turnout is usually quite low. And then, there's the road surface. What was once a nice smooth asphalt road, maybe 25 years ago, is now a rough, worn-down macadam strip offering little more than unrelenting vibration. If there's anything loose on your bike, this course will find it. Robin gave me a handful of Gu packets this morning after the ride, so between that and a bunch of PowerBars, I should be OK fuel-wise. I'm not as confident about my fitness level, however. Having spent the Tour de La weekend completely off the bike, it's been a long time since I've seen any real racing and I feel neither sharp nor fit.

Down Time - Pickin' Places

So the impending move of Tulane's entire Data Systems across town will mean that my regular e-mail ID will be unavailable starting around 6 am tomorrow and won't be back up until some undetermined time during the weekend. I'm guessing I won't have dialup access at all, but we'll see. I'm not sure I can go three whole days without internet access. Meanwhile, with some help from a couple of folks in Texas and the photos of the Cat. 4 finish that were sent to me, I've gone ahead and added placings for the Tour de La Cat. 4 Crit. down to 11th. I'm sure they're not perfect, but I think they're pretty close. Close enough for upgrading purposes, I think. Unfortunately, I don't have a good photo of the finish of the Cat. 5 race. The one that I thought was it looks like it was probably the second half of the sprint because none of the guys we picked in the top 4 are in there as far as I can tell.

Spacemen in the Yard - Not Quite the Long Ride

It really feels like mid-summer now. The a/c runs all night and the morning air is thick and hazy and warm. We had a big group for the long ride this morning and we weren't too far down the road before Eddie or somebody up front had us going 29 mph. I was trying to avoid doing any long-term tissue damage today, taking short pulls and drafting a lot, and when the speed got high about ten miles in, I noticed a little bounce as I was spinning in a lower gear than usual. I knew what that meant, of course. As soon as the pace eased up a bit, I pulled out of the line and started dropping back. Robin noticed and dropped back with me to help fix the impending flat, while I told the other guys to go ahead and that we'd catch them on the flip side. So we stopped and took our time fixing the flat, already dripping sweat all over the place, and then cruised along easily until we saw the group on its return trip. I did end up taking a few fairly hard pulls in order to keep the pace steady, but I made them short.

Today was the day that Dawn Wesson's mosquito research team was supposed to be hunting mosquitoes in my back yard, and when I looked out the window I saw two people in those tyvec space suits, complete with mosquito netted hats, holding these cute little hand-held vaccum mosquito guns. Perfect Mardi Gras costumes, I thought, as I ran to get the camera. Alas, I had left my memory card at work, so I couldn't get any pics.

I guess I need to get busy and figure out how I'm going to get my sorry ass up to Hodges Gardens for the district road race this weekend. I suppose I could take my car, but with the a/c operating only when it feels like it, it might be a little uncomfortable. We'll see.

The Tuesday Rush

I found the clock through one half-open eye as my brain stumbled into wakefulness. The bright red "6:04" made its way down my optic nerve and pounded on the firmly shuttered window to my brain. Suddenly the neurons started to fire and I jumped up. Geez! Ten minutes to get to the levee or I'll miss the training ride. On the bike in 4 and on the drops in 5 pushing the 39 x 13 down Carrollton Avenue. I arrive dripping sweat one minute late and there's just John there, waiting. I ask if we're late or early but the look on his face tells me he hasn't a clue. Just then we see a few riders coming our way and I know we're on time but everyone else is late.

The group was ultimately pretty big. I guess at least 15, complete with The Howard surging up to 29 or 30 mph every time he came to the front, which always seemed to be when I was trying to latch back onto the end of the paceline. Don't you just hate that? You take your pull, move over and start to drop back, anticipating the relative comfort of the draft at the back, but then you realize that you're going to have to be going 3 mph faster than you were when you were at the front just to catch the wheel of the last guy.

There was a flat on the way out and those in front coasted along for a while, not wanting to stop and suffer the sweat-in-the-eyes deluge that comes with a sudden stop in the summer. Pretty soon, the statute of limitations ran out and the group ahead of us started rolling faster. Courtney said "lets to, they can catch us at the turnaround" and a few minutes later the paceline was going strong again.

On the way back a little group rolled off the front while the rest of us were being civilized and waiting for everyone to regroup after the turnaround. Courtney was up there. She has a real knack for staying on the right side of the gaps. By the time we got a paceline going again, they had 20 seconds or so, and our group wasn't really in chase mode yet. When I came to the front the gap had grown slowly to maybe 30 seconds and I tried to lift the pace gradually a couple of mph. At 26-27 we were starting to close and with most of the group taking pulls we reeled in the escapees within a couple more miles. It was a pretty good ride today. Hot, of course.

When I got home I washed out all of the gatorade coolers from the Tour de La, enjoying the cool water on my feet, and rode in to work. It was already in the mid-80s.

So I've almost got all of the post-TDL chores wrapped up. The Chief Referee's report is ready to be mailed - just waiting for the 4-figure check for the USCF. I added more of the masters crit placings that Shane sent me today from the videotape, and I uploaded about 10 megabytes of photos from Malcolm and Laura. I also updated all of the LCCS points standings.

A f t e r m a t h

I swear, it's way harder to work a race than to race a race! The Tour de Louisiane went quite well this year, and we didn't have to dial 911 even once! By the time Mark dropped me and all of the club's race promoting stuff off at my house it was close to 6 p.m. on Sunday. In the aftermath of the event, my basement is a bit of a mess, but hopefully I'll get down there tonight to wash out the gatorade coolers and put everything back in its place.

Friday night registration went smoothly as usual and I guess we handed out about half of the race numbers. The Cat. 5 race was full, but one or two kind masters Cat. 5s switched to the masters race in order to make more room for the 5s, which was nice. In the end I think we went a few riders over the limit out of sheer pity for those who had travelled long distances.

It was about 3 a.m. Friday night when I was rudely awakened from my slumber at the Super8 by a clap of thunder that could have raised the dead. It was storming outside, which seems to be SOP for Friday before the Tour de La lately. By morning the rain had slackened to a light drizzle and as we started off the first few riders around 8:15 the skies were already starting to look better. The TT went fairly smoothly, although one rider (one of OURS, no less!) missed his start by maybe 10 seconds and another had some sort of mechanical, probably a pulled-over rear wheel, just after starting that cost him over 30 seconds. Starting over 180 riders at 30-second intervals does not leave much room for distraction. There is just enough time for me to give each rider a reminder about the course distance, the fact that the road is open to traffic, and the need to ride single-file on the way back. All-in-all the times seemed to be a little slow despite the absence of any significant wind. As soon as the last rider took off, I headed for the truck and fired up the computer. Mark and I got all of the rider information, start times and finish times entered by the time we had to leave for the road race, and I printed everything out in the truck as we made the 45-minute drive to the road course.

By the time we got to the RR course, it was starting to heat up and the rain was long gone, but the scattered clouds were keeping the temperatures from getting completely out of hand. The parking was especially tight this year. There was the usual organized chaos in the half-hour before the start when we're searching for last-minute corner marshals, lining up the lead motorcycles, giving instructions to the local police, and getting the follow cars and wheel trucks organized. Keith, Mark and Elliot handled the confusing like pros, though, and the first race started pretty much on time. I was really relieved that there were no major crashes. In fact the only one I know about was a couple of riders who went down in the Cat. 5 race. We had a whole bunch of new GMRS radios which worked out pretty well. We had very clear communications with most of the following vehicles when they were a couple of miles from the finish, and were able to relay that information to the downstream police car so he could block off the oncoming traffic for the sprints. The place-picking was difficult because all but the masters race ended in a big, charging field sprint. Shane had the video camera working, though, so we were able to get places for almost everybody later that night. I think we had all of the results pasted up in the hotel window by about 9 p.m., which is pretty good for this sort of thing.

Sunday's criteriums looked like a lot of fun. As usual, I spend much of the time squinting in front of a barely readable laptop screen working on the results. Everything would have gone very smoothly except for the unusual number of ties on GC. In stage races, the standard method of breaking ties on GC is by taking the sum of the individual stage placings and giving the better placing to the person with the lowest number. The problem with that, of course, it that you need to know where everyone placed in the middle of the pack. It took quite a while for Shane and Adam to resolve the seven tied riders that we had in the top 12 of the Cat. 1,2,3 race. You see, often you can't read each rider's number on the videotape, so you have to make inferences about who they are based on their team jerseys, bikes, wheels, etc. It is an imprecise methodology. Anyway, the delay wasn't really all that long, and most people were crammed into the Acme Oyster House where we do the awards ceremony, enjoying the a/c and beer and shrimp po-boys. Mike Lew had gotten flowers and champagne for the winners, and even brought along an absolutely beautiful podium girl to hand them out (a photo of whom I regret I didn't get). Afterward, a few of us hung around and had our traditional post-race lunch before heading back across the lake and into reality. I got the results up on the website around 6:30 or so and called it a day.

Everyone in the club worked hard on this event, and I think that the riders enjoyed it. From what I saw of the races, it looked like the Cat. 4s, Masters and Cat. 1,2,3s had particularly competitive races this year. And that's pretty much what it's all about.

Now I just need to fill out the post-event paperwork, add the USCF numbers to the resutls spreadsheet so I can reformat a copy for uploading to the USCF Results and Rankings database, correct all of the club names so that they match the official USCF club names, and of course update the LCCS rankings. I figure that'll take me three or four days, easy.

Official Weekend

Well it's time for me to dust off my old official's hat and spend the weekend in a hot and sweaty dead run as Chief Ref for the Tour de Louisiane. In my case, the term "official's hat" has special meaning because there actually is one that I've been wearing to officiate the Tour since the days when Banana Republic was a funky mail-order company that actually sold surplus military clothes - but that's a whole other story. I've spent all morning printing out release forms, organizing entries, replacing batteries and generally getting all of my stuff together for a weekend that will probably include everything from torrential rain to sizzling 98 degree heat. Why do I keep doing this?

Online registration ended last night with 140 riders registered and I'd be surprised if we didn't see another 50 or 60 for late registration, which will make it the biggest ever, I think. I've been fielding questions all day from riders trying to get early TT numbers and that sort of thing, and I'm not looking forward to having to turn away the Cat. 5s who will certainly turn up on Saturday not realizing that there's a field limit in Cat. 5 mass-start races. Mark's coming over to pick me and all my stuff up in about half an hour. We'll be handling the Friday night registration and spending the night at the hotel. Hopefully a lot of riders will come to pick up their numbers so I can get at least half of the field entered into the computer before race day because it's a real fire drill trying to get the TT results done en route to the Road Race while in the car. If we end up with 200+ riders, it will be very tight, time-wise, getting results posted an hour before the 1 p.m. Road Races.

Naturally, there is a big line of severe weather heading this way - complete with tornados. It should mostly blow through this evening and tonight, but they've got a 50% chance of rain in the forecast for tomorrow morning until around 9 a.m. That means it might be a little messy for the time trial, but if all goes as expected, the Road Races should be hot and dry, which means my socks will probably try out some time around 3 p.m.

I sure wish I was riding this race instead of standing on the sidelines with three stopwatches around my neck, two tape recorders in my pockets and a clipboard in my hand baking in the afternoon sun hoping that nobody does anything stupid out there on the road. Luckily we have a very experienced group of people in the club who have done this for quite a few years, so we will do the best we can managing this largely uncontrollable situation!

Sure am looking forward to that cold Turbodog on Sunday afternoon!

Good and Edgy

I must be finally starting to acclimatize to this hot weather because for no apparent reason I felt pretty good this morning. We had at least 15 on the long levee ride, and it didn't take too long for the pace to ramp up pretty good into the light headwind. It was one of those days when I seemed to feel better the faster we went. Everything felt smooth and buttery and controlled, like it was in slow-motion.

The old Ergobrain rolled over 44,000 miles yesterday, so it seems I've maintained something a bit above 11,000 per year for the last four years. I can tell you one thing. If I'd been doing these kinds of miles back when I was 25 I would have been kicking ass, but back in the day 300 mile weeks were more than rare and I was usually quite satisfied with 150. Now I guess a lot of those miles just go to waste for lack of sufficient HGH, testosterone, sleep and various other youthful juices.

Toward the end of the ride today things got going pretty fast and I took a lot of pulls as we rolled along at 27-28 mph. Then The Donald came flashing past and as Phil Liggett would say "things hotted up." Jay and Dan and BJ went with him and I tagged along too. Anyway, I ended up on Donald's wheel at the end, and when he split off to go down the levee at the playground, I coasted for a little while, passing the playground, and then looked back for the rest of the guys so we could spin back into town together. Nobody was back there, however, so I figured they had all rolled down the levee and stopped at the Playground, so I went ahead and continued on home down Oak Street and past all of the parked coffee-drinker cars lined up near Carrollton where there are three such establishments in a two-block span. It's nice to see Oak St. thriving, actually. It was once the business center of the town of Carrollton. Later, when I talked to Robin on the phone to ask him to pick up a bunch of GMRS radios for the road race, he told me that right after that last surge one of the guys (Matt Howitz) bumped wheels and went down, breaking his collarbone. Geez!! So now I feel lousy that I didn't know and just rode off into the sunset, or sunrise as the case may be, like I couldn't be troubled to stop and help.

I am feeling very edgy today because of the upcoming Tour de La. I skipped the training race last night so I could print out the first batch of 85 release forms for the pre-registered riders. Since then, we've gotten over 30 more pre-registrations. Last I checked, I think we were up to about 117 and there were maybe two spots left in the Cat. 5 race. All of the race numbers and pins arrived this morning, along with a package of one-day license forms, annual license forms, etc. from the USCF. Robin is on his way across the lake right now to patch potholes and generally check out the course one last time. Tonight I'll have to get all my stuff together so we're ready for Friday night registration, which is always actually kind of fun because nobody is in a big hurry. Then bright and early Saturday morning the shit will hit the fan, as they say.

The weather for the weekend is looking like standard summer pattern, which means hot with a random chance of thunderstorms. Margaret Orr, one of the local weatherpersons, is saying:
Saturday-Tuesday: Mostly clear and slightly more comfortable. Lows in the low-mid 70s. Highs will be in the upper 80s to around 90. Rain chance 20%. The Weather Channel is sticking with 40% chance of rain. We shall see. At any rate, it doesn't look like a wash-out or anything and may well turn out to be dry and not too terribly hot on Saturday, which would be nice.

The Tour Approaches

It's hot and humid and I felt particularly sluggish this morning as I rode over to the levee to meet the group. I think perhaps I've just got a lot of other things on my mind, not the least of which is the upcoming Tour de La. This always happens the week before the Tour!

We use Active.com to handle our online registrations, and I get an e-mail notice every time someone registers. Those notices are getting more and more frequent and online registrations are running well above last year. Whether that translates into more entries overall, or just fewer race-day entries remains to be seen. I'm hoping for the latter, myself. It's looking like the Cat. 5 field may fill up before race day. As of right now (around 1 p.m. on Wednesday) there are only 13 slots left in the 50-rider field. We've got 82 registered so far, compared to less than 60 last year at this time. Should be interesting! This is always the point at which I stop worrying about whether we'll have enough riders and start worrying about whether we'll have too many to handle. In particular, I worry about the fairly narrow country roads that we use for the road race, all of which are open to traffic. The center line rule is difficult to enforce sometimes and often it's just the luck (bad) of the draw whether a rider gets hit with a penalty or not. The one thing that gives me some confort is the presence of the motorcycle refs.

Oh Man, it's Summer

10:30 last night. I look over at the outside thermometer. 85 F. The air-conditioners are working hard and have just started to get the upper hand after having been off during the day and having to cool down a house that was around 86F.

This morning at 6:15 it was still around 80 and the air was thick with moisture. An easy spin out to meet the Levee group had me already sweaty and once today's big training ride group really got going there was sweat flying everywhere. That's the problem with riding around here in the summer. In most places there's at least a reasonable proportion of your sweat that actually evaporates and does what it's supposed to do, but here it just drips. It drips from your nose onto your top tube and it drips from your helmet and forehead into your glasses and it drips from your arms onto your handlebars and into your brakes and shifters.

Despite the impending Tour de Louisiane, the pace on the way out was fast, fluctuating between 27 and 30 mph with a couple of guys on TT bikes. Rob's got his aero bars so low I think he's in danger of taking skin off of his nose. Todd was there, all bandaged up, describing in detail how when he got home after Sunday's crash he found he could insert the whole tip of his index finger into the gaping hole in his elbow. David was out trying out a used Litespeed Arenberg that he's thinking about buying. His copious and corrosive sweat has almost dissolved his current steel steed and so Ti is particularly attractive to him right now.

When we stopped on the way back to fix one of the levee ride's frequent flats, the heat was intense and I'm sure we left a pool of sweat on the asphalt. By the time I got home the local news weatherman was already reporting a temperature of 88F at Audubon Park. This makes commuting to work a little less convenient. When it's hot like this, as it will be until September, I pack my shirt and undershirt, and ride in whatever old T-shirt is handy. Since I don't really want to be riding up the elevator in a sweaty T-shirt alongside the Vice-President and other people to whom I'd just as soon prefer not to explain how I get to work, I change shirts in the Bike Room, leaving the sweaty one draped across the bike to dry. The really important thing is to have a very cold drink with me so I can cool down on the way up to the office. I usually put a soft drink (that would be a "soda" to y'all) in the freezer as soon as I get back from my training ride so it can chill down while I shower and change.

Registrations are going well for the Tour de Louisiane. I think we're up to around 55 or 56 online registrations right now, which is a bit ahead of this time last year. I always worry that the Cat. 5 race will fill up and I'll have to send people away on race day, since there's a 50-rider limit for that category. Right now there are about 23 slots left, so I'm sure the field will fill up. I just hope I don't have to disappoint anyone. A couple of times a day I've been updating a special page on the website showing registrations, but I haven't put a link to it from the rest of the site, so you just have to know the URL to see the list. It's hard to know what to make of the pre-registrations, but it looks like we'll have a good-sized contingent from Texas, particularly Houston. The weather forecast is still looking OK. Typical summer weather, which means a hot with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms popping up at random.

Sizzle, Sizzle

It was a busy weekend, cycling-wise. As a follow-up to Saturday's blazing Giro ride, Reo and I went over to Loranger Sunday morning for a group ride around the Tour de La course. I had been expecting a modest turnout of six or seven, and was rather shocked to find 15 or 16 guys there when we arrived. Reo looked at me knowingly and said something to the effect of "This is gonna turn into a race." By the time we were half-way through the second lap, his prediction had been totally validated and the group was strung out and hammering over the rolling hills along the "back stretch." I was planning on doing three laps and so had been trying to lay low, since I could almost smell the adrenalin and testosterone in the air. Things were just starting to unravel as we approached the town of Husser, and I couldn't resist attacking one of the steep little hills there. Well, that just added fuel to the fire, and from there to the finish line in Loranger it started feeling a lot more like a race than a training ride. Tim and Jay and a couple others were particularly busy keeping the pace high and by the time we got to the finish of the second lap there were a couple of little groups left in our wake. It was definitely fun, though! After that lap about half the group headed back to the cars, leaving seven of us to do a third lap. It was pretty clear that this lap was going to be slower, since everyone's legs were feeling that last section.

When we hit the really bumpy section, along Cooper Road, Charlie pinch-flatted at practically the same spot where someone else had flatted on the first lap. It classic Charlie style, it took long enough to fix that Reo was able to wander over into the bushes an pick a handful of blackberries while we waited. Anyway, I guess I ended up with about 70 miles Sunday on top of 75 or so Saturday. After I got home I had to run over to the office to print out the final version of the TDL Race Bible and drop it off at Robin's house so he can make the copies and start assembling them. Then I spent the rest of the day emulating the cat by lounging around on the sofa while alternating between eating and napping.


This morning we had a nice easy recovery ride up on the levee. I had received an e-mail the night before from The Donald about a crash that had happened during the Giro ride. It seems that Todd and one of the Tri guys had rolled off the front of the group on the way back along Chef Menteur Highway. Somehow this dead armadillo leapt out in front of them. Todd was riding second wheel at the time and the lead guy was probably on his aero bars staring at the ground or something. Well, he sees the armadillo at the last moment and barely misses it, while Todd, who was on his wheel, just nails it. I should at this point make one thing quite clear. Dead armadillos are hard. Very hard. Hitting one is little different from hitting thirty pound rock - usually with the same results. Todd ended up on the pavement, of course, and later stopped in at the ER to have them put five stitches in his elbow. I think Donald took the Armadillo home for dinner. Last night I had gotten a cryptic little "ditty" from The Donald about the incident.

It started out like this:

Ode to the Mighty Shelled One
(to be sung to the tune That's Amore')

Whennnnnn you're cruising down Hayne, and you feel sudden pain,
armadillo
When you're ridin' real fast, and the street smacks your ass,
armadillo

As you fly, side by side, in your 53, hope that you don't see,
armadillo
Up ahead, hit the brake, what was that, big mistake,
armadillo

There's more. Much more. But I'll spare you for now.

Windy Giro

With a tropical storm moving ashore far to the east of New Orleans, we were treated to a rare north wind this morning that kept both the temperature and humidity down to fairly comfortable levels. The only fly in the ointment was the strong wind. I rode out the the lakefront a bit faster than usual since I was running late, and ran into Rob and Russell along the way. We didn't really get the full force of the wind until we hit Lakeshore Drive, thouh. On the way out, the group struggled down Hayne Blvd. battling a headwind, and I soon sought shelter toward the back of the pack. My legs are still not feeling quite right. Once we made the right turn onto Paris Road, though, the pace picked up quickly. There were a few really dumbass moves as we made the cross over three lanes of interstate traffic, and that kind of split the group (stupid ones in front, of course) resulting in the usual sprint down to the exit ramp and continuing down the service road. Tim came around me at one point to close a big gap and I latched onto his wheel, dropping down to the 13 in the process. I was quite solidly pegged for a while just trying to stay in his draft as he pulled me up into the mid30s. At the end of the service road, Charlie and I stopped for just a moment so I could pull a long piece of grass out of his jockey wheels. Then we had to chase hard to catch back up. Next thing I knew, there was a group of maybe eight guys way off the front. The pack was having a very time getting organized in the headwind, though. Eventually we got a group of 10 or so at the front doing paceline and started to reel in the break, but it all fell apart again after a few miles so we didn't catch them before the turnaround.

The ride back was mostly pretty sweet thanks to the tailwind. When Realdo drifted off the front, I went up to him, taking Tim with me. The three of us ended up doing some smooth and fast paceline all the way back down Chef Menteur Highway. At times, I'd be sitting at the back behind those two big guys going 30 mph and I'd just be soft-pedalling in the ample draft. Sweet! When we hit Hayne Blvd. and got that nice tailwind back a few guys rolled off the front. I started after them and then Robin came by on the left and I jumped onto his wheel. He then proceeded to roll it up to 30+ mph. all the way down Hayne. When I looked down at my computer on the TOP of the casino bridge, it was showing 30mph! Afterward Tim and I took the long way home, riding down Canal St. and along the river on Tchoupitoulas so that I had something like 75 miles by the time I got home.

Tomorrow there's a group meeting in Loranger for 7:30 to do the Tour course again. Maybe I'll go.

Weatherman Field Day

The local weather forecasters are having a real field day right now. They've been hungry for something to get excited about for months and so they've latched onto this Tropical Storm story. You would think it was the storm of the century. In fact, if it goes as predicted, we probably won't have much of a problem at all, but it's not looking good for Saturday's big track meet in Baton Rouge. I'm expecting to see a cancellation notice on that any time now! Anyway, we are currently under a Tropical Storm warning.

Yesterday's long ride really felt long to me! The pace was pretty steady and not too fast, but I was feeling kind of tired and run-down. I went ahead and rode this morning, and the group did a nice easy recovery type ride which was just perfect, considering. My legs have felt rather sluggish and stiff since Tuesday so a little rest is probably called for. Ben called a little while ago, gathering advice as to whether to reschedule the Saturday night track meet because of the weather. The problem with these Tropical Storms and Hurricaines is always that you have to make a decision a couple of days out, but you don't really know where the blasted thing is really going to go until later. We've actually had voluntary evacuations of the City of New Orleans a couple of times in recent years for hurricaines that didn't end up having much of an impact on the city. So my guess is that he'll postpone it, since at this point it's for sure nobody from the East is coming anyway.

I'm finally just about finished with the Tour de La Race Bible, and I sent it out to some of the club folks for a little review, since there's always something that turns out to be wrong in there. I'm still trying to track down a bunch of one-day license forms for the Cat. 5 race. One thing we really need are some good GMRS radios. That's what LAMBRA ought to be buying. I'll have to talk with the appropriate folks about that.

It seems like NOBODY will call me back today. I've been trying to get a few simple numbers on endowment awards since yesterday, and the only people who have replied to my requests are the ones who were passing the buck. Same problem with the one-day licenses. I really think that the folks at the USCF offfice in Colorado Springs take off around noon on Fridays and go out for a ride. Not that I blame them, you understand. There are some extremely nice places to ride around "the Springs."

I don't really know what I'm doing tomorrow. I think some folks are going up to ride the Tour course again, but if the weather is sketchy, I'll probably just opt for the good 'ol Giro ride unless someone talks me into going across the lake.

Smooth and Steady

This morning's training ride was smooth and steady. The dozen or so riders who were up on the levee were all of the same mind today and we did the paceline thing all the way. Charlie T showed up today. He's done with Texas A&M and headed to LSU for Law School in the Fall. I was actually glad that the pace never got very fast since I could feel my legs a little bit when I first got onto the bike. I was able to spin along in the 39 x 13 most of the way, just shifting up to the 53 x 17 toward the end when the horses started smelling the barn and the speed crept up a notch. Instead of getting off of the levee bike path at Oak Street as I often do, I rode farther down to Burdette Street and rather than switching over to Pine as I usually do, for some reason I decided to just continue down Burdette through Carrollton. As I'm riding along I'm thinking to myself "why the hell have I been torturing myself on the bumps and potholes on Pine Street for the last couple of years when Burdette is so much smoother?" I think it's the first time I've ever taken that route and it's much nicer that the one I usually take. Man, change is hard!

So our Data Systems operation is getting ready to move everything - lock, stock and barrel- from the main campus and my building to a new location in this big building near the Superdome that Tulane is leasing space in now. This is going to involve over 200 servers, a mainframe, terabytes of storage, tape drives, etc. The downside is that if things go as scheduled I won't have e-mail access from Friday the 24th through the next Monday. I'm not sure I will be able to handle that without medication.

With the Tour de La less than two weeks away, the training rides have been getting good groups and the speeds have been increasing. It looks like things are coming together on the organizational end, and Keith has gotten some moto-refs lined up for the road race, which is a big relief. I've still got some stuff to do that I'm pretty late on, but I've been really busy at work and not able to carve out much free time lately. Hopefully I won't forget anything too important! I think the main things left to do are to finalize the Race Bible and get copies made and assembled, and to make sure the results software is working by doing some test data entry and results. Online entries continue to trickle in, a few each day. It looks like a number of riders from Texas will be here, so that'll be nice. I hope everyone realizes that we will be charging the late entry fee on Friday night, so they may as well register online since we absorb the active.com surcharge and they can save the $5 for a cold mug of Abita Turbodog at the Acme Oyster House during the awards ceremony! My reward for officiating the Tour is usually an Oyster Loaf and a Turbodog after the awards ceremony. Yum!


A big typical summer thunderstorm passed over us about an hour ago and I think the big antenna on top of our building took two ligntning strikes, judging by the loud "crack" sounds I heard. Lots of good copper ground wire up here on the roof, though. It looks like it's cleared up pretty much now, so I may try and make it out to the lakefront for the training race this evening.

Hard One

Must've been a lot of frustrated legs due to yesterday's endless rain because this morning's long levee ride was a hard one. Rob, BJ, Eddie, Donald and a few others started pounding away at the front after we got to the Country Club and it hardly eased up at all after that. We spent a lot of time around 28-30 and as usual it was just killing me. Of course, things split up a bit toward the end and somewhere around the Luling bridge it surged up into the 30s again and Francis and I decided we were close enough and sat up. There was considerably less energy available for the return trip, however, and so I spent a lot more time at the front since I had been careful not to flog my quads too badly on the way out.

Along the way, near the Huey P. bridge, we saw a truck/SUV of some sort that looked like it had plowed right into the concrete base of an industrial building. Most of the truck was off the ground, embedded in the building, and the front was completely, and I mean completely, flattened. The police and fire department was there and they had the street closed off which means there was a fatality. In fact, when we came back on our return trip they had put up red plastic sheets to keep people from seeing then extricate the victims. Sad. Looked like somebody was going way too fast on a wet River Road.



Ben S. is busy organizing a big last-minute Track Event at the Baton Rouge Velodrome this Saturday and it looks like he'll have some significant amount of cash on hand for prizes. It will probably be the biggest track meet we've had there in many years. I may even have to re-glue my tubulars and do a few events myself. He's sending me the flyer today so I can put it up on the website.

I don't usually watch baseball on TV (or for that matter football, basketball, soccer, etc.), but last night I watched Tulane play their final game to determine if they would go to the "super-regionals" game. It was actually pretty good, but somewhere around the 8th inning a thunderstorm packing a lot of lightning came along and they delayed the game for half an hour. Since it was already around 10:30, I was long asleep by the time the game resumed. Somehow they finished the game, though, and Tulane won, so I guess it was a very big night at Bruno's which has been a haven for downtrodden Tulane athletics fans for many decades. Since we live only six blocks or so from the stadium where the games were being played, we could hear the cheering every time something big happened.

Too Late

The skies were cloudy as I slipped out the door this morning, hoping to get in a decent ride before the predicted rain arrived. Perhaps I should have checked the radar first, though, because it turned out I was a bit too late. Although it was not raining when I hit the road, by the time I reached the levee, just 10 minutes later, a light drizzle was falling. I was a few minutes early for the 6:40 a.m. group but I figured I'd ride toward the Playground on the levee bike path so that I didn't waste any precious on-the-bike minutes. I didn't get far before the raindrops got heavier, and looking up the river to the Northwest, the sky was looking pretty bad. About then I saw Joe riding toward me and I turned around. There was no point, really. It was becoming increasingly clear that the day would be a wash-out and since I was only planning an easy day anyway, I decided quite easily to just bag it and head home in the light rain. If I'd started riding at 6:00, I probably could have gotten in about an hour without getting soaking wet, but today I was too late.

So I rode in to work in the car with The Wife with the windshield wipers running, a cup of coffee in one hand, and the radio playing. When you're accustomed to riding a bike to work, driving a car in rush-hour traffic is really a frustrating experience. On the bike, there's always a way around, and although you may not be going as fast as the cars, they rarely actually impede your steady progress. Driving the car is quite the opposite. Every RTA bus, every moron with a cellphone in his ear, every traffic signal, every construction zone feels like a slap in the face. What are these things doing getting in my way! Geez, it's a good thing the drive is only about four miles long. If I had to deal with bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate for an hour every morning I'm quite sure I'd lose it and end up the subject of one of those helicopter video reality TV car chases where the perp always seems to end up smashing the car into an immovable object of some sort.

At work it stormed for hours around mid-day. I'm talking about flooding streets, lightning, power outages, etc. Around 1 p.m. much of the area lost water pressure for about an hour. The Unversity sent out an email that read:

Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 13:45:08 -0500
From: Sylvia Major smajor1@tulane.edu
Subject: Conserve Water
To: MEDSTAFF-L@tulane.edu

We have just learned that there is no water pressure in the city at this
time. Please do whatever you can to conserve by using all facilities
sparingly. Dr. Bihlemeyer's office is handling the problem and will alert
us as to the extent of the problem and whether is will be long or short term.

Which is a nice way to say "please don't take a leak until we tell you it's OK because the toilet is not going to flush more than once!"

I rushed through an update of the LCCS points this afternoon, updating the spreadsheet, the various web pages and uploading it all to the LAMBRA website. Hopefully I didn't make too many mistakes, but with a manual system like this and little free time, a few are inevitable. Even for me! I'm sure I'll get the usual handful of e-mails and end up re-posting everything at least once. Anyway, I spent quite enough time on it today and I've got a truckload of work on my desk.

You know, the kind of work I actually get paid for.

I did a little IM with The Daughter this afternoon and she sounds happy to be back in Iowa City and back into some sort of training routine doing mostly core conditioning and riding her bike on the trainer. For some reason she seems to like that kind of thing. To me, riding a bike on a trainer is an absolute last resort. I'd much prefer a ride in 98 degree heat or 30 degree cold any day. Go figure.

Tour Course Preview

I opened the door this morning and was shocked to find the streets wet and a light rain falling. By the time I put the Saris roof rack on the car, the rain had increased and I was good and wet. A few of us were heading across the lake to ride the Tour de La road course and it was not supposed to be raining. Luckily, by the time we got to the course in Loranger the sky was looking better and the six of us headed out for the first of two laps on the course. The rough sections were still pretty rough, although I could see where Robin had already patched some of the worst potholes on the particularly bad 3-mile stretch that heads North. The back half of this course is my favorite part, though. The road is smooth and there is a series of short steep little rollers. I really wish that the last 3- mile section from the last turn to the finish was smoother, though. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not smooth either.

We had a good ride though. The course is pretty scenic and I really like it. Jay and Brooks were pushing the pace a bit on the hilly sections and on the last lap they opened a pretty good gap on Brandon, Amy, Yaro and me that took me a long time to close. By the time we finished two laps, my legs were tired. Right after we got back to the cars, it started to rain, so I guess we timed it pretty well!

I noticed that the health club where we'll be placing the start/finish and parking for the Tour de La road race is closed, so I'll need to change the directions in the race bible because people who are looking for a health club aren't going to find one any more. It looks like parking will be a little tight, but I think they'll be able to squeeze everybody in.

Good Legs

The Daughter hit the road this morning at 6:15, leaving me lots of time to make the Saturday Giro Ride. It was warm and humid and as I rode around in little circles at the lakefront waiting for the group to get started I was already feeling hot. Perhaps I've finally started to acclimate to the summer because I had good legs today. As we rolled down Lakeshore Drive on the way out a few of us got separated from the group. As it turned out, someone had a flat and the group waited for him to fix it. When we saw that the group had disappeared, we waited around on Hayne until they showed up.

There was a pretty big group on the Giro ride, despite missing a few who were out riding the Tour de La course. Once we got going on Chef Highway, the pace ramped up to 30 and pretty much stayed there the rest of the way out. As we neared the turnaround it surged again and when Brandon jumped, I latched onto his wheel and got a nice ride to the "finish." I suppose there were a few people out there today who were feeling energetic, because the pace stayed fairly high most of the way back. After we made the turn onto Hayne Blvd., a little group slipped off the front and three of us went after it. We chased at 27-29 mph all the way to the base of the Casino bridge, and then of course had to sprint to the top. It was a good workout, and when I got home I spent a couple of hours emptying the fridge.

Guess who ended up in a photo on Velonews.com as the subject of one of the honorable mentions in their photo contest? Check it out. It's titled "Ghost Riders."

http://velonews.com/galleries/Contest4b/Ghost%20Riders%20-%20by%20Michelle.html

The Tour de La Approaches!

Thanks to the efforts of many of our club members, things are coming together for the upcoming Tour de Louisiane, June 18-19. The online registrations are beginning to tickle in as usual and the local riders are asking about course maps and scheduling weekend rides to check out the road course. For those of us involved with making this little event happen, it is both exciting and frightening. I will need to check on the event permit and insurance today to make sure nothing has gone astray, but my main responsibility is to get the race bible finalized and printed and make sure I have everything in place to get the results done quickly.

We did an easy Friday ride today, which was nice considering it was hot and humid and looks like it will stay that way for a while (like probably until September). The Daughter is heading back to Iowa City early tomorrow morning, accompanied by this huge guy from Iowa who is driving up with her. Yesterday's long ride was pretty fast, which was just what the doctor ordered after having a dinner meeting that involved $120 worth of wine and a nearly $500 hit to my checking account. Hopefully that reimbursement will go through quickly! The hot weather is making me feel kind of lethargic and it's nice to have that extra motivation of a group ride to get me out the door in the morning. I've missed the last three Wednesday training races and I really feel it. I NEED those evening races and never seem to quite get in shape if I miss too many of them. I heard the one this week had a pretty good group, so that's encouraging. Of course, I would have made it there if I hadn't been at "Restaurant August" on Tchoupitoulas Street at the time with a couple of consultants and Tulane folks. The place was actually pretty nice, and the service was very good. The food was more along the lines of "designer food." You know, the kind where they charge extra for dribbling various sauces onto the otherwise empty places on your plate in order to disguise the fact that there really isn't all that much actual food there. I had "Crispy seared blackfish over parsley root, lobster-parsley salad, lobster jus." I don't know what "jus" is but maybe it's just chef-speak for the stuff that drips out of the lobsters they served to other folks.

Gina called last night to see if I was still alive. She won a little criterium town in Tucson last weekend and there are a whole bunch of photos of her linked from the azcycling website. After the women's race she rode the Cat. 1,2,3 race and got bumped off the road into the bushes by some guy who also landed, considerably less elegantly, in the bushes. I think the photo she liked the best was the one where she is checking out the fallen rider to make sure he hadn't broken anything or punctured a lung. Nice to have a med student in the field.

Meanwhile, Kenny B has been traveling all over the country hitting some of the big criteriums. He actually made it onto the podium (3rd Place) at the big CSC Invitational in Arlington (Cat. 1/2) and finished well at Somerville too. I'm impressed. Makes my own pitiful existence seem rather more insignificant of course. That's Kenny in the middle of the photo wearing the red helmet and blue jersey.

Hopefully we'll have a few folks who want to do a ride on the "Tour Course" on Sunday. There's a group going on Saturday but I won't be able to make that since I'd like to see The Daughter off in the morning. It looks like a few riders are interested in going up there on Sunday too, so that would be good since I'd like to check out the course and the parking situation myself. We'll be using the field adjacent to the Health Club for parking this year, so I hope that works out OK. It will be much more convenient for everyone since it will be right at the start/finish line.