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.
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