Roasted on River Road

Today's 2-stage, Race near Baton Rouge was really hot.

Things started out nicely enough early in the morning with 9-mile Individual Time Trials that were actually 10.6 miles. The course followed a long bend in the river so that at the finish you were going in the opposite compass direction from the start. When I looked down at my computer the first time, it read 29 mph. Hmmmmm. Big tailwind. That lasted for a mile or so, after which the course had a lot of crosswind and a little headwind. I managed mostly 25-26 mph, and although I never quite stopped gasping for breath, turned in respectible time that sorted out to 4th in the masters race. First through third were pretty far ahead, and although the hot spot and finish bonuses for the road race were reasonably generous, it wasn't looking too likely that I'd be able to move up. Behind me was a rider from Arkansas (Mark A./CARVE), a mere five seconds or so in arrears.

The road race started a bit after noon, and it was brutally hot. I had a few teammates in the group and they all took their turns attacking, but soon became apparent that another plan was afoot. Todd H., who had placed 2nd in the TT, flatted - a development of which I was totally unaware until one of the other riders came back to me and told me, wondering why I wasn't at the front pushing the pace. Soon, word spread and my teammates went to the front and kept things fairly fast. Todd was not to be seen again, so now I was racing for 3rd. There were two hot spots, one at the end of the 2nd lap and the other at the end of the 4th, and it was crucial that I pick up points in them to defend my slim lead over the rider from CARVE. At the first hot spot, I glued myself to the AK guy's wheel and jumped hard when the sprint started. At the last moment he looked back and saw me gaining on him, though, and beat me to the line. Although I got the 3rd place hot spot points, I lost 2 seconds to him. The second hot spot was virtually a repeat of the first, although by now a number of riders had been dropped, including my teammates. Now you have to understand that the Arkansas guy was totally focused on moving up on GC via the bonus points, so he would not pull for anything. Larry, had been attacking relentlessly since the second lap and by now was way off the front solo, which was a big relief to me because that meant the attacks were basically over. The last lap saw our little group start to crumble, and three or four miles from the finish, Mark, the Arkansas rider, blew up and was off the back, followed shortly by another rider, leaving me with only one companion. I was now racing for 2nd place. The LaS'port guy (Michael F.) was hurting and wouldn't pull, but I was reluctant to allow the pace to slow too much, so I ended up pulling for the last two or three miles. At about 150 meters from the line he jumped hard but I was able to come around him for 2nd place, which ended up moving me up to 2nd in the overall too.

After that, I was pretty cooked, but the Cat. 1,2,3 race was about to start so I spent the next few hours handing up water bottle to Reo who got himself into the break and ended up doing pretty well. I don't think I ever quite stopped sweating. I'm just now realizing that I am not sure what place Reo ended up in, though. There were some problems with the final results, one of which was caused by my quickie modification of the Tour de La results spreadsheets. When I added a second hot spot, I mistakenly revised the GC formula to add the bonus time rather than subtract it. Luckily an astute rider caught the error. (I told 'em to check the spreadsheet out before the race!)

Anyway, we didn't get back to N.O. until after 8 pm, and I am cooked - in more ways than one.

tRain Delay

Ahhhh, Friday!

There were still little pools of water here and there in the street this morning, remnants of yesterday evening's thunder and lightning show. When I got back from work it was raining pretty hard so I ran up into the attic to see if I could make a good assessment of the little leak that's been slowly making a mark in my bedroom ceiling (directly over MY side of the bed, of course). Alas, not a trace of water there. Lots of traces of rats, to be sure, but no leaks. I suspect a strong East wind and an all-day rain is needed before any water gets through, so I'll move it to the very crowded back burner for now.

But I digress.

At 6:40 a.m. there were only Bob P. and myself up on the levee. Reo rode by and stopped for a minute, but his clock was ticking and he had to go. We rolled down the levee and picked up three others before the playground, but when we got there one of the guys was standing on the side of the bike path with two innertubes in his hand looking rather despondent. Being a Friday, we all stopped to render aid, and it was a good 15 minutes and yet another blown inner tube before the issue was resolved. It seems that the cheap rim strip had a hole in it and one of the spokes was protruding through enough to puncture the tube(s). Anyway, we finally got going and had a nice recovery ride, keeping the pace around 20 mph. Matt C. and I rode at the front the whole way chatting about various things. Matt's just finishing up a summer session at one of the local universities, and after a little vacation in Florida will be heading back up to Oxford, MS where he's a student at Ole' Miss. He was bemoaning the fact that Christian Leask won't be there this Fall. If I were he, I think I'd be bemoaning the fact that I was going to be taking Organic Chemistry! Between the slow pace and the tire-repair session, I was running pretty late by the time we got back, but I decided to stay on the bike path all the way to the Corps of Engineers building rather than deal with bumpy Oak St.

Wouldn't you know it? Just as we approach the Corps building where I turn off, a train comes by. It turned out to be a really long one, too, and as I was riding around in little circles waiting I was hoping it wouldn't stop because it was mostly a long string of unloaded flat cars designed to hold those big ship containers. Luckily, it kept rolling and I finally made it home about half an hour late.

The house next door to me just went up on the market, and when I looked out the back window this morning I was surprised to see a woman and two kids in the back yard. Hopefully it will sell to a nice family with lots of money who will improve the property value. That's my strategy, you see. Have a poorly maintained house in a good neighborhood so that the neighbors' houses help keep your property value up.

Tomorrow is the Delta Racing Stage Race in Baton Rouge. Actually it's really neither a real stage race nor in Baton Rouge, per se, but close enough I guess. I'm not holding out much hope for this one since there's an opening Time Trial that's around 8 miles which means I'll probably start out pretty low in the overall. There's only one other stage, a road race the same afternoon, and although it has two time bonus hot spots and pretty big time bonuses for the finish places, it'll be hard to make up enough time to compensate for my usually mediocre time trial. Beats sitting on the couch, though!

Ran across a funny little website showing all the different ways riders in the TDF were dealing with their sunglasses on one of the big climbs. When you're climbing like that, you're going so slowly that the sweat drips all over your glasses and eventually you have to take them off so you can see. The problem with the Oakleys, however, it that they don't fold up, so you have to find some place to stash them where they won't fall, but won't get in the way either. Personally, I use the Padrnos method most of the time, and the Armstrong method other times.

Much reaction locally to an article that ran in the local paper entitled "Armstrong's achievements good, not great." I can't say that I disagree too strongly with the author on most points, except when he starts trying to make comparisons and writes:

"Furthermore, Armstrong's career accomplishments don't even put him on par with athletes such as Jack Nicklaus (18 major golf titles), Pete Sampras (the all-tennis leader in Grand Slam titles with 14) and Tiger Woods (10 major golf titles)."
"Is Armstrong's streak of Tour de France titles more impressive than Edwin Moses' 102-race winning streak in the 400-meter hurdles, or Martina Navratilova's mark of six consecutive women's singles titles at Wimbledon?

"No."

Now that's just total bullshit, but I guess it will endear him to the local beer drinking golf club crowd. That was, after all, the whole point.

Splitsville

It was so dark this morning! I mean, I know we're starting to tilt away from the sun and all, but lately the clouds in the east have made it seem much darker than you'd expect for this time of year. Added to that this morning was a steady wind out of the west that made for a long trip out and a fast one back.

Although the group started out small, we kept picking up riders along the way and by the time things really started rolling I guess we were up to about 15. There seemed to be a lot of riders this morning who were determined to keep it slow and kept opening gaps in the paceline. Finally, I had gotten about enough of that and went across yet another gap and soon the group had split. A few of us up in front got into a decent little paceline and pushed into the headwind at about 24 mph. The ride back was faster, though, but eventually it split again and a small group got pinched off the front around the pumping station in River Ridge. I had to go around a few guys and chase in order to make the bridge, topping out at around 34 mph. The rest of the way we were doing around 27 fairly comfortably, except for a big surge at the end. Dan and I hung onto Matt's fancy TT rocket for a while, but finally backed off when we got to the bridge and he was still pulling at 31 or so. Not a bad training ride.

Looks like I'm going to need to get a digital certificate so I can electronically sign our semiannual lobbying reports. Yet another unfunded mandate by Congress. I think it'll cost us about $60 a year in order to submit our two reports, not counting the fact that I'll need to send them (on paper!!) a notarized form. Pain in the arse, this is.

On a brighter note, NASA procurement is ready to send us our RFP for one of our centers that received a nice little $1M earmark. Last year they took $80 of that for administrative costs, but this year they are apparently not allowed to do it, so we get the whole $1M. Of course, we must first put together all of the necessary documents, statement of work, budgets, etc., and submit it all via their new NSPIRES system. Should be fun. The Principal Investigator is completely clueless about the adminstrivia required for this sort of thing and I think that deep down he just doesn't understand why they don't just send him a check.

The Time Trial and Road Race this Saturday should be hot and boring, but I guess I'll go since it's right next door in Baton Rouge. I wonder what the turnout will be like. It would be great if we could get a lot of our local guys to skip the Giro ride for once and go to an actual race!

Long One

It's been a long day! The Wednesday morning training ride got going pretty fast, and since I'm currently mired in the summer doldrums, when the pace got up around 25 I chose not to play and dropped to the back of the paceline. We had a good training ride and I did eventually take some pulls, but in general I was feeling lazy and preoccupied. The whole time I could hear an irritating light rattle coming from my front wheel. It was the extra long stem on the tube that I put in there yesterday. When you put those long-stemmed tubes into a regular rim, they tend to rattle against the edge of the valve hole. I'll have to put a little tape around it tonight before it drives me crazy. It really ruins the nice quiet early-morning ride through the neighborhood on the way to the levee!

So this afternoon I had to attend a long seminar and training session for a new online personnel system that we're implementing soon. Everyone was in one of the computer labs on the uptown campus doing this interactive training thing. It was so interesting that I opened a new window and checked my email and read the news on CNN while it was going on.

I think I must have spend half the rest of the day dealing with bike racing stuff. First, I resubmitted all of the Tour de La results so that everyone who raced in each stage was included. When I had originally submitted them, I had only included those who had placings on GC, omitting anyone who didn't finish any one of the three stages. I think it's better this way. Of course it took me a couple of hours to make those corrections, and a most of the Cat. 4s and Cat. 5s got "DNP" for their placings in the Crit. because the judges couldn't pick all the places and there was a problem with the videotape.

In the meantime, I got a call from Realdo who noticed that he wasn't listed on the USCF results and rankings system for any of his results from the Biloxi races, so I sent an e-mail out asking about that. Then the issue of how to score (for the LCCS series) this weekend's races in Baton Rouge came up. I got a pretty quick response on that one from the LAMBRA officers, though, so it's settled and will be scored as separate races. Why was there a question, you ask? Well the event is called a stage race on the flyer, and indeed it has a GC prizelist determined on total elapsed time plus bonuses. However, there is only a TT and a RR, both on the same day, and riders are not required to finish (or enter) the TT in order to ride the Road Race. So technically, it isn't really a Stage Race at all.

Big Group, Fast Ride

When I decided to try and get a few extra minutes of sleep this morning I knew I was taking a chance. Sure enough, the next time I glanced at the clock I had fewer than 10 minutes to get my sorry ass out to the morning training ride. Impossible, of course, but I went for it anyway and as I made the climb up the levee I was surprised that the group was just pulling out. I was probably 5 minutes late, so it's a good thing that they left late because I was not in the mood for a 20-mile time trial this morning.

The group was really large today. There were at least 25 riders as we rode under the Huey P. Long bridge, and as I drifted to the back, the speed started to ramp up. It was nearly ten miles before my turn at the front of the long paceline finally came up, and by then the group was rolling along at around 27 mph. I put in 60 or 70 strokes and dropped back, ending up around the middle of the paceline that, by now, had been short-circuited so that half the group could sit in at the rear. We flew down "the dip" and through the usual rocks and gravel that wash onto the bike path down there, and a couple of miles later things started getting kind of mushy. For a while, I couldn't tell if it was the front or the rear, but it didn't take long to become clear that the front tire was just about flat. A big piece of rock or shell was stuck in the center of the tread. It was probably only a couple of miles to the turnaround, so I waved everyone past and Robin and I stopped to fix the flat and take the opportunity to spray our glasses with water to wash out all the sweat.

We finished well before the group came past on its return trip and when it did we latched on. The pace was still high, and there were a few sections where I was seeing 29 and 30 mph. I was watching one of the bigger riders a couple of bikes ahead of me. Sweat was dripping from both ends of his handlebars like a badly leaking faucet. I wondered how he could possibly carry enough water to break even. People really do vary a lot when it comes to sweat volume. My body seems to be fairly good at regulating sweat so that even when it's quite hot, there aren't copious amounts of body fluids being wasted. Other riders just seem to have an "on" and an "off" switch, and when it gets hot they just pour water the whole time. They're easy to identify in the pack because they're the ones who have both a camelback and two large water bottles.

It just started raining! Hard. Maybe this will cool things off a bit, but more likely the sun will be out in 15 minutes and the city will feel just like a sauna for the rest of the afternoon. The temperature is down to 90 F, but the relative humidity is showing 60%, making the "heat index" 99F.

Thick Air

Up on the levee this morning the air was so thick with moisture you could hardly see through it. Over to the east, the haze reduced the rising sun to little more than a dull orange ball. A typical Monday group eventually materialized nonetheless, and with the addition of John R on his TT bike and Rob K, the pace was a bit faster than usual. At some point one of the guys said to me, "I thought Monday was supposed to be the easy ride." Actually, it never got really fast, but the steady 23 mph pace was a couple of mph faster than usual. Like much of the country, we're mired under a huge high pressure system right now. Combined with the moist tropical air blowing up from the Gulf, it can make things pretty miserable around here. In fact, we're under a "heat advisory" right now. This is the one time of the year when people in New Orleans actually start wishing it would rain.

I put a bunch of nice photos from last Saturday's criterium up on the NOBC website. Perhaps I'll get some more later this week. I took a bunch myself, but they really don't compare with the ones taken by the folks with the really nice cameras. The one above is the only one I took that is different, mainly just because it's kind of interesting. I worked through the results at some point today and have the LCCS points standings about ready to go, I just need to find out when one of the riders who was unattached the last time he raced joined the TCF club so I can assign appropriate points to the club standing. I am thinking that next year I may push to use only the club affiliation listed on the USCF database for LCCS purposes. Having to track this stuff down is a pain, and you never really know if the club is stretching the truth in order to add a few more points to it's total. In order to really do this stuff right I'm going to need a database rather than the Excel workbook I'm using now, especially if the number of riders increases.

Are We There Yet?

First things first. A big congratulations to the Discovery team and Lance Armstrong. I never thought I'd see a Tour de France with three U.S. riders in the top ten, including a 7-time GC winner. Awesome. This is truly a special sport.

So Saturday was our La./Ms. district criterium championships. It's not really a very big event, but there was a decent turnout for most of the races this year. Realdo and I had planned on arriving about 45 minutes before my 45+ race, but after missing the Denham Springs exit and having to loop back around, things got a little tighter time-wise. I rushed off and registered for both the masters 45+ race and the masters 35+ race, despite the fact that they were back-to-back, while Realdo got my bike sorted out. I figured I'd see how I felt after the second race before deciding whether to give the Cat. 1,2,3 race a shot. Three back-to-back races in the midsummer heat sounded a little crazy, even to me.

After rushing around in the blazing sun to get registered and all, I was still able to do a couple of laps of the course before the start. It was a pretty nice course with a few good turns and one long straight section that included the start/finish. From the start there three turns in quick succession, followed by a longish straight ending with an off-camber right turn that featured a big and unavoidable crack in the asphalt. Then a very slightly uphill bumpy section, two nice right-handers, and a sprint of maybe 150 meters to the finish.

The half-hour masters 45+ race was quite small, though, and after the first few laps I figured I'd put all my eggs in the sprint basket for this one and try to save a little something for the 35+ race to follow. In the end, I got a good position going into the final corner and jumped hard as soon as I came through, crossing the line first. I did one cool-down lap, dripping sweat the whole time, and then hustled back to the car to pin on my Cat.1/2/3 number and refill my bottles for the 35+ race that was due to start in less than 15 minutes. One more lap and I'm on the line in the blazing sun waiting for the start, still sweating profusely.

The 35+ field was larger, and this time I had a few teammates. This race was pretty fast and active, and there were a number of early attacks that kept the speeds high. About midway through the 45-minute race Reo attacked forcing a couple of the other teams to chase. Right after the group came back together, he launched again and this time the front of the group hesitated. For the next few laps, Reo hovered up the road with a tenuous 10-15 seconds. There were four or five riders up at the front who did not want to let it go and they worked hard to chase him down. I quickly inserted myself up there and started blocking, trying to stay glued to the first or second rider most of the time and generally disrupting the chase effort by soft-pedaling through the turns and whenever the lead rider would try to pull off. As a result, the pace would drop to about 20 mph every now and then, and Reo's lead slowly grew. By the time he had 30 seconds or so the chase effort had mostly fizzled and I dropped back a bit to seek some recovery.

I knew we should be getting close to the finish, but I hadn't seen any lap cards yet - they were supposed to start counting down laps with 5 to go. So we come through the start/finish and they're announcing a prime, which I'm not interested in. The official is holding up two fingers, but without a megaphone or anything I can't really hear what he's saying. I catch the word "prime," though, and figure it must be a $20 prime. Well, the next time through there's a little surge at the front for the prime and then is eases up. I don't hear a bell. It turned out, though, that this was actually our bell lap. Thing is, I never heard a bell and I never saw a lap card. If someone rang a bell, it must have been a very quiet one. So I'm blissfully lounging near the back getting ready for a big effort in the last couple of laps when the pace starts to pick up coming into the last turn. I'm confused. Is it another prime? An attack? Well, it turns out it was the finish! A number of the riders near the back of the group never knew we were on the bell lap. For some reason, it appears the official had dispensed with holding up the lap cards (which he used for the preceding 45+ race) and was using his fingers to show how many laps to go. Naturally, those of us who weren't right on the front never saw any of that. I have to say I was rather disappointed because I had been looking forward to the sprint. I ended up coming in 7th, I think, but at least Reo got the win and my teammate Jaro took 3rd or 4th, so although it wasn't a complete disaster, it could have been better.

I was pretty toasted by the heat at the end of the 35+ race, so I decided to skip the Cat. 1/2/3 race. I think that if there had been another race in-between the 35+ and Cat.1,2,3 race, I might have ridden, but I was way too hot and bothered at the time to turn around and start what I knew would be another fast race. Reo, on the other hand, was soon back on the starting line, along with Charlie Davis.

The 1,2,3 group had a good-sized field. Much better than last year. The pace looked very fast and early in the race Herring's Troy Porter got off the front solo, quickly amassing a lead of at least 30 seconds. It was looking like the race was in the bag for him until he failed to show up on one lap. It turned out that one of his stem bolts had broken on the back stretch! So right away there was a flurry of attacks and things looked like they got quite fast. At one point, Reo had no choice but to put in a full lap effort in order to close a gap to a small group containing all of the heavy hitters, pulling the rest of the group across in the process. Eventually, though, two riders got clear and ended up making it all the way to the finish where Frank Moak pipped his breakaway partner on the line. Reo ended up around 8th, but only after getting the original results, which had him about dead last, corrected. I don't think Reo ever got his prize for 8th - they had already given it to the wrong person based on the preliminary results. I think I drank five cans of coke, along with four or five water bottles, and didn't need to pee until about 6:30 p.m. A little vacation for the kidneys!

The women, Cat. 4s and Cat. 5s all raced earlier in the day, and Jason, Shawn and Steve took 1st, 4th and 5th in the Cat. 5 race while Courtney and Amy took 1st and 2nd in the Women's race. Not bad, considering a number of riders didn't make it to the race this weekend.

Sunday was a long hot Giro ride. Reo is trying to get in some extra mileage in preparation for the upcoming Tour of Guyana. Despite the relatively small Giro ride group, the pace was pretty fast for most of the ride. There were a couple stops - one for a flat and one for a broken spoke - that provided some brief relief. On the way back down Hayne Blvd., we ended up with a little group of three or four. Looking back as we came over the bridge, the rest of the group wasn't even in sight. We hit the marina after the ride and downed four bottles of Gatorade by the time we got home.

Friday F'sure

Yeah, you right. It's finally Friday and it has been a long and rather unmotivating week for me, highlighted by the submission of our semiannual lobbying reporting form to Congress. It is an irritating task that serves no useful purpose and about which nobody really cares, so naturally it's my job to make sure it gets submitted. So now, for the public record, everybody can know that Tulane spent roughly $160k on lobbying during the last half of 2004. Bet you really were dying to know that little tidbit, eh?

This morning's training ride had a fairly large group for a Friday, and we did our traditional easy Friday ride. These almost always are done as a double line so that everybody has someone to chat with, and the lead pair usually stays on the front for a mile or two since the pace is generally between 18 and 21 mph. Along the way, Dan and I somehow got on the topic of mosquitoes and for some reason I totally blanked out on the genus names of the most common ones around here (culex and aedes) until The Donald chimed in "aedes!" Anyway, the morning ride was fairly relaxing, but by the time I was ready to ride to work it was already about 85 degrees F and sunny. The photo above came from the finish line camera at last weekend's race. Adam, who was one of the Referees for the event, clipped it from the video and sent it because it was kind of interesting. It wasn't all that close of a sprint, but for some reason I felt like I needed a little bike throw just to be on the safe side. I was probably a little delirious from dehydration at that point after riding two criteriums that day. Tomorrow I'll be doing one or more criteriums over in Denham Springs, which is just about an hour away. It's looking like it will be really hot and I'm not feeling too motivated. Come to think of it, I'd better print out the event announcement so I know where and when I need to be there! Amazingly, the temperatures have been even higher up in Iowa City where tomorrow's high is predicted to be 100. It's only 92F here right now. I wonder if she ever put that air conditioner back in the window . . .

I got a quick note from Gina this morning telling me that she has been upgraded to Category 1. Getting a Cat. 1 upgrade nowadays, without resorting to groveling and begging at the feet of the regional USCF rep., is no easy task, but if you want to have a go at it, spending a couple of weeks placing in the top ten at Superweek is a good start! That makes her one of fewer than 200 Cat. 1 women in the U.S. out of about 3,800 licensed riders.

Long Line on the Levee

When I got up this morning it seemed awfully dark, and even after arriving at the start of the Thursday long ride it still seemed a bit too early. Perhaps it was because of the clouds in the East, or maybe the sun is coming up a little later now and it's suddenly become noticible. Anyway, there was a large group this morning and as we headed up the river the line of riders stretched pretty far. Things didn't get very fast for a while, but by the time we got out to the "dip" there were a few at the front pulling pretty hard. I was feeling really tired this morning for some reason and wasn't too interested in ripping my own legs off, although I'll admit to making a hard effort in the last mile or so. A lot of the riders who were there at the start were gone by the time we made the turnaround. The ride back again stayed slow for a long time, and then shifted to a paceline and we criused silently for a while at around 24 mph before it picked up toward the end.

So my friggin' cable is still not fixed. The day after the tropical storm, about two weeks ago, I called, patiently waited on "hold" for half an hour, and was told that the next time they could schedule me was for 5-7 p.m. on the 20th. So after patiently waiting for like ten or fourteen days, I leave work early at the appointed date and time and of course Cox doesn't show up, so then I call them up and after much delay come to find out that they just don't seem to have any record of that. Yeah, right. And then the guy tells me about how they should have been out there within 24 hours. Yeah, right again. So he says someone should be out to fix it "within 24 hours" and I don't have to be at home for that. Why do I have the feeling I'll be calling those screw-ups a couple times more before this is all over?

Anyway, since I got home early I searched around for something for dinner and ended up making up a batch of quickie Gazpacho. My version of that popular cold Spanish soup is rather simple but really nice for a hot summer evening. Basically, you just use a big can or bottle of V-8 Juice and add well-chopped onion, garlic, celery, cucumbers, bell pepper if you have it, and tomoato. Then add some good olive oil, vinegar, Tabasco, and whatever other seasonings strike your fancy. Stir it all up and let it chill for an hour or two. I ate too much of it last night, f'sure. If you can let it sit overnight in the fridge, it gets even better.

Steve put a bunch of nice photos from last weekend's criterium on his website. Pretty nice. I'm hoping to get some more results from last weekend for the riders who didn't score any omnium points. I put in what I got from one of the Biloxi folks, but I know there are still some missing.

And babe, don't you know it's a pity,

". . . that the days can't be like the nights."

Whew, it's definitely Summer in the City 'round here. After the first half-hour or so, the smallish morning training ride group was already starting to wilt in the outdoor sauna we call home. Things seem to slow down as the average temperature increases - a necessary adaptation indeed. Last night before I went to sleep around 10:30, I glanced over at the outdoor thermometer. 84F. The moisture in the air keeps it from cooling down much at night (remember those lectures about the specific heat of water?). So, as is always the case, the next month will be an exercise in conservation of energy, both electrical and personal. To go out on a hard training ride is to stand up to Mother Nature and slap her in the face. We didn't do too much slapping of faces this morning, but the pace was nonetheless steady and brisk. Jeff and Jay seemed determined to keep us on track and the result was a nice steady pace, mostly in the neighborhood of 23-24 mph.

High atop my current list of irritations is the city's garbage pickup. Ever since the tropical storm over two weeks ago, they have been entirely incapable of picking up the garbage on time, or for that matter, on the correct day. When they do show up, apparently at whim, they pick and choose which items they will throw into the truck and which they won't. The Wife and I went for a long walk yesterday evening and every now and then the stench of rotting garbage would waft our way as we walked through the neighborhood. On the way back from Audubon Park, we went through the Tulane campus and I noticed that they had finally put up a sign where they had been doing some sort of odd construction work near the old chemistry lecture hall. I walked over there to see what it was they were working on and found that it is to be a combination outdoor classroom and 9/11 memorial. It looks kind of interesting in the typical functionally useless Architectural Digest sort of way.

The La/Ms district criterium championships are this Saturday in Denham Springs, which is close enough to Baton Rouge to be practically considered a suburb nowadays. It seems that they've arranged the schedule to discourage the masters from riding in the Cat. 1/2/3 race. Last year I did the 45+, 35+ and Cat. 1/2/3 races, with two of them back-to-back, and was seriously wasted by the end of the last one. This year, all three are back-to-back. Hmmmm. What to do?

Got the LCCS points updated, but still don't have complete results from the Mad Potter's races - mostly just the placings for the people who scored points. I've a promise to receive the complete results, though, so we'll see. I noticed that in the long TDF stage today the GC leaders allowed the break to get over 20 minutes by the end. Now I know that the team directors have done all the math and everything, but here in my world gaps never get to be 20 minutes. In fact, anything over 30 seconds tends to make me nervous.

No Mo' Free Laps

Got a quick call from GiVo the day after the final race of the Superweek Pro/1/2 Women's series. After surviving all eight of the prior Superweek races unscathed, which is no easy task, she gets taken down three laps from the finish of the last criterium. At that point in the race, there are no more free laps, so you can either chase or go home. She did indeed go ahead and finish, but as a consolation prize got her picture in Cyclingnews. She ended up 7th overall and 5th in the sprints competition. I'm impressed. I think she said she was off to do a trauma surgery rotation at Duke next week. Impressed again.

My legs seem to be recovering OK after Sunday's little dose of punishment, although I was holding back a little bit on this morning's long training ride. When I met the group at the pumping station it seemed pretty small, but by the time I finally dropped all the way back, somewhere around the Country Club I guess, I was shocked at how large it had grown. The pace, aided by a light tailwind, was typically fast but not ballistic. On the way back we were riding one of those moderate, smooth pacelines that are so predictable that you sometimes find your mind wandering as your legs switch over to auto-pilot. Just about that time, John's rear tire exploded. I was on Jeff's wheel at the time and it startled him so much I think his bike may have actually left the ground for a second. Most of the group stopped while we fixed it, which turned out to be a bit of a problem. The tire had split just above the bead. They were about to put a dollar bill in there as a boot, but instead I dug out the emergency race number that I keep in my bag for just such situations. Typical race numbers are made with Tyvek paper that works great as a temporary boot. Anyway, Todd put about 90 psi in there and he was good to go.

So I see that Pereiro won the TDF stage today. That's pretty gutsy after having been in that break two days ago and placing second. If Armstrong can avoid any big problems over the next few days and then turns in his usual time trial performance, he'll take the yellow jersey all the way to Paris this weekend. That would be pretty damned amazing. Even more amazing would be to have three US riders in the top ten.

A Sunday on the Rivet

The criterium course in Biloxi was a pretty good one with a variety of road surfaces, a few good technical corners and a long, wide straight stretch on the back. Parking was in a nice big parking lot adjacent to the start/finish. I just put a bunch of photos from the crit up on the NOBC website.

Going into the Master's criterium I was down in 5th or 6th place, thanks to my lackluster time trial the day before, and George Heagerty had moved up into 1st. It was already hot when our 9:30 a.m. race started and as expected the pace was fast and the attacks came early and often. I guess it was about mid-way through the 45-minute race that someone attacked and I saw Eddie Corcoran (NBO) respond. I was pretty far back at the time and figured that the pack would go after it, but for some reason there was a long hesitation at the front. I clearly remember thinking "there goes the race." I had spoken with Eddie yesterday and I knew he was kicking himself for having missed the break in the road race, so I knew that he would work hard if he got into a break today. The duo quickly got a 20 or 25-second gap and the pack was still disorganized. Heagerty and his teammate Tom had probably already figured out that if those two took 1st and 2nd, George would still likely get the omnium win. A few laps later, Tom did put in a long fast pull, as did Mike Lew and I, pulling the pack up to within a mere 10 seconds of the break, but the rest of the pack just wouldn't close the deal. A few of my teammates told me later that they never even realized that those guys were off the front until it was way too late. So soon enough we were reduced to racing for 3rd as the final laps approached. Just before the bell lap, Tom Bain went to the front with George Heagerty firmly glued to his wheel and proceeded to pull the whole last lap. On the bell lap, I thought Mike Lew and I were well-positioned up in the front five or so, but as the leaders rounded the turn at end of the long back stretch, coming into a series of six turns before the finish, someone inexplicably eased up and we were streamed by the pack and stuck way too far back. I jumped after the next couple of turns and moved up to maybe 10th before the final turn when the sprint really started. Coming through the sharp left-hander about 100 meters before the finish, the two guys in front of me swung a little too wide and bounced off of each other, forcing me to change my game plan at the last second. I ended up finishing 5th in the field sprint - 7th overall counting the two guys in the break - which was rather disappointing for me, to be sure. I was happy to hear that Eddie had won the 2-up sprint for the win, even though it meant that he moved ahead of me in the omnium. The result was that I moved down to 6th place in the omnium.

It was a fun race, though, and after I cooled down a bit I headed back to the car, put the bike on the roof and went off to take a few pictures of the Cat. 5 race in which we had a number of riders. That race looked pretty fast, but I don't know for sure how the finish or the omnium placings ultimately came out.

An hour or so later, as the Cat. 4 race was getting ready to start, I heard that the promoters were allowing the masters riders to enter the Cat. 1,2,3 criterium at no extra charge. Well, despite my overheated and dehydrated condition (or perhaps because of it), I couldn't resist a free race entry and went over and picked up a number so that I could at least give Realdo a little assistance early in the race. So the bike came down from the roof again, I refilled my bottle of HammerGel, and tried to stay in the shade as much as I could. Charlie Davis, who had also ridden the masters races, had also entered this criterium, as had Rick Selby, so at least Reo wouldn't be entirely unsupported. That is, until we started to fade later in the race.

The 1,2,3 race finally got started about an hour late, and it was HOT in more ways than one. As usual, Kenny B. attacked the first lap, but the pack was on him like white on rice today. Shortly after he was brought back, another Herring rider went, which was no surprise either, but the pack reacted quickly again. There followed a series of attacks, none of which survived, but it was keeping the pace very fast and a number of riders got popped off the pack during the first 15 minutes of the hour-long race. This whole time I was trying to stay near, or at, the front, covering as many of the attacks as I could. The group was consistently doing 28-30 mph down the straight back side of the course - into the wind! I knew I wouldn't be able to do this all day, of course, and after a while it looked to me like the Herring guys had decided to put all their chips on the pack sprint table where the odds of success were looking a little better, so I dropped back a little bit to seek some shelter. Then, about mid-way through, someone attacked hard on the back straight and two Herring guys (Kenny and Frank) went along with Realdo. I looked at that 4-man break start to roll away and breathed a sigh of relief. I figured that if that break survived, Reo would at least keep his 3rd place in the omnium standings, maybe even move up one spot. I was pretty much done for the day anyway. Sure enough, the pace almost immediately eased up in the pack and I retreated farther to the back to try and recover.

The only job I had remaining was to see if I could snag a place in the top 10 or so in order to deprive other riders of omnium points that might allow them to get ahead of Reo in the overall. For quite a few laps I sat on the very end of the pack behind G.W., taking lessons in conservation of momentum. There's a right and a wrong way of sitting at the back of a criterium pack, and G.W. definitely knew the right way. Ease up just a bit coming into the turns so that you don't need to touch the brake and also don't need to get out of the saddle to re-accelerate on the way out. Very smooth.

Coming into the bell lap the pack was not showing much life and in order to get a spot nearer the front I went past the line and took the first spot. I ended up pulling almost the entire last lap, but it was worth it to keep a good position. I knew something would happen in the last three turns before the finish, and I eased up just a touch on the third-to-last one. Sure enough, I heard someone jump behind me. I immediately reacted and slotted into third position going through the last turn. As we came through that turn at full throttle the guy in front of me hit his shifter to drop down another cog and dropped his chain. For a while he was all over the road, but luckily I was able to go around him easily on the inside and ended up 2nd in the pack sprint, which was 6th counting the 4-man break. Realdo had taken 3rd in the breakaway, so his 3rd place in the omnium was safe. I have to say that I really, really enjoyed the Cat. 1,2,3 criterium, although I am at a complete loss to explain why I often feel better in the second criterium when I do two on the same day. Shortly after the finish, after downing half a gallon of assorted liquids, I realized I had made a crucial mistake. I had completely forgotten to spray on my sunscreen. My badly aging northern european skin was rapidly turning hot pink and I was somewhat uncomfortable most of the night because of it.

As a result of the late start and having to wait for the final omnium results to be posted, I ended up completely missing my dad's birthday party. I'm pretty sure the 1,2,3 crit was more fun, though!

I think it was around 9 pm that night before I finally got re-hydrated, and this sunburn is still bugging me!

Mad Potter Saturday

Realdo and I were halfway to Biloxi when it dawned on me that we were running late. We were on our way to the first two races of a weekend omnium near Biloxi, Mississippi, and it was becoming clear that my calculations had been somewhat optimistic. I pressed a little harder on the gas pedal, though, and we arrived to find a long line still at the registration table. The race would clearly be starting a little late, so although we were rushed, it all worked out. I was riding the master 35+ race that had 34 or so riders and a very high proportion of horsepower, and although the course was not particularly hilly, I was expecting a hard race.

At the start, I was lined up near the back, well out of range of the referee's megaphone, and was relieved when the race started at a fairly civilized pace. The course consisted of three laps of a 15 or 16 mile loop, plus a four of five mile stretch to and from the finish line, which was not on the loop. The first lap went smoothly and I quickly realized that the combination of narrow roads and large field would make staying at the back a very risky combination, so I started working my way up toward the front. It took the better part of half a lap, but finally I installed myself up in the front third of the group where I would at least have a fighting chance to react to any action. It wasn't until the second lap that things started to pick up and about mid-way through I was in a 3-man break to which the pack had granted a brief vacation leave. Soon enough, though, were brought back and I found myself about 10 seconds off the front. I stayed out there for a while, hoping to perhaps stimulate some action, and eventually a 6-man break materialized and started putting some time on the rest of the field. Our little group was working well together for a few miles and as we started the final lap another small group bridged up to us making for a break of about 10 riders. There was some confusion for a while, but eventually one of the guys put on his director sportif hat and started getting the group organized. We soon had a fast, if slightly disorganized, rotation going that again started putting time on the pack. It wasn't until the final seven or eight miles that things started to slow down as the riders started to smell a sprint. As we rounded the left-hand turn for the final 4-mile run into the finish, Tom Bain attacked and strung out the group, but the response was quick and he was brought back quickly. A few minutes later, he went again but this time it seemed like he eased up rather quickly. As it turned out, he had a flat front tire and the wheel truck was minutes behind us with the pack. I think that about half the pack had been keying off of Tom, so his sudden loss was a little disappointing. The finish was at the top of a fairly long but not too steep climb, so although the pace picked up a lot at the 1 km mark, it wasn't until we were inside the 200 meter sign that the sprint really started. As I started to come around Ed on the left, I heard the moto-ref blowing his horn behind me and suddenly wondered whether the center-line rule might be in effect for the sprint. It would be unusual, but since I hadn't heard the instructions at the start, I wasn't sure. Rather than take the chance of being DQ'ed, I eased up and went around Ed the long way, on the other side. As we came up to the line I saw him glance over his shoulder, and when he saw me coming he made a last-minute lunge for the line, but it was too late and I got past him to finish in 2nd spot.

A while later, Realdo, who had been in a 6-rider break in the Cat. 1,2,3 race, won his sprint to finish first, ahead of The Great Balded One. After three cold caffeine-loaded Red Bull drinks, we headed over to the nicely air-conditioned Palace Casino in Biloxi for something to eat and to watch the Tour de France on the huge TV screen. We hung out there until it was time to leave for the afternoon 3-mile time trial which started about an hour late. I guess I did a respectible time, but certainly not one of the best. I won't see the results until tomorrow at the criterium.

After the TT, we headed back to New Orleans where I went straight over to my mother's house because my brother and his family were in town. I gave Gina a call on the way back to see how things were going at Superweek, and it sounded like they are going super. She said that in today's race she was 3rd in the pack sprint behind a small breakaway and had moved up to 5th or 6th in the overall standings with one race to go. She's won over $400 so far, and will almost certainly take home a chunk of change for her overall placing as well. Isn't it great when you can take home a little bit more than you spent?

As I'm writing this it's already past midnight and I'm waiting for my jersey to finish drying so I can get my gear together for tomorrow's criterium. There is a dull ache in my legs, but it's not too bad. Tomorrow should be fun! I expect there are a few guys who will have something to prove in the criterium, so that should make it lively.

Storm Front - Friday the 13th (stage)

When the alarm went off this morning I knew something was not quite right. It was just a little bit too dark. As I rode through the neighborhood on my way to the levee, through the soft saturated morning air, I could feel the low carpet of grey clouds hovering above the treetops. There was a small group today for the Friday ride, and we rode a double paceline with each lead pair taking long pulls and chatting about the usual stuff. "Going to Biloxi this weekend?" For some, the question needn't be asked because they rarely travel to races. Others were still being evasive, not yet committed to doing the whole 2-day omnium or just a single race a la carte. I had already registered for the omnium yesterday evening, just minutes before getting a call from Reo looking to get together on the transportation issue. Biloxi is only about an hour and a half from here and we'll likely drive back to N.O. after Saturday's road race and time trial, only to turn around and drive back over the next morning. Definitely cheaper than staying overnight, anyway. I'm looking forward to it, even though I don't feel like I'm really in race shape lately. I've missed all of the training races the last few weeks because of conflicts with work, and although I've been riding consistently I know that the intensity has been lacking. Still, lack of fitness should never be used as an excuse for missing a local, or even regional, race. The racing itself is much better training than you'd get at the weekend group ride, and in this particular case the $45 entry fee for the weekend is quite reasonable. It looks like the weather on Saturday and Sunday will be good, which around here means a 30-40% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. The only issue for me will be to have a couple of respectable finishes and then to try and make it back to town early enough Sunday afternoon to avoid being too terribly late for my dad's birthday party.

Yesterday after we left work around 6:30, The Wife wanted to drive over to the big Barnes & Noble bookstore to get a book for my dad. As usual, it turned into an hour-long ordeal. Personally, I find big bookstores to be completely overwhelming and unless I know ahead of time what I want, I'd rather not go. Same thing for greeting cards, by the way. The Wife takes a completely opposite approach. If she needs to pick up a birthday card, for example, she will absolutely read each and every card on the rack before making a decision. Same thing goes for bookstores. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been so hungry.

I was reading Martin Dugard's TDF blog a few minutes ago, and thought it was pretty clever of him to refer to today's stage as "Friday the 13th," since it's the 13th stage of this year's Tour. I had been at work for quite a while this morning before I suddenly remembered to check in on how today's race was going. When I pulled up Cyclingnews and the Eurosport live audio, I found that I had timed it just right. There was a 2-man break containing the amazing Chris Horner dangling just ahead of the peleton with only about 5 km to go. Chris and the other guy kind of blew it in the last 500 meters by starting to worry about the stage win and not keeping their momentum going. You just can't do that with the sprinters' teams knocking on your back door. They both got swallowed up within the last 300 meters or so, I think, and the day went to the sprinters as planned. Very gutsy move by Chris, though, and it's pretty cool to see him doing this stuff in his first year as a euro-pro after getting added to the Tour de France lineup at practically the last minute. He ended up 10th for the stage which is none too shabby anyway. Dream-come-true just to be there. A stage win would have been practically unbelievable.

I see that Gina finished pretty far down in the pack in yesterday's Superweek criterium, although she got 5th in one of the sprints, which I presume are like primes??? There's a special sprint points competition in addition to the overall competition. She's still 7th in the overall and 8th in the sprints with three events left, so that's pretty awesome. I'll bet she's the only med student in the top ten.

So I've still got a couple of unhappy Windows98 laptops at home. One will boot up fine and work fine for a while, even an hour, and then just randomly crash to the blue screen of death indicating a hardware or driver problem. I uninstalled a few things last night to see if that would matter, but it didn't. Good thing I usually rely on those old machines only for simple e-mail and web browsing. I'd just go ahead and reinstall Windows on one of them, but I don't know if I can find the original CDs that would make that oh so much less painful, but I'd still need to do the deed at work where I have a high-speed connection because the old version of Win98 would need major online updating at the very least.

Busy, Busy

Happy Bastille Day!

I added a photo album showing some of the landmarks for the morning Levee training ride, so if you've been wondering what it looks like out on the bike path, you can check it out on the NOBC website.

Last night was kind of rough, computer-wise. I've got two rather old hand-me-down laptops at home that I use and both of them had some serious problems last night. One would crash to a blue screen with some sort of cryptic message about a hardware issue, while the other would hang in the middle of loading Windows every time. I spent a lot of time in "safe mode," running complete disk maintenance utilities, defragging drives, etc. and one of them seems to be mysteriously cured while the other is still unhappy. It seems like I went through a similar situation a couple of months ago. Anyway, I was up until midnight fooling around with the blasted things. I sure wish I could afford to spring for a shiny new computer! Maybe even something that isn't running Windows98.

It's been a busy day today and cycling-related things have really had to take a back seat. Don't you just hate it when work interferes with your cycling?

I had a 9 a.m. meeting this morning, so went out to meet the Thursday long ride group already knowing I'd be turning back early. The pace today, at least while I was there, stayed pretty moderate. Although there was a pretty big group, a few of the usual instigators were absent and so the group stuck to a reasonable facsimile of a paceline all the way out to the St. Charles parish line where I turned back. I enjoyed the mostly solo ride back today, staying at a nice tempo around 22 mph, give-or-take. Along the way I picked up one of the guys who commutes in to Ochner and we chatted a bit after I eased up at Jefferson Playground.

I spent all morning in meetings and most of the early afternoon following up on meetings and didn't finally check the TDF results until well after noon. It looked like a predictable stage - a group of riders who were well down on GC was allowed to go down the road while the big fish kicked back a little bit.

I see that GiVo is still doing well at the Superweek races, finishing 17th and 11th in the last two races. Meanwhile Shannon Koch of Team LaS'port in Shreveport is heading to Austria for the Junior World Championships as part of the U.S. team following her recent victories at nationals. She'll be racing with the Cat. 1,2,3 guys in Biloxi this weekend as a warm-up.

Hump Day in the Big Easy and on the Galibier

There was a small crew out this morning for the Wednesday training ride, and that kept the pace quite civilized. On my way down to the basement to get the bike, I picked up my cheap little digital camera so I could snap a few photos of the ride for the website. It's always kind of difficult to explain to visiting riders exactly where the group meets, and I figure a few photos might help. As usual, I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the photos, but then what do you expect from a fixed-focus camera being used by someone riding a bike? My "real" camera is really too heavy and bulky to use while riding anyway. I ended up doing a couple of camera intervals, sprinting ahead of the group so I could slam on the brakes, whip out the camera and snap a shot or two as the group approached. I would then have to get going again and chase the group down. This is why I took pictures on a Wednesday when the pace is slower instead of a Tuesday when the pace is ballistic!

So I see that NASA had to delay the shuttle launch. That's a real shame. The folks here in New Orleans who built the new tanks must have been disappointed. Brian, one of our club riders, works at Lockheed-Martin. I don't usually know exactly what he works on, which is probably why I'm still alive. Suffice it to say that I'm quite sure the Space Shuttle fuel tank isn't the only thing they do out there.

The Tour de France was pretty interesting today. One thing I love about the Tour are the names of the mountain passes. I have a set of wheels named after the Sestriere, and you can have breakfast at La Madeleine here in N.O. (three locations, I think!). Today the TDF went over the Madeleine, Telegraphe, and Galibier, finishing after a nice downhill from the latter. I was surprised and impressed by Vinokourov and Botero, both of whom, I suppose, had something to prove today. Discovery seemed to ride a well-controlled race with most of the team working hard to keep Lance protected. In the end they narrowed the gap to the Vino/Botero duo to just over a minute and even set up a leadout for Lance to sprint for the 3rd place bonus (he ended up 6th though).

On the home front, I was all set to drive over to Ft. Walton tomorrow with my dad to sort out the hurricane damage at his house, but as it turned out he got someone over there to clean things up today so (a) we don't need to go, and (b) his birthday party will be here in town on Sunday afternoon, which means (c) I get to do the Biloxi races this weekend. There are no results up yet from yesterday's Superweek races, so I don't know how that went. I wouldn't be surprised if it rained up there, though. Speaking of rain, it looks like the new Tropical Storm will be moving into the Caribbean soon, if it's not already there, and we're all hoping it takes a more southerly track than Dennis.

Droppage? Beaucoup

Awesome. Lance pounded his fist hard on the Tour de France table today, silencing the critics, at least for now. As they climbed the final hill to the finish the droppage rate went through the roof. The Disco Boys gave everyone a lesson in teamwork along the way, pushing the pace early with Hincappie sheltering Armstrong until the final 12k and Popovich delivering the final coup de gras a couple of kilometers later that put the hurt on the rest and set Lance up for his final push to the finish. At 5k to go the group really starts to disintegrate as Lance puts in another surge. Only Valverde can hang on to the finish, and Lance gives him a nice long leadout to get every second they can and avoid any cat-and-mouse stuff, letting him shoot past to take the stage win. Rasmussen and Mancebo finish nine seconds later. Basso? A minute down. Kloden? 2:14 down. Ullrich? 2:14 down. So Lance takes the yellow with 38 seconds on Rasmussen and 2:40 on Basso. Still plenty of mountains to go, though, and it's a long way yet to Paris. There will be opportunities tomorrow for some.

Meanwhile back in the real world, there was a big group for the long Tuesday ride this morning. The group sat back and let a couple of the guys on TT bikes ride off into the distance, although eventually the pace picked up pretty well. The ride back was jerky, with only a handful willing to get to the front in the light headwind. The pace was all over the place and few of the riders were on the same page today, with many content to sit in near the back. I got home drenched with sweat. I'm still not sure how I'm going to work out this weekend. I really want to do the races in Biloxi, but it's my dad's birthday and he's invited everyone to his place in Ft. Walton. The same thing happened last year and I ended up doing only the Cat. 1/2/3 Crit. Sunday afternoon.

After trying to accommodate other races and various people, and moving the date of the Team TT twice as a result, Shane finally threw in the towel today and cancelled the Team Time Trial. He told me that he had never actually offered to put it on in the first place. "They" had simply assumed that he would and put it on the calendar in his absence, despite the fact that he is no longer a member of the club that promoted it last year. After he rescheduled it there was a fair amount of complaining, proving once again the old saying "no good deed goes unpunished." He's been all over La. and Ms. this year officiating and between that and his new children and all of the other work he does for LAMBRA, I guess that was the last straw. Perhaps someone else will pick up the event and put it on.

GiVo continues getting excellent results at Superweek. Yesterday she was 3rd in a long road race (I think she said it was around 70 mi.) and moved up to 3rd in the overall standings for the Pro/Cat.1/2/3 Women. There's another road race today and I think it may be in the rain thanks to the remnants of hurricane Dennis.

Rest Day?

While the TDF riders are licking their wounds and hatching the schemes that will play out on the slopes of the Alps next week, I've been kept rather busy today. The morning air was uncharacteristically cool and breezy this morning as the last remnants of the hurricane's circulation pulled some slightly drier air in from the north. I was out the door early today because I had left the commuter at work in case I had to stash the car in the garage to protect it from the hurricane. That meant I'd have to drive in with The Wife, so instead of waiting for the 6:40 group, I headed out earlier and got in a solid 1:15 of training alone, getting back in plenty of time to shower, change and get to work shortly after 8:00. It was quite nice, actually, and besides, I've been meaning to do more solo training rides anyway.

Back at the office I had to put a couple of computers back together, having moved a few of them on Friday in case there had been any wind or rain damage to our rooftop office. A steady stream of work, interrupted only by an interview with a job candidate from New York, kept me on my toes much of the day, although I did rush out for a plate of tasty but somewhat runny RB&R at the Med School.

I got a quick email from GiVo yesterday. She's currently up in Milwaukee at Superweek, aka the "International Cycling Classic." This is probably the oldest multi-day event in the United States, and one of the few that truly deserves to have the word "classic" in its name. Somehow I never made it up there. Anyway, she has been getting some great results up there, finishing 7th and 8th in the two criteriums she's done so far (there are 9 races for the Pro/1/2/3 Women). As a result she's currently in 5th place in the overall standings. The first criterium had 70 women in it, of which only about 30 finished. Now that's a huge women's field by any standards, especially for a criterium. I'll bet it was wild!

The hurricane didn't seem to do nearly the amount of damage that Ivan did last year, and initial reports from the locals in Ft. Walton is that my dad's place stayed high and dry. It looks like Navarre Beach got pretty well flattened, though. Now we can start worrying about the next hurricane that is starting to form out in the Atlantic.

Unsettled

I'm sitting here on the couch, coffee cup in hand, watching the Weather Channel as the gentle breeze from my 50-year-old Hunter Oscillating Fan fills the room. The hurricane is just a few hours from flattening Ft. Walton and Destin again, and the question now isn't whether my dad's place will be flooded, just how deep the water will be and where the boat will end up. Here in the relative safety of New Orleans, a 4-5 hour drive from ground zero, the weather is nonetheless unsettled, with gusty winds and overcast skies.

I have really been enjoying reading Martin Dugard's Tour de France blog, which he is writing for Active.com. While most of the other TDF blogs get updated long after the day's stage has ended, Martin, who writes for the New York Times, updates his within a couple of hours of the finish, and does so with real style. Where else to you get an insightful summary of a bike race laced with quotes like this:

It reminded me of our daily need for inspiration, and Saint-Exupery’s rant against society’s embrace of mediocrity. “You rolled yourselves into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, raising a modest rampart against the winds and tides and stars. Nobody grasped you by the shoulders while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught will you ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

The other interesting one is being written by 14-year-old Alex Trautwig who uses his dad's priveliged access to tell us about what kinds of swag are available to the spectators, how the team logos are put on the yellow jersey, and what it's like in the caravan.

The Discovery team, aka "The Disco Boys," at least stuck together today despite allowing two breaks to go up the road and giving away the yellow jersey. After the big climbs, they got together with CSC and pulled back a few minutes on the break. Perhaps it was a strategic decision. Perhaps not. In my little bike-racing world of short fast and flat races, a three-minute gap is huge, stage races routinely being won by just a few seconds. In the TDF world, though, the time gaps on a single mountain stage are usually far greater, with otherwise strong riders losing 15-30 minutes in a single day. Nonetheless, the situation in the Tour seems far more unsettled than in prior years, and the Disco boys have a real race on their hands this time. I sense that the other teams smell blood and absent the usual fear that paralizes the competition, they all seem quite willing to be agressive.

So this morning I decided to skip the Giro ride and instead do a solo ride along the levee. I left early and found the bike path mostly deserted all the way out to the end. I cruised along, occasionally sitting up to enjoy a bit of tailwind, but generally pushing an easy gear at a moderate pace. On the way back I ran into Reo who turned around and rode with me all the way back through Audubon Park before heading back to the bike path to put in another 20 miles or so. I may end up making a trip to Florida one day next week to survey the damage. We shall see. I don't think the hurricane will cause much of a problem in Biloxi, so next weekend's races there should be good.

Thanks Ben!

The minute that Ben S. cancelled this weekend's track meet, I knew we were in the clear. Indeed, as hurricane Dennis traversed Cuba it lost most of its punch, emerging into the Gulf of Mexico as a relatively mediocre Category 2 hurricane. Since then, the projected path has solidified and the consensus is that it will make landfall around Pensacola, which is a good 200 miles to the East. As a result, I'm expecting a relatively nice day tomorrow with a nice North wind and maybe even some slightly drier and cooler air. Bullet dodged! The only question now is how badly my dad's house in Ft. Walton will get hit.

When I got up this morning, I made a quick check of the Weather Channel, and headed out to the Lakefront for the Giro ride. Just as I got to Robt. E. Lee Blvd, a couple of blocks from the lake, I ran into Eddie. He said that Lakeshore Drive was closed and that the police had just run him off, so we headed down to the Casino bridge to await the group, picking up Jeff along the way. We waited for a long time up on top of the bridge before the group finally showed up. The group didn't seem too energetic as it worked its way down Hayne into a moderate headwind, but after turning on to Paris Rd. it picked up quickly and we hammered all the way down to Chef Highway. After a while I drifted back to toward the back of the group, but as we approached the last couple of miles I noticed that a small group had split off the front. There was a sporatic chase, a few solo attempts to bridge, but eventually the headwind killed everything off and it came back together before the turnaround. My legs, which had felt pretty dead earlier, seemed to be feeling better now and it wasn't long after the turnaround that the speeds started creeping upward. For once we got the green light and so the group approached the Goodyear sign sprint at full-bore. I was stationed near the front, not really committed to a sprint, when Howard looked back at me and patted his butt - the international sign for "stick to my wheel." About 200 meters from the line Howard took off with me glued to his wheel. By the finish he had taken us up to 40 mph and I had one of those rare occasions to check out the 12. It was a nice ride back, for the most part, and I sprinted up both of the bridges, but when I looked back at the bottom of the second one, there was practically nobody back there. A few of us rode back together, but we never saw most of the group again.

The Tour de France looked like it must have been pretty good toward the end. A couple of guys held off the pack by a few seconds, but Lance stayed with the small lead group. Unfortunately, Hincapie came off on the last climb and finished with the second group, moving him down to about 8th on GC. I'm sure that much will be said about how Lance ended up without any teammates on that climb.

Threat Response

hurricane Dennis continues to have a bead on the Gulf Coast, and the city is well within the "cone of probability," which is a nice way of saying it might hit here and it might not. In a city this size with only two ways out, that means decisions have to be made well before there is much certainty. So far, New Orleans hasn't issued a voluntary evacuation order but the University officially closed down about half an hour ago. Most of the locals I've talked to have not decided if they will evacuate yet, although a few have made hotel reservations in Texas just in case. The hurricane will certainly be at least a Category 4. Category 2 and 3 are pretty severe hurricanes. The ones that are Category 4 are best experienced by television from a hotel room a couple of hundred miles away. Dennis is a serious one and I'm a little worried that the most recent changes in its forecast path have shifted it farther to the West. It will be a long weekend, to be sure! Yesterday evening I climbed up on the extension ladder and rigged up the partially broken cable TV line so that I can get a signal again. The streets in my neighborhood are still piled high with debris from last weekend's tropical storm, and I'm hoping, but not expecting, that the city will be able to get all of that stuff picked up before Dennis arrives. Locally, the panic level has ratcheted up a couple of notches in the last 12 hours. The TV news stations have been running pieces explaining the city's newest evacuation plans, aka "Contraflow," in which they will completely shut off all inbound interstate traffic and instead use both sides of the interstate for outbound traffic. I really hope it doesn't come down to that. There is a certain intentional effort to create a mild level of panic at the earliest possible time in order to get people to make earlier decisions about evacuation. It works pretty well.

I rode early this morning because we're interviewing job candidates today and I needed to be ready to go earlier than usual. Once again, I was reminded that I need to be riding solo a bit more often. I mean, there's no need to go all anti-social or anything, but a couple of solo rides a week are good because you tend to focus more on how you are feeling, your efficiency, your limits. It is difficult to think much about cycling when your city is being threatened with annihilation, though.

The folks in our Data Systems department are a little worried about this hurricane since they just moved into a new building. Hopefully I'll have good internet access, at least until the power goes down. We shall see.

Detour

Today just seems to be one of those days full of obstacles!

The morning training ride group was big but a little lazy at first. I had gotten a call from John last night who wanted to warn me and the morning group about a support wire along the levee bike path. He and Realdo had been riding that evening and had come across support cable for a phone pole that had been snagged by a tree that had fallen during the storm. It was stretched across the bike path about eight or nine feet above the road, and they were worried that if it got any lower somebody was going to be decapitated! Luckily, it was quite high enough for everyone to ride under this morning. I was feeling particularly sluggish today as often happens when I have a lot of things on my mind, and every time the pace surged my legs were reluctant to cooperate. Maybe it had something to do with the extra glass of wine last night. Since we ended up with my sister, brother-in-law, and mother at the house last night for dinner (they were still waiting for their electricity to be restored), The Wife went out and bought a bunch of Shrimp on Steriods. We fixed them up with olive oil and seasoning and I slid them into our classic old O'Keefe & Merrit Stove with the "Grillevator" and we had a nice big dinner.

On my way to work on the commuter, which BTW has about 15 psi in the tires right now, I had to detour around two fallen trees on Fontainbleau that had still not been removed and were completely blocking the road. Just when I though I was in the clear and was flying down the Broad St. overpass, I noticed some trucks in the median and some water on the road ahead of me. Thinking it was nothing much, I continued on, only to find that there was a broken water main that was pouring tons of water across the road. It wasn't much of a problem, but I couldn't slow down fast enough to keep from getting my pant legs good and wet. I get to work and realize I've forgotten the key to the bike lock, but since the bike's in the "bike room," that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So I get to work and my 11:00 meeting gets pushed back to 12:00 and then to 12:15 over lunch, so now I've got to go get some cash out of the ATM. I get on the phone to line up a service call from the cable company and after being on hold for 28 minutes I finally speak with a human who tells me the next available appointment is the evening of the 20th!! Damn, I'm glad I'm not paying for digital cable and missing all the good stages of the Tour de France on TV, 'cause I'd be really pissed about that. The cable got so stretched during the storm that it is currently held onto the house only by the copper core wire. The grounding sheath, insulation, etc. is all pulled back about an inch, so the chances that the thing will stay up there at all until the 20th are slim. Luckily I've still got antennas around the house, so we're back to broadcast TV for a while.

After the Storm

The Tropical Storm at blew through last night was quite a bit stronger than I expected! By midnight most of the neighborhood was without electricity and we were getting rain and wind gusts up around 50-60 mph. Luckily, there's only one oak tree between my house and the transformer, so we never lost power, although the TV cable line did break. The streets are littered with branches and leaves, but otherwise things are fine. I had to drive up to Baton Rouge early this morning and didn't get back until around 5:30 p.m. Both my sister's and mother's houses are still without power, which wouldn't be a big problem except for the heat and humidity, so they were happy to come over to our place for dinner and to spend the night in the minimal air conditioning our window units provide. Needless to say, I never got to ride today, but tomorrow should be fine. There's another Tropical Storm heading this way, though, so the weekend could be bad, depending on which way it goes.

Ben just rescheduled the track events for next weekend, so I guess that practically guarantees rain!

Tropical Rains Moving In

As usual, I forgot about yesterday's flat until 10 minutes before I had to roll out the door this morning, and the result was that I didn't actually hit the road until nearly 6:10. I knew I'd be late for the long Tuesday ride, and as I time-trialed my way to the Levee I noticed that it was much too dark for that time of the morning. There were already a lot of dark menacing clouds to the East and South blowing in from the big Tropical Storm out in the Gluf. The latest storm track puts it on a collision course with the city, which will mostly mean a lot of rain over the next few days. There's also another storm moving into the Gulf from the Atlantic that is likely to become a hurricaine over the next few days, so here we go again! The mayor of Grand Isle has already issued an evacuation order.

But for the moment, it was still dry and after chasing the group for a couple of miles, I finally made contact somewhere past the bridge. I hung onto the back for a while to recover and soon the pace started creeping up. A few riders turned back because of the threat of rain, but I figured I'd go ahead and ride today because tomorrow was looking like a real wash-out anyway. Before I knew it there were just Todd, Eddie and me and the pace was still going up. The rest of the group hovered half a minute behind us. When Eddie and Todd started taking their pulls at 29-30, I started skipping mine. A tailwind is nice and all, but I didn't want to be so blown up that I'd have to call a taxi to get me home from Destrehan. The pace eventually settled down into the 26-27 mph range, at which point I happily returned to the rotation. When we finally made the turn-around and the survivors regrouped, we took it pretty easy for a long time. In the distance, we could see nothing but black rain clouds hovering over the city. We were going to get wet. The only questions were how long and how wet.

It started as a light rain. By now we were cruising along in the mid-20s, fighting a light headwind and staggered a bit to avoid some of the wheel spray kicking up from the lead riders. By the time we hit the River Ridge area, though, the warm summer rain had turned into a heavy downpour. I could feel the huge drops stinging my thighs and there was a steady stream of water coming through the vents in my helmet. My socks were already soaked and after a while I stopped trying to avoid the wheel spray since there was nothing left to salvage. Thankfully, it eased back down to a steady drizzle by the time I got home where I stripped naked in the basement and threw the whole mess into the washer. I put the helmet and shoes in front of the fan for the day and then it was Fire Drill time to get cleaned up in time to walk the five or six blocks to catch the 9:00 shuttle for the Health Sciences Center. By the time I got there, my feet were soaked from wading through some flodded spots on the sidewalk, but I had a dry pair stashed in my messenger bag, so at least I wouldn't have wet feet all day at work.

I am supposed attend an important meeting in Baton Rouge tomorrow with one of my coworkers, and we just discovered that what we thought was going to be a 1-hour meeting is actually an all-day "retreat" starting at 9 a.m., so as far as I'm concerned, it can just rain like hell tomorrow because I won't be able to ride anyway! Right now the rain is pounding my window at work and showing no sign of stopping. Gotta love it!

There was a little drama at the Tour de France Team Time Trial this morning when the U.S. rider on CSC, Zabriskie, crashed just a couple of kilometers before the finish. CSC ended up finishing two seconds down on Discovery, and I'm sure they would have won if not for the moment of confusion caused by that crash. Zabriskie had won the Stage 1 time trial. Because of the way the TTT rules work, he now drops all the way back to 53rd, 1:28 down. That's gotta suck. I really like being able to listen to the live commentary via eurosport.com while at the same time reading the real-time updates on cyclingnews.com. Don't need no stinkin' digital Cox Cable secret decoder box, thank you.

Independence Day in the Country

Yesterday afternoon we clamped the bikes to the roof and headed a couple of hours North to stay overnight with Jim and his wife. Jim works at Tulane with The Wife, and they have bought a chunk of land and a couple of little run-down houses way out in the country. Cow country, to be specific. This place is far enough away from everything that you may as well just turn the cellphone off. They have been working on fixing up this little house, and have done a nice job with it. Nothing fancy, to be sure. The floors slope and the doors don't all latch, but the a/c works great and bed is soft and at night it is quiet. I mean, scary-quiet. For a guy who lives twenty feet from a six-lane highway, all that quiet takes a little "getting used to." So anyway, after we arrived we took the tour of the property. Along the way, the neighbor, who grazes his cattle on some of Jim's property, walked over with a little Catahoula Hound puppy, carefully working himself through the barbed wire fence. A bit later, his wife and their daughter walked across the pasture to join in the conversation. It seemed to mostly revolve around snakes. This guy's wife had been bitten by a copperhead a couple of weeks ago, and he had just killed a water moccasin (aka cottonmouth). So naturally, we immediately set out to pick blackberries, which is the one thing I know of that is always associated with snake bites. I guess it was just too hot for the snakes to pay us much attention, though, and we returned with a big pail of rather small blackberries (it's really late in the season for blackberries). That night, after half a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, we hit the sack around 10:30. No fireworks, no gunshots, just silence. Spooky.

The next morning, The Wife and I headed out at 6:30 for a 40-mile ride. It's been a long time since we did a ride that long together. I had mapped out what I knew would be a really nice route, using most of the roads that we had ridden last winter on a training ride. Although we were two hours from New Orleans, most of the intersections had painted arrows on them from the Crescent City Cyclists' Century rides (or maybe just some Bob Hodges rides). Anyway, the roads up there were awesome. Lots of smooth asphalt and rolling hills and narrow tree-shaded country roads. I think we probably saw a total of ten cars in 40 miles. The Wife, riding her antique 5-speed Bruce Gordon with a low gear of 42x18, was definitely struggling on the steeper hills, but I resisted the urge to attack anyway. Just as we got to the last little hill, maybe 300 yards from the house, my front tire flatted. I was so close, I just wobbled in the rest of the way on the flat. Afterward, we helped staple up some classic country house ceiling tiles in one of the rooms they're working on.

So The Daughter went out and got new tires and a front end alignment on the Jeep to the tune of nearly $700, and that was with the tires on sale! Ouch. She paid for them herself, and we'll reimburse her, but it definitely won't be all at once!

The "Lance Effect"

I woke up just a bit late this morning and so I had to ride out to the lakefront at better than my usual casual speed. As I passed one corner where there is always a newspaper stand on Sundays, the guys there cheered as I rode by. 6:30 a.m. and New Orleanian newspaper salesmen are cheering a cyclist. Will wonders never cease? This incident was, no doubt, a direct result of "the Lance Effect." Every time the Tour de France makes the news in the U.S., this sort of thing starts happening. Anyway, the Giro ride turned out to be quite fast today, despite it being a Sunday, which usually means a slightly more civilized pace. Along the way I spotted Rob Konrad in the group and rode up to ask him how the track events went yesterday. He said they got in the morning session, but the afternoon session was rained out shortly after Tim Reagan crashed and broke his collarbone! Bad luck for Tim for sure. This happened in the sprints, and Rob didn't know what exactly happened. He said it looked like he just went down all by himself coming through turn 4. Maybe he unclipped?

Anyway, I'm off for a drive across the lake to spend the night at a friend's house up around Mount Herman, so I've got a copy of the map we used for one of our early Spring "Bob Hodges" training rides up there. Hoping to get in a little ride tomorrow morning.

I'm still trying to figure out how those guys in the TDF can average 34 freaking MPH for 19 km. Tailwind or not, I've never even been in a paceline that approached that kind of average speed. I wonder what the average speed of the guy in past place was. I'll bet it was close to 30 mph. Like I've said before, the pros are a whole different species. It's amazing they can interbreed!

Adult Snoballs & SuperPaceline

Last night's outdoor party ended early the same way many such parties end - with everybody running for cover. Fortunately, the rain didn't start for a couple of hours so there was plenty of time to scarf down a good portion of the goodies, along with a couple of Abita TurboDogs. I had just enough time for a nice Plum Street Snoball before the raindrops started to fall. The great thing about having snoballs at parties is that you get to add your own "special flavors." Yum! When it's hot and humid and you're way overdressed because you had to rush there straight from work, nothing quite hits the spot like a snoball.

So I completely wimped out on the track events. Realdo called me last night and tried to entice me to go, but I just couldn't drum up the motivation for some reason. Kind of odd. Anyway, that of course meant I was destined to do the Giro ride. There was a big group this morning, along with an uncommon wind blowing in from the west. As the group headed out with the wind at its back the pace went from fast to faster to fastest in a hurry. After things came back together following the initial adrenlin rush, I found myself in a long circular paceline. For a few miles, there must have been 30 people in the rotation with the speed in the 29-31 mph range. Eventually there were a couple of big surges (I had a max of 38+) that disrupted the paceline, but anyway it was fun. Of course, once we turned around, it was hard work all the way back, even at the relatively civilized pace the group was comfortable with. By the time I got home I was hot, tired and completely out of water. It's Summertime!!

I received a communique from Gina this morning who is presently enjoying the hills in Chattanooga, TN and looking forward to Superweek. Superweek is one of those true U.S. cycling classics, a collection of sometimes loosely organised but highly competitive races spanning two weeks in Wisconsin. This thing has been going on since the early 70s. Somehow I never managed to make it up there. It was one of the first "big" races I ever heard about in the U.S. when I started racing.

I checked Cyclingnews.com when I go home from the Giro, picking up the live reports from the Tour de France about half an hour before the favorites started. I was pretty impressed with ol' Lance. He smoked the course, missing first place by two seconds and putting 51 seconds on Vino in 3rd (and over a minute on Jan). Looks like this will be an interesting Tour!