Rocky Mount Weekend

Thanks to Charlie D, our team captain and general travel coordinator, I'll be heading up to the Northwest corner of the Pelican State tonight so that the Shreveport guys can take turns ripping my legs off. It's not really as bad as it looks in the course profile (check the scale), but it ain't the levee either. Shreveport is a lot more like Texas than the rest of Louisiana, and indeed their races often attract some of the I-20 crowd from Dallas, which is considerably closer than New Orleans. However, unlike New Orleans, it is situated on a legitimate part of the continental land mass, as opposed to Mississippi River delta muck, and as the race's name implies, there are both mounts and rocks. Not a whole heck of a lot of either - after all, this isn't exactly Colorado - but some of those little hills are steep and long enough to hurt, especially since the usual climbing technique practiced around here is to attack anything that goes uphill.

With two longish road races in the August heat, I am expecting it to be hard, but I've got a ride up there and the club's picking up the hotel cost, so I registered online with active.com last night, a couple of hours before the deadline, so I could save maybe a buck fifty since active's service charge eats up a fair chunk of the $5 race-day registration late fee. For the Tour de La, we pay the late fee, so it's a little bit more "worth it" to pre-register and that's what we want since it really cuts down on the race-day registration chaos. For Rocktoberfest, where the budget is a little tighter, I chose to split the active.com fee with the riders, so they only pay half of it. Seems fair enough. I've got to say that the folks at active.com are extremely helpful and for a larger race they do earn their fees. When I set up the registration for Rocktoberfest last week they went and checked it out to make sure everything agreed with the event announcement and then even added a feature so that riders can pre-register for a second race on the same day for only $10 (which we say in the flyer). I think they have some significant competition with Bikereg.com, though. I have been wondering if LAMBRA could set up a deal with them for reduced fees if we require that all LAMBRA, or maybe just LCCS, races will use them for online registration.

Anyway, I guess I should have broken down and fixed my right brake/shifter. It's gotten so stiff the last few weeks that I have to push the brake lever back forward after I use it because the spring can't overcome the friction. Basically, it's all screwed up and will require major transplant surgery, if not a complete replacement. I'm pretty sure something in there related to the shifter is also broken, because the computer's gear indicator has been really flaky lately - when it works at all. It was all so much simpler and more reliable when the shifter was on the downtube and the brakes didn't have those wimpy return springs like they do now. All I know is that once I take it apart and find what I expect to find, it will be a number of days before I can gather up the necessary bits and pieces to make it all right again, and I'd rather wait until then end of the season for that. In the meantime, I'll just keep spraying TriFlo in there and dealing with it unless it stops working altogether.

This morning's ride was warm and extremely humid. I wasn't surprised, since the temperature at 10:30 last night was still nearly 85F. Being a Friday, though, the "20 mph rule" was invoked and so I did an easy 24 miles or so up on the levee with three or four other guys. I could still feel my legs from yesterday, though.

That never used to happen when I was 25 years old.