Wrong Side of the Gap

A nice little cool front dragged through yesterday evening, and by morning the temperature was a fairly pleasant 50F or so, but as usually happens the front brought with it a brisk north wind. Since the levee bike path offers absolutely no protection from the wind, and since it generally runs more east-west than north-south, I knew today's training ride would be all about the crosswind. I hit the levee right on time this morning, finding only a couple of other riders there, and we were starting to think we might have to shorten our ride because of the combination of abundant wind and insufficient wheels when riders started appearing all over the place. By the time we went under the Huey P bridge the group was pretty large, or I should say "long," and I rode at the front for a long time waiting for the inevitable.

Pretty soon a line of riders streamed past me and I latched on somewhere past the middle, maybe ten riders from the front. The pace would surge whenever the usual suspects hit the front, and even though I was far from the end of the paceline, I was grovelling along the edge of the asphalt for whatever sliver of draft I could get. I noticed that Jeff, who was in front of me, started letting the guys coming off the front back into the paceline ahead of him. About the third time he did that, I was just about to tell him to stop because all he was doing was dooming us to a fast pace and slim draft when the pace surged again. This time he eased up and motioned me to come by. By the time I did I was already five seconds on the wrong side of the gap and had to really bury myself to make any progress closing it. I guess I was doing around 27 into the cross/headwind. The last rider in the lead group was Donald, and so I was focused on getting his wheel. Just as I was about get his draft and enjoy the reward for my effort, Donald sat up! Auggggh! That was it. There was no way I could make another effort like that unless there was a finish line and a big prizelist in sight, so I eased up a bit too and latched onto Donald as the lead group rode off down the levee. We soon picked up another rider who had come off the lead group and were rolling along at a reasonable clip as we approached "the dip."

Suddenly I looked up and saw that the whole lead group had turned around and was heading back early. You know, riders are like sheep. I knew that Donald probably needed to turn back there in order to get to work on time, but it was unusual for Todd and the rest of them to cut the ride short. Maybe that's why they felt like they needed to be riding like they were 5k away from a Tour de France stage win. Anyway a couple of us continued on and eventually caught Tim who was on his way home (he's temporarily living out that way near Destrehan), and had a nice ride to the turnaround. The trip back was maybe just a little bit easier, wind-wise, but toward the end it was just BJ and me and my legs were really starting to hurt. We did ease up after making the bend near the country club, but those last few miles felt really hard to me anyway.

So it looks like the Tulane student who has been living with us will be able to move back into her apartment on Thursday, so that's a good thing all around, and the sun is finally starting to come out so we should have a few days of cool but nice weather for a change. I am finally starting to feel like I'm getting caught up a little bit for the first time since the hurricane and can maybe start to focus on getting my own house fixed up now.