Alone Again . . . Naturally.

After being off the bike Monday and not riding Tuesday morning, I made sure to get out of the office and hustle back to the house yesterday after work so I could ride out to the lakefront for the first Tuesday training race. As usual, I hit Lakeshore Drive a couple of minutes late, so I continued on expecting to eventually see the group coming the other way. I didn't. I was alone. The weather was perfect. There was little traffic except around the Elysian Fields traffic circle where the Corps of Engineers debris collection people were checking in at the end of the day, parking their pickup trucks anywhere they felt like it. I kept thinking that there must be someone else out there I could ride with. There wasn't. So I got in a couple of hours on the bike, which was good. I don't get it, though. Do the local riders think that the weekend Giro ride is really going to get them in shape for racing? Maybe it's just that the only reason they ever enter races is to justify their training, and it's actually the training they like. Anyway, if I could find the time and energy to actually promote a Tuesday night race series, I would, but as it is I'm challenged just to get myself out there by 6 p.m. Damn, we need a race promoter around here. It would be so easy.

I headed out to the morning levee ride today a bit late. As usual I'm having trouble adjusting to the darker mornings since we switched to DST last week. Luckily, just as I was coming up the ramp to the bike path, Realdo was cruising by in the same direction. I rode alongside him for a while and soon we could see the group about a minute up the road. As the pace picked up, I slipped back onto his wheel and he gradually ramped it up to 25 - 27 mph until we caught. He had to turn around and head home right after we closed, though. The ride was good, though. Nice pace, especially once Tim rolled off the front about 20 seconds and we started to chase.

Guess I won't be able to ride tomorrow - 6:20 a.m. flight to Cedar Rapids by way of Memphis and Minneapolis, then a rental car to Iowa City for the night and a two-hour drive to Ames the next morning. All I can do is hope for a working hotel exercise bike.

Damn I hate those things.