State College

Well, after a long day involving three airplanes and a 2-hour drive, I'm up here in State College PA where the weather is awesome, the hills are plentiful and the best I'll be able to do is to spend a sweaty hour on a nasty hotel exercise bike. Why are these exercise rooms always located as close as possible to the most humid location possible, namely, next to the swimming pool?

When I got up this morning I downloaded the updated USCF listing from the website (it gets updated around 4 am MST on Fridays), and then went to download the release forms for the riders who registered online for tomorrow's 2-Person Time Trial. As usual, Active.com had failed to enable my permission to download the waivers, so I had to email them. As they always do, they failed to read my email and just sent me the instructions for downloading the release forms, which assumes I have that capability already. Soooo, also as usual, I had to email them again. Finally they added the capability. Then I had to install an updated version of Acrobat Reader in order to open the damned things without getting an error message. Sheesh! Looks like I'll be giving Bikereg a try for the Tour de La this year.

Not much to do here today, I'm afraid. The gymnastics meet isn't until tomorrow. At least we got to have an early lunch with The Daughter today. It was kind of exciting to hear her talking about how interesting she found a recent seminar on the effects of exercise on localized bone strength.

Just Another Wednesday Morning

Yesterday evening, after getting home a bit earlier than usual, I dusted off the old Pennine, pumped up the tires, and took a little easy spin around Audubon Park. The weather was just about perfect and the park was crowded with joggers and walkers and bikes and bad golfers lobbing balls through the Oak branches onto the bike path. It was something of a change to be on the old racing bike that I first built up around 1972 when a custom frame and fork could be ordered from England through the local bike shop for around $100. This was back in the days when "10-speed" didn't just refer to the number of cogs on the cassette. It kind of brought me back, though, to be riding that bike around Audubon Park on the same road where a couple of NOBC members first invited me to the local novice race in City Park. By the time that summer had ended, I was ordering a custom blue and green Pennine with spear-point lugs, Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing, Cinelli sloping fork crown, chrome Campi dropouts and a hand-painted mountain scene on the tops of the seat stays. It was quite a step up from the mass-produced Atala with cottered steel cranks and center-pull Weinmann brakes that I'd been gradually upgrading with Nervar cranks, Universal side-pull brakes, Zeus pedals, and Normandy Luxe / Fiamme tubular wheelset. That frame is still hanging in my basement with a cracked down tube; the result of a couple of years of commuting 20 miles a day with a heavy bookrack on the back, I suppose.

So anyway, the Wednesday ride was pretty typical today -- nice steady paceline -- interrupted only by a couple of excursions onto the grass to get past the drilling rig that's still blocking the path out in Kenner. Elise and the new guy Quentin were both on hand today. Those new NOBC jerseys really do look nice.

Grain Elevator Gunk

It's a warm and breezy day in the neighborhood. As always, I am having a hard time forcing myself out of bed in the dark for the 6:15 rides. I mean, I'm doing it, I'm just not liking it very much. This morning we had a humid wind blowing our of the southeast, and that made for a fairly quick ride out to the turnaround. Somewhere between Williams Blvd. and the Jefferson Parish line they have set up a drilling derrik directly, and completely, on top of the levee. It takes up the entire width of the asphalt. For some reason, they have also stretched orange plastic roll fencing down both sides of the levee so that you have to ride down the grass quite a bit in order to get around it. When I arrived at the start this morning there were a couple of riders there who were waiting to warn us about it because they had nearly plowed right into the thing in the dark. Indeed, today the darkness lasted a bit longer than usual thanks to some clouds that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, one of those misplaced clouds dropped a bit of rain on us just before we got into grain elevator territory at the far end of the ride. There is always a thick layer of grain dust on the bike path near the grain elevators, and it typically deposits a nice layer of dust all over your bike -- except when it's nice and wet. In that case the wheels spray grain dust gunk all over everything, including your face, glasses, helmet, shoes, etc. It's not a pretty picture. This stuff is what you would get if you dropped a handful of Cheerios into a blender full of dirty water and then took a shower in it. Anyway, the ride out to the turnaround, other than the sprinkling of rain, was fairly uneventful, culminating with a nice surge for the last mile or so. It had obviously rained out there before we even arrived, judging by how wet the road was.

Guess what happened next. We had just turned around when behind us we heard the dreaded announcement "flaaaat!" So the few of us in the lead eased up and soft-pedaled, waiting for the flat to get fixed. As we came to the bridge with no sign of anyone coming up from behind yet, Jeff looks down at my rear tire and says "that looks low." Sure enough, I could see bubbles on the wet tire where the air was escaping around a chunk of glass or something. Just about the time I got it fixed, the others caught up, so that worked out OK except that I was feeling really gunky after changing the flat on a wet tire covered with grain elevator gunk. The ride back was mostly into a headwind and seemed to take forever even though we were keeping up a decent pace.

I got an interesting communique from Gina V this morning with a link to a blog story about her nabbing some guys who were stealing team bikes at last weekend's Spin City Classic races in Orlando. Check it out: http://www.myogenesiscycling.blogspot.com/.

So the club is gearing up for next weekend's 2-Person Time Trial where everyone, even the riders who race in it, pitches in to help keep things running smoothly. Unfortunately I won't be there this year since I have to go to another gymnastics meet up in PA this time.

Weekend at the Mount

The Rocky Mount Stage Race was a lot of fun this year. I uploaded a writeup to the NOBC website, so I guess I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say that the courses were great and the competition was challenging and when you come out with a result better than you were expected going in, you always think the race was great. There was some good participation from the Texas folks, including the Compliance Depot team (including Shannon K) out of the Dallas area, as well as the Oklahoma City team. Overall, the race seemed better organized and ran more smoothly than last year, and we didn't get lost even once despite there being no race bibles at registration. Luckily Keith had printed one out before we left. Anyway, by the time this race ended I was starting to feel, however temporarily, a little bit like a bike racer again.

Riding back to New Orleans with Wes, we pretty much went through the entire history of local bike racing, typical race strategies for normal people, and those sorts of things, so the drive seemed to go by pretty fast. I was especially happy that my calf muscle that I seem to keep injuring and which cramped up on me at the end of the road race seemed to be pretty pain-free, so hopefully it will stop causing me trouble by the time I race again. Unfortunately, that won't be for a few weeks.

I went out for an easy spin on the levee this morning as usual, and also as usual for a Monday I only found Joe when I arrived. Right where we normally meet, there was a Levee District Police SUV parked today. Just as I arrived, Joe comes up the hill from the opposite direction, passes the open window of the police car, stops directly behind the SUV tailgate, and proceeds to take a leak. I'm glad the guy in the truck was busy writing something up because if he had seen that I'd probably be writing this from the Jefferson Parish jailhouse.

Rocky Mount Stage Race, Day 1

Keith and I were on the road at 4:30 am to make the drive up to Shreveport /Bossier City for the annual Rocky Mount Stage Race, and now, at 10 pm, I'm starting to get a bit sleepy. The only thing keeping me up is the huge portions of tacos and chips I had for dinner. Since I was riding the 45+ age group race today, we didn't start until 11:30, by which time it was nice and warm. Our group was not very big -- maybe 20 or so -- but is seemed to include quite a bit of horsepower nonetheless. The 35+ group that had left ten minutes earlier was larger. We had our new team kits today, fresh out of the plastic bags, and although they looked really good, I wish I could have run mine through the wash once because like most new clothes, it didn't breathe too well. Anyway, our road race was pretty fast and animated. David Hyde spent some time solo off the front, and then Tom Bain and I did the same, and when we got to the hot spot sprint, which was on the top of a fairly significant climb, Tom took the 1st place points and I took second. Halfway through the final lap David and one of the LaS'port guys rolled off the front and opened a decent gap. I was a few riders back in the pack, just behind Tom, and I was starting to get nervous about it because the front of the pack did not seem to be responding. I craned my neck to try and get a good look up the road, and just as I did, I saw Tom doing the same. When I saw him slide over to the right and shift to a higher gear, I knew immediately that he was going to bridge, so I latched onto his wheel like white on rice as he hammered across the gap. Just before we caught, I came around and kept pushing the pace as we came past the two breakaway riders. Right away all four of us realized we had a good combination that could make this break work. We quickly had a nice fast rotation going and started opening the gap. After making the last turn, there are only three or four miles left to the finish. I was hoping we could keep the rotation going all the way to the final climb, but David had other ideas and attacked hard after I had taken a pull. I really had to dig deep to keep from being dropped, but of course at that point the smooth rotation pretty much came to an end. By now we could see the last hill. The first part of the climb was done at a fairly smooth pace, but when we hit the 200-meter mark, Tom jumped with me on his wheel. My right calf started to cramp (it's been giving me trouble for a few weeks now), so I never did stand up and try to come around Tom. I ended up 2nd to Tom at the finish and our group ended up over a minute up on the rest of the field. The evening Time Trial, which was only 2 miles long, was nonetheless pretty painful thanks to a significant headwind the whole way. I'm pretty sure that TT moved me down to 4th, but I haven't seen the actual results yet.

Crumbling Infrastructure

When I turned the corner in front of my house this morning, I knew something was amiss. There was water flowing into the storm drain across the street -- lots of it. A couple of houses away I could see a six-inch plume of water erupting from the crumbling asphalt that we euphemistically call a street around here. Exactly the same place and the same scene that I saw the morning we evaculated for Katrina. This particular section of street has had broken and leaking water lines under it for as long as I can remember. Every now and then one of them lets go big-time and the street becomes a water park. Eventually the city comes out with a big backhoe, six people, one shovel, a yellow truck, and a big roll of duct tape or something. The new guy digs while the others sit in the shade under the oak tree on the corner eating and drinking whatever they sent the other new guy to the store to pick up. Then the leak stops and we lurch over the pile of dirt and rocks that they left in the hole for another two or three months before someone else comes along and dumps a few shovelfulls of hot asphalt over it, rolls over it a couple of times with the truck, and disappears until the next time. Infinite loop -- "Wash, rinse, repeat." So I just shook my head and continued riding out to the levee, making a mental note to call the Sewerage and Water Board in case none of the renters who live there do.

It was breezy today and I was wasn't feeling very motivated, so when Matt started pushing the pace early in the ride, I dropped back a bit to seek shelter. At one point we had to slow down as we came up on pedestrians on both sides of the bike path. Naturally the three or four riders in front didn't. Nobody seemed too interested in closing the gap, which was fine with me, and we did the rest of the ride out to the turnaround with a nice little paceline as another three or four guys sat at the back. The return trip was similar. Matt surges, a few people jump to catch up, and the rest of us just keep plugging into the headwind at the same pace as if nothing had happened. Another small group eventually split off the back of ours. We were holding a steady 23 mph most of the time, and the group in front of us never got more than a minute or so. By the end they eased up and we caught some of them.

So when I got home I picked up the phone and called the Sewerage & Water Board's "Emergency Hot Line" to report the leak. When I got the "your call is important to us" recording crap, I put the phone in speaker mode. It was about half an hour later that an unenthusiastic voice on the other end finally mumbled something unintelligible, so I told the person the location of the leak and was told it had already been reported. Needless to say, my morning shower was less than ideal, since the water pressure was about as enthusiastic as the S&WB emergency response team.

Life in the big city.

Had to fix more problems with the LCCS results last night because I used an early and incorrect version of the 3-man TT results for some of the rankings. This happens sometimes because I'm shuttling the work between the office and home, using different computers, and doing the work in bits and pieces. I suspect there are a few people in there who were listed as riding on one-day licenses who actually purchased annual licenses at the race, but who knows? The CR told me that there were four people who raced on expired licenses and didn't buy renewal annual licenses that day. Great. Anyway, I ended up re-doing practically everything, which took a couple of hours. The big problems always seem to revolve around the damned one-day and race-day renewal or new licenses. At least this year we aren't scoring the Cat. 5s, but the masters and women provide more than enough problems all by themselves. Plus, I always get a few USAC license numbers that are wrong, so when I crossmatch with the official rider database I end up with some rider from Kansas showing up in the results and then I have to search the huge USAC database for somebody named "John Smith" and find the one who lives in Louisiana. It's all very frustrating, and I wish we would just do what the USAC does for their ranking system: If you're not listed in the official rider database as having a license on the day the results are compiled, then you do not get points -- period. Race-day paper renewals and new licenses do not count. "I have a dream...."

Mid-Week on the Levee

Despite the darkness, the morning riding weather around here has been pretty damned nice lately. With temperatures in the lower 60s and no threat of rain, all sorts of riders are beginning to emerge from hibernation seeking group rides. The mid-week levee ride had over a dozen riders this morning, at least for a while, including a new guy from the west bank (Quentin), and a particularly smooth triathlete whose name I keep forgetting (Tulane med student). Even Clayton and Young Dan made appearances today. As has become traditional, the Wednesday ride was smooth paceline at what I'd call a nice, "brisk" pace. Easy to sit in, and just a little work while at the front. I guess we were typically rolling along at around 23 mph, give or take. Since the switch to DST, we've been starting pretty much in the dark and finishing with the sun right in our faces. Man, I can't wait until summer really starts and it's always warm and always light!

Yesterday Laura sent out an email telling everyone that the 2007 NOBC team kits had arrived and that she had sorted them out into everyone's individual orders. That is, except for the pieces that the manufacturer screwed up on, for which we'll have to wait a while. Those of us going to the stage race in S'port this weekend are scrambling to get hold of the new jerseys in time. I suppose I may go ahead and ride in the "really" old age group of 45+ for this one, since Mark D. is also riding in it. There's not much difference between the 35+ and 45+ races except that the 35+ gets to do an extra lap of the road course. I'm sure my lousy time trial will do me in anyway, regardless of which group I enter. I should probably try to find some fast wheels to borrow for that, but I'm sure I'll never get around to it.

I stayed up again last night and put the LCCS rankings up on the LAMBRA website and of course this morning found a number of errors. It's a real pain to do those rankings for the team events, especially when the official results get changed after you've already started. I'm sure there will be more changes as people get a chance to look at them later today.

Just Too Fast

Man, this morning's long levee ride was weird. It is still very, very dark at 6:15 when we start, but today there was a pretty big group. After a mile or so I dropped back through the group to the back where I was blinded by all of the blinking red LEDs. We had to ask a couple of guys to turn theirs off because it was making it too hard to see the road. As we went, we picked up more and more riders and the pace kept increasing. I can't say how fast we were going because it was still too dark to read the computer very well, but somewhere out past the country club we saw a couple of riders, or to be more precise, we saw a couple of blinking white lights, coming our way. As we met, they slowed down to turn around and latch onto the group, and so a number of riders in the group eased up a bit. Unfortunately the riders at the front didn't. So suddenly there's this big gap and the small group up ahead is not showing any sign of slowing down. The riders at the front of our group make little effort to close the gap, and I can see that the lead group is already going too fast for a solo rider to make the bridge very easily. Finally, Eddie C comes around and starts to accelerate with a couple of us on his wheel. He pulls us up to what must have been 30 mph. I come through and take a short and slightly slower pull and then pull off to the right. Just then, Howard comes blasting past on the left on his TT bike. So I'd been expecting a little draft but instead I have to pull out all the stops to try and catch Eddie but they're already going too fast and I can't get into his draft. I'm guessing that they hit 33 or so. The gap ahead of me opens quickly and I'm alone. I glance down and I'm still going 29 mph. Since I make it a rule never to try to chase down guys on TT bikes (as if...), I ease up a bit and wait for the rest of the group to catch. We end up with six or seven guys and hold a fairly steady pace all the way to the turnaround. When we get there, Rob is already on his way back. Eddie has turned off early and gone home. A few of us catch up to Rob and we form a little group plugging into the headwind for the return trip. I look back for the rest of the group, but they are way, way back there and showing no interest in catching, so we just keep taking long pulls all the way back at 23-24 mph. Then, shortly before the playground, Howard and Luke, both on TT bikes, come past on the left and we increase our pace a bit to latch on. A mile or two later and Luke turns back to look for someone and Howard turns back for home. Rob's already ridden up the road somewhere and I end up riding in the last couple of miles with one other rider. Strange ride.

So I was up late last night working on LCCS rankings, and got about half-way through last weekend's race before I had to call it quits and hit the sack. Maybe I'll finally get it all caught up tonight so I can find a little time to clean up and update the websites. Yesterday I got the official incorporation document for LAMBRA, so we are finally an actual corporation, registered with the Louisiana Secretary of State and all. Guess I can check that one off the to-do list.

2-Man Weekend

It was still rather chilly by the time Keith and I started warming up for Saturday's 2-Man Time Trial up in Baton Rouge. After the race, as I checked out the results and looked at the bikes, I don't know if I was more in awe of the riders or their bikes.

Keith and I rolled up to the start line on our regular road bikes, supplemented by clip-on aero bars. By comparison, I was really decked out, since I not only had an aero helmet, but I had actually removed my water bottle cages. So how much time can you lose in a 21-mile 2-man time trial? Turns out the answer is about four minutes. There was a pretty decent breeze blowing by the time we started, which was just after 10:00 a.m. The course is a 10.5 mile loop, most of which runs along the Mississippi River levee, and thankfully we didn't hit the headwind section until the last half of the circuit. We started out pretty smoothly and I think we both avoided going too deeply in to O2 debt, which was good, and by the time we got to the sweet tailwind section we were trading pulls at 28-30 mph. This was sustainable, but obviously about 2 mph slower than ideal. We could see that we were slowly gaining on the team that had started a minute ahead of us, but it wasn't until we were well into the second lap before we passed them. By this time Keith was starting to struggle and we were slowing down by a couple of mph when he would come to the front. This often happens to my unfortunate team time trial teammates who spend most of their "recovery" time searching in vain for my draft. So the bottom line was that we posted a mediocre time that was sufficient to avoid embarassment, averaging just a tad over 25 mph. With some of the fastest Cat. 1 and Cat. 2 riders off at the Fayetteville race in Texas, the fastest time of the day was posted by a Master 35+ team, which finished over three minutes faster than we did. The second-fastest time was a Master 45+ team and the third fastest was a Cat. 3 team. As a group, the 35+ category had 6 teams go under 50 minutes, proving once again that old guys can still time trial.

Later that evening we had a couple of the neighbors over for dinner where I over-cooked a big piece of salmon on the grill (grilling and wine drinking make for a bad culinary combination). At some point we got to talking about old computers and I ended up firing up the old Osborne. Amazingly, it still lights up and boots from a twenty year old single-sided 5 1/4" floppy disk. If I could just get the "L" key to start working again, I could probably run the old program that I wrote around 1985 to keep track of the Tour de La stage race results! I think this computer came with something like 64K of RAM.

On Sunday I headed over to the Northshore with Sam for a much-needed long road ride in the hills. With a 7 am starting time, I was shocked at how dark it was as I drove across the Causeway. We had about a dozen riders for this 75 mile ride, and it soon became apparent that it would get competitive. Although the ride certainly had its slower sections, there were enough uphill attacks and surges and sprints for town signs to make it a nice race simulation, albiet punctuated by a few refueling and regrouping stops. When we were on the back side of the course, up North of Plainview, things got fairly aggressive. A few of us ended up in a "break" and the group got pretty strung out. With all the action going on, nobody wanted to ease up for the right-hand turn onto a small road that brings us back to Plainview, and the result was that Rosanne, who had come off the back much earlier on this stretch, missed the turn and ended up in Bogalusa. Of course it took us quite a while to figure out where she was. First, we stopped at the next intersection and waited. When she failed to show up, Jason rode back to the previous intersection, but there was no sign of her. Eventually we got a few garbled cellphone calls and found out that she was hitching a ride in a pickup to Plainview. She and Rusty then took a slightly shorter route back, and we soon resumed our self-flagellation. As usual, a surge on the Watchtower hill split the group, and eventually it was just Jason, Mark, Sam and me. After Tung road, Sam eased up saying he wanted to use the last four miles as cool-down. The rest of us kept pushing the pace until finally Jason declared it was time for a truce and we backed off. Before we got back to the cars, though, some of the other guys caught us and then of course all bets were off again! It was fun. Much more fun than having to go out to Sears and buy a new electric lawn mower that afternoon after The Wife declared the old one to be dead. In fact, it was just that the power cord had shorted out where it comes out of the handle, and I had it fixed in about ten minutes, but the reality was that she really wanted a nice new lawn mower that didn't make mysterious clunking noises. Such is life.

The Daughter had a nice meet over in Oklahoma Saturday night, placing second on beam despite two weeks of limited practice time due to a minor ankle injury.

Falling Behind

One of the big New Orleans based cruise ships heads out from port every Thursday afternoon, and yesterday I happened to catch it as it made its way down the Mississippi past the French Quarter and prepared to round Algiers Point. Behind the cruise ship in the photo, on the other side of Algiers Point, you can see the newly commissioned $1.3 billion USS New Orleans tied up a the Naval Support Facility there. I was thinking how much I'd like to be on one of those ships, although for two entirely different reasons.

Perhaps it was the wine at my niece's birthday party last night, but I didn't sleep well last night at all, even though I stayed up until around 1 a.m. to put some photos from Rouge-Roubaix up on the NOBC website. Malcolm Schuler did his usual magnificent job of documenting the event and got some great shots of the lead groups. I also read Michael Olheiser's writeup on the Memphis Motor Werks website. Damn, I almost went down too when I rounded that same sharp sandy turn. Of course at the time I was probably already over twenty minutes behind him!

So this morning I overslept and didn't get out the door until almost 7:00. Then, just to twist the knife, I caught a train at the end of Willow Street. I basically just threw in the towel at that point and took a little ride through the 'hood while I waited for the train to pass, after which I just spun easily down the levee waiting to meet up with the group on its return trip. As it turned out, the group was going fairly fast, at least for a Friday, so although I didn't get in many miles today, at least I did get my heart rate off of the couch for a few minutes. Back at home I made the fatal mistake of checking my email before I left, which but me a bit behind schedule, and then I got a LAMBRA-related phone call that put me back by another half-hour or so. The result of all that is that I feel like I'm really falling behind on a lot of stuff both at work and at home right now. I think I'm depressed about the $550 that The Wife just spent on tickets to Harrisburg, PA for the upcoming Big Ten gymnastics championships where I'll be sitting on my butt instead of racing in the NOBC 2-Man Time Trial. Man, sometimes life just seems like a never-ending string of compromises, doesn't it?

There's been some chatter on the email lists around here lately about the ever-popular topic of masters age groups and which categories and classes should have separate races. There are basically two approaches to these things. There's the "if you have it, they will come" side, and then there's the "show me the riders, and then I'll have it" camp. Classic chicken and egg thing. Which comes first: separate Cat. 3 races, or enough Cat. 3s to have separate Cat. 3 races? You can replace Cat. 3 with Master-45 or Master-55 or Master 40, or whatever. Around here it's always a bit of a roll of the dice from the promoter's standpoint as to which and how many separate races he can have without the whole event becoming really boring and fiscally and promotionally unstable.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a 2-man TT up in Baton Rouge with Keith D. It should be painful, probably more so for me than him, though. Tonight I'll clamp on the antique aero bars, remove the bottle cages, and put the TT helmet in the bag. Voila! Instant time trial bike.

Clearer Skies

It rained all night as expected and I didn't even need to look out the window this morning when the alarm went off. Instead, I got an extra hour of sleep and made it to the office uncharacteristically early. By afternoon, though, the sky had cleared considerably. Perhaps there is hope for a ride this evening if I can get out of here early enough.

I got a bunch of Rouge-Roubaix photos from Malcolm S. this morning that I'll hopefully get up on the website some time tonight. They're mostly of the two lead breakaways this year, with some close-ups of the top riders coming over one of the dirt road hills. That's Michael Olheiser (MMW) over there in the photo, probably around the time he dropped everybody and started working on the eight-minute lead he had at the finish.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Gov' has announced her new $600M education spending package today. Gee, there must be an election coming up. The press release shows "$10 million for hurricane-affected colleges to help them recruit and retain faculty and to help them with their recovery efforts." I'm sure they neglected to add "for public universities" to that sentence. There was a flurry of calls this morning about how LSU is getting an increase of $19M while the University of New Orleans is getting all of $1M because they are using the Fall 2005 enrollment numbers to do the allocation -- as if they have conveniently forgotten about that little hurricane that wiped out much of the Fall '05 enrollment in New Orleans. Turns out they made adjustments for a couple of the community colleges, but not for UNO. More LSU games. They just can't seem to help doing it -- never seem to miss an opportunity to stick it to UNO.

Still waiting on final and complete 3-man TT and Rouge-Roubaix results so I can get the LCCS points updated. Getting that all set up for the new season should take a very long time. There's a 2-man time trial in Baton Rouge this weekend that I'll be doing. I wish it was longer than 21 miles, though, but I guess we'll make it painful enough anyway.

A Combination of Factors

It must have been a combination of factors. Yesterday's ride was fairly brisk, and of course it's been dark in the mornings again since the time change, and then there was the fog and threat of rain to consider. At any rate, there a very small group up on the levee this morning to enjoy the nice tailwind out to the turnaround. Although the fog was bad in only a few isolated spots, the cold damp air coming off of the river made it feel kind of uncomfortable. Every now and then it would feel like someone had just opened the refrigerator door in front of you. The small group kept the pace pretty civilized today, and although I know I should be training harder, I didn't. I'm tired and I guess a little unenthusiastic about life right now. Perhaps tomorrow will be better...

Thump, thump, thump

Yesterday morning my legs were pretty sore from Sunday's epic, but I figured I'd better get out for a little spin anyway, so I headed out to the levee (it was still good and dark at 6:30 - what was Congress thinking??) and did a nice easy 20 miles just to keep the legs moving. Then, at 3:15 my PalmPilot alarm goes off reminding me about a 3:30 dentist appointment I'd conveniently forgotten about, so I rush out of the office and hit the interstate out to the 'burbs where my dentist's office is. Two blocks from his office I hear "thump, thump, thump," and immediately know I have a flat tire. The Michelins on the car have 55k miles on them, and the one that's flat had a nail hole plugged a few months ago, but I was surprised to have it just go completely flat on me like that. I'm just glad it didn't happen as I was screaming around the exit ramp five minutes earlier. Luckily the neighbors invited us over for a little casual dinner last night where there was ad libitum wine availability.

So anyway, this morning I'm sitting here at the PJ's coffee house in Clearview Shopping Center, waiting for the lackadaisical Sears automotive folks to install four new Michelins and siphon something in excess of $600 out of my account. The tires were on sale, but of course the price they gave me at the Sears store was $20 higher (each) than what was advertised on the web, so I whipped out the copy of the pricing that I had printed out for just such an occasion and they made the correction, grumbling something about the website advertising people not telling them about the sale prices. Like I believe that.

So this morning I was out at the long levee ride at 6:15 where the only light was coming from the moon, the stars, and the blinky LEDs on the bikes. This shifted DST thing is crazy. We nonetheless blasted down the bike path in the pitch dark for fifteen miles before it was light enough to see. Believe me, I was leaving a little more space between the rider ahead and myself than usual. I was glad that my legs felt generally OK, except that I could still feel an occasional twinge in my right calf where it had cramped up near the end of Rouge-Roubaix last Sunday. Rob and Wes didn't seem any the worse for wear either. Rob said that after he had crashed he ended up with the group that was chasing my group and that they were just hammering the whole time. He knew it would be bad when they caught us just before the dreaded long gravel climb at around 65 miles.

Much to do at work today. Hopefully I can get to work on the new LAMBRA LCCS rankings tonight...

My Legs Hurt!

There will be many stories about this year's Rouge-Roubaix road race. Already infamous in four or five states, this annual festival of pain encompasses 100 miles (actually only about 97 this year) of some of the most scenic and poorly maintained roadways in the Felicianas. For various reasons, there were more crashes and flat tires than I've ever seen. This year I started knowing full well that I was getting in over my head. It wasn't the first time, though. Coming early in the racing season, area cyclists are still all over the board in terms of fitness. Hell, some of us don't even have a clue where we are! But then, that's never stopped me before.

Waiting for the start in St. Francisville, I'm shivering slightly despite my double jerseys, knowing full well that in a couple of hours I'll be wishing I'd left one of them in the car. Keith and I start out side-by-side for the three-mile neutral roll to the official start. The "A" group of Cat. 1-3 and Masters riders is, I guess, around 75 strong and there are teams from Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. I tell Keith I'm afraid it may be a fast start. As it turns out, things remain fairly calm for the first 25 miles or so, interrupted only by an attack by Michael Olheiser, last year's winner. He's wearing his stars and stripes jersey from his masters national championship. I finally roll up to Keith and ask how far to the first gravel section and he says that we're almost there. We quickly work our way up near the front and round the turn onto the gravel about five back. Olheiser immediately pours on the gas as the gravel sucks up our momentum and the road pitches up. I respond immediately, but fifteen seconds later I realize I'm in serious trouble. I'm rapidly sinking into O2 debt and my legs are already loading up. I have no choice to ease up and watch twenty riders stream past. Finally recovered from my stupidity, I blend in with the group but already there is a break of about twenty off the front. The next five or six miles are rough. The gravel this year is fresh and big and there are numerous riders standing on the roadside with flats waiting for the overburdened follow car. With two or three miles of gravel left to go, there's a crash just ahead of me as one riders loses it in the loose gravel and two other plow into him. One of them is Rob K. Jason, Matt and I thread through an opening and continue. I see a couple of Herring guys on the side of the road with flats. The group up ahead has been out of sight from almost the beginning, and Keith was with it. Then, I see Keith on the roadside with a flat too. Finally we hit the asphalt and things settle down a bit.

There's a fairly long stretch between the first gravel section and the second one, and our group grows. With ten miles or so left before the second stretch, we catch Kenny B. who had been in the front group. I ask him how many people and he says there are two groups of ten or eleven up the road. I know we won't be seeing them again. In our group is Scott K., and he is obviously frustrated with our pace. With about five miles to go to the second dirt stretch, he and another few riders get away and build up a gap of maybe 20 seconds. Just before we get to the turn onto the next gravel road, Herring's Bain Foote and a few other riders catch us. Bain had flatted on the first gravel road and has been flogging a small group of chasers ever since.

We make the turn onto the next road and cross a dangerous plank bridge. I'm in good position near the front as we turn onto the second gravel road and immediately begin a long leg-breaking 1-mile climb in loose gravel and sand. I'm wishing I had something lower than the 39x23 I'm in. When we hit the climb, the riders just exploded all over the place. I look up to the top of the hill and I can see most of our small breakaway walking up the hill. Bad sign! There is nothing resembling a paceline as each rider tries to find rideable road and struggles with spinning and sliding wheels. Two-thirds of the way up my front wheel washes out and I have to put a foot down. I'm not the only one, either. I walk up the hill, leaning on my bike, until the road is a little more firm, and remount. A lot of riders are already over the top. I finally get going again and catch up to a few other riders and we slip and slide our way over the remaining hills until we finally meet asphalt again. I'm tired now and having trouble focusing on the road because of the constant pounding. A little chase and we catch a few more and eventually have a nice little group again. My legs are not feeling all that good, and there are still over 30 miles left to go. I gulp down some more HammerGel. Every now and then a few more riders catch up to us from behind.

Somewhere around 80 miles in, we finally hit the final gravel section. It's easier than last year's final stretch, but my legs are really hurting now and I struggle with the large gravel and sandy climbs. The rider I'm following heads over to the right side of the road and I blindly follow him right into a bunch of sand. I have just enough time to say "this is bad." We're both off the bike walking up the hill. Riders are disappearing in the distance as I finally find a spot to remount, but again, there are other riders around me in the same situation. I chase and catch a couple of other guys and am trying to settle in a bit when I lose it again on a steep climb. I was probably shifting at the time and I almost crash, getting one foot on the ground at the last moment. I've dropped my chain and have to stop to reseat it, then I walk a bit more to a spot where I can remount and continue. I'm pretty much alone now. Most of the riders who were in my group are up the road -- a few are behind. I'm no longer really in "chase mode." I'm just trying to survive and stay upright until I can get off of the gravel. A mountain bike rider I am not. When I hit the asphalt road it's so rough and full of holes that it takes me a few miles before I'm convinced it's not gravel. I look back and see a lone Herring rider about fifteen seconds back and ease up so he can catch. My worst nightmare is to have to ride this whole last section alone. When he catches I lift the pace one or two mph, back up to maybe 20 mph, but when I look back again he has dropped off. I'm on my own. For the next ten miles or so I ride in my own private pain tunnel wondering if there is a group chasing me, and then I catch a glimpse of a jersey up ahead rounding a curve. A few minutes later I roll up to three riders and latch on. I feel like I've been saved from a fate worse than death. If we can just all work together for the last seven or eight miles we'll do OK. Then, with fewer than five miles to go, a group of six or so catches us and immediately rolls past. I accelerate to go with them and four or five leg muscles cramp simultaneously. They are only going maybe 20 mph, but my legs are obviously toast at this point and they rebel. I end up with a small group of four or five that includes some of our original group and some of the group that caught us, and after a while my legs begin to recover a bit. With three miles left, Rob flats. He's already crashed on the first gravel section and had to chase back on after commandeering the front wheel of the rider who took him down. He's riding tubulars, so he goes to the back and just rides in on the flat. I end up with one other rider for the last couple of miles, and then, on a climb almost within sight of the finish, he drops off. I have no idea what my placing was, as I had to leave right away to pick up The Wife from the airport in New Orleans. I'd say top-30 would be optimistic, given my computer's time of 4:43 and the number of riders in the finish area when I arrive. Olheiser wins again, apparently solo with an 8-minute gap. Realdo is 6th. My legs ache and the toes on my right foot are absolutely on fire. I scarf down some pasta jambalaya at the finish, down a Coke and head back to NOLA. I'm driving without a shoe on my right foot, and I'm feeling very grateful for cruise-control. Eight hours later, my legs still hurt.

Springtime Giro Lemmings

It is, by anyone's measure, a Spring day in the Crescent City. I rode out to the lakefront slowly, intent on taking it as easy as possible at the Saturday Giro Ride. The weather was practically perfect -- temperatures warming into the 70s, a clear sky, and light winds. I had expected a smaller group, though, since I know a lot of these guys, myself included, plan on riding tomorrow's Rouge-Roubaix. That fact didn't seem to have much of an effect on the pace, though, so I was staying near the pack where the draft is thick, and just trying to stay out of trouble. Things were going along pretty smoothly until we got to the spot where we merge with the Interstate and have to cross three lanes of high-speed traffic on a fast, sweeping curve. I was toward the back of the group, and as we got close I looked back to see five cars, two of which were towing trailers, coming around the curve at 60 mph. For reasons I cannot even begin to rationalize, the lead riders cut across in front of them. Like lemmings, most of the rest followed. I was dumbfounded by the sheer stupidity of what I was seeing. A small group of us didn't, indeed by then couldn't, follow. I watched as one car drove right up to the back of the group, which was at the time blocking all three lanes, and slammed on the brakes. Geez. It was close -- really close. We could smell the burned rubber as we crossed over a little later. Somewhere behind me one of the guys said "it's not worth dying for." Naturally, the deadheaded riders up front just kept hammering, leaving the rest of us to regroup and watch most of the group disappear down the road. We ended with a nice paceline down Chef Highway and then finally rejoined the group after the turnaround. The Midsouth Masters had their new jerseys today. They are the blue/grey ones. Sure is a lot of blue in the local peleton this year!

So tomorrow is the infamous Rouge-Roubaix road race. This annual 100-mile race is done as two big groups on a 100-mile course with lots of turns, a few good climbs, and three long sections of gravel road. Surviving it is generally considered an accomplishment. The last time I did it was in '05, and I probably shouldn't be doing it this year, but it still beats the hell out of another Giro ride! My preparation involved a trip to the LBS for a supply of Hammergel. I'm hoping that there will be the usual big group and I'll be able to hide out in the draft a lot. The thing that will make this one different from those I've done in the past will probably be the temperature. Although it will be in the 50s at the start, it should quickly warm up into the 70s, which means I'll have to bring the "big" water bottles and hope that they don't get launched when we're flying down the gravel at 30 mph.

One Day Off

When the alarm went off this morning a little voice whispered in my ear, "You need to take a day off!" So I listened. I had been feeling particularly dragged out the last couple of days with no particularly good explanation. It's not like I've been doing a lot of hard training miles or anything, but something has just not been quite right. Perhaps I've been fighting off some airplane bug, or maybe a Sushi bug from the other night, or whatever.

Last night Sam stopped by to return the team kit he had borrowed for his recent trip to TXBRA land, so we hung around and talked for an hour or so, which, for me, resulted in a second bottle of beer and an early bedtime. I must have needed that, because for the first time in a week I slept like a rock. In fact, after I decided to ignore the morning alarm clock I slept for another hour before getting out of bed as the morning sun streamed through the blinds. That seems so strange. With a routine that normally has me out the door by 6:30 am at the latest, waking up to sunshine this time of year is really a different experience. So with a good night's sleep and a day off for the legs, I'm feeling kind of refreshed this morning.

The only thing that is nagging me as I sit here in the office looking out at the warm and sunny landscape is a growing desire to be out on the road instead of sitting here driving a computer and desperately procrastinating about revising my job description. I hate job descriptions -- especially mine. Perhaps it's because the reality of it all is that it can really be summed up quite nicely in one short sentence. "Does whatever is needed, whenever it is needed, for whoever needs it." Allocating percentages of effort to things like "35%: Assists in the formulation of long-term multidisciplinary and inter-institutional programs responsive to University needs and capabilities and Congressional priorities" is like trying to nail jello to the wall and, really, who wants jello on the wall anyway? Besides, it's not like when somebody in the office can't (for the tenth time) figure out how to scan and email a document I'm going to say "sorry, that's not in my job description."

On tap for the weekend is a hopefully low-intensity visit to the Giro Ride on Saturday and then a drive up to St. Francisville for the annual Rouge-Roubaix festival of pain followed by a quick trip back to N.O. to pick up The Wife from the airport. I miss the days when we used to start the new season with a flat 25-mile road race. There's also The Daughter's gymnastics meet in Minnesota tonight that hopefully I'll be able to follow via online scoring, plus my sister's dogs to feed because they will be out of town.

Zoned Out

Maybe it's the weather, or perhaps the increasing pollen count, but the last couple of days I've been feeling really zoned out. I feel like I could sit in a chair and stare at a blank wall for a few hours and just be perfectly content with that. It's as though my brain is stuck in neutral. Take this morning, for example. The Thursday riders were mostly a few minutes late getting together, and then for the first five miles Bob and I rode side-by-side at the front going maybe 18 mph and nobody seemed interested in coming around us. Eventually they did, of course, but it's not normal for it to take that long on a Thursday with a group of ten or twelve. Maybe I'm not the only one who is zoned out. Anyway, I spent most of the morning just following wheels and letting them dictate my pace.

So the pace finally picked up to something above the embarrassment threshold and I just never could really get into it. Little gaps would open in front of me and I would let them go for a little while before slowly pulling them back, but there was no committment, no snap. Then, on the return trip, things got kind of strange. I was alone for a long time with a couple of riders ahead of me and the rest of the group behind, even though I was barely doing 20 mph. Finally, everyone came back together and the pace moved up to 23 or so, and then as we were getting close to the finish, Donald flatted. Well, we'd been going so slowly that everyone knew we were already running late, so most of the guys kept going. A few of us stopped to help, and then a mile later the tire was flat again. Donald finally found the offending piece of rock in the tire on the second try. I rolled home at an uncharacteristically slow speed wishing I could go back to sleep.

So I guess I'll show up for Rouge-Roubaix. It won't be the first time I've started that race unprepared, and besides, it's looking like the weather is going to be pretty nice with a morning low of around 50F and a high of -- get this -- 77. A 10% chance of rain and 7 mph southerly wind should make it fairly pleasant way at the back of the pack where I'll probably spend most of the day. Maybe I'll roll up my shorts and work on my tan.....

Riding on Empty

I may not be a certified cycling coach, but I'm pretty sure most would advise against an evening of wine, sushi, the Billy Joel concert, more wine, and more sushi, followed by a morning training ride on an empty stomach. The concert was a lot of fun (but damn, the Piano Man is getting old -- good thing I'm not), and since I was the designated driver I was going really easy on the wine, but the combination of all that and a second night of insufficient sleep time did kind of catch up with me by morning. The earlier sunrise, at least for the next few days until we switch back to DST, and the relatively mild temperature made for a good-sized group this morning for the Wednesday levee ride. The usual steady paceline, interrupted occasionally by Howard, was brisk but moderate, hovering mostly around 23 mph, and would have felt really great except for the feeling that I was riding on empty the whole time. With Rouge-Roubaix coming up this weekend, I am still a little bit on the fence about entering, but I suppose I will anyway. The morning email included a notice from the promoter that they had to change part of the course, which resulted in the elimination of the crucial leg-breaker gravel-road climb at around the 80-mile mark. I'm not really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The group is usually fairly thinned out after the gravel climbs that come at around 60 miles, so it might make a small group finish more likely than usual. Probably won't matter one way or the other for me, though, because I already know I'm not ready for a 100 mile race anyway. We'll just book this one as "training."

So we still don't have the final official results for Sunday's 3-Man TT. I hope the Chief Ref can sort it all out soon because I'd like to get the LCCS points updated prior to next weekend's race, and it always takes a lot of time to set up the initial LCCS scoring pages for the new season. I still need to finish the Track LCCS, although it would be nice if I could get the results in a format I could work with, and with all of the necessary information like USCF numbers, instead of the confusing multi-colored image on the TCF website.

Touch 'n Go

After a busy weekend up in Iowa City with a 3-way meet that didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped and "senior night," we were finally headed back south early Monday morning. Just before we left I checked my email and found that Shane had sent me the official results from Sunday's 3-Man Team Time Trial, so when we got to the Moline airport I hastily built the web page and cleaned up the results so they would look OK (the spreadsheet had all the names in lowercase, plus a bunch of data like USCF numbers that isn't needed for the results page). I almost got it all finished before they started boarding the plane, but some of the names are still all in lowercase. Anyway, the trip back was uneventful and we landed back at MSY around 4 pm, at which point The Wife decided she absolutely had to have a new suitcase for her (work-related) trip to Puerto Rico this morning. I don't really claim to understand why she keeps buying expensive suitcases and then complains bitterly when they are, inevitably and almost immediately, trashed by the luggage handlers at the airports. I mean, just buy something fairly cheap and plan on throwing it away in a year or so. Anyway, the ultimate result was two hours of looking at suitcases like it was a life-altering decision before we finally got home.

When I finally checked my email at home I discovered that a few people had some problems with the results that were posted and that the Chief Ref was going to investigate and perhaps make some corrections. There had been some "technical difficulties" with the printer at the event, so they were never able to post either a start sheet or the official results, so naturally when they showed up on the website yesterday some people found problems. Anyway, Shane will work on that tonight, so we should have it cleared up fairly soon. He told me that he was handling the start and that someone else was handling the finish. One problem was that the finish line guys were just writing down the number of the first rider of each team to finish, which would have been fine except that they were 3-man teams and the finish time was supposed to be the time of the second rider. Some teams dropped one of their riders before the finish, so when they recorded the finish time of the solo dropped rider, it was hard to tell after the fact if that was a team time or just the time of a dropped "third wheel" rider.

We found a pretty neat video on Google of one of the recent University of Iowa gymnastics meets. Check it out. Meanwhile, I have a couple hundred photos of other meets to sort through and post to their website along with vids of a couple more of their meets. I think I need to do some of my own work first, though!!

Back to the Single Digits

It was back to the frozen north yesterday, first via the middle seat on a big airplane to Memphis, and then a couple of hours later to Moline via the usual little commuter jet. Finally, we drove a rental car in a light snow to Iowa City, at which point the Mazda's "Check Engine" light came on. Sheesh. I figured it was probably the usual case of a loose gas cap, but it wasn't, so we figured we'd better call the folks at Hertz. Amazingly, they immediately dispatched someone from Cedar Rapids with a replacement car, which happened to be much nicer -- heated seats and that sort of thing. I never really appreciated heated seats when we were in New Orleans.

The temperature this morning is 8F, but with a clear sky it's expected to get all the way up to 33! That's actually warm enough for water to exist in its liquid state. Although I'd sure like to be riding right now somewhere warmer, I can't really say I'm all too distressed about missing the 3-Man Time Trial that will be starting shortly down in Baton Rouge. I mean, it's a 3-event series with no prizes except a jersey for the winner, and all the races are 21 miles. Just can't get too excited about that. What I am distressed about is another three day lapse in my training routine. The gymnastics meet starts at 2 pm today, but we're supposed to be at the gym for 10:30. At some point before the meet they have a little recognition thing for the seniors on the team and the parents have to go stand out there on the floor too. This will be The Daughter's last home meet, although they still have four or five meets on the schedule this year. The last meet in April will mark the end of her competitive gymnastics career that started innocently enough when we enrolled her in an after-school gymnastics program at age 8.

Cool Friday Riding

A little cool front came through last night and returned the temperatures to more or less seasonal normal, so it was comfortably in the upper 50s this morning for the easy Friday ride. I had opened a number of windows yesterday evening and so the house was a lot more comfortable than it had been when we got home yesterday after work. The difference in humidity was really noticible, and as they often say around here, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." Actually, they more often say "It's not the heat, it's the stupidity," but that's a rant for another day.

On the way out to the levee, as I went past the old streetcar barn, I noticed that it was full of the "red" Canal St./ Riverfront streetcars -- the ones that were all flooded out due to Katrina. I'm guessing that they are there to be repaired, or perhaps they already are, so maybe one day we will finally get our "real" streetcars back on Carrollton and St. Charles Ave. and downtown can have their DisneyWorld versions back.

So anyway, as usual Joe and I were the only ones up on the levee when we started out today at a blazing 16 mph pace, but eventually we picked up a few more riders (including Ben!!). It was fairly windy, and nobody was interested in going fast anyway, least of all me, so we had a nice easy ride that stayed around 19-20 mph for the most part. The temperature never really warmed up during the ride today.

So yesterday I started getting the wierd questions that I always get before a team time trial. Do you have to start with three riders for a 3-man time trial? How many riders have to finish in order to count? If one rider is a Cat. 2 and another is a Cat. 4 and the third is a 50 year old female with a Swiss license who had a sex-change operation and is implicated in the Operation Puerto affair, does the Cat. 2 rider still get LCCS points? You know, the usual stuff.

It's Getting Faster!

I had to check the outdoor thermometer twice this morning. Was it really 71F? Part of me refused to believe it, and apparently that was the part responsible for putting on the arm-warmers. OK, so I knew there would be some fog out on the levee along the river, and that cold fog coming off the water always makes it feel colder in spots, but it was hard to believe nonetheless. For the past few months the long Thursday ride has been cut short more times than not, usually because there were only a few people, or it was really cold, or really windy, or some combination of the three factors. Today, though, the radar was clear and the temperature was warm and the turnout was high. I guess we had around 15 at one point, and the pace quickly ramped up to 24-27 and pretty much stayed there. The Bicycle World guys were being particularly aggressive this morning, and that, combined with an occasional stiff crosswind, was making it hard for the folks at the back to hang on. The pace kept going up and down and gaps kept opening and closing, and generally it was a hard ride today. I was trying to be careful on the way out because we had a slight tailwind much of the time. I knew it would be harder on the return trip, and indeed it was. At least I didn't have to worry about saving my legs for the 3-man Time Trial this weekend because I'll be up in Iowa.

Speaking of Iowa, yesterday we moved the "inside stuff" website to a new server and the site now has its very own URL. The reason for the move was to give us more space for competition videos and photos, so I spent a while last night getting all of that working. Hopefully I'll be able to get in a good ride tomorrow and perhaps very early Saturday before I have to head to the airport. We'll see...