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.