Decisions, decisions, decisions. When I headed out to meet the Giro Ride on Saturday I could feel the beginnings of some chest congestion from that head cold that's been slowly working its way southward for the last week or so. I could also feel the strong wind. I would have expected it to have calmed down by Saturday, but it had not. The resulting Giro Ride was kind of strange. Riding out on Hayne Blvd. at the beginning of the ride, nobody seemed willing to pull into the wind and for a long time the pace stayed pretty slow. Realdo and maybe a couple others had long since rolled off the front and were already way down the road by the time things really got going. Even so, there seemed to be a general reluctance to work back in the pack. Perhaps it had something to do with the riders who were planning on doing Sunday's time trial over in Lafayette. Well, the group can be lazy sometimes when there's a headwind, but there's one thing you can always count on. When the group gets a good tailwind, it will get very fast. Indeed, such was the case on Saturday as we came back down Chef Menteur Highway where, by the end, my computer showed a maximum speed of 37.5 mph. Probably would have been a little slower if I hadn't tried to close that gap to the leaders at the Goodyear Sign Sprint.So by Saturday afternoon, I was seriously thinking about going up to Baton Rouge for their spring Century Ride. I had already pretty much decided not to make the trip to Lafayette for the 20 mile time trial because of the time, cost, and fact that it was such a long way to go for 20 miles of unrewarding suffering. I'd just be lying to myself to think that I'd get much out of it except maybe a case of bronchitis or pneumonia anyway. A few of the local guys were going to do the Century and it sounded like it might be fun. It's probably been ten years since I've done an official organized Century Ride. Things didn't quite work out, though, which was probably a good thing, considering. By nine o'clock I was feeling a lot of chest congestion and I started to doubt the wisdom of doing a 100 mile ride that would require me to get up at around 4:30 a.m. Then, for some reason, I just wasn't sleepy. I ended up watching two movies on TV back-to-back and not going to sleep until well after 2 a.m. Strange. Anyway, on a weekend where I had a choice of a Time Trial in Lafayette and a Century Ride in Baton Rouge, I ended up settling for the lowest common denominator and set my sights on the Sunday Giro Ride -- again.
Sunday morning the weather was looking spectacular. The wind was, at least initially, calm and the temperature nice and cool. Dead tired, I took off for the lakefront to log another Giro, meeting Brooks along the way. Lately, some of the Giro riders have been rolling down the road early. They usually loop around the fountain and ride back to meet the main group. Well, we got in with that group and then I had to convince them to do some loops of the fountain because I knew there must be another group that had started at the correct time. After a few minutes, they were still nowhere in sight and our group got impatient and rolled. Damn, I wish they would just wait and start with everybody else at 7:00 and not screw things up like that. As it turned out, we had left a whole group behind and they didn't get back together with us until after the turnaround. That really sucks. Anyway, my legs were feeling pretty good for some reason, and even though I knew my lungs were not particularly happy I did pretty much work today, especially on the way out, and I put in a decent effort for the sprint at Venetian Isles. The turnaround there is just before the bridge over Chef Menteur, which means "Chief Liar." There are a number of theories about how that body of water got its name, most of which involve the local native Americans.The return trip stayed pretty fast today, which is uncharacteristic for a Sunday, especially one on which a number of the strong guys were off at the time trial. I ended up getting in a pretty good workout that included a really long solo chase effort. Afterward there was a nice group heading back uptown, so I did a loop of Audubon Park and then Brooks, Diego and I rode down the levee for a few miles. I think I ended up with around 80 miles. It was a good day, but by the time I got home I was tired and hungry.
