Clear Skies and TT Bikes

It was one of those mornings when getting out of bed and onto the road was a challenge. Once I was out the door, though, I was pleased to find that the relative humidity was relatively low, which would at least cut down on the sweat seeping into the shifter mechanicals. They always start to get pretty gunked up this time of year and with all the salty sweat the bike's exposed to, anything that can corrode will corrode. The sky was clear and blue and the weekend forecast is calling for hot temperatures with highs in the 90s and little chance of rain.

The group up on the levee was quite large today, and I guess I must have missed the memo about TT bikes because there were a bunch of them in the group today. Frankly, I don't know how they do it. It's quite frightening enough on my regular bike with my hands inches from the brakes and most of my weight behind the bottom bracket. There was hardly any wind when we started, but as we got farther out we picked up a little tailwind and the pace got fairly fast. Of course, that meant that the return trip was largely into an increasing headwind. That resulted in a relatively small group taking pulls at the front and a lot of people sitting in. The ones who will be racing this weekend, however, had valid excuses. Toward the end of the ride the pace started to get kind of erratic, partly because of the increasing pedestrian and truck-crossing density I suppose, and partly because of a few surges at the front.

So I got the official Road Championship results from Shane today. Hopefully I'll find some time to get the LCCS rankings updated before the Tour de La. Yesterday I picked up the big LAMBRA race kit, which is a white shipping container containing all of the finish line camera stuff, radios, etc. There was also a big tent thing and the new finish line and 200M feather flags. We'll have a lot of stuff to get over to the Northshore Friday afternoon! Robin's working on printing the Race Bibles, the hole on the crit course has been patched, and so things are more or less ready to go assuming lots of folks show up to volunteer. Online registration ends at midnight and right now there are a bit over 100 registered, to that's looking fairly normal. I think the Cat. 1,2,3 race will be pretty much wide open this year with both Herring and Memphis off at other stage races. The Cat. 4 race is looking to be big and competitive and the Women's race will have a really good turnout too. The Cat. 5 race still has 15 slots open, so that's good.

The Dad was in for a little surgery this morning and reports are that it went well. I know he will be glad to be rid of that suprapubic catheter. Who wouldn't? The Daughter should be hitting the road in about an hour for the long drive down from Iowa. Tomorrow is looking to be pretty busy!