Weekend Plans

It seems like its been a while since I had a weekend without a race and where the plan was entirely my own. The training plan of a Giro Ride on Saturday and a Northshore ride on Sunday may seem unremarkable, but compared to the balance of my agenda those will likely be the high points. The languishing kitchen painting project is in desperate need of a jump-start and this is looking like the only weekend I'll have with some long blocks of time, so guess what I'll be doing in-between training rides.

I was up kind of early this morning so I decided to use the time to make my ride out to the Lakefront a leisurely one. I think my average speed for the trip was probably twelve miles per hour. It's nice to ride easy and look at the early morning scenery sometimes because later in the day the view is partially obscured by dehydration and the splatters of sweat on the inside of my glasses. The Giro Ride group was pretty typical today except that a few guys were taking it easier than usual because of tonight's track races in Baton Rouge. I myself had seriously been considering going, but the aforementioned painting job took precedence. I kind of hate it when I have these attacks of responsibility. Fortunately, they don't happen too often. So anyway, the Giro Ride was pretty fast all the way out and most of the way back. I reset my computer just as we came down the bridge onto Hayne Blvd., and by the time we hit the turnaround out at Venetian Isles I think the average speed was just a bit under 26 mph. As usual, the stretch down Chef Highway was the fastest and I spent most of that just sitting in the paceline. With a couple of miles left before the turnaround I moved up toward the front to take a couple of pulls and ended up coming onto the front about half a kilometer before the sprint, so I figured I'd do the day's "neutral leadout," taking the lead group up to about 200 meters at which point the sprint streamed past me on both sides. I did have a little bit of fun when the Goodyear Sign sprint came up, though. I was hanging around maybe six riders from the front with the pace already up around 27 mph. I could see Bain just ahead of me kind of boxed in on the right, then I saw Tim come up on the left and when he did he looked over to Bain and said "come on." As Bain crossed over to get his wheel, I latched onto Bain's as Tim pulled us up to sprint speed. I was happy to hang onto Bain when he finally stood up to sprint.

On the way home I rode through Lakeview to see how the recovery is going. It's slow. There are lots of vacant lots where houses once stood, quite a few homes still showing the water marks from the flood that haven't been repaired at all, and some that have been, or are in the process of being raised. Basically, much of the area still looks like a construction zone.

The rest of my day was spent spackling, sanding, and painting. There's still a very long way to go on this little kitchen project but at least I got three windows finished and put a coat of paint on one of the wall cabinets. Wish I could say it's fun, but it's not. I'm looking forward to a long ride in the country tomorrow. Although we're starting at 7 am, I'm sure it will be plenty hot by the time we finish. So basically the weekend will consist of two rides and a lot of painting. Some weekend plan, eh?

Oh, and if you've made it all the way down to the end of this long post, you may as well take a look at the Discovery Channel team's Tour de France Video because you obviously don't have anything important to do anyway.