A Little Confused

Why I kept waking up over and over again last night I don't really know. I think the salty pizza and extra glass -- or two -- last night might have had something to do with it, though. When the alarm finally went off this morning, I was thinking that it was a Tuesday. Tuesday?? Apparently I was a little confused. Of course I quickly realized it was Saturday, but I was already awake with little chance of going back to sleep, so naturally I figured it would be a good time to lube the chain. Anyway, I eventually got out on the road where it was still rather dark at 6:30 am. As I approached my turn onto Carrollton Avenue I saw a rider streak past. I stepped up my pace, made the turn and was a little surprised to find that I wasn't gaining on the rider. I kicked it up another notch and finally started closing the gap to the rider, who, it turned out, was Dan Bennett. So it was nice to have someone with whom to ride out to the lake.

It seemed that there were riders scattered all over Lakeshore Drive in groups of two and three this morning, so we rode all the way down to the start of the Giro Ride, turning around with a small group. All the way down Lakeshore people kept asking "is this everybody?" Things get rather confused when so many riders don't wait so that everyone can start together. We heard there was yet another group behind us, so we rolled along the lake, picking up riders along the way, and eventually, near the end, the missing group merged with ours and finally everyone was together.

Still, today's ride seemed a little confused. As we battled a little headwind down Hayne I stayed tucked safely inside the pack, which itself didn't seem interested in going too hard. After the turn onto Chef Highway, though, I think a little break rolled off the front and soon the pace started to ramp up. I finally made my way up to the front of the group expecting to get into a nice smooth paceline, but what I found was mostly more confusion. For some reason things at the front just weren't coming together. Two riders would pull, then there would be nobody to come through. Then someone would surge past them all, a couple would follow, one might pull through, then things would crumble. After a few nonproductive pulls, I retreated to the back to let them work things out among themselves.

The first part of the ride back featured another small break off the front that was finally caught thanks to a nice tailwind and a long stint at 29-31 mph. Then, when we hit the service road, things got kind of confused again and the group pretty much split up. All this time Dan and Rusty were way off the front. So anyway, once the small group I was with caught back up to Dan on Lakeshore, we spent the rest of the time mostly re-telling racing stories from the 80s and battling traffic all the way back uptown.