Don't you just hate it when work interferes with fun? Things were already going downhill by Wednesday with morning meetings on the calendar for both Thursday and Friday. The meetings were good, and the work was satisfying, it's just that the scheduling was lousy. Friday afternoon preparations for a Monday morning meeting in DC took me up to 5:30 or so, if you don't count the last-minute change I made a few minutes ago, which gave me about an hour to go the seven or eight blocks down Canal Street to the Psychiatry party at the Ritz-Carlton. Unfortunately, traffic was so snarled up with multiple events in town that it was nearly half an hour before I handed the keys to the valet and strolled casually into the old Kress department store, which along with the Maison Blanche building is now part of the impressive Ritz. The party was fun, and I was glad I arrived early because by the time it really got underway, the hotel had a full-scale parking crisis going on. At one point they were handing out $20 bills to people so they could park in a nearby garage. After consuming copious quantities of boiled shrimp and wine, I was back home and ready for bed before midnight, looking forward to the one training ride I'd get in five days. Now that's a winter training program you won't find in the Cyclist's Training Bible.
When I got up this morning the streets were wet and there was a moderate fog. I was afraid some sort of unexpected rain had moved in, and actually checked the radar just to make sure. I probably would have ridden anyway, though. So I headed off into the warm muggy air to meet the Giro ride, catching up with Chad on Carrollton Avenue and arriving promptly at 7 am. Chad spotted Brooks who was already riding way out ahead of the group, which, as it turned out, hadn't even started yet. Someone had flatted right in the parking lot, so the main group was running a good ten minutes late. By then there were at least two small groups that had been expecting to be caught by the main group but were now something like fifteen minutes up the road. Another flat on the service road, along with a pretty tame pace, extended the gap even more, I suppose. Chef highway was really foggy in a dangerous way, and so I had my blinky light going for the whole ride. The pace finally picked up along Chef, and by the time we got back to the service road we were starting to catch some of the other riders. This whole time Jay, whose high-tech monofilament Specialized shoe-lace had broken, was riding with his shoe tied to his foot with a plastic grocery bag, which seemed to be working quite well. Since we rode basically the whole time in the fog with water droplets clouding my clear lens Oakley's, I never did take any pictures. Somehow forcing fog into the front end of my digital camera didn't seem like a good idea.
All-in-all, it was kind of an odd Giro day, but I felt like I got in a decent workout by the time I got home with 65 or 70 miles on the clock. By then the temperature was probably around 75F. The weather around here has been crazy, and I guess I'll find out tomorrow how it's been in D.C. Sadly, I'll be missing either the mountain bike ride up in Clear Springs that Keith set up, or another nice long training ride on the northshore. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?
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