A Giro Morning

It feels a lot like Spring around here lately. The oak trees are finally dropping their catkins all over the streets and everything is covered with a layer of yellow-green pollen. The trees and grasses are the bright green color of new leaves. It's a great time to be a plant. So after a full day off the bike yesterday, I headed off to the lakefront early this morning with a nice little south wind behind me, wondering if the lingering effects of yesterday's 2-man team time trials would keep the Giro Ride pace under control. I am still being rather cautious with my ankle, but I was glad that, despite the swelling, I wasn't feeling any significant pain while riding. I was also trying out the new Giro Atmos helmet that a bunch of us got recently through a deal worked out by the bike club and the Bicycle Connection.

Helmets. I've worn everything from the old cotton-stuffed leather ones to the original 1 lb. Bell hardshell, to the early Giro models, Limar, another Bell, etc. They've never been quite right, but at least they are now so light that you can ignore them. My problem in recent years has been that my head is right in-between the small and medium sizes (they used to offer a lot more sizes in the old days). The Giro, like the Bell before it, is a little snug in the Small size, but I guess I'd prefer that to one that moves around on my head. Anyway, I think I've got the straps about where I want them now, so I'll cut off the excess strap and put a few stitches through it so I won't have to mess with the buckle adjustment any more.

Anyway, the Giro turnout today was maybe a bit low for such a nice Sunday morning. When I turned onto Lakeshore Drive and headed West to meet the group I stopped to take a quick photo of the sunrise. The humidity was around 97% when I left home and there were some patches of fog. My glasses stayed fogged up until we were half an hour into the ride today.

Right after we hit Hayne Blvd., a little group rolled off the front while the rest of the group was still getting organized. It didn't seem that there was ever any real chase, but eventually the pace did pick up pretty well. The group was still disorganized, though, and things slowed down a lot when we first turned onto Chef highway. Eddie rolled up to the front and started organizing a paceline, which worked pretty well for a while, but as the pace and headwind got harder the number of riders coming through to the front got smaller and smaller. I was glad to find that I still wasn't feeling any pain in my ankle, although whenever we went over little bumps or rough sections I could feel the swollen tissue jiggling around. Weird. The thing that was actually bothering me the most was pain from the ribs. It still hurts to take a deep breath and of course I feel every bump in the road as well. By the time we were halfway back I was starting to feel an occasional twinge in the ankle, though, so I tried to back off a bit. It never got bad, though, and so the ride was a complete success, at least by my standards. I think I'll be OK for Tuesday Worlds on the Lakefront, anyway.

Yesterday's 2-Person TT went pretty well. Conditions were close to perfect, and the winning 40 km time, turned in by Tim and Diego (who was riding Junior gears), was a quick 52:57. In all, 23 teams went sub-hour. Registration was kind of comical that morning because it was so dark. We had flashlights hanging from the tent canopy for the first half-hour. Everything went pretty smoothly, though, despite a slight shortage of help. We had the complete start list printed around 8:00 and the first team went off at 8:15, and as far as I know there were no missed starts. I did come to one disturbing realization as I was standing there at the finish line getting ready to write down the first finish times.

Most of the stopwatches that we have do not display tenths or hundredths of a second after the first hour of timing. This wasn't a problem for this particular event, however it will be an issue for Stage Races this year because there is a new USCF rule about breaking ties on GC that requires tenths of a second for the TT stage. We have a couple of watches that will show hundredths after the first hour, so we will have to make sure those are the ones that go to the finish line timers, and perhaps I'll have to to shop for some new watches. I'm like something like this.

Limping Along

It was warm and humid up on the levee this morning, and for some reason we had more people than usual for a Friday. Quentin's knee seems to have recovered and so he was spending a lot of time at the front. Some Fridays when there are only a few riders we hardly break 21 mph, but today we spent most of the time closer to 23, which was actually pretty nice.

The fallout from my crash yesterday seems to have focused on my ribs and ankle. Otherwise, my neck is a little stiff, which always happens after a fall, the cuts on my thumb are irritating but minor, as are the light scrapes on my knee and arm. The ribs, though, hurt every time I sneeze or laugh or, for that matter, breathe. I know from experience I'll likely be living with that for a few weeks. The ankle is ugly. It's still quite swollen with a nice black and blue band of pooled blood at the bottom. Fortunately, it's really not painful to ride as long as I'm seated, although I've developed a bit of a limp when I walk. I never was very fond of walking anyway. I guess I must have put that right foot down hard on the slope of the levee and rolled the ankle. Not really anything to do for it except wait, I'm afraid. It might be a week or two or three before I can stand on the pedals and sprint, though.

So tomorrow I'll put on my official's hat for our club's annual 2-Person Time Trial. The registration and results is ready but largely untested, the numbers are sorted, the traffic cones and water jugs are waiting by the door to be loaded into the car at 5 am along with all the other essentials. I went out and bought two new stopwatches since a few of the older ones have become unreliable, and changed the batteries in a few others. I've got copies of the two different kinds of release forms ready to go as well. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything important, but at this point we will simply make do with what we have. The only thing that would really screw things up would be a severe lack of volunteers. Of course, if need be, a time trial can be handled by about three people, assuming none of them make any mistakes and the riders are really patient about waiting for the results to be posted.

Levee Surfing

It was a nice morning today with the predawn temperature up around 60F and a moderate southeast wind flooding the city with that warm gulf humidity that ensures a bountiful summer for all the area's fungi. There were a few people missing today, and I don't think the group ever got larger than seven or so, but that didn't seem to be having a negative effect on the effort level. With mostly cross or tailwinds on the way out, the pace stayed rather fast. Fast enough, in fact, that by the time we were approaching the Dip things were starting to fall apart paceline-wise, and so eventually the whole group took it down a notch for a while so everyone could recover. By the time we made the turnaround out at Ormond, everyone seemed ready for a little breather, especially since the return trip would be mostly headwind.

Chad rolled off ahead solo and after a while the group started to ever-so-gradually speed up, eventually catching him somewhere around the parish line I guess. After that is was just a nice smooth paceline. That is, until I decided to do a little levee surfing.

There's a crash on the levee
And mama, you've been refused
Well, it's sugar for sugar
And salt for salt
If you go down in the flood
It's gonna be your own fault
-- Bob Dylan

The paceline was making one of those long gradual bends in the river at the time, and the apparent wind was starting to shift from one side to the other. I was near the back of the line, I think maybe on Justin's wheel, just cruising along when I guess someone up front zigged when the guy behind him expected him to zag. I heard someone up there say something and then next thing I knew everything in front suddenly slowed and swerved to the right and my front wheel was swept cleanly out from under me. I hit pretty hard on my right side and remember being briefly in the highly aero but UCI-illegal Superman Position surfing down the grassy slope of the levee as my bike performed cartwheels somewhere behind. Because of the slope of the levee, you get to fall a few extra feet when you crash, the same way you do on the track. Thanks to his quick reflexes, or just dumb luck, I avoided being subsequently squashed like a bug by Chad who had been behind me and also took a little grassy detour but remained upright.

Since I landed on the grass the skin damage was minimal, although I did somehow manage to twist the hell out of my right ankle which is now rather swollen and painful. I guess the lower part of the bike came down the edge of the pavement because my right pedal and rear derailleur are now just the slightest bit lighter. Anyway, if you've got to crash, this is the way to do it. No broken bones, no broken bikes, and no head injury! I rode to work a little more slowly than usual this morning, but I don't think this little incident will keep me off the bike at all.

Tuesday Night Worlds.

It was still pretty cold yesterday morning when I rode out to meet the morning levee ride. To make matters worse, I caught a train for the second day in a row. The group was still waiting, however, and we ended up with a decent group as we headed up the river in the semi-darkness. This being the second week of Tuesday Night Worlds out on the lakefront, I was planning from the outset to turn around early. This would have been a wise plan except for the strong southeast wind. After dropping off the back and turning around at the "dip," I ended up with a rather long solo ride into the wind that was probably just as much work as I'd have gotten staying with the group all the way out to Ormond.

I skipped out of work a few minutes early, arriving at the lakefront in plenty of time for the 6pm start where I was happy to see maybe twenty riders chomping at the bit. It was still pretty windy and I knew it would be a hard day on Lakeshore Drive. Once we rang the bell for the start, things stayed civilized for all of five minutes before the attacks started. For the next couple of laps I was on the rivet just trying to keep from being dropped. Eddie launched a couple of harsh attacks, along with Tim, Brooks, and I guess a few others. I think the group pretty much split in two within the first two laps, although I couldn't say exactly when or where because I was preoccupied with trying to suck in enough air to remain more or less conscious. I had to go way over my limit a few times in order to close gaps that were largely of my own making, and there were more than a couple of times when I was lost in the pain cave without a flashlight, and I was lucky to stay with the lead group. Part of that luck probably had to do with Tim not being able to put much pressure on the pedals because of a skipping chain on a new cassette. It didn't stop him from inflicting some serious damage on the rest of us, but at least it was moderated a bit since he really couldn't stand up in most gears.

Seeing as how there was a strong gusty crosswind coming out of the southeast, Mike W. naturally chose to ride a huge fixed gear and rear disk which kept everyone on his toes, especially when he was on the front guttering everyone in the crosswind. Man, if there's one thing I could get an advanced degree in, it's riding between the curb and the crack on Lakeshore Drive! This was like "Advanced Wheelsucking 404 (prerequisite Giro riding and zealot approval)." I think I wacked a couple of big chunks of concrete or something along the way on Tuesday.

So anyway, somehow I made it to the bell lap in one piece, hanging onto the lead group by the skin of my teeth. We circled the fountain for the final time and headed for the finish just about a kilometer away and I had a pretty good picture of what would happen. Tim, unable to stand and spring anyway, gave the whole group a long leadout. Then the pace slacked off just a touch as we turned back into the wind and the sprint started a little early. I saw Mike grinding his big gear and coming past on the left. On the right were Tim, Matt and Woody. Tim finally eased up and then -- surprise -- Matt didn't sprint. Woody, meanwhile, found himself trapped between them and I could see him desperately trying to find a way out so he could finally sprint. I briefly considered launching myself, but the thought of hitting that headwind all alone made me think twice. By the time Woody got through it was too late, though, and Mike made it to the line first. I was already well toasted and just tried to stay on a wheel. It was a great workout and I guess I logged around 60 miles for the day. As Jim Bergin used to say "Ain't bike racin' fun?"

Afterward I rode back uptown with Tim, who was himself riding back to Kenner by way of the levee.

This morning it was warmer and the ride was brisk and pretty civilized. The Mississippi River has been rising a bit lately and is supposed to crest here in New Orleans just a tad below flood stage. Flood stage is about where the river comes up to the base of the levee, so it's not really an emergency or anything. I don't think they will even need to open the Bonnet Carre' Spillway, but it's nice to know it's there just in case! Anyway, the Corps of Engineers and all those political appointees on the Levee District boards who have never been through this are understandably on alert. Meanwhile, back at the office, things got really busy, especially in the afternoon. Somewhere along the way Robin called to say he'd gone out to the time trial course that we'll be using on Saturday for the 2-Person Time Trial and refreshed the course markings. Now if we can just get a good turnout of volunteers for the event, all should be good. I still need to remember to pick up a bunch of batteries so that the stopwatches and megaphone make it all the way through, and of course I need to set up the results spreadsheet on Friday so that it will pick up the rider data from the USAC database, at least for those with current USCF racing licenses.

Results and the Points

So Adam did a great job as Chief Ref. at last Saturday's 3-Man TT up in Baton Rouge despite a shortage of help. That meant, of course, that he couldn't even really start on the results until everyone had finished. Fortunately, Norman had provided a half-dozen bottles of wine for the finishers which, at least in my case, made the wait much more, shall we say, "palatable." I ended up spending much of the afternoon and evening posting results, checking USCF numbers against the USAC membership database to get the correct club/team affiliations for the LCCS scoring, reformatting the results to upload to the USA Cycling Results and Rankings database, etc. There were even a couple of errors that still had to be fixed with the Rouge-Roubaix results, now three weeks in the past. I guess I've probably spend a good ten hours on the Rouge results and so I don't really want to hear about any more problems. Ever since we got so good about posting race results to websites it seems a lot of riders feel they can split right after the race and then complain about their placings three days, or a week, later. I do try to be fair, but by then the results are on at least one website, they have been scored for the LCCS, and they have been uploaded to the USAC, so making any changes is a real headache. It's clear already that a few of the area clubs are already carefully combing through the weekly race results hunting for any extra LCCS points they might be able to scoop up. At the 3-man TT, one group wanted to have a guy start with one team early, drop off right away, go back to the finish line, and start with another team. Of course that meant he would have gotten points for riding on two teams when, for all practical purposes, he'd really only ridden on one. We'll have to add a special event rule to cover that next time. These folks don't miss a trick!!

Anyway, I was glad to hear from Shane the other day that LAMBRA has finally ordered the big race clock. It's a pretty big investment because we went with one that has the really big bright numbers (not the little LED numbers that are hard to read in the sunlight). It will be great for time trial starts and finishes, and will also be able to be placed in such a way that it will show up in finish line video as a backup for the judges.

Meanwhile, back in the Crescent City, we had a pretty fair group for the Easter Sunday Giro Ride, but for a few of us things kind of went south for a while when Jack flatted going up the Casino Bridge (stay away from those drain grates, guys!). Most of the group continued on, but a few of us waited. Eventually there were just four of us soft-pedaling down Hayne Blvd., looking back periodically for Jack and Robin and whoever else had stopped to assist. By the time we were approaching Bullard Ave. we still couldn't see anyone coming, so Brandon and I took a right turn there so we could take a little short-cut and make up a little time. Problem was, it was windy as all hell (we were really, really lucky with the wind on Saturday for the 3-man TT). So here I was again doing a time trial all the way down Bullard and Chef Highway. We started picking up stragglers, though, and that helped a lot. We were able to get back into the group after the turnaround, and soon the pace started ramping up as usual. I ended up getting a pretty decent workout, including a couple of good sprint efforts up the overpasses at the end, plus there was the added entertainment of watching Mike W., who had chosen this windy group ride to break out his fixed gear and disk. I guess he handled it pretty well under the circumstances, although the rest of the group was being careful to give his rear wheel a little extra latitude. Now I need to start resting up for the Tuesday Worlds on the Lakefront...

Three People

Thanks to a start time scheduled at the relatively civilized hour of 9:30 am, Ed N. and I didn't leave for Baton Rouge this morning until around 7, and since the first riders didn't actually start until 10:00, we arrived in plenty of time. Today was the Raising Cane's Racing annual 3-man Time Trial on River Road, just down the river from Baton Rouge. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I finally got my 3-man team together. With veteran Mike Lew on the hook I was then able to get Dave S. on board for the short 21.5 mile effort. I ended up spending most of Friday afternoon and evening posting the final Rouge-Roubaix results and updating the LAMBRA Cycling Cup Series rankings.


Arriving at the start area I could see that there was a pretty good turnout for this year's race. There were lots of clubs represented. They were mostly clustered together in little groups all up and down the road, pinning on numbers and assembling bikes and generally getting their acts together. For myself, I had just bolted on the clip-ons as usual. In fact, Dave was the only one of us with an actual Time Trial bike. In classic fashion, Mike showed up with his regular road bike. I figured this arrangement would probably serve to balance us out pretty well.


We were one of the earlier groups to start, and I was glad to see how smoothly we got rolling. As planned, Mike took the first pull, smoothly rolling us up to speed. By the time I came to the front we had a little tailwind and 27 mph was feeling way too easy. We flew through the first turn like we were on rails, and then, gradually, we started to pick up a little headwind. The group was rotating really pretty smoothly, although as always I was kind of impatient with the pace. Being the smallest rider of the group, I was getting full recovery at the back, and although we were seeing mostly 26-28 mph on the computer I knew we needed just a little more speed. The other guys handled my surges politely, though, and I started taking longer pulls to compensate. As we had planned, Dave, who was the biggest of the group, was taking shorter pulls and keeping the speed steady. We passed our 1-minute group pretty quickly, and I felt we were rolling well. Soon after we started the second lap I could see Mike starting to struggle a bit when he was on the front, and about half-way through that lap Dave said he was about done. I encouraged him to stay with us as long as he could, and in fact he didn't finally drop off until we were maybe three or four miles from the finish.


Right around that time the Herring masters riders, led by the Great Balded One, passed us. I saw Mike glance over at them and then he started pouring on the coals, bringing us up a couple of mph. Soon we were passing the Herring guys. Of course, they couldn't let that stand, and as I was starting my pull I heard them coming up alongside us again. I lifted our pace just a bit more to match theirs and for a moment the two teams were side-by-side. Then I heard Mike call out behind me. He had been trying to get back on my wheel just as I'd accelerated and now he was coming off the back, so although it would have been great fun to have had a little drag race for the last mile or two, we had to back off. The finish line came up quickly and we finished about 15 seconds behind the Herring team which had itself started two minutes behind us. My computer showed an average speed of almost 27 mph, which I thought was pretty respectable. We ended up 10th overall out of maybe 30 teams; 3rd among the master 45+ teams. I guess I can live with that.



Before I left I copied the admittedly incomplete results spreadsheet to my trusty Swiss Army Flashdrive so I could post something when I got back home.

This was one of those team time trials that I really enjoyed, and as is often the case there's still a little voice in the back of my head saying, "You could have gone faster." Yeah, well maybe...

Shrunken Mileage

It's just been one of those weeks when the weather, although admittedly not all that terrible, just seems to be having a blast slapping the morning ride around. Yesterday, with the rain still falling outside, I hit the "kill" button without even getting out of bed, content in the knowledge that I'd logged a few extra miles on Tuesday and with that little surplus in the training bank I could afford to skip what would have been a rather nasty ride in the rain.

Unfortunately, another cool front blew through the area overnight, complete with the usual blustery wind. At first the morning levee ride krewe looked kind of thin, but we picked up a few people between the start and the playground, ending up with maybe a dozen to do battle with the crosswinds. It was dark, of course, but a few of the guys, most notably Rob, were taking pretty hard pulls so I was trying to do my share as well. We were probably only managing 22 or 23 mph, but it was still hard, and it didn't take too long before the group that was trading pulls at the front dwindled down to four. Eventually it got to the point where every time I'd come to the front I'd try to keep it at around 22mph but Rob would immediately come past towing the other two guys. That situation of course quickly devolved to where Rob would come past towing nobody, as we were all starting to suffer for lack of paceline recovery time. Somewhere well before the parish line we lost the rest of the group, and then the gods smiled down upon us and put a two-inch bent rusty cotter pin through Rich's rear wheel, bringing us to a stop. Well, not actually all of us. Rob kept going, and I don't even know if he knew we'd stopped because he was in iPod land and definitely not listening to anything from Celine Dion.

By the time we got rolling again a few of the other had caught back up, so we rolled down the levee for a few more miles but turned around even before the dip when we saw The Donald & Co. heading toward us. The trouble with crosswinds is that it's never much better in the other direction and this morning was no exception. Even with the wind, though, it wasn't quite as challenging a ride as I'd wanted. It was also another shortened training ride.

Meanwhile, on the racing front I seem to be kind of left out in the cold, still looking for a couple of guys with whom to ride the upcoming 3-Man Time Trial in Baton Rouge. I just can't fathom why people don't want to try recovering from their pulls behind a 50cm bike with its rider on aero bars. With a few of my usual suspects on the bench with children's soccer or mending bones or Easter weekend, it's a little harder than usual. I've got a couple of calls in, but they're kind of long shots. We'll see. Sometimes this all seems to come together at the last minute. Shane tells me that he has finally ordered the big fancy race clock that we've been wanting to get for LAMBRA events, so if it actually gets delivered as promised we should have it in time for the big Mississippi Gran Prix stage race. I'm still sitting on my hands with regard to the final Rouge-Roubaix results since I gave the masters until Friday to tell me if they wanted to be scored in their categories, but I haven't heard from anyone else since yesterday so I think I'll be able to get that done tonight. Then I'll have to update the LCCS rankings with the Rouge results plus the Monroe TT results, and then by Sunday the 3-man TT results as well.

Blown Away

The wind advisories were already posted when I climbed up the levee to meet the tiny cluster of blinking red lights. Tim, already halfway through a training ride at 6:15 am, rolled up to the group as we clipped in and we headed up the river into the darkness. We rode side by side for a long time, keeping a steady pace and waiting for whatever morning light might filter through the overcast sky. Gradually the pace increased, lifted by a gusty and unsteady tailwind. I strained in the dim light to read the numbers on the computer when I felt the air go dead. We had momentarily matched the speed of the following wind. It read something like 24 mph, so now we knew the wind speed, and also what we'd be up against on the way back. Considering the headwind we'd soon be facing, the group turned around at the "dip" today, and Tim volunteered to pull us back down the river. Somewhere in the crosswind the group split. I'm not exactly sure where, as I was busy trying not to get dropped myself. Soon there were just three of us. The Max dropped back to give some assistance to the rest of the group, leaving just Tim with me hanging onto his wheel like a starving Remora. Around Harahan, Tim dropped back down the levee to head home, leaving just me and the headwind and ten miles of road going the wrong direction. I twisted around looking for the group but it was far behind, so I shifted to an easy gear and spun, and coasted, and waited, and finally Max arrived with the rest of the group in tow. At least I had a good tailwind on the ride to work!

I spent far too much time during the day dealing with LAMBRA stuff, but on the plus side I think the Rouge-Roubaix results are pretty solid and I'll be able to post something final this weekend. We even tracked down a mystery rider who had finished 15th but whose identity the officials never could verify. As it turned out, the mystery rider, Clarke, has a blog on his team's website and had not only posted a nice writeup on the race, but also a photo of him and the rest of the group with which he finished! Somewhere along the way I also set up the online registration for our upcoming 2-Person Time Trial.

So I rushed out of work at the stroke of 5, went back home, and by 5:30 was on the road heading out to the lakefront for the Tuesday Night Worlds. The wind was officially at around 23 mph with gusts to 30. We had a good group of about a dozen, and with Woody and Eddie dishing out the punishment and the crosswind taking no prisoners the group was soon blown away into pieces. My legs were not feeling too lively today, and although I was taking my pulls, they were short and felt weak. After a couple of laps I pulled off the front and as I started drifting back I saw Eddie surge past. The next thing I knew I was four bike lengths off the back and never could get back into the draft. So I rode another lap easy until the next group caught me. Then the front group sat up and waited and mostly everyone was back together for the last couple of laps. There were a few attacks that put me on the rivet, which admittedly is probably a good thing training-wise. The finish came down to Woody, Mike and me, in that order. Mike, who had been saving himself for the previous lap or so, finally came around Woody while I basically watched from the back. The weather was warm and there was something comforting about being out there on Lakeshore Drive, sweat dripping in my eyes and lunch gurgling up in my esophagus as I gasped for air while clinging tenuously to the draft of the rider in front. It was a good workout, and the ride back home into the wind didn't seem nearly as bad as I'd expected. It's all relative, I guess.

Transition Time

This was one of those 'double Giro Ride' weekends for me. There was a 40 km Time Trial just a few hours away on Saturday that I might have, should have, ridden, but excuses were sufficiently plentiful to keep me at home. Leaving The Wife without a car to fend for herself after spending three days working a conference downtown probably wouldn't have been nice. Nonetheless, the weekend Giro Rides really seemed to highlight the fact that the local racing community is entering that transition time between 'mostly training' to 'mostly racing.'



Saturday morning was warm, and with a nice humid South wind the Giro Ride felt different, and not just because we were missing some of the stronger riders who were doing the Time Trial up in Jackson. With sweat dripping down my forehead and dripping into my glasses it was really starting to feel like summer. I rode back uptown into the wind with Kenny and Bain, logging a respectable 70 miles or so, and spent the next few hours pouring over Rouge-Roubaix results. You see, various problems and miscommunications resulted in some serious problems when it came to scoring the race for the various classes and categories. Thanks to three of our LAMBRA officials, the USCF member database, the Results & Rankings database, and the USAC club membership listings, and a few educated guesses, I finally pieced together most of the data I needed to make a first cut at the results breakdowns. I really hate it when it takes this long to get results done. Having raced for many years when you usually never saw the complete results, and were lucky if the official was able to place the top ten, I always have a sense of urgency when it comes to getting race results posted. It's Sunday night right now and they're not quite there yet. I've given the masters riders the rest of the week to let me know if they intended to be scored in their categories instead of age groups. I expect there will be a few of the Cat. 1/2/3 masters who wanted their points to go toward their Cat. 1/2/3 rankings instead of their masters rankings.



So Sunday morning it was quite a bit cooler but still rather great riding weather when I headed out in the dark for the lakefront. The group was fairly big for a Sunday, and by the time we finally started rolling up to speed on Hayne Blvd. it was clear that a number of the guys were shifting into race mode. A handful of riders split off the front and the gap started growing quickly. Alarms started to sound. Red flags. All that stuff. I saw Brady start coming around on the right and got on his wheel. Soon Brady, Dave and I were in full-on chase mode, battling a rather significant crosswind and making just the slightest bit of progress. Brady was taking some huge pulls, and then as we approached the turn onto Paris Road he suddenly dropped off. I looked over at Dave and said "We're done..." We eased up just a bit and soon Brady was back and we were back up to speed, this time riding directly into a tough headwind. It looked like we were at least holding our own, but I can't say we were gaining ground. We chased hard all the way down to Chef Highway, picking up a couple of guys who'd been dropped out of the lead group along the way. By the time we were on Chef we had five or six riders in the group and we were struggling to hold 23 mph in the wind. The lead group was still in sight, but they were a good minute up the road, so it was all just for the exercise.



After the turnaround we all regrouped and the pace stayed slow for a while. I was talking to Robin about it and told him I was pretty sure that with the tailwind we would be up to 35 mph by the end. I was close. It was more like 37. After the Goodyear Sign sprint, in which Bain motored past Mike at probably 38-39 mph, I thought it might ease up, but it didn't really. Like I said, the group is making the transition into racing season mode, which means that the fast sections, while not necessarily a lot faster, are definitely getting longer, and the slow sections are getting a whole lot shorter. Anyway, I stopped taking pulls for a while on the service road to try and recover a bit. It was really a good training weekend, I think, and the rest of the day was just spectacular, weather-wise. I even relented and spent a couple of hours at the Zoo since it was earth fest weekend there.

Friday Already. How'd That Happen?

This morning was yet another wash-out, although at least this one didn't come as a surprise. What caught me off-guard, though, was the realization that it was already Friday! This week seemed to go pretty fast. I was up past midnight trying to come up with a viable way to score the subgroups from the Rouge-Roubaix results, some of which are still in production, since at registration they somehow managed to avoid making up individual start lists and therefore there was no way to tell if, for example, a Cat. 2 rider who was over 45 intended to race as a Cat. 2, as a Master 35+, or as a Master 45+. In fact, I remember picking up my number that morning and pausing for a moment because something seemed to be missing, but I was in a rush and didn't stop to think. What was missing were start sheets! There will be a few unhappy people regardless of how we handle it, but we will have to create those groupings (which are strictly for LCCS points and bragging rights) using a method that treats everyone the same because it's not going to work to either make assumptions about individuals nor to let them chose after the race is over.

So despite the wet streets, I got up in the dark anyway this morning to peek out the window, and I could see that the actual rain was over, but just couldn't work up enough enthusiasm to get me out the door on the old Pennine for a little recovery spin. Part of the reason, I'm sure, was that my right calf was still twitching and knotted up from those cramps I was getting last Sunday. And then there was the evening training ride I had done yesterday that certainly didn't help that situation.

I was already in the parking garage when Dave called to see if we could meet to ride out to the lakefront together for the training ride/race. It sounded like a plan, but the fly in the ointment was that I was having some difficulty finding my car! I don't often drive to work, and that morning I'd decided to go up a few extra floors so I could take the front elevators (it's complicated...). So way up at the very top of the garage, on the 7th floor of the 25 floor building, I found a nice spot. The trouble was, by the time I left I couldn't remember which floor I'd parked on and ended up wandering through the parking garage maze for about ten minutes. If I'd just ridden the bike I would have been halfway home by then. Anyway, Dave arrived on schedule and we made our way down Carrollton Avenue, doing battle with the cars most of the way, and got to Lakeshore Drive right about 6 pm. This being the first Tuesday/Thursday training race of the season, and having been very quietly announced in a rather roundabout fashion, there were only four of us, but we got in a really good workout anyway thanks to the strengthening wind. The east end of Lakeshore Drive was barricaded. I suppose it's related to the ongoing work they've been doing of raising the height of the levee. I was initially disappointed that we couldn't use our regular 6-mile loop, but soon after we started I realized that this was a blessing in disguise. There was hardly any traffic! Nobody could cruise on Lakeshore Drive, and anybody who was going anywhere was forced onto Leon C. Simon or Robt. E. Lee Blvd., so we practically had the lakefront to ourselves.

I have to admit it was kind of a long ride back uptown into the wind, especially since I ended up with something in excess of 70 miles for the day. Even so, it felt great to be back on Lakeshore Drive with sweat dripping down my face, trying to get a draft off of Mike W without overlapping the wheel of death. I'm looking forward to some more of these on Tu. and Th., and will probably start turning around a little early on the morning ride on those days so I can get in to work a little earlier and therefore get out of work a little earlier. I think the training races are back! Next week, arms will be twisted and egos threatened!

Strangely Reluctant

It wasn't particularly cold this morning, but it was still just a little colder than I'd been expecting. After I opened the door to ride I turned around and grabbed my Pearlizumi vest. Perhaps it was the humidity, but for some reason it seemed colder than the thermometer, which was hovering around the 50F mark, seemed to indicate. Of course it might also have been the fact that it was pitch black outside without even the slightest hint of dawn in the eastern sky. Whatever it was, my legs seemed strangely reluctant this morning. I suppose I must not be quite as recovered from last weekend as I'd hoped.

The group numbered about a dozen today, and after a sluggish start the speed steadily crept up until we were consistently in the 25-27 mph range. I think we had a very, very light tailwind, and there were a couple of guys on time trial bikes, but even so I was surprised at how lousy my legs felt. Riding in the cold and the dark are definitely not very high on my fun list, and I was glad we had Brady along with his industrial strength helmet-mounted headlight because for a while we were going a whole lot faster than would have been safe with the three or four anemic little blinky lights we had among us. The ride back was noticeably slower but still not what you'd call easy. So anyway, at least from a "perceived exertion" perspective, it seemed like a pretty good workout.

This afternoon I'm heading out the the Lakefront for an evening training ride with whoever shows up. I'll have to drive home first since I have the car here at work, so I haven't decided if I'll then drive or ride out to the lake. Probably drive, though, since it'll probably be dark before I get back home and it'll still push my day's mileage up to 65 or so. At least the temperature has warmed up and the sun has been out, so perhaps the old legs will be a bit less indisposed after hanging around doing nothing all day under my desk.

Ed N., who cracked his Bianchi 928 last weekend in the Rouge-Roubaix (probably when he crashed) is looking for a replacement 55cm frame that won't require a bank loan. He's got a TT bike on hand, so at least he's not sitting on the couch eating chips!

Just Another Wednesday

Garbage Day. I stepped out into the morning darkness and switched on my lights. There was barely a glow in the sky as I pedaled slowly through the neighborhood streets lined with identical huge wheeled garbage cans. It's a sight I thought I'd never see in my part of town where houses are packed closely together and people park expensive cars on the street for lack of driveways. The cars go away during the day, but a lot of the garbage cans don't. They're just too big for people to deal with, and often too wide to fit down the narrow alleyways between Shotguns. Life in the city.

After yesterday's rain it got cooler again -- down to the mid-50s here in town -- and I was glad to find the streets dry and the winds calm for the morning ride. The only problem now is that the sun doesn't come up until we're halfway through the ride. It makes is so much harder to get out of bed! The group was small today and so the pace was steady. My legs feel almost, but not quite, recovered from last Sunday's punishment. Keith N. and I talked for a while about the race. He had been on the fence about riding it until the day before, but ultimately decided to ride it. It sounded like he'd learned a lot and he had lots of questions. Christophe, who had come down from NY for the race, posted a long writeup on his blog and it sounded like he'd had a good time. I'm still waiting for the results to get worked out so I can update the LCCS rankings and send the results up to the USAC Results and Rankings database. The Wife is working a little conference starting today down a the Westin here in town where she's probably got a really nice hotel room. I usually end up staying at home, though, because if I stay downtown I have to bring my bike and everything and it just makes getting in my morning ride a real hassle. Otherwise, it's just another Wednesday in the Crescent City.

Oh yeah, read this. If you don't understand and it doesn't make you fear for your national security, or at least your personal well-being, buy me a beer and I'll explain it. Probably rather loudly.

What? Rain and Darkness?

The legs were pretty stiff Monday morning, as expected, but I got out of bed anyway so I could get in a nice recovery ride. It always comes as something of a shock to see how dark it is in the morning after we switch to DST. That particular morning the streets were wet as well, so I checked the radar and figured I could probably squeeze in an hour before the next batch of rain arrived. The levee was pretty deserted, which was good because I hadn't been able to find my headlight. It felt good to be spinning an easy gear and I think my legs appreciated it, but somewhere out around the Country Club the road became more wet and there was a feathery light misty kind of rain falling. It wasn't nearly enough to make me run for home, especially since the temperature was close to 60F, and so I rode for about an hour, arriving back home none the worse for wear. I have to admit, though, that I wasn't feeling too sharp all day at work.

So I get up Tuesday morning looking forward to doing a nice long training ride and trying out the fresh chainrings I'd installed the night before. I had intentionally waited to install them until after the Rouge-Roubaix since parts of that race are often like riding in a sandstorm and sand is harder than aluminum. I looked out the window and saw that the street was really wet as if it had just stopped raining. Damn. Sure enough, within fifteen minutes it was raining hard, so I conceded defeat to the rain and darkness for today. On the plus side, I remembered where I'd left my headlight! Maybe, if I can get home early enough, I can get in a ride this evening. Lakeshore Drive, anyone?

Meanwhile, in LAMBRA land, the Rouge-Roubaix results are coming along slowly. Most people probably don't know what actually happened. Shane, who was supposed to be the Chief Ref. and is arguably the best with results and the camera, called in sick the night before so Adam was called in for registration and then Ricky and Rick were drafted to handle the the finish and results. Because it had been so cold at the start and so warm at the finish, a whole lot of riders were making all sorts of clothing changes while out on the road and as a result many of them crossed the finish line with numbers that were covered up, or with numbers that were on articles of clothing that were now in their pockets, or with numbers that had been pulled lose from one or two pins. Also, in all the race day confusion, there was apparently never a solid start list generated, so the CR had to go through and figure out which pre-registered riders hadn't picked up their numbers. Then, of course, there were some crashes and flats and such that resulted in people who didn't finish and came back by way of a following car or other vehicle, along with a few people who took wrong turns and fell off the face of the earth (I thought the course was pretty well marked, but when you're in bonksville it's hard to read the signs). Those people rarely think to let the officials know that they have abandoned. Anyway, Ricky's still sorting out the results and just this morning (well actually it was around midnight last night) sent me the finish orders for the A and B races, although both had numerous riders for whom there were no placings. One was apparently the first place woman because the promoter emailed me this morning to tell me who had been awarded the first place prize after the race. I'm glad we don't have these kinds of problems often! Anyway, the promoter is busy thinking up ways to get better results next year using things like frame numbers or even chip timing.

Riding the Rouge

It was a cruel twist of fate to have Daylight Savings Time begin on the morning of this year's Rouge-Roubaix. With a pre-dawn temperature of 32F but an expected noon temperature of around 65F, clothing choice was going to be a big compromise. The plan was to meet Viv and Branden at about 5 am to drive up to B.R. in time for the start, so I went to bed a little early Saturday night after setting the clock to DST and the alarm to 4:15 a.m. Shortly before midnight I woke up and looked for the clock on the night table. Thinking something must be hiding the numbers, I reached up to move it only to find that the lights were out. They were out everywhere. No power as far as I could see up and down the street. I waited half an hour or so to see if it would come back on, but finally gave up and set my cellphone alarm instead. Good thing I'd awakened in the middle of the night or we would have been very late.

So we made the two-hour drive up to St. Francisville, watching the thermometer drop from the lower 40s in New Orleans down to 32. The parking lot at the hotel was very busy for the start and we all debated what to wear, or not wear. I ended up with a base layer plus three jerseys, arm-warmers, knee-warmers, etc., yet still spent the first ten miles shivering. Forty miles later I'd feel extremely overdressed. Having your handlebars erupt into uncontrolled shivering while in the middle of a 90-rider (I'm guessing here) field can be a little uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way it struck me that this was the 10th annual Rouge-Roubaix. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. Finally I started to warm up as the huge field squeezed its way down a narrow winding country road under a full canopy of trees.

I looked down at the computer. 20 miles. With the first dirt section at around 24 miles, I knew it was time to make my way closer to the front. This was no easy task, of course, since the pack was basically ditch-to-ditch and lots of others had the same idea. Slowly I worked my way toward the front and hit the dirt in a pretty good spot, somewhere within the front twenty or so, I guess. The road was well-packed this year and the gravel wasn't deep, so it was more of a dirt road than a gravel road. Somewhere behind, just before the turn, there had been a big crash. I wouldn't even learn about it until thirty miles later. The dirt and gravel demands your full attention, and even though there wasn't a break off the front this year, the pace remained brisk on this relatively flat road. I saw 27 mph at one point. Soon after we got back onto the asphalt, all hell seemed to break loose ahead of me. Apparently the riders near the front had reached an agreement to make a nature break and suddenly they all started pulling off the road and hitting their brakes. This came as something of a surprise to those of us nearer the back and almost resulted in a big pile-up.

The next long stretch on the road was surprisingly uneventful. Usually there are repeated attacks along here as riders and small groups try to establish a gaps before hitting the second gravel section at 60 miles. This year, though, the Metro VW guys from Dallas were staying on the front riding fast tempo. I always try to rest as much as I can along this stretch, so I dropped back a ways to where I thought I was around mid-pack. Glancing back, though, I was surprised to discover that I was instead at the back of the pack. That's where I found out that there had been that big crash. Even so, the group was still pretty large. There must have been around 60 or 70 in the field. With five miles left before the second dirt section I again started trying to move up. The problem was that there wasn't enough pressure at the front to string things out at all, so everyone was bunched up and getting more and more anxious the closer we got. Somehow, after a long and concerted effort, I worked my way reasonably close to the front by the time we turned onto the dirt. This second stretch had a bit more gravel, but was still pretty fast and solid by Rouge-Roubaix standards. Right away we hit the mile-long climb that usually splits things up. Behind me I heard Brooks anxiously saying, "Randy, I REALLY NEED you to move over so I can come past on the right." I looked up the road at the disintegrating field and the long climb and calmly obliged. Brooks shot past and I wondered how he'd maintain that pace all the way to the top. A little while later I passed him and coming over the top I could see riders scattered all up and down the road in small groups. Most of them, of course, were in front of me. Finally I reached asphalt again and found myself immediately in a loose group of five or six other riders. Twenty seconds up ahead we could see the main group coming back together, and fifteen seconds ahead of them a smaller lead group. We were all hurting, but after a little encouragement we got a paceline going and started to chase in earnest. I was glad to have Russ Walker in our group because I knew he would keep the chase going. The problem, though, was that the big group ahead of us was also in full-on chase mode, so although we were going full-bore ourselves, we weren't making much headway. Glancing up the road it looked like the main group was closing in on the break, so I started to hope that once they caught they would all ease up for a while. The follow car passes us and we pick up a little draft, but I can see that we're going to catch anyway as the two groups up the road start to come together. So after chasing for five miles or so we were all safely back in what remained of the main field. I sucked down some more HammerGel, drank some water, and looked around. The group was now down to maybe 40 and we had been the last to make it across.

The final, and most difficult, dirt section was quickly approaching at mile 80 and as usual my legs were already feeling the miles. I can't remember another year when the lead group was still so large by that point, though. Clearly it was all going to happen on the viciously steep climb at mile 80 and the run-in to the finish in St. Francisville. So here's where I made two really crucial mistakes.

Shortly before the turn onto the last dirt section I found myself sitting practically ON the back talking to another rider and not paying attention to the mileage. Suddenly I look up and see the front of the group making the left turn and already know I'm in serious trouble. I shift to the small ring and prepare for the agony. We hit the climb right away and the front of the group just attacks it like it's a bump in the road. I'm feeling OK, spinning the 25 up the early part of the hill right behind a little string of riders. Somewhere ten or fifteen guys ahead of me a rider loses it and has to put his foot down. Everyone behind him, including me, is forced to stop, unclip, and start walking up the hill. I hear Frank Moak mumble something like "It's over" as he puts his foot down (it wasn't, for him). Now I'm really losing ground. Cyclocross is not my forte.'

So I run up a few steps and realize that the surface doesn't seem all that soft, so I decide to try and clip in so I can get back on the bike. Mistake. Huge mistake. I try once and my foot slips off the pedal. I try again and clip in but the grade is so steep I can barely move the bike. I can hear the guys in the following car, which is now immediately behind me because I'm dead last, screaming encouragement. "Come on Randy, ride that bike!" I inch up a few meters and lose it and have to unclip again. The race is disappearing over the top and I'm running up the road again. Finally I get clipped in again but the group, scattered as it has become, is already far up the road. I'm on my own. Up and over another hill and I see a water bottle rolling around in the gravel and Russ just getting back up to speed after losing it on the edge of the road. He latches on and we roll through the rest of the gravel. The race is long gone, but we pick up another rider, maybe two, so we have a little group. Soon the follow car passes us and I watch as it disappears down the road -- always a rather depressing image.

A few miles later we come up to two teammates excitedly switching bikes or wheels or something, and after a while they come screaming past us. Russ latches on and I try, but both calves are starting to cramp every time I stand so I have to let them go. Now I'm with one other rider and we have about ten miles left to ride. He seems to be suffering even more badly than I, so I'm taking really long pulls. My calves are feeling better, so we're rolling along at a reasonable pace but when I go to pull off I discover he's off the back. Not wanting to ride the last eight or nine miles alone I wait up for him and we get going again. He takes a couple of pulls, but twice again I find he's dropped back. Just before the last time he asks me how much farther because his computer is reading something like 99 miles. I have to tell him that it will be closer to 104 by the time we get to the finish, and you can almost hear the air coming out of him. So I ended up riding in the last three miles solo.

Where did I finish? I really don't know. I guess somewhere in the 30s, which isn't too bad, considering. Even if I'd been able to stay with the main group, which eventually split into two, I doubt I'd have been able to sprint and might well have been dropped anyway, so it probably wouldn't have changed my placing much. Still, it was a respectable result and I was glad I'd ridden. Later, I was happy to hear that Tim had finished 3rd, although of course he was disappointed with that. One guy had pulled a "Michael Olheiser" with three miles to go and the rest of the lead group just wasn't able to pull him back before the finish.

Brandon eventually finished up and we waited around for our B race teammates to come in, one by one and mostly smiling. Viv, it turned out, had crashed very early in the gravel and hurt her elbow, but after flagging down a passing ambulance and stuffing an ice pack under her arm-warmer, she was able to finish along with Elise and Judith. I don't really know how the B group guys did, results-wise, but I think all of them finished, which is, after all, the prime directive at Rouge-Roubaix.

And So It Begins Again

Yet another early meeting on Friday interfered with my morning routine, and the best I could do was a quick hour on the levee in remarkably chilly weather. This latest cold front is proving to be formidable, especially considering that it's already March. Later in the evening the temperature really dropped and the wind picked up to the point where the weather service issued a wind advisory for the area. By morning it was still pretty windy, but the sky was clear and so I decided I'd ride out to the Giro Ride. The plan was to ride with the group out to the end of Hayne Blvd., and then to turn around and spin back home. Lakeshore drive was still showing the effects of the strong north winds from the night before, with lots of dirt and mud having been washed onto the road out toward the eastern end. Anyway, the plan worked out pretty well, actually. I must admit, though, that I really found it hard to make myself turn around and watch everyone else ride off into the distance. As I headed back was glad to have Robin and Keith, who had turned around shortly after me, to keep me company. Keith was still debating whether or not to ride, so naturally I told him he should. I mean, if you can, why not? You'd be out doing a long training ride anyway, right?

By the time I got back home I was starting to get kind of cold. Anyway, the whole idea of turning around early was to avoid any possibility of starting tomorrow's Rouge-Roubaix with sore legs. Since it will be in the 30s for the 8 a.m. start, and I haven't ridden much more than 70 miles at a stretch this year, I figured that under the circumstances I may as well start with fresh legs.

And so it begins again. Season #37, I think. As I usually do, I'm approaching the 2008 "Rouge" more as a hard training ride than as a race, although I know from experience that it will kick my butt anyway. In a way, that's the whole point of this race. So last night I put my trusty old Rolf road wheels on the Orbea so I could ride them on that bike once before "The Rouge." then, when I took off on them this morning, they started making all sorts of scary creaking sounds for a while, which was probably caused by those aluminum spoke nipples awakening after a few winter months of quiet corrosive contemplation. A few miles later everything settled down, though, so I guess they're good to go for tomorrow. Later in the day I went out in the car in search of HammerGel. My usual source out in Metairie didn't have any in stock, so I stopped by Bicycle World and found one dusty bottle of cappuccino flavor on the shelf, so that will have to do I guess. I really like the orange flavor the best, but this should at least keep the bonk at bay. With DST starting tonight, tomorrow morning's 4:30 a.m. alarm is going to feel really bad, I think. I'll be picking up Viv and Brandon shortly after 5 a.m. from a Starbucks that won't open for another hour and a half in order to make the two hour drive up to the race. Ordinarily, I'd probably have pushed for an even earlier departure, but since it'll be freezing cold up there in the morning I figure we'll cut it as close as we can.

Long Day Off-Bike

"The best laid plans of mice and men..."

This week just hasn't been going according to plan. All I can say for sure at this point is that I am definitely not suffering from overtraining. About the time I should have been 20 miles into a 45 mile ride this morning I was instead rolling the Volvo up to speed on I-10 heading for Baton Rouge. The bottom line: no riding for me today. A hastily arranged 9 am meeting with lawyers to sign some documents, followed by a trip to the court building, a couple of hours checking email at a Barnes and Noble, and then another meeting with lawyers to sign more stuff took me all the way up to 12:30. I left The Wife at the bookstore and headed downtown for my own meeting with the state Facilities Planning and Control folks (FP&C for those in the know) about a state grant we have for the Primate Center. An hour later, as I was getting back into the car in the parking lot, The Wife called. Another meeting with the lawyer. Another signature. All related to the mother-in-law's estate of course, but complicated by nine siblings and at least seven dangerously strong egos.

So finally we are free to head back to NOLA and I decide to go by way of Covington so I can pick up a team jersey and shorts for Brady. Ten miles later and we're sitting on I-12 at a dead stop. There's apparently been a big accident somewhere up ahead and everything is shut down, and we're trapped. My eyes are glazing over. People are driving down the shoulder of the road. We lurch forward a couple of feet at a time, and I'm thinking the whole time about what's going on in the automatic transmission. I hate automatic transmissions, because every time the car stops I can just envison what's going on down there and it isn't pretty. So anyway, the 1-hour trip to Covington took about two and a half hours, but we finally made it home just before dark.

I then decided to take a closer look at that tire from which I'd pulled a roofing nail yesterday morning. I pull the tire and tube off the rim and am shocked to find a big gash in the inner surface of the rim. The nail went right through the rim strip, right througn the aluminum on the inside of the rim, and I can see and feel the bump on the outside, near one of the spokes, where it almost penetrated the other side. Geez, that was a hell of a nail!

So I'm feeling none too confident about this Sunday's Rouge-Roubaix. The weather is looking to be cold in the early morning and the field is looking to be really strong. The "A" race has 75 pre-registered, so I'm sure it'll be close to 100 on race day. Should be interesting. I think my main goal for this one will be survival. Then again, compared to Jill's recent adventure, this will be a walk in the park. If you haven't read Jill's writeups, trust me, you should.

The Blue Streetcar and Getting Nailed

It was better this morning. It was colder, to be sure, and I'm still enveloped in some kind of blue funk that I can only attribute to the change in the weather and my own neuroendocrine instability. As I often do when I'm feeling tired and unsettled, I reached for "comfort clothes" today, which is to say that I was nicely overdressed but quite cozy as I made my way out past the Willow St. streetcar barn to the levee. For the last couple of months I've noticed a peculiar blue streetcar sitting there in the barn. Now, you should know that New Orleans streetcars do not come in blue. The original ones that are supposed to run only along the historic St. Charles Avenue line are painted kind of an dark olive green with brick red trim. When they started up the new Riverfront line some years back, they went out and bought some "used" streetcars and for the most part painted those red. Likewise, the modern air-conditioned Disneyworld style replica antique streetcars purchased for the revived Canal St. line a few years ago were painted red. So the lone blue streetcar remained a mystery. As I was running a couple of minutes early today, and there were a couple of guys standing there at the entrance to the streetcar barn, I figured I'd stop and see if I could get some answers. I was told that the blue streetcar was the only one of the Riverfront line that had survived Katrina and that it had been painted blue because they were experimenting with some different colors at one point (and apparently still are if what the guard told me was true). The rest of the streetcar barn is mostly full of red streetcars in various stages of restoration, and from the looks of things it will be some time yet before they have a full fleet out on the tracks again.



Sooo, anyway, I continued on to the levee where we had a smallish group today for the Wednesday ride. Thankfully, yesterday's strong wind was long gone and so we had a nice smooth paceline ride in the 21-23 mph range. I have to say it's really been nice having the sun come up early enough to leave the lights at home. The bad news, however, is that this will be the last week for that since we change to DST on Sunday. This is both bad and good, however. On the bad side is the fact that it will be dark again for the morning training rides, and even worse, Sunday's Rouge-Roubaix will start an hour earlier, relative to sunrise, which will make it even colder up in St. Francisville where the Sunday morning forecast is now showing a temperature much too close to the freezing point of water for my taste. On the good side, though, is the extra daylight we'll have in the evening, meaning it'll be time to get some people together for some Tuesday hammer sessions (or training races, or whatever) on the lakefront.



By the time I split off from the group to roll back down the levee and head home I was starting to feel better. Coming down the ramp from the levee I looked behind and selected a nice between-car gap to aim for, shifted to a bigger gear, and stood up to accelerate to River Road speed. Just as I hit the bottom and tucked in behind a pickup truck I heard, and felt, a huge "thump, thump, thump" coming from my rear tire. I knew immediately I'd been nailed and no, Rob, I'm afraid Tuffy's wouldn't have prevented this one. The inch-long roofing nail had completely trashed the new innertube I'd installed just last week, but at least the hole in the tire casing wasn't so big that I needed a boot, at least not yet. I guess I pick up something impressive like this once or twice a year, which isn't too bad, really, because the streets of New Orleans have been littered with all manner of roofing nails ever since the hurricane.

Turnabout

After a short and easy "active recovery" ride with Joe on Monday, I was expecting a lively long levee ride this morning. I was also expecting to feel recovered after the recovery ride. I got neither.

The storms ahead of this week's cold front finally rolled through late at night, putting on a big thunder and lightning show, and throwing in lots of strong gusty wind for lagniappe. The nice spring-like weather of the last few days was completely turned around within a couple of hours as the wind shifted to the northwest and the temperature started to fall. Yet the thermometer this morning read something like 51F, so I figured "how bad could it be?"

There was a small group up on the levee, and by the time I got there I was already feeling quite unenthusiastic. My legs still felt kind of stiff and achy, and the prospect of battling the wind was particularly unappealing. I think I'd already decided to turn around early before I even clipped in today. So we headed out, picking up a couple more riders (even Robin!) along the way, and settled into a kind of unsteady rotating paceline with six or seven riders. The problem was that the crosswind sections really had room for only four or five, so after taking a quick turn at the front and then struggling to find a bit of draft from the next guy when he dropped back, you would quickly find yourself at the back where you'd need to switch over to the line moving forward, usually without a draft until a couple more people up front pulled off. Ordinarily I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it, but this morning I was just feeling tired and grumpy and was really, really not enjoying myself at all. Pretty soon we lost Mignon and I think maybe another rider, which just made it worse. I've always found that once a group gets down to just a handful of riders, this circular paceline stuff becomes less and less attractive because you end up spending half of your time either pulling at the front or dropping back or accelerating back onto the paceline. Just ain't worth it no more. But I persevered so as not to upset the flow, but I just couldn't get into it.

When we got out to the St. Charles Parish line, I eased off the back with Robin and we turned around early, riding back down the river with the better part of a quartering tailwind until Robin turned off around the bridge where he'd parked his car. I still felt a little guilty for not having done the long ride, but sometimes you've just got to listen to what your body's telling you. Mine was clearly saying, "go home and have some nice toast and jam." As I rode in the last few miles I could see the two Navy ships being built at the Avondale shipyard across the river, one of which, the USS New York, had been christened last weekend. That's the ship that is built with steel recycled from the World Trade Center. The ship's motto? "Never Forget, Strength Through Sacrifice."

By the time I got home the temperature had actually dropped a bit and my feet were cold. Damn. I was all ready for summer, too. I had a brief workshop uptown on Tulane's new website "content management system" in the morning, so at least I had time to stop by PJ's on campus for an overpriced cup of coffee and a chance to check my email. Looks to me like dealing with this content management system is going to be a rather painful transition for me. I'm really going to miss my straightforward HTML tables, but such is the price of progress.

Much of a Good Thing

Lake Pontchartrain was calm and pretty in the morning light as I set the cruise control for the dead-straight 24 mile drive across the causeway. Thanks to a southeast breeze I had the company of pelicans and seagulls as they surfed the updraft along the east side of the bridge. Sipping on my coffee, I looked up at the clear blue sky and thought it would be another spectacular riding day. I was right. Still, arriving at the start of the northshore training ride I was a little surprised to see there would be only nine of us on such a great day. One reason for the low turnout was probably the fact that it's also prime time for, well, pretty much everything from soccer to walks in the park.


So the nine of us headed out for the usual circuit, riding north on a sweet tailwind. As we approached the watchtower I looked down at my computer, and then at my watch, and thought, "it's going to be a long ride home." When we turned west a few miles past Enon the tailwind became even stronger and the pace, of course, shot up quickly. There's nothing like an early-season tailwind ride in warm weather to make you forget about saving a little something for the inevitable headwind slog that awaits.


By the time we turned back to the north we'd already gapped off a couple of the guys, so, not without some difficulty, we kept the pace a bit slower out to highway 10, but once we turned right again toward Plainview and entered the traditional killbox, things started getting faster. We went up the first big hill together at a smooth tempo, but soon after that things started getting faster and the next significant hill finally broke the chain in more than one place. A few of us in the front group started taking short pulls into the growing headwind as if we were in breakaway mode, and I started to feel the effects of yesterday's perhaps overly enthusiastic Giro Ride. It seemed I wasn't alone. The previous day's great weather had sucked most of us into hard rides, and now we were finding that back-to-back perfect riding days might be a little too much of a good thing.


When we got to little Sie Jenkins Road, we regrouped, but for some reason Jaro decided, as he had the weekend before, to continue on alone. By the time the rest of us finally got rolling again with everyone in attendance we must have been ten minutes down on him. We never caught sight of Jaro again. In fact, Robert was feeling so bonked when we got back to Enon that he stopped at the store and ordered a hamburger! We took that to mean he was not going to be pushing the pace on the way home, so we left him to refuel and headed out. Once again, of course, we couldn't resist putting the hammer down over the watchtower hill, so things split up again on the way to Tung Road. Jason and I waited there for the last couple of guys to catch up and when we saw them coming we started soft-pedaling down Tung Road only to look back a minute later and see that they had stopped. I couldn't tell if they'd had a flat or what, so Jason went on and I went back to see what the problem was. When I got there I found Jake lying in the grass on the side of the road trying to summon up the strength to make the last seven or eight miles back to the car. So of course I stretched the truth and told him we had only five miles to go, so they clipped in and I rode with them straight into the headwind, which by this time had gotten quite serious, the rest of the way. I was pretty tired by the time we got back, which was right about when Jaro headed out in his car to find Robert, who without hesitation accepted the lift. It looked like most of the group had a pretty hard ride today, although I think the real culprit was our own inability to waste any part of such a glorious weekend by going slow.


Tomorrow, I will be sore...

Nice Giro Weather

Well last night we went back to a nice little restaurant on North Carrollton with the neighbors. I refuse to divulge the name of the restaurant because it's small and if everybody finds out how good it is I'll never get a table. Anyway, after two bottles of wine and a split of champagne, we headed back to the house where we found to our surprise we were out of wine! As luck would have it, however, we had an ample store of beer. The ultimate result of the evening, as you might guess, was that I awoke at 5 am, quite thirsty and with a dull headache.

The good news was that the temperature was in the upper 50s, the wind was very light, and it was a Saturday. We'd sent out an email earlier in the week to try and get a Giro Ride group photo so I'd have something fresh to put on the NOBC website, and since I wanted to bring a tripod for the camera I decided to take the car out to the lakefront. I hardly ever drive out to the Giro Ride. Anyway, the weather was really spectacular today and there was a good turnout for the Giro. As we rolled down Hayne Blvd. I kept looking down at my computer because it felt so easy sitting in the draft of the large group. With such a light wind, it was easy to sit in the draft no matter how fast the group at the front pushed the pace. At 27 mph I was practically soft-pedaling. It was all so nice that I didn't really make an effort to get up near the front until the last couple of miles before the turnaround. With a mile or so to go I found myself on Mike W's wheel and when he eased off to avoid hitting the front too soon before the sprint, it was quite a while before I went around him because he kept changing his line rather abruptly, which is the nicest way I can explain it.

After the turnaround the group went slow for a couple of miles and I started getting impatient. I mean, the weather was great, my legs were feeling good, and as George Pou used to say, it was "time to put out the cigarettes!" So I rolled off the front at a smooth pace and soon the whole group was back up to speed. There were a few riders who had slipped off the front before the group woke up, though, and I don't think we quite caught them before the Goodyear sign sprint. I made some reasonable efforts over both of the overpasses today. Coming up to the first one, the Casino overpass, I could see that Mike W. was planning on getting to the top first, but shortly after he took off, Kenny and Bain (?) went flying past. For myself, I felt pretty good sprinting up the overpasses, but backed off before the top, remembering that I was planning on doing a long ride on the northshore tomorrow.

Back at the parking lot I rounded up the NOBC riders who were around and we got Kenny to snap a few photos so I'd have something reasonably nice to put on the website.

Up in Alaska, I just read "March 1, 2006 5:00pm - Jill Homer arrived in McGrath at 4:20pm with a smile on her face according to Bill Merchant. her total time was 6 days 2 hours and 20 minutes."
Being a natural-born blogger, she posted an uptate on her blog from Nikolai, the last stop before her finish in McGrath. I cannot even imagine trying to take a nap in -20F weather where your chemical heat packs freeze solid and can't be activated. Awesome.