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.