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.