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.