Unplanned Respite

Tuesday morning's alarm went off a mere four hours after I'd finally hit the sack, and ten minutes later I was on my way out to the levee, still half-asleep. The air was chilly enough for knee-warmers and the Kodiak jersey, and if I said I enjoyed the ride out to the dip I'd be lying. I was tired and uncomfortable, and within a few miles all I could think about was the fact that I'd be turning around early at the dip and riding back alone. The paceline was motoring along pretty quickly thanks to a little tailwind, and although I was trying to do my share, it was decidedly weak. So when we arrived at the dip I was only too happy to pull out of the paceline and head back down the river. Something was telling me to take a little break, and I wasn't arguing about it, so I put my hands on the tops, shifted to a low gear, and rode for a few miles at 16 mph, looking at the scenery. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, my speed increased as I rode through Kenner and Jefferson. It always happens this way when I'm trying to ride easy by myself. The last five miles or so into the headwind were fast enough to actually qualify as training, I think. Regardless, it was looking like the afternoon's weather would be excellent and I was determined to make it out to the lakefront for Worlds ... if I could just stay awake that long.

Since we were taking the Volvo to the body shop for repairs, I didn't get to ride to work. Instead we dropped off the car at Champs and walked across the little parking lot to the conveniently located Enterprise car rental place. The insurance company was springing for all of $15/day for a rental, so we ended up with a $25/day Ford of some sort with stained carpets, cigarette burns in the seats and reeking of that nasty air freshener crap that all rental car companies feel compelled to use. At least it reminded me why the Volvo was so expensive.

Tuesday Night Worlds! Today we had Dan Bennett, back in town for a while to attend a class reunion, along with most of the usual Zealots. For the first time this year the wind was practically calm, which made for a much more fun training race with lots of attacking and changes in pace. Woody, despite his extensive road rash from last weekend's Georgia Cup criterium in Chattanooga, was taking some long steady pulls at the front, as was VJ, and there was a whole bunch of guys sitting in the pack enjoying the draft. I made a number of hard efforts, mostly closing gaps as usual, and was kind of surprised how good I was feeling, under the circumstances. Every lap we had to negotiate some huge lengthwise cracks around the Elysian Fields traffic circle. They've been actually filling these in with some kind of asphalt/tar stuff, which is great, but at the moment a lot of them have had all the dirt and stuff blown out of them, but there's no filler yet, so you're left temporarily with this huge wheel-grabbing crack about two inches wide, along with little patches of sand here and there. Anyway, it was a lot of fun today. A mile or so from the finish Woody and one other rider (Mike C?) took off and got a huge gap as the rest of us contemplated the wisdom of launching a chase in the grey zone that's a little too long to go solo and a little too short to recover if you don't make it. Eventually someone started towing the group up and I found myself on Dan's wheel closing in quickly on the duo. Dan wasn't quite sure where the finish was, though, so when he eased off I launched with Noel on my wheel. If the finish had been 20 yards farther we'd have won, but I ran out of road and never got past whichever one was in the lead.

So this morning the alarm goes off and I reach up, turn it off, and fall immediately back asleep. Oh well, I guess I must have needed another hour or so of sack time anyway.