Crunch Time

It never fails. Just as the Tour de La approaches, all sorts of other things start to go critical, mostly at work. Many years ago I would start skipping training rides during the two weeks prior to the Tour, sometimes just to get the rest, and other times because there just wasn't enough time. For the last six or seven years, though, I've steadfastly refused to give up my riding time. After all, I won't get in a single pedal stroke this weekend while I'm officiating the TDL. It never seems to really matter, but at least it keeps me from regretting all the work that goes into the race a little bit less.

So anyway, it's been busy on all fronts. The NOBC team has been working hard to pull the event together. There are a million things that have to be done - getting portable toilets delivered, charging radio batteries, producing the Race Bible, arranging for follow vehicles, police, moto refs, etc. The list is endless. Personally, I carve out just a small piece for myself, as do most of the rest of our experienced race organizing crew. I hesitate to call any of us promoters. If we were, we'd probably either give up on the event altogether or figure out a way to make money on it. As it is, the costs have been rising alarmingly from year to year while the number of riders has stayed more or less constant. Aside from the $4,000 prizelist, I guess there are another $6,000 in costs, mostly for police, officials, hotel rooms, and those sorts of things.

So I woke up this morning feeling really tired. I had done the long levee ride on Tuesday and have ridden every day for the last ten days or so, plus commuting to and from work. Speaking of commuting, I've been strapping my messenger bag to the rear rack on the commuter and I guess that's starting to take its toll on the antique rear wheel. Yesterday, on the way home, I broke a spoke. Of course, since it's a good old-fashioned 36-spoke wheel, I was able to get home without a problem. Later that evening Dustin came over so I could make some badly needed adjustments to his bike. I trued up the wheels a little more (they're still rather far from perfect), gave him a couple of water bottle cages and bottles, blocked out his rear derailleur so he'd be legal for the Junior race, raised his saddle a little bit more, etc. After that I spend a couple of late-night hours updating the LCCS points series and posting all of that to the LAMBRA website. Basically, I got maybe 5 hours of sleep before I was back on the bike this morning.

Today's ride seemed a little odd. We ended up with a pretty long paceline and the pace was fairly brisk, but the strange thing was the wind. It felt a lot like a winter wind, other than the fact that it was in the 80s. That meant that much of the ride was into a crosswind, and on the bike path that means four people with a draft and ten more lined up along the edge of the road without a draft. On the way back Elise and I tried to organize a second eschelon, but apparently that is just totally beyond the comprehension capacity of most of the riders. They would rather ride without a draft on the edge of the road and complain about the leaders not being far enough over to the other side. Oh well. We tried. As we cooled down after the playground Gabe asked me if I had some aero bars he could borrow, so he followed me home and I gave him a set to use this weekend. After that I had to replace the broken spoke in my commuter bike's wheel and true it up. Luckily the broken spoke was on the non-freewheel side, because I don't think I have a remover for that single-speed freewheel. Anyway, I finally made it to work. Whoo hooo.