On the Drops

I was in bed early last night. I guess the renewed training routine, together with the other stresses of summer in the city, must have been catching up to me. I still felt a little sluggish this morning when I stepped out into the humidity at 6 am. As I slowly climbed up the path to the levee I glanced at the sun over my right shoulder. It was a big dull orange disk, filtered by the thick summer haze. I could already tell that today would be a hot one.

Brooks was already up there, sitting down and leaning against the big siphon pipe. Right on cue the other riders started showing up and we soon headed out with a pretty large group for the long Thursday ride. Brooks and I rode herd at the front for the first few miles, and then I dropped to the back as the pace started to ramp up. We had a light tailwind today, and that seemed to keep the speed up pretty high. At some point a few riders went off the front and the gap opened really quickly. Somebody tried unsucessfully to make the bridge, but the pack simply responded by gradually bumping up its pace. We ended up with a good smooth paceline comprising about half of the riders, with the other half staying our of the rotation. Today I spent most of the time in the front half. The group off the front had 40 seconds or so, but I think we were holding that in check over the last ten miles.

After the turnaround we could feel the headwind and the group went really easy for a long time, but of course you knew that couldn't last forever. By the time we were halfway back we were back into race mode. That's when I finally made the transition and got on the drops. I had been avoiding that position for a couple of reasons, one of which was mainly psychological, but I guess today was the day to fold over a little more and get back down where I belong. Granted, I can still feel a little pain, especially when I go to change hand position from the drops to the top of the bar. So I ended up riding quite a while on the drops as we took turns pulling. The pace stayed pretty fast the rest of the way back and I was definitely feeling tired when we finally eased up at the playground.

Today is kind of hectic. Lots of stuff I have to get done today at work, along with a lot of emails and phone calls about the Tour de La (I'm the contact phone number). Pre-registration is running a bit behind last year. The combination of a big NRC criterium in Austin and the ever-increasing price of gas may be part of the reason. On the plus side, it will keep the field sizes down to manageable sizes, which is always nice on the narrow winding road race course. We've got a whole slew of motos lined up for the Road Race, and along with this year's addition of a second back number, there will be some centerline penalties dished out for sure to anyone who really gets stupid about it. I hate to do it, but last year was out of control in a rather dangerous way. BTW, if you happen to read the nice article in the NY Times ("Faster, Higher, Stronger") check out the mistake near the end where the author gives this obviously wrong quote, presumably from Christian Vandevelde; "When negotiating curves, he said, position your feet so that the pedal on the inside of the curve is down, with the outside pedal up (which keeps your weight balanced). " Yikes!