Fast and Wet

Damn, it was hard to get out of bed this morning. I always have trouble getting up when it's still dark, and in case you haven't noticed, it's still pretty dark until after 6 am now. So somehow I made my groggy way out to the levee where I found an unusually large group assembling up there. When Tim and Woody showed up I knew we were in for a fast one. The wind was light and the group numbered about twenty-five by the time we really got rolling. A group that large on the bike path makes for a very, very long paceline indeed. I was only three or four from the front when we got to the bend at the Country Club, and since I wanted to try for a photo of the long strung-out group, I pulled out of the paceline and drifted to somewhere near the back. I clicked off a few images and got back into the paceline, and soon the speed started to surge. For the next five miles or so there was no way I could move up without taking some big chances, so I hung out near the back behind a big guy on aero bars who was wisely leaving a couple of bike lengths between himself and the rider in front of him. Eventually things bunched up a bit near the pumps and I was able to get back into the rotating part of the paceline, but it was still another five miles before I finally hit the front and took a pull. As usual, things started to fragment a bit as we neared the turnaround and I got more than enough opportunities to pull.

So we turned around and it was clear that Tim and Woody had little interest in chit-chat. A little group of us formed quickly and the pace started going back up, but luckily most of the rest of the rest of the group latched on. It didn't last too long, though. By the time we were half-way back Tim and Woody were really pushing the pace and the paceline was getting disturbingly short. Then, for the last five miles or so, Tim, Woody and Donald started trading attacks. By then I was pretty much hanging on for dear life and hoping somebody would close the gaps. I looked back and there was nothing but empty levee. So it was a good hard workout and when I got home I was soaked to the skin with sweat.

Then, back at the house, as I was ironing a pair of pants I thought, "the last two times I rode to work in these pants it rained." Well, I almost couldn't believe it when, half-way to work, the wind suddenly picked up and I started to feel raindrops. Once again, I got fairly wet, and by the time I rolled into the Tidewater building my freshly-ironed pants looked just like they had when I'd taken them out of the washing machine. Wet once again. The traffic out in the Mississippi River has been pretty heavy today with an endless stream of big ships making the tricky turn at Algiers Point.

Returning to Normal

It's amazing how the local riders have their arrival times so dialed-in for the morning levee ride. Five minutes before start time and the meeting spot is deserted. Then, within a matter of about 120 seconds, six or seven riders suddenly show up right on cue. This morning I was actually a few minutes early and as I climbed the levee from River Road I looked up to the "pipe hill" and saw only a single rider. Once I was up on the bike path I looked back downriver and just caught the image of a rider wearing an NOBC jersey going the other direction. "Damn," I thought, "That was probably Dustin and he's going to miss us." Sure enough, a couple of minutes after we started, my phone rang. Ordinarily I'd ignore a phone call at 6:40 am, but this time I knew who it would be. Dustin was down at the Audubon Park end of the bike path wondering where everyone was. So I quickly explained the situation and told him to turn around and we'd eventually meet up on our way back from the turnaround.

The river seems to have finally returned to normal. After three solid months of being higher than it's natural bank, it now looks like it's back where it belongs. Also, the river is finally more or less open to normal shipping again following the oil spill last week. That situation is still not quite normal, though. Sitting in my office today I could see a whole swarm of small boats out there across from the CBD doing cleanup and I could also easily make out the areas where there is still oil floating on the water. It's rather amazing that they can do anything at all to clean up oil spilled into such a big and fast-moving river.

So anyway, the Wednesday ride seemed fairly fast today, but the legs felt pretty good and I was happy with it. Back at work later in the morning we sent out a thank-you letter to some of the key people in the House and Senate for their work in getting the Education Disaster Loan provision into the College Opportunity and Affordability Act. This was rather a triumph, actually, and represents a good thing that will come out of Hurricane Katrina and will potentially benefit all universities, so naturally you'll never hear about it on the 10:00 news.

After The Wife was knocked off her bike, possibly intentionally, as she was riding to work on the bike path over the Jefferson Davis Parkway overpass, she wanted to take a different route home today. We ended up taking the long way home riding mostly under the Oak trees along St. Charles Avenue taking in the scenery and making stops at the Post Office and Prytania Street bank along the way. I noticed that The Dark Knight is currently showing at the old Prytania Theatre. Might have to check that out one day soon. Earlier, I just had to take a photo of the awesome scaffolding that had been erected for work on one of the old brick churches on St. Charles. I have spent some significant time on scaffolding hauling up bricks and mortar, but was never higher than maybe twenty feet. There was just no comparison with the complexity of the scaffolding and the sheer height. I've always found scaffolding to be facinating. They're like these giant adult Erector Sets.

So Kenny B. has started rounding up a big crew to go do the Six Gap Century in September. I am seriously hoping I'll be able to finally do this "ride." I'm still kicking myself for missing the chance I had to do it back in 2001 when a few of the local riders went and put a couple of guys into the top ten. Well, they would have been in the top ten if it had been a race, but of course it's just a ride, right? Yeah, right. There's a little problem with a conflicting stage race in Mississippi that had been tentatively rescheduled, but it looks like there is a chance it may move to a different weekend to avoid the conflict since so may of the LAMBRA riders are talking about doing Six Gap this year.

Let Downs

The weekend races are over and nothing's on the calendar for a couple of weeks. The Tour de France has ended and the Vuelta seems an eternity away. The only real cycling news is about which relatively unknown athlete has tested positive for an appetite suppressant and might not be able to compete in the Olympics. WADA is completely out of control and reveling in it. The Olympics are still barely on my radar, and it seems that unwelcome reality is rushing in to fill the temporary void. The free weekends are rapidly being usurped by obligations rather than passions. It's not 9 pm yet and I've just refilled my glass with the last drops of the leftover wine. On the SciFi channel I just heard the line, "That photon blast must have somehow supercharged her microprocessor.... it'll take a fusion reactor to do her any good." Everything just feels like a bit let-down today.

It must be Tuesday.

After riding Monday on the Cervelo, I finally broke down last night and swapped out cassettes so I could get the Orbea back on the road today with its regular training wheels. This morning, though, it seemed particularly dark when I took off down Neron Place for the bike path. With my Oakleys stuck into the holes in my helmet I could see some dark clouds looming in the southeast, and together with an unusually strong morning wind it wasn't making me very optimistic. Nevertheless, we rolled out about on time and with Tim at the helm for the first ten miles or so the pace gradually increased. Although I thought we'd have a headwind most of the way out, it was really more of a crosswind. Even so, the pace stayed pretty fast all the way out to the turnaround, and indeed my legs still seemed to be feeling Sunday's little sprint. As it turns out, one should sprint more often than once every three months for best results.

Anyway, as soon as we turned around and looked at the sky that had been behind us, Max wisely said "let's not hang around here too long."

Well, despite our best efforts, we didn't quite make it back before the rain started. Gabe, who was with us on his last ride in New Orleans before heading back to his normal life, said it looked like his last ride would be like his first. Well, not quite. Although we got a fair amount of light rain, it was nothing like that particular ride in April, and I arrived back at home with just a little bit of water sloshing around in my shoes. The rest of the day, well, was basically all downhill from there.....

Fast and Flat

My internal alarm clock went off at 5:45 right on schedule Sunday morning, so I rolled out of the luxurious pillow-top bed at the Hampton and shuffled down to the lobby for a bracing cup or two of watery hotel coffee and one of those little donut things they always have. Soon, another hotel guest sat down at the table and I quietly sipped my coffee while he told me his life story. The Cat. 5 race was the second one on the schedule today, so we packed the three bikes back into Ed's Jeep and headed over to the nearby criterium course, arriving about when the Women's race started. I could feel some stiffness in my legs from Saturday's time trial effort, but that was to be expected, I guess. My own race wasn't until 11:00, so I had a few hours to kill watching the other races, taking pictures, and trying to stay in the shade.

In the Women's race, Vivian and Judith looked to be in defensive mode, marking the attacks but not making any big efforts off the front. I was a little surprised to see that race come down to a big field sprint. The course was a fast and flat loop through a business park and featured silky smooth asphalt and some nice shady oak trees for the spectators. Out on the course, though, there was no shade to be had, and a strong headwind was keeping the speed down on the back side. Of course, that meant a roaring tailwind for the long finish straight where even a modest effort would take the group well up into the 30s.

The Cat. 5 race was nice to watch, with the NOBC team doing a fine job of controlling things for Ed who was leading on GC. The Cat. 5 race was being run as an omnium instead of a stage race, so a high placing was important despite the fact that Ed had put something like 50 seconds on the rest of the race in Saturday's time trial. Thanks to their efforts nothing was able to escape, so he scooped up a few points at the hot spot, and then finished it off by winning a blazing drag race to the finish line at well over 40 mph.

By the time the 50-minute Masters got underway it was starting to get pretty warm out there on the asphalt. Although I was standing at 7th on GC, I was kind of expecting to drop down to 8th or 9th since both of the guys behind me were just 3 seconds away and I still had zero confidence in my sprinting ability. My main focus was on staying near the front and not missing any key breaks. The race was pretty fast, thanks largely to repeated attacks by the Jeep team. I started out trying to stay out of the fray, but after the hot spot sprint came and went I started feeling a little more ambitious and found myself at the front a few times responding to attacks and pulling when the pace would slacken too much. Whenever there would be a prime or hot spot or just another attack, we'd come past the finish line and into turn #1 at 30-32 mph, which resulted in a couple of the guys doing some off-roading in the grass on the outside. When we finally saw the "4 laps to go" card I was still feeling OK and decided to get in on the action a little bit. As usual, I wasn't the only one with that idea and so for the last few laps the pace got very erratic as guys would attack, we'd get strung out chasing, and then it would bunch up again.

When the bell rang for the last lap I was a little farther back than I liked, but the group was pretty small and I didn't have much trouble moving up to maybe 5th wheel coming into the final turn. As we rounded that one a couple of guys were playing bumper cars on the outside and lost their momentum and I ended up swinging over to the left and into the wind. By then, though, we were getting a full tailwind and I was fully committed to a very long sprint. I think I was already in the 53x12 when we rounded the last corner, so all I could do was spin it up as fast as I could. Mark from Midsouth and Dan from Pearland were battling it out just ahead of me, and for a moment I tried to get a little bit of Mark's draft but wasn't too successful. It was still a very long way to the finish and I could see Jeep riders on either side of me. I was rather shocked that there wasn't a stream of riders coming past us at that point, considering the tailwind. About 50 meters from the line I figured I'd had enough for the day and backed off a bit. I guess my usual motivation hasn't quite fully returned yet. The Jeep guys came past me just before the line, but I was still pleased as punch to have ended up 5th in the criterium and 6th on GC, which was a lot better than I'd been expecting Saturday morning.

We didn't stick around for the finish of the Cat. 1/2/3 race because of domestic commitments, but I was glad to see that Herring kept Chris in first place and that his teammates Frank and Scot took 1st and 2nd in the criterium. It looked like there must have been a 3-man break that finished about 20 seconds up on the pack. Anyway, it was a fun and long-awaited weekend of bike racing immersion for me and now I'm wishing for more races. There's nothing on the local calendar until mid-August.

The Lafayette club did a great job promoting and organizing this race and I was really glad I'd gone. The location is great for attracting some fresh riders from the Houston area, as evidenced by the 23 rider women's race. I think half of that field was probably from some place in Texas and it looked like they had a pretty good race.

La Vuelta de Acadiana Cat. 5 Criterium

A quick little video of the finish of the Cat. 5 Criterium in Lafayette, LA. That's Ed Novak winning the sprint that topped out at around 40 mph.

Over in Lafayette

Ed and I rushed off for Lafayette, LA after work Friday for the Vuelta de Acadiana stage race. This morning's road races were on a flat 16-mile course through the sugar cane fields. The master's race was pretty civilized until the 1st lap hot spot. The sprint for that one topped out at a bit over 38 mph, and soon afterward the attacks started. Most of them didn't look too threatening, and although I was mostly trying to stay out of trouble I did end up in the wind a few times. Then, about halfway through the second of three laps, a little surge opened a gap, ahead of which were seven or eight riders. I was, of course, on the wrong side of that gap. I looked up the road and could see that the group had a lot of the stronger riders in it, and although the gap was growing the riders at the front of my group didn't look like they were going to do anything about it. As soon as I got an opening I took off in pursuit and made the bridge pretty quickly, bringing one rider with me. We made contact just as the group was getting organized, and for the next lap or so we had a fairly smooth paceline going. Then, with about half a lap to go the coordination started to falter as riders began to worry about the sprint. I wasn't worried, though, because I pretty much knew I wouldn't have much of a sprint today. I ended up coming in 8th of the 9 riders in the break, but the good news was that we had put something in the neighborhood of three minutes on the rest of the field. In the Cat. 5 race, Ed had a pretty good race, picking up some hot spot points but missing out on the finish bonus. Patrick got caught up in a crash, but finished and didn't look too terribly scraped up. Ed K. finished with the group in the Cat. 4s, and Vivian missed the break but won the hot spot bonus and was 2nd in the pack sprint.

The afternoon 3.8 mi. time trial was really hot and quite windy. I was a little undermotivated but did a respectable time that moved me to 7th on GC, however temporarily, but a slim 3 seconds over 8th and 9th. I guess I should have pushed a little harder. Meanwhile, Ed N. did a great time. The next fastest time in the Cat. 5s was 44 seconds slower. Too bad the Cat. 5s was being scored as an omnium instead of as a stage race. He still ended up in 1st on GC with an 11 point lead.

Tomorrow's criterium will probably be pretty lively. I will likely drop down a place or two unless my sprint miraculously reappears, but that's OK. I'm pretty happy with my results today, considering.

An Empty River

So last night a bunch of us headed over to Cooter Brown's to watch the replay of the day's Alpe d' Huez stage on the big screen. This little get-together had been arranged a couple of weeks earlier by way of the NOBC Yahoogroups list. Someone who knew the owner got the OK for the oh-so-risky maneuver of replacing the regular baseball or basketball or professional wrestling or whatever it is that bar patrons normally watch on those big screens with the Versus coverage of the Tour de France. No doubt they had to look up Versus in the channel guide just for us. Complicating matters for me was that The Wife had invited her sister and niece over for dinner at some point in the afternoon, which meant that I wasn't ready to head over to Cooter's until after I'd grilled a $30 piece of salmon and consumed a couple of glasses of wine. Somewhere around the middle of that second glass Kenny called to say that they wouldn't turn on the sound at Cooter's because it might disturb the other patrons and so he was out of there. So after confirming that indeed we had a lot of the local riders in attendance anyway, I rode down to the riverbend, ordered up a glass of Porter, and had a rather enjoyable couple of hours chatting with everyone and watching the TDF coverage -- without sound. I doubt I could have heard it anyway over all of the talking. The undisturbed "other patrons" amounted to five or six people, all of whom were quite unconcerned with any of the television screens, so I really don't know what the big issue was. All of this, of course, made it a little bit of a challenge to get up this morning, but I did anyway.



The morning ride was pretty fast today with Matt pushing the pace on the way out until, mercifully, Dave had a flat and we all got to stop and drip sweat for a while while he fixed it. It took a few miles after that before the pace really got rolling again, but of course it did. Likewise, the ride back seemed satisfyingly fast and toward the end it was clear that there were more than a few tired legs in the bunch. We even picked up Young Dan at some point, who I presume is in town from Austin for a little visit. His fresh legs were quite welcome over the final few miles of the ride.



So I'm signed up for a new stage race this weekend over in Lafayette where I'm sure I'll get my lunch eaten, but hey, some racing seasons are just like that, especially this one. Meanwhile, here at work, it has been really odd looking out over the empty river all day and seeing not a single ship. It seems a tanker ran over a barge full of oil the other day just upriver from the convention center, splitting it (the barge, not the convention center) in two. The resulting 400,000 gallon oil spill has everything shut down from New Orleans all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico for all practical purposes while they try to clean up the mess that is now spread out over about a hundred miles of river. So there are at least a hundred big ships that are going nowhere right now and that's not a good thing. I think the pilot of the tug boat that was moving the barge is in really deep doo-doo, considering that nobody on board at the time had a pilot's license.

The Tuesday Routine

The Tuesday morning alarm seems to be going off earlier lately. As our hemisphere begins its annual tilt away from the sun I can already sense the lagging sunrise on these early mornings. For just a moment, it even felt a touch cooler as the group headed upriver on the bike path for a routine long levee ride. A few clouds on the horizon offered sporadic shade on the way out to the turnaround at Ormond, and with the light tailwind our group made short work of the outgoing leg. The ride back seemed to be a bit more erratic with first a few and then a few more riders staying out of the rotation, but it never got really hard or anything. As you can see, Howard wasn't looking particularly stressed. The little headwind did indeed make our 24 mph pace more work than play, but I was still surprised toward the end when big gaps started to open. My own legs seem to be feeling some minor effects from Sunday's efforts, but nothing really significant.

I finally got my economic stimulus "check" last week, which the treasury department quietly deposited into my bank account and I didn't even notice for a week. It didn't feel all that stimulating, though, since it will go mainly toward catching up on bills and plugging a small bit of the rapidly growing gap between take-home pay and inflation. With the dollar languishing for the foreseeable future at the bottom of the international monetary dumpster, I expect Euro bike parts are about to go completely out of sight. The photo is what it looks like when you're completely bonked, fully dehydrated, getting dropped, and about to pass out. At least that's what they tell me.....

I'm looking forward to Alpe d' Huez night tomorrow at Cooter Brown's. It should be fun, even though I am quite sure I won't wait that long to find out the results. To hell with the exchange rate, I'm going for the imported beer!

Back in the Race

STRUNG OUT MASTERS

The LAMBRA/USAC Criterium Championships were Sunday right here in NOLA, and it was already well past time for me to get back into the race. It's hard to believe it's been eleven weeks since my little collarbone incident, but I was quickly reminded when the master's race started yesterday morning. My lack of racing and race-oriented training was both expected and clearly apparent, so I had already developed a very simple 5-point race strategy:

1. Don't crash;
2. Don't get dropped;
3. Don't crash;
4. Don't put you face into the wind no matter what;
5. Don't crash.

Actually, despite my conservative approach to the race I was quite pleased with how I felt. I knew that my biggest limiter for this race would be in the area of recovery time since most of my riding over the past month has been relatively steady base-training stuff. What that meant to me for a criterium was that if I went too far out on a limb chasing a break of just pulling hard for any length of time, I'd be at serious risk of blowing up if another big effort were required right away.

KENNY B. DEMONSTRATES HIS SPACEWALKING SKILLS FOR THE CAT. 4 FIELD.

We had a good-sized field for the masters race and it started out at a fairly civilized pace as the riders familiarized themselves with the course. The 1-mile circuit had two very sharp corners plus a U-turn, which meant at least three hard accelerations per lap. The new turn on the back side was the sharpest, and even near the front you had to brake going into it and stand up coming out of it. Basically, the course was deceptively hard and reasonably technical. In fact, there were a surprising number of crashes, especially on the sharp corner on the back side. As things settled down, I was doing fine trying to stay near the front and out of trouble and feeling good that there didn't seem to be a lot of squirrely riding going on.

The real race didn't begin until about half-way through the 50-minute event when riders were starting to get tired and the responses to the attacks started to falter. Around that time two riders rolled off the front. I looked up and saw that they were Tim Regan from Herring and Mark Graffagnini from Fish House and I immediately knew it was serious. My instinct was to bury myself to try and bridge, but instead I stuck to my game plan. I told anybody who was listening "there goes the race, you'd better get going," but the reaction was slow and disorganized since two of the bigger teams in the race had riders in the break. I dropped back into the pack a bit so I wouldn't be in the way, but it was really too late by then. Not going after that break was hard. At one point on the back side of the course we were going really hard and I dropped my wheel into a long crack and nearly lost it. Close one! Once the break was clearly not going to be caught things settled down a bit, and eventually things started to ramp up for the inevitable pack sprint.

For the last three or four laps I was working on maintaining a good position near the front and I was starting to feel like I had a good shot at the sprint. Indeed, on the last lap I was in a pretty decent position, maybe five or six from the front, as we flew into the sharp corner on the back side. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see some guy coming up the inside way too fast. A quick calculation determined that (a) he would have to violate a number of laws of physics to make the turn from that angle, and (b) our courses were going to intersect at the apex of the turn. So basically I had to go way outside and hit the brakes and of course he had to hit the brakes too. That opened up a huge gap, and I think a couple of 4-letter words issued forth from my mouth as I got up out of the saddle and basically sprinted to try and close the gap. At that point my chances for the sprint went pretty much down the drain, although I did get back into the draft shortly before the last corner. I ended up 10th, getting passed by a couple of guys between the last corner and the finish. Under the circumstances, I was OK with that. Later that evening I checked my computer and was rather surprised to find a maximum speed of nearly 36 mph, which seemed pretty decent considering the course.

At least I didn't suffer the bad luck of some of my teammates. In the women's race Viv crashed and then didn't realize she could get a free lap, so she ended up in a little chase group that ultimately lost a lot of time on the leaders. Then, to add insult to injury, the whole lead group of five or six, in a truly stupid move, turned back onto the course after their finish just as Viv's group was coming around the last corner for its sprint, so she had to slam on the brakes and didn't even get to win that sprint like she should have. They were all lucky there wasn't a big crash and that the CR didn't disqualify the whole bunch of them for gross stupidity. In the Cat. 5 race Ed Novak somehow mistook the bell lap bell for a prime bell and thus completely blew the finish. He might never hear the end of that one! Earlier in that same race John had crashed on the U-turn and ended up with eleven stitches in his chin. In the Cat. 4 race it seemed like Brady worked his butt off the whole race and then something happened on the last lap or two and he finished well back in the sprint.

I have to admit, I did briefly consider entering the Cat. 1/2/3 race, but ultimately decided I'd be pushing my luck and should probably help out with the officiating instead. In that race, three of the Herring guys went off the front, then one dropped back to the pack. Brandon was working his ass off towing the pack and for a really long time they were keeping the gap down to ten seconds or so. Once the break was down to only two, the gap came down a bit and I told someone next to me that if it got any closer Frank Moak would surely attempt to make a solo bridge. I was almost right, except that it was his teammate Tim who made the bridge. Once the three of them were together the gap slowly started to creep up until the pack kind of gave up on the medals, so Herring swept up pretty much everything as the temperatures rose into the upper 90s.

Happenings

Things were going along fairly normally yesterday, and when The Mother called in the afternoon to say that my brother would be in town that evening it was easy to accommodate. Kenny was doing a little criterium clinic on the City Park course where the races will be this weekend, but I didn't really need to be there, so it was no problem.

I left the office around 2:30 and stepped out onto the hot sidewalk to ride uptown for my last follow-up visit to the orthopedist. It felt like someone had left the blast-furnace door open out on the streets. The appointment went fine and he basically said "you're done." If the lump on my shoulder gets to be a problem, he said he could scope it and to just let him know. I guess I'm a little bit on the fence as to whether to go that route or just live with it as it is. Anyway, around 6:00 we got into the car to go over to The Mother's house and I realized I'd left my cellphone inside. "Oh well," I thought, "I won't need it tonight." So we visited with family, drank some wine, ate dinner and headed back home around 9:30 or so, and the first thing I heard when I entered the house was a beep from my phone. Four voicemails and five missed calls. That didn't sound good, because I'm really not that popular.

Jenn, who is a faculty member at Tulane, had been out at City Park practicing criterium skills, had fallen and broken her collarbone! I think we should post a quarantine sign on all roads leading into the city because there's obviously a collarbone epidemic here. That makes five broken collarbones this year. Jenn and Brady were at the ER until I guess around 2 am. The clavicle is broken in at least two places, and as I write they're at the orthopedist (the same one I saw yesterday). I would guess that this one is going to be a surgical fix. Brady said he thinks that one of her cleats was pretty worn and she might have pulled it out when she started a sprint. Anyway, she went down pretty hard, so there's some significant road rash to deal with too. Paul said she even passed out briefly when they were loading her into Kenny's truck for the trip to the hospital, although they weren't convinced she'd had enough of a head injury to do a CAT scan.

So this morning I did the long levee ride, which was pretty good. We had at least 15 people, which makes for a very long line on the narrow bike path. Later, on the way to work, I went by two houses that had collapsed the previous afternoon, shortly after I'd passed on my way to my doctor's appointment. They had been abandoned since the hurricane and had been leaning precariously for a couple of years. This morning there was a film from the local TV station, along with the power company, cable company, and a demolition company. The neighbor, whose house had been hit by the ones that collapsed, did not seem too happy. He'd been trying to get some action on the properties for years with no success. As I pulled up to the Tidewater building at work I could hear a pile-driver across the street. Finally!! After at least four years of on-again off-again planning, interrupted by Katrina and delayed by contractor problems and state funding issues, the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center construction (OK, well probably just the test piles) is finally underway.

Sure is a lot happening around here lately.

A Tuesday in Summer

Well, summer has set in firmly around here. Often enough I return from a training ride and can't think of anything to say about it except that it was hot. They all seem to melt together this time of year. Tuesday's long levee ride was no different. As I've been trying to ramp up my level of intensity, training-wise, I have been confronted with the undeniable fact that my racing fitness level is still rather lacking. I'm sure it's understandable and all, but at this point I keep finding my head writing checks that my legs can't cash. Tuesday's ride had a good group, and when I saw Tim join in I knew it would turn into a good workout for anyone who wanted it. I think the group split on the way out, although like I said, these rides are all kind of melting together in my head lately. What I do remember is the ride back from the turnaround. Tim didn't let the group dilly-dally around very long before rolling through the middle and sailing off down the road. Charlie and I followed, and before long it started to feel like we were in a 3-man time trial. Although I never looked back, the rest of the group started chasing pretty quickly. At one point I distinctly remember thinking, with some sense of relief, that Tim and maybe Charlie were bound to turn off to head home somewhere out around Kenner and that I could then get a little recovery time before the pack caught me. Well, as it turned out that recovery time came a little sooner because Charlie flatted! Anyway, it felt like a good workout, at least for me.

Today, though, I had issues. A 9:00 am meeting meant that doing the usual group ride would be really pushing my luck, so instead I headed out just after 6 am for a quick 20 mile ride which left me with ample time for the daily ritual of eat, shower, iron, dress, ride to work, down a cold Coke, stand in front of the fan in the office to dry, and change shirts. I went just a tad too fast on the way to work this morning, which increased the sweat factor a bit above normal. The only real problem with that is the hair, and the trick is to quickly dry off the wet areas and basically get it all at the same level of dryness in order to avoid unwanted hat-induced curling. Wasn't quite successful with that today and consequently have a little curled-up hunk of hair above my right eye. No, it's not cute.

Situation normal ..........

Single Digits

A HOT AND BUSY WEEKEND ALL AROUND
Sunday morning was going to be a hot one, and before I left for my second Giro Ride of the weekend I stuck a big water bottle into my downtube cage and dumped some Cytomax into the other one. I was running pretty late, and with only 15 minutes to make it to Lakeshore Drive I didn't have the luxury of enjoying an easy early-morning warmup. With a couple of miles still to go I glanced down at my watch. 7:00 am. If the group left on time and went its normal warmup speed, I should make it. Sure enough, just as I hit Lakeshore Drive at the Bayou St. John bridge, the group was right there. So was the wind! As we rode along the lake the water was churned up into whitecaps already with a gusty northwest wind. I already knew what would happen, of course. The ride out to the turnaround would become a drag race at some point, and the ride back would be slow and painful. Such is the Giro.

After the group turned onto Chef Highway I saw VJ and Brett start to pull away. A couple of us rode up to them as they continued to accelerate. Both were on time trial bikes, and with the wind at our packs we were quickly up to 28 mph. We started taking pulls as the pace started to creep upward, and soon it was just Brett and VJ pulling and me hanging onto the back. This was not so easy. We were rolling at 30 mph and it was a lot of work just to switch from one wheel to the other each time one of them would drop back. I was definitely in trouble. I looked up ahead and saw the sign for Highway 11 and decided I'd stick it out until we got over the levee. As we came over the little hump that defines one of the city's outermost, and least effective, levees Brett dropped back, VJ surged a bit, and I popped off the back right on cue. I looked back and saw the group at least a minute back. After a bit of recovery, I was rolling along with the tailwind at 27 mph without much effort and even gave it a little gas for the last mile to keep from being caught by what was left of the group. After I turned around and hit the headwind I figured it would be a very long ride home. Indeed it was. Between the heat and the wind I guess most of the people in the group, including me, were running pretty low on enthusiasm by then, so the pace stayed pretty reasonable. Finally, back along Lakeshore Drive, the ride broke up as always and I found myself riding with Mark and another rider as we started up the Bayou St. John overpass. I looked down and laughed. 9 mph. Single digits. Yes, I was definitely done for the day. I rode home slowly as I sucked the last droplets of water from my bottles, looking forward to a cold drink and a shower.

We ended up having to drive up to Baton Rouge to secure The Wife's mother's house (which has been empty for a few years now) that got broken into yet again, finally getting back to NOLA around 6:30, just in time to head over to my mother's place for dinner. I had just enough energy to open a bottle of wine, grill some meat, and eat. The rest is just a blur!

Another Fast One

"Damn, my legs feel like crap," I thought to myself as I started out for the lakefront. Sometimes it's like that. You start out feeling tired and achy, but after a few miles everything loosens up and you're fine. Before I'd left, I had been sure to fill both water bottles, and knowing it would be hot and sunny, I'd dumped some Cytomax into one of them, and followed that up by spraying a nice coating of sunscreen onto my arms and legs. I should have squeezed in one of my larger bottles, though, because the two regular ones didn't really cut it today. On my small compact-frame Orbea, the big bottles just barely fit inside the triangle and I have to pull them out of the cages kind of sideways.

I met the Giro on Lakeshore Drive as usual, and as soon as we hit Hayne Blvd. the speed went up quickly. With a healthy wind blowing from the west, I knew it would be another fast one. Within a couple of miles we were a two block long string of riders going 29-30 mph. With very few lapses, the speed stayed in that neighborhood all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. When the group crossed onto Chef Highway, a little group split off the front while the rest of us had to wait for some traffic to pass, so all the way out to the turnaround we had that rabbit to chase. I was feeling fairly good and trying to stay in the rotation at the front, but after taking a couple of pulls I'd have to back off for a bit to recover. There were probably only seven or eight guys doing the work at the front at any one time, though. Even so, we were gradually making progress in closing the gap which had stretched to about 40 seconds or so. We never caught the leaders, but toward the end we swallowed up a few stragglers from that group.

After a slightly slower return trip, I was literally sucking the last droplets of water out of my bottle as a bunch of us waited around in the parking lot for Kenny's criterium clinic. The focus was mostly on basic bike handling, and we spent some time trying to pick up waterbottles while riding, and pedaling while holding one ankle with our hands. Of course, there was a lot of discussion about the basics of cornering and criterium riding in general. John and I stopped on West End Blvd. to refill our bottles before heading back uptown because we were both getting pretty dehydrated by then. Anyway, I think the clinic was helpful.

After I got home I went over to the bike shop to check on the LAMBRA race clock that had gotten rained on at the Tour de La. It was still acting pretty flaky. We decided to leave it on the charger overnight just in case it was a power issue. If that doesn't work, I guess we'll have to send it back for repair. Luckily, as I was standing there with Adam one of his customers walked up and he turned out to be the guy who has practically the same race clock for the local triathlon club, so we might end up borrowing that one for the criterium next week.

Around Town

Thursday's long levee ride felt fast but was otherwise uneventful. I got back to the house hot and thirsty, and then after a shower and bite to eat I stepped out onto the sidewalk with the commuting bike. The sun was already beating down on the city, and I was glad that half of my commute is, not accidentally, on streets shaded by nice old Oaks. The worst part is the mile along Broad Street where I have to go over the long Broad St. overpass that crosses the Interstate, the railroad tracks, and a number of other streets. For some reason the drivers seem to think this overpass is the local version of the Autobahn, and I routinely get passed by cars going 50 mph (the speed limit is 35). The Wife refuses to ride over this overpass unless absolutely necessary, preferring to take her chances on the Jeff. Davis overpass with its bike path paved in broken glass.

So after a long day at work I thought that since we were both on our bikes we might stop off at the Ogden Museum for their regular "Ogden After Hours" and have a beer while listening to one of the local musicians. Today they had local artist Linzzi Zoarski, who does this fun 1940s style stuff that somebody referred to as "Frenchman Street Jazz." The only problem with these things at the Ogden is that the acoustics are worse than terrible. Like most museums, the place is all glass and marble, so it's like trying to listen to music from inside a tin can. On the other hand, the nice thing is that they always feature a little informal interview with the artist that is always interesting. So I had a beer and we bought one of her CD, and headed toward home the long way along Magazine street.

Well let me tell you that riding your bike down Magazine St. around 7 pm when you're already hungry smells delicious. There are tons of restaurants along Magazine, and it quickly became irresitable. So we stopped at Semolina's Bistro Italia, across the street from the Bulldog and next-door to Rocky's, where I had a nice glass of porter and some excellent pasta marinara out on the sidewalk. As we were sitting there I thought "I'll bet I spot Kenny Bellau before we leave," because I think I've seen him almost every time I've been there. Well, right on cue Kenny (who is giving a free criterium clinic tomorrow after the Giro Ride) wanders by with a couple of friends trying to decide on where to eat dinner. I think they ended up walking down to the sushi place since one of them was some kind of Catholic-style Vegan who doesn't eat mammals or birds but does eat fish -- raw. A couple of tables down was a police officer having his dinner. I often see police officers on foot patrol around this area. As we're sitting there I hear a few fireworks go off just down the block, and the police officer jumps up and starts running down the street. I think he gave the moron who did it a good little lecture, and then returned to his dinner.

Anyway, by the time we ate it was starting to get dark, which made the rest of the ride home through the upper garden district, uptown, and Audubon park quite pleasant. Or maybe they were the two beers that made it so pleasant. These are the kinds of things that make living in New Orleans so interesting, even after all these years.

Summer in the City

This morning really felt like the definition of summer. The air was warm and thick, and it seems to suck some of the enthusiasm right out of you. Around lunchtime I stepped out onto the sidewalk on Canal St. and walked a few blocks down to the ATM to get some cash for food. I was immediately reminded of the song by the Lovin' Spoonful:

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

This is the time of year when I actually hope for a little rain shower to show up in the afternoon just to cool things down a little bit.

The morning levee ride was well-attended today, and everyone was mostly on the same page which kept the pace smooth and steady, even though there was significant disagreement about the direction from which the insignificant wind was coming. It was hard to get myself out of bed today, and it took me quite a while to feel warmed up. Eventually, though, I got back on track and toward the end of the ride I stayed near the back of the group and over to one side just so I could get in a few miles without a draft. When the paceline is this long and everyone's taking longish pulls, it seems like you spend way too much time sitting in and way too little pulling.

I read another excellent "Toolbox" article on the Pez Cycling News website yesterday. This one was on team leadout tactics, and for once it didn't assume that everybody was riding with a six-rider team of super-fit leadout men. The article addressed the much more common scenario where you only have two or three teammates that are capable of doing anything, and it covered a lot of the little things that go into good teamwork and planning for races when they come down to sprints. For example:

"The idea of ‘blocking’ is taken to extremes all too often when people hit the brakes, swerve, or otherwise pull those bone head moves that have come to define lower category racing. Don’t be bonehead!"

Bonehead indeed! So on the subject of bike races, perhaps I'll jump back into it for the LAMBRA criterium championships coming up the weekend after next. I'm definitely not quite up to speed, but I know that if I don't race I'll never be race-ready anyway, so I think I'll ride the masters race with no expectations and see how it goes. The next weekend is a stage race in Lafayette that should be good as well. I can't believe it's already about time to start working on our Rocktoberfest race in October. I think we'll take a shot at getting it back onto Lakeshore Drive this year. It looks like most of the levee work is about done and I got the contact from Robin last week, so hopefully they won't try and charge us more than we can possibly afford. I mean, we ought to break even on at least one of our races this year.

Playing Catch-up

Well we wrapped up the remainder of the 1,400 mile drive yesterday, arriving back in New Orleans well before dark. I had been afraid that we'd get stuck in Dallas rush-hour traffic, and from prior experience I was expecting the worst. As it turned out, though, things were flowing surprisingly smoothly in the big D and although we were occasionally bumper-to-bumper it really wasn't for long. So I guess we ended up spending in the neighborhood of $420 for gas, which was still better than we would have gotten for plane tickets and a rental car, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't have been able to bring the bike and as a result would have been miserable the whole time.

So with that little excursion behind me I'm now playing catch-up at work on a number of projects that, for reasons related to the maintenance of my own good mental health, I more or less ignored for the last week. I did make it out to the morning levee ride today where my legs felt like lead after two solid days of driving. Donald was there, having apparently had an extra-large bowl of Wheaties, followed up by a can of spinach, and washed down with a good dose of sado-masochism. He was taking long hard pulls all day, and when he'd pull off the other fifteen guys would rotate taking maybe twenty pedal strokes each before dropping back.

I think I was starting to get back into the swing of things toward the end of the ride, but I have to admit that I still feel pretty slow, even though I was wearing the new X-ray jersey that The Daughter gave me. If you look at the graphics, you can find a few broken bones, some with surgical repairs, so I guess it seemed fitting, eh? Speaking of which, my shoulder has been kind of unhappy lately, probably from lugging around luggage and stuff on the trip. Anyway, I arrived home pretty hot and tired, so I dove head-first into a carton of ice cream that I found in the freezer. I mean, strawberry ice cream is practically the same as strawberry yogurt, only without the lactobacilli action, right? I do like my ice cream, even if I am a little bit lactose intolerant.

A Few Miles Too Far

With the wedding set to begin around 5 pm, I figured I had the entire morning for another long ride. Around 7 am I filled up my two little water bottles in the hotel bathroom, sprayed on some sunscreen, and headed off to pick up the C-470 bike path. I'd ridden much of it the day before, but this time I hoped to follow it all the way around to Golden. I didn't exactly know how the bike paths all connected, but guessed I'd figure it out when I got there. I was already five miles down the road when I realized I'd forgotten the map back at the hotel. Adventure!!

It was warmer than Friday and things were already starting to heat up pretty well as I went past the reservoir where the bike path curved to the north. Eventually I came to the Bear Creek area where the bike path merged into a tangle of park bike paths. After a few wrong turns I finally got past most of the park and found myself on the west side of C-470 at Bear Creek Road. Looking to the west, I could see the road disappearing up into the mountains. Across the street a few riders were hanging around obviously waiting for the rest of their group to arrive. As I weighed my options a couple of riders went past. So clearly this was a good road for riding. I quickly changed my plans and headed off up the road. As I started climbing I could see a rider up ahead, so naturally I picked up my pace a bit to catch up. We were climbing steadily at about 12 mph and for this rider from New Orleans, it was like being on crack. I knew I was going to have to turn around soon, but I really, really didn't want to stop. I pulled up alongside the other rider who was a guy around my age riding a vintage 80's Tommassini with Campi Delta brakes. He looked like he did this ride every day. As I stepped up the pace he latched on and we continued climbing for a four or five more miles. I was thinking "I'm really going to pay for this on the ride home." Finally, when we reached the town of Kittredge at around , I eased up and apologized for having to turn back. I was already looking at a 75+ mile ride by the time I got back to the hotel. The ride back down the mountain to C-470 was a blast. The speed limit for many sections was around 30 mph, which I was considerably slower than I was going. At one point I was coming up on a Jeep and when the driver saw me she slowed down, eased over, and waved me through. After a few miles at 40+ mph weaving around the bends in the road I was actually starting to feel a little dizzy.

So back down on the bike path I got lost again in Bear Creek park, logging some bonus miles before finding my way back onto the correct path. Now it was really starting to get hot. With fifteen miles left to go I was already rationing my water and my legs were beginning to feel heavy. I was getting rather dehydrated by then and all I could think about were the ice cold cans of Coke floating around in the bottom of the ice chest back at the hotel. The last five miles or so were pretty ugly. A couple of miles from the hotel I called The Wife because I didn't have the room key. Turned out she wasn't at the hotel, so when I spotted a grocery store with vending machines out front I hit the brakes and fed a dollar into the machine for a cold coke. I would have paid two dollars at that point!

Right now I'm at a rather ragged Comfort Inn somewhere north of Dallas and south of Oklahoma City. We'll finish up the rest of the drive tomorrow if the Dallas rush hour doesn't kill us!

Tour de Bikepath

It must have been in the 60s when I headed out from the hotel this morning. Whenever I ride somewhere with low humidity the air feels strange. And so it was this morning as I rode northwest down the Cherry Creek bike path toward downtown Denver. My plan was pretty flexible today, so I was really just playing by ear. This particular bike path was fairly nice, as bike paths go, although like most metro bike paths there were a lot of odd turns and twists, and not having ridden it before I figured I'd better take it fairly slow. Eventually I arrived at the end of the Cherry Creek path where it ran into the Platte River. Thanks to the map that Sriram, the rider I met at the Performance shop yesterday, had given me, I knew there was a long bike path that ran along the Platte, so I headed more or less south on that one. I was thinking that I could make a big loop of around 60 miles by connecting three of the bike paths.

All along the way there were other riders, mostly fitness/recreational types, but nonetheless their numbers were impressive. Since both bike paths ran along rivers, they were essentially flat. However, they are also fairly narrow. That one factor kept me from going very fast. I guess my typical speed was around 18 mph. Still, it was nice riding, and it was great to be able to avoid having to deal with traffic in an unfamiliar city. By the time I got to the end of the Platte River path, where it meets a big reservoir, I'd ridden maybe 45 miles.

Looking to the west, I could see that I was only a few miles from the mountains. Looking to the east was the endless expanse of Denver. Which way to go? Haha! It was not contest, of course. I figured I could afford a few extra miles, so naturally I headed north on the C470 path for a few miles. The whole time I'm riding up and down the long rollers alongside the mountains I'm wishing I could turn west and do some real climbing. By then, however, I'd already eaten my only powerbar, I was down to one bottle of water, and I was looking at a total ride distance of at least 65 miles, so I finally forced myself to make the U-turn and head back. I think I stopped three times over the next ten miles to check the map to make sure I hadn't gone astray. There were a number of other bike paths that met the C-470 path, and it wasn't always clear that I was heading the right way. Eventually I made it back to the hotel with around 67 miles on the computer. It was a satisfying ride -- quite a bit better than I'd been expecting.

I think I'll be able to get away tomorrow morning too, so maybe I'll ride over toward Golden and see what's brewing there.

Up in Denver

Twenty plus hours in the Volvo listening to the smooth and steady drone of the straight five as we rolled over the least interesting parts of five states and we were finally inserted into the weekday afternoon Denver interstate gridlock. We spent last night at a little motel somewhere north of Oklahoma City and were back on the road around 6:30 am scanning the countryside of the emerald Starbucks orb. Somewhere in Kansas we spotted a roadside billboard advertising one of them. Just 59 miles ahead! The wife nervously counted down the miles and the landscape outside the window scrolled repetitively past as if it was an old-time cartoon. Somewhere along the way we started seeing signs advertising the world's largest ground hog. I kept trying to get a photo of it, but the best I got was the sign about other animals that were apparently part of the same show. Go figure... Finally, way off in the hazy distance, I could see the skyline of downtown Denver.

So after some intense negotiations involving discrepancies between advertising, reservations and reality, we got into a nice little room at the Residence Inn. With hours left to kill before dark I went out in the car to scout out a place to ride. We're just a mile or two from the Cherry Creek Reservoir, and I knew there was a park with a bike path there, so we took a lap around. It looked like it might suffice for a ride or two so we headed back to the hotel. Still restless, we took a little walk. The area around the hotel is basically an endless string of retail operations interspersed with cozy little clusters of consumers. It reminds me of parts of Dallas. As we're walking back I spot a Performance Bicycle shop directly across the street from the hotel and figure I'll stop in and see if I can get some local intelligence about where to ride. The staff were generally clueless, but one of the customers overhears me and mentions a long bike path along C-470. It sounds pretty good and so we start heading for the door. I had noticed a nice small size Orbea Orca on the roof of a car out front, and just then I see a guy who must be the owner. He turned out to be a font of information and runs out to his car to get a Denver Bicycle Touring Club map that highlights in red every bike path and bike route in the entire metro area. I'm amazed. He insists I keep the map since the bike shop is sold out of them. So anyway I'm thinking I'll head up the Cherry Creek bike path, which I can get to easily from the hotel, and see where it takes me. I should be free all morning tomorrow, so there will be ample time for getting bilssfully lost. I can see the possibility of making a big loop by connecting three of the longer bike paths. We'll see.

On the Road

Oh yeah, my legs still felt a little unhappy this morning when I rushed out to meet the 6:15 ride. I arrived at the pump hill to find a little group already waiting, and pretty soon we had about a dozen. With one of them being Tim, I knew it would be a fast one. It was. By the time we arrived at the turnaround the group size dwindled a bit, and as usual we took a little time to ride easy. We were still regrouping, riding at maybe 10 mph, when I heard excited voices behind me. Looking back we saw a woman lying on the ground with a couple of riders standing over her. One of the guys had hit her and knocked her to the ground. Luckily we were going really slowly and she didn't appear to be hurt.

It didn't take long for the pace to ramp up again as we rode into an increasing headwind. I was holding my own, but that's about it. After Max and Tim turned off for home the pace eased up just a bit, but the headwind seemed to have gotten stronger. Basically, it felt like a pretty hard ride today. By the time I got on the commuter to ride to work it was already blazing hot. I decided to put the messenger bag on the rack instead of my back since that always makes it feel a little cooler.

Tomorrow we'll hit the road for Denver, a 20+ hour drive that we'll likely split up into two days. We should make Oklahoma City easily tomorrow, and that might be a good place to stop. We'll see how it goes. I'm bringing the bike, but have no idea if I'll be able to find a place, or even the time, to ride. I should have some time in the mornings if I can just find a decent place to ride.