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.