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!
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