Spinnin' and Grinnin' Around Town

Saturday's plan was a little bit different -- long ride, low speeds, small ring. Rather than indulge in the usual Saturday Giro Ride, a little contingent had planned on doing the "Tour of New Orleans" route. This particular ride around town, mapped out by Kenny, takes us through a lot of areas of the city where the tour buses never go. The rules were simple: Stay in the small chainring and enjoy the scenery.

I was still a bit unsteady from the prior evening's downtown reception at the Westin Canal Place when I stepped out the door into the 6 am darkness. Our group was meeting at the lakefront at the rather uncivilized hour of 6:30 am. It was pretty chilly as I turned on my headlight for the seven mile ride out to the lake. Under my vest I was dressed for the warmer temperatures I was expecting toward the end of the day's ride, so I expected to be a little bit on the cold side. As I rode north past City Park I saw a bunch of runners coming toward me. I see them often when I ride out early in the morning. We always acknowledge each other, perhaps just because we're glad to see someone else who might understand why we're out there in the first place.

I was glad to see a decent-sized group of a dozen or so coming toward me on Lakeshore Drive, and indeed it was the group for which I was looking. I turned around and slipped into the draft. The Tour of New Orleans route is probably a bit over 50 miles, so I was expecting to log around 70 miles for the day. Although that may have been an accurate mileage, I'm sure I put in about 90 miles worth of spinning. As we coasted down the Casino bridge, we noticed that Jenn and Brady were suddenly missing. Someone said that Jenn had mentioned something about not feeling well. I rode up to the front of the group and slowed them down for a while. Looking back, I saw someone way up at the top of the overpass. The only problem was that he had turned around and was going the other way. We soft-pedaled for another mile or so before concluding that they must have turned back, so the rest of us continued on our way. Riding down Read Blvd. toward Almonaster, I was a bit surprised to see how many houses were still in complete disrepair. I had really expected that by now the majority of the buildings would have been fixed up. The group worked its way across the Industrial Canal, going over the big bridge rather than the little old one, and soon enough we found ourselves rolling into the French Quarter.

At Cafe' du Monde we all stopped, riding around the back to where the take-out window is. I though we could get some coffee more quickly that way, but as it turned out there were a lot of open tables inside, so a bunch of us sat down and we ordered a round of cafe au lait. I mean, what else would you order there? I was tempted to get an order of beignets, but considering that we still had another couple of hours of riding ahead of us, I thought better of it. Regardless, it was a rare treat to be doing a group ride like this, and I was really enjoying it. We finally headed off down Magazine and Prytania streets, riding toward uptown on quiet Garden District streets under the old oaks.

Somewhere around Audubon Park we lost a few riders who needed to get back sooner, and a bit later, near the Jefferson Playground, Russell headed for home. The rest of the group continued upriver on the bike path, eventually turning north and working its way to the Jefferson Parish bike path between the levee and the lake. I was happy to find that bike path to be in great condition. Even better, we had a nice little tailwind blowing us along the smooth asphalt at the edge of the water. I had been careful to work on my "suplesse," or lack of it, all day, sometimes spinning at RPMs just below the "bounce" level. This kind of low-gear riding always has one undesirable side-effect. Since your weight is practically never being supported by your feet when you're spinning low gears, you can probably guess which part of your anatomy has to pick up the slack.

So anyway, it was a good technical workout in the finest winter ride tradition, even though I suppose it was kind of light on the calorie-burning side. After about five hours and 70 miles, I guess I'd had half a bottle of water and one cafe au lait, and yet I wasn't feeling particularly drained. All-in-all, it was a good day on the bike. Good thing, too, because today I didn't get to ride at all. I was up before 7 am working on stuff for the day's annual LAMBRA meeting. That meeting was a bit of a marathon session, starting around 11 am and lasting until a bit after 5 pm. There was a lot of good discussion among all of the club representatives on hand and I really left with the feeling that everyone there was truly committed to finding ways to increase both the number of people racing bikes and the general quality level of the races. It's not as simple as it seems, though, and the path is not particularly clear, but I think we made some progress. I'll try and write up a summary tomorrow, make some of the suggested changes to the bylaws and LCCS rules, and get that out to the group for review. Then I'll have to work with a few of the promoters to resolve some of the date conflicts on the calendar.