The final straw was the gap that opened as the long string of riders negotiated the curve around the pumping station. My day had already been going badly. I had rushed out of the house a little late, but with still enough minutes in hand to make the 6:15 am group ride. It was warm and humid, which is to say 70 F and 98% relative humidity. Summer clothes weather. As is often the case in January, the warm weather won't last, and already there was a strong and gusty south wind building up ahead of the approaching cold front. I put a little more pressure on the pedals as I made the curve onto Willow Street and cut sharply across the streetcar tracks that lead into the big streetcar barn. Passing under a streetlamp at 20 mph I looked down at my watch. 6:12 am. No problem. I'd be there in a couple of minutes. A block from the levee I looked up to see the little cluster of flashing red lights gathered at the meeting spot. I bumped over the railroad tracks and around a couple of corners and started up the levee. The flashing lights were gone! I checked my watch. 6:15. WTF?? This was not a good omen. So I start out with a little time trial to catch the group, and it's immediately obvious that it will be a fast day. It's also obvious that there's a little bit of last Sunday still in my achy legs.
January and February are always the hardest months for me. After two or three low-pressure "base training" (aka "goofing off") months, a growing awareness of the impending racing season begins to creep in. So now begins the somewhat delicate balancing act among intensity, recovery, endurance, and of course, the weather. The tightrope isn't too hard to walk ordinarily, since the weather often inserts a sufficient number of excuses for rest days into my unstructured training routine, but when we get a whole week of summer at the beginning of January, things tend to go kind of haywire. And it's not just me. Lots of the other riders, most of whom know better, have trouble reining in the urge to hammer. Add to that the fact that January and February typically see the widest range of fitness levels within the local riders, and you have a recipe for what happened this morning.
So, getting back to this morning's ride, there were a few people up front pushing the pace, and with a long string of riders, in the dark, and a strong crosswind, it quickly got very stressful. The paceline wasn't rotating, which meant that either one person was just planted on the front, or somebody a few riders back was letting guys in ahead of him. Whatever the case, anybody more than six riders from the front was reduced to riding the edge of the road in a futile attempt to get enough of a draft to survive. Since the pace was fairly fast, moving up would mean a long stretch in the wind at an even faster speed, and I didn't see too many people trying that. I spent a long time behind John, and after nearly running into his rear wheel a few times when he'd suddenly slow down in the dark, I had to back off a bike length of so. So anyway, gaps kept opening and people kept surging to try and close them and things were generally a mess. It has all finally come back together when we approached the curve at the pumping station, but while the front few riders zipped through smoothly, the next two or three coasted through and let little gaps open. You can't do that when there's a crosswind if you don't want to get dropped, which of course is exactly what happened. I made my way to the front and tried to pick up the pace enough so we'd have a chance to catch, and I think a few riders came with me. At one point I made a big effort to close the last of the gap, but when I pulled off for the next rider to come through, there wasn't one. So I had to let it go and wait for the remnants of the shattered group to reconvene and reorganize at a slower pace. There were just a couple of riders By the time we got to the turnaround, only Brady was ahead of us. The others who had been with the lead group had already checked out.
The return trip was a little better, but things still came apart in the crosswind, especially after some really long pulls that left the back of the paceline (I use the term loosely) out to dry. I got home feeling pretty tired and sore. Still am. On the plus side, tonight is Twelfth Night, which around here is really just the beginning of the Mardi Gras season. Since I don't belong to the Twelfth Night Revelers of the Phunny Phorty Phellows, I'll have to be content with some King Cake at the neighborhood Twelfth Night party across the street! The way things are going today, I think I'll need a little wine to go with that.
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