All About the Wind

This weekend's cycling was, in very large proportion, all about the wind. Saturday morning found me flying north along the freshly paved Marconi Drive, a stiff and warm tailwind at my back. I was looking for a hard workout, and judging by the wind I knew I'd get one. Arriving at the parking lot on Lakeshore Drive in record time, I learned that Mark G. had forgotten his jersey and so everyone was waiting for him and VJ, who had offered to lend him one, to get back. So we headed out a bit late for what I knew would be a battle with the wind. As we all know, although cyclists tend to resemble sheep in a headwind, in a tailwind they tend more toward the Superhero spectrum of alter-egos. Since most of our outgoing trip was going to benefit from the southwest wind, you can just imagine the pace that was being set up at the front. For the whole stretch down Chef Highway our speed rarely dropped below 30 mph except for the one short section where the road turns to the south. I spent most of that stretch in the rotation up at the front lapping up that aforementioned hard workout. But all good things come to an end, and that holds doubly true for tailwinds. To make matters a little worse, many of those in the group were doing the long ride to Fort Pike, leaving us with just a skeleton crew for the return battle into the wind. When I finally go back to Lakeshore Drive I was pretty well toasted. Mission accomplished.

Now, the reason I'd turned around at Venetian Isles instead of doing the longer ride was that I was planning to drive up to the Velodrome in Baton Rouge to bring the medals for the LAMBRA Track Championships. I hadn't wanted to skip the Giro, since I felt I needed the miles, so I'd already missed the morning session, but since the evening session wasn't scheduled to start until 3 pm I figured I'd throw the track bike in the car and practice my left turns while I was there. The only problem was that a big cold front, which had caused the strong winds earlier in the day, was moving through around mid-day. When I left New Orleans the temperature was nearly 75F. When I arrived in Baton Rouge, a bit more than an hour away, it was down to something like 58 and the wind had shifted around to the north and grown even stronger. As the small contingent of trackies assembled for the afternoon session (there were probably only a dozen riders) everyone was pulling on the arm and leg-warmers. I was glad that just before leaving, I'd grabbed my arm-warmers and a jacket. I was not glad, however, that I'd failed to actually put the arm-warmers into my bag! I dug through my bag and came up with two jerseys and an old pair of knee-warmers, so that kind of saved the day. As for the racing, well I rode a 3-person scratch race in which I came in either second or second-to-last, depending on your point of view, along with a Kilo that was more of a promenade, and the first leg of an Olympic Sprint. It was nice to be back on the track after an absence of something like four years.

So by Sunday morning the temperature was in the mid-30s and the wind was just howling out of the north. I would later find out that Lakeshore Drive had been closed because of the water washing up over the seawall. I myself, however, was headed for the northshore ride. I knew this one would be pretty brutal, and considering the cold and wind was pleasantly surprised that we ended up with nine riders. You can probably guess who those zealots were. We huddled around and inside the cars hiding from the wind and trying to decide what to wear. I opened my bag, looked inside, thought for a moment and said, "I'm wearing everything."

So the first twenty miles of the ride were, for the most part, straight into the wind. Ed N. and Jason were feeling none of the pain that I was and kept the pace fast enough that within a few miles the temperature ceased to be a problem. That just left the wind and the pace.

Way out on the back side of the course there's a longish hill that always begs for a sprint to the top. By then my legs were burning with every hard effort, and when the surge came mid-way up, I decided to back off. When things finally flattened out I could see that there were two small groups ahead of me and two people behind me. I made something of an effort to close the gap up to the next group, but once they started working together I never really had a chance, so I rode that seven miles or so alone, pretty much on the rivet, but thankfully with something of a tailwind. They were a good minute plus ahead of me by the next intersection, and the two behind me had been dropped really early along that stretch, so I decided to wait for Mark and Mignon. So I waited, and waited. I finally called Jason who I knew was waiting with the rest of the group about a mile down the road and told them to go ahead. I'd wait for the others and we'd take the shorter route to Enon and regroup. So I started riding the course backwards but was beginning to wonder why I hadn't seen the others yet. They might have had a flat, or one of them might have really bonked, or they might have taken a shorter route back. A couple of miles later I was about to turn around when my cellphone beeped with a text message that had just been delivered because I'd apparently been in a dead zone back at the intersection. It said that they had taken an earlier shortcut. Better late than never! So that left me with a nice eight or nine mile solo ride on already dead legs, but at least the sun was out, so I enjoyed the solitude and nice road and pushed myself along in the crosswind at speeds in the 14-19 mph range thinking, "this is great preparation for those last ten miles of Rouge Roubaix next week."

We did all regroup at Enon as planned, except for Mignon and Mark who had already passed through there earlier (Mignon later backtracked to meet us on Tung Road). At one spot on Tung Road, where there's a steep little hill that I have officially named "Redneck Hill," stands a little house that is always flying a Confederate flag and and Army flag. Just in case there should be any doubt as to the type of people living there, they have conveniently erected a nice little spray-painted sign, complete with visual aids. Afterward we climbed the fence at the school and went across the street to eat at a new little Mexican restaurant. That was pretty good, actually. I think we were the only ones there who weren't speaking Spanish.