Buzy Work

It's been a busy work week, and by the time I add in a training ride (or two), some Tour de Louisiane stuff, some Giro d' Italia, and a couple of glasses of wine, blogging has been getting short shrift. On the plus side, we've gotten pretty much accomplished over the past four days. Most of the course approvals for the Tour, which had been slow to acquire because we moved two of the stages, are finally in place. The event permit has been submitted, the event announcement is up on the home page, and online registration is ready to go live next week. There are still some new maps to make, and of course the Race Bible to update, but things are progressing. The Criterium will be on the Lakefront in New Orleans this year, which should be interesting. The old course in Covington was great, and we'll definitely return there one day, but for now the road surface has gotten so incredibly bad, and the police cost so high, we decided to seek something different. Last year we ended up breaking two plate-glass storefront windows and one car window with flying rocks thrown up by bike tires on those "paved" streets. This year it will be an L-shaped course with a couple of wide U-turns and two trips up and over the levee each lap. I think it will be a fun course.

So anyway, it was a busy week all-around. Got the car computer re-programmed so that it knows what position the passenger side window is in. It was very confused after the door got replaced a couple of weeks ago. LSU pulled a slick move with the hospital issue this week, but that's a long story that has a long way yet to go. The weather has been hot and humid all week with no real end in sight. The Tuesday levee ride turned out to be pretty fast. Chad and Rob rolled off the front really early before most of the group was ready. Next thing I know, I'm off the front with Woody. The gap up to the lead two guys was maybe 45 seconds so at first, so we weren't really in chase mode, but at some point Woody got the idea that we should chase them down and the pace picked up appreciably. I was taking shorter pulls than Woody but eventually we made contact.

Wednesday morning I probably should have gone even easier than I did, because by 5 pm I was rushing out the door and heading home so I could ride out to the lakefront for the Wednesday Worlds. We had another good sized group of around 20. I was feeling pretty good, considering, so I was kind of disappointed when the group split in the crosswind and I got stuck in the wrong half. Our group cobbled together a very disorganized chase, and with that in mind I was surprised that we didn't lose all that much more time to the lead group. After the training race I rode down to the other end of Lakeshore Drive to do a lap or two of the Tour de La criterium course so I could check out the roads and corners. It was pretty nice. Mostly really smooth asphalt with some fast turns. The only bumpy section is the part where the race goes around Shelter #1 through the parking lot. There are a lot of those reflectors glued to the concrete around there. Most of them can be avoided easily enough, and perhaps a few of the more badly placed ones might inexplicably disappear early one morning.

By Thursday morning I was feeling a little tired, but not nearly as much as last week. The ride this morning was a bit more steady than Tuesday. I did a lot of work on the way out, and then kind of took it easy on the way back. Riding to work later that morning I stopped to take a photo of the Easter Lions in front of a house on Lowerline.

The Wife heads off to San Francisco early tomorrow morning, and then on Saturday morning, around 12:30 am, Sam and I will be making the 6-hour drive up to Shreveport for the annual Rocky Mount Stage Race. It will be a long day, no doubt, with the road races in the morning and the TT that evening, but the only alternative was to leave NOLA at 7 pm, which wouldn't put us into S'port until nearly 1 am, so I figured we may as well save the hotel cost and go up on Saturday morning. Hopefully we'll be able to get in a little nap between the two stages. The road race course is reasonably challenging, with a long uphill finish that usually splits up whatever is left of the group. The bad news for me is that they've lengthened the Time Trial this year, which basically means I can lose even more time on GC than usual!