High Water, High Season

Tuesday morning was remarkably cool. It was also remarkably windy. I had skipped my ride on Monday in order to get the Rocky Mount Stage Race results posted (yes, I'm a little compulsive about that...), and with the nice cool weather I was looking forward to the long Tuesday morning training ride. We started out with a pretty good tailwind and before long Chad was up there pushing the pace. Hard. The pace seemed unsustainable, at least for me, and I let him roll off the front a few bike lengths. From behind I heard someone say, "Good, let him hang out there for a while." The paceline was already starting to come apart a bit when Tim showed up. He was coming toward us and had to make a U-turn after we passed and then catch up to us from behind. The guys at the front didn't ease up one bit, and if it hadn't been Tim I would have held out no hope whatsoever that he'd catch. Of course, it was Tim, so he did catch up to us even though we were probably pusing 29 mph at the time. Not too long afterward, with Chad once again off the front, Woody attacked to bridge up to him. A moment later, Tim went flying past too and the next time we saw Tim and Woody they were riding back from The Dip where they'd turned around.

The rest of the way out was relatively steady, but still quite fast, and I was dreading the ride back which I expected to be headwind all the way. It was. There were times when we were riding paceline and struggling to hold 19 mph.

As the survivor group clawed its way back down the river into the ENE wind, I started to notice how high the river had gotten. It's been rising at a somewhat alarming rate lately. Down by the Huey P. Long bridge, where they had gone to great effort to build up a roadway and work area on the batture as they construct the supports for the expanded roadbed, the water looked to be three or four feet deep. A lone plastic port-o-let was still floating around down there this morning. I wonder if they will have to suspend work entirely or if there are things they can be doing up on the structure until the water recedes. Anyway, looking out at the river it's amazing how strong the current looks right now. Usually it looks like the "lazy Mississippi," but right now there are some areas that look like the Colorado, only much deeper. Anyway, as we're riding in the last couple of miles and I'm wondering why I'm feeling so gassed, I look down and notice my rear tire is going flat. Sheesh. So I stopped an snapped a couple of pictures of the river, and then nursed the soft tire down Oak Street to Zotz. Since the temperature was still pleasant, I figured I get a cup of coffee and take my time fixing the flat. Oak Street, by the way, is coming along nicely and it looks like the front few blocks should be ready to open back up soon.

Wednesday morning was much the same as Tuesday, only shorter. Tailwind on the way out, headwind on the way back. The pace once again got a little out of hand on the way out, and the ride back was once again pretty hard. I was feeling kind of flat the whole time, for some reason. Meanwhile, there has been lots of LAMBRA work to do lately. After getting last weekend's results posted on Monday, I spent nearly two hours, between last night and today, putting together the results data to upload to the USAC database. I put some new photos on the LAMBRA home page (I wonder if anyone ever looks at that?), made some calendar updates, revised the upcoming events, etc. We have a lot of fairly big races coming up. Next up is this weekend in St. Francisville where they're offering a $3,700 prizelist for the Cat. 1/2/3s at the West Feliciana Classic stage race. Then in June there are two full weekends of racing, including the Tour de Louisiane. We've been working on the final preparations for that one and I still have to put together the revised race bible, but at least the website is pretty much done and all of the appropriate logistical arrangements are proceeding nicely. I think the new criterium course on the Lakefront will be fun. Unfortunately, I'll be officiating rather than riding for that one.

The weather is still pretty nice today, so I'm planning on riding out to the lakefront for the Wednesday training race. I have a feeling the wind is going to make this one harder than usual.....