Thursday Already? Yikes.

So it's been a busy week so far, and it's not going to get any less busy at least through the weekend. Tuesday was "Tulane Day at the Legislature" where we schedule some key meetings in Baton Rouge and, for the day, take over the "Rotunda" of the Capitol Building with displays of various Tulane projects, centers, etc. The Rotunda stuff provides some good exposure since it's in-between the House and Senate chambers where the sessions start in the early afternoon. For me it's really a mildly interesting but rather boring day of pacing around the Rotunda secretly hoping that there will be some big disaster that will relieve the boredom and provide a reason for being there. As it was, things went pretty smoothly and I was back home in New Orleans by 5 pm. I didn't get to ride on Tuesday, but I was probably due for a day off the bike anyway since my legs were still feeling a little bit of the damage done at the races in Alexandria.

I had been assuming that I'd feel all fresh and energetic for the Wednesday morning ride, but instead I just felt kind of tired and worn out. I think a little bit of that is probably just the extra stress of the upcoming Tour de Louisiane. As usual I've been fielding a lot of emails and phone calls about the race, finishing up the Race Bible, and going through the pre-event checklist that is now pretty much committed to memory. As always, there will be a few things that are just left up to chance, and a few more that fall through the cracks, but in general I think most of the bases are covered. Mark is trying to find a sound system we can use for the criterium since the one we planned to use won't be available. I hope we find one because I think Erich (hamming it up for the camera in the photo), who agreed to be our announcer, should be pretty entertaining. There are 113 pre-registered for the TDL as I write this, so I think participation will be about normal since there's usually a little flurry of registrations in the evening before pre-registration closes, which is tonight. Just under half of the pre-registrations are from outside La./Ms., with a big contingent from Texas. It looks like the Cat. 4s will be the bigest field this year.

In the meantime I've been collecting names of LAMBRA riders who are planning on going to Nationals. We want to provide some sort of monetary assistance for those riders, so I need to get a good count in order to divide up whatever size pie I get from the Treasurer. So far I've heard from 16 riders who are planning on competing in one or more National Championship races. Awesome!

Anyway Wednesday's morning ride was brisk but smooth, although I arrived back home feeling kind of drained. So at lunch I rode over to Whole Foods to get a sandwich since I was planning on doing the Wednesday Worlds out at the Lakefront after work, and doing that on an empty stomach doesn't seem to work very well. By 5:30 I was on the road to Lakeshore Drive and man, it was hot! Summer has definitely arrived in full force around here. The race itself was pretty small since a number of the regular riders are probably in taper mode for the weekend's Tour de La. I was still feeling pretty tired, and after closing a bunch of gaps in the first few laps I finally got popped off the back when there was another surge after the fountain traffic circle. I backed off and rode with Mignon for a little while and then jumped back in when they were on the way back from the Elysian Fields traffic circle. By then things were already looking kind of rough, with gaps opening all over the place, and on the last lap one of the guys (Matt?) rode off the front and everything kind of blew apart. I ended up chasing Mike W. for the last half lap but never caught. Afterward, I rode down to West End with Brady and Rolan to check out the Tour de La criterium course and decide where to put the start/finish.

Apparently Robin showed up there a little later and removed the lumps of concrete that I was worried about in the entrance to the Shelter loop. Now I just have to set up the results spreadsheet, charge up a lot of batteries for the radios and clock and cameras, take inventory of race equipment, and make a run to pick up whatever is needed. That's usually a collection of stopwatch and tape recorder batteries, paper tablets, etc. Then tomorrow I'll download the pre-registration data, print out the release forms, and get everything sorted out for Friday night registration. On the plus side, there isn't much rain in the forecast, so the big factor will likely be the heat. I think there will be more than one rider who is happy we moved the road race to the morning time slot.

My legs still felt dead for the Thursday morning long ride. Perhaps I'm still acclimitizing to the heat, or perhaps I got a bit dehydrated yesterday. Anyway, on the way back from Destrehan, VJ went to the front on his TT bike complete with Zip 808s and just towed the whole string of riders all the way back down the river. I think Erich took a couple of pulls, but otherwise it was all VJ. I was way at the back and nobody ever dropped back the whole time.