Aerobars and Bottle Launchers

The streets were still wet when I peeked out the door this morning and I wondered if more rain was on the way. So I moved the old ErgoBrain from the Orbea to the Cervelo and headed for the lakefront, firmly resolved to spend the ride following wheels as much as possible. With the LAMBRA championship time trial coming up on Sunday, the group was short a few riders, but I wouldn't say that the pace was easy. There was a big group of triathletes somewhere up the road. Even if I hadn't seen them getting started as I rode to meet the Giro, I might still have guessed they were out there just from the occasional water bottles we passed. Those seat-mounted bottle launchers they like to use seem to have trouble with the New Orleans streets. I was mostly sticking to my game plan today because the only thing worse than doing a 40 km time trial is doing a 40 km time trial with unhappy legs. There were still a lot of clouds in the sky as we headed back from the turnaround, but you could tell that things would be clearing up soon. In fact, we were expecting a cool front to come through, bringing a Sunday morning temperature in the low 70s. Somewhere along the way we caught up with a lot of the triathletes, some of whom mixed in with us, adding significantly to the amount of exposed thigh and shoulder skin.

Shortly after we exited Chef Highway onto the service road I heard Eddie C. yelling "flat" behind me. We were pretty close to the back at the time and most of the group kept going, but since I was in easy mode today, I turned around. One of the triathletes had flatted, so we all stood around and watched, offering wise advice to Eddie as he fixed the flat. After that, our much smaller group had a nice even ride most of the way back. Then, as we were heading up the Casino bridge I heard the nasty grinding sound of a very unhappy chain. Glancing to my right I could see that one of the triathletes had dropped her chain halfway up the overpass, so I turned back to make sure she was OK. We ended up with an even smaller group for the rest of the ride, but that was just fine with me today.

So now I'm sitting here at home with a ton of stuff lined up in the basement, wondering how I am going to fit it all into the station wagon. There's the Great White Box, the clock and clock stand, four big coolers, three boxes of goodie bags, the big finish line flag, and then of course my bike, bag, computer and printer. Since this race had required pre-registration, I have the results spreadsheet all ready to go already. All we need are start times and finish times. I just have to remember to make sure the registration folks note which LCCS category the older masters riders want to be scored in (35+, 45+ or 55+). I just set the alarm for 5:10, which should hopefully give me time to get out to the course by 6:15 or so. I'm sure it'll still feel like a rush to get the first rider started for the official 8 am start time. Since we've posted everyone's start time, I already know that I'll be going off at 8:56 for an hour or so of solo suffering. I bolted on the aerobars about an hour ago, so at least the bike is ready.