Tired Thursday Thighs

I was up and out the door by 6 am yesterday morning, trying to sneak in an hour or so before dreaded Jury Duty. Already it is that time of year when the blinky light stays clipped to the tire bag all week, a sure sign that we're tilting away from the sun again. At least the morning temperatures have been relatively mild lately, and I'm not even going to comment on the tropical weather for fear of jinxing this year's hurricane season. So I got in a nice little solo ride and then headed down to mid-city for Jury Duty at Tulane and Broad, locking the bike up to one of the many no-parking signs alongside a long row of parked police cars, and working my way through all of the shady dreadlocked characters holding their ridiculous pants up with one hand, I checked through the medal detector and walked down to the jury lounge. There I sat for the next three and a half hours with nothing to do except read email and try not to stare at the only attractive thing in the room who was sitting across from me. A bit after noon they called out fifty names, including mine, and sent the rest home. We were instructed to return at 1:30, so I pulled out a powerbar, bought a coke, and hung around upstairs, finally returning to the jury lounge just in time to find out that we could go home. Another bullet dodged. Meanwhile, the jury that I was almost on, the one that has been sequestered, and still is, since the 17th, rendered a guilty verdict in the first-degree murder case. Now they have to decide on the death vs. life in prison issue.

So after a few hours at work I was ready to head out to the lakefront for a little suffering. As usual, the training race didn't disappoint. I did a lot of work at the front and by the time we were down to the last couple of laps I was pretty well toasted. On the final lap I thought I'd launch an attack from about fifth wheel as we headed toward the fountain traffic circle, knowing full well I'd be caught quickly and probably blown right out the back, but that's what training races are all about, right? Anyway, just as I had formulated my plan I saw Woody, who was a few bikes ahead, glance behind him. I knew what that meant, but I wasn't quite fast enough. He launched a fierce attack and although I responded pretty quickly, I was a bit too far back and low on fuel to make it into his draft. By the time I was halfway around the circle, I was done for the day. The ride home was nice, though!

This morning my legs were feeling a little sore, so I was glad that the pace didn't go ballistic from the start. Instead, it just kind of gradually ramped up and up and up as the number of people pulling went down and down and down. A lot of the blame, or credit as the case may be, for that would have to go to Howard who was characteristically surging an extra couple of mph each time he'd come to the front. The ride back today turned out to be a lot harder than I'd expected. Often when the ride out is hard, the ride back will remain slow for a long time. This time, though, Howard and Brady were pushing the pace and eventually the rest of the group had had enough and let them, with me tagging along, go. It could have been a lot harder for me, but with both Howard and Brady to draft behind, I was getting some pretty nice recovery in-between pulls.