A Table for Four

It's cold again. Honestly, this time of year I never know what surprises the thermometer will bring each morning. Today it was back in the upper 40s - long tights and shoe-cover weather for me. Clouds on the eastern horizon blocked the sun, and together with a strong north wind made it feel colder and darker than usual. Like me, everyone had tried to time his arrival at the meeting spot to minimize any unnecessary standing around, so the crew went from three to a dozen in about two minutes. As we headed up the river into the wind I already knew what would happen. At some point we'd come to a long crosswind stretch, someone at the front would push the pace, and then something, almost anything, would cause a little gap to open. As we all know, a little gap on a crosswind day can be fatal.

It didn't take long for the group to sort itself out - stronger riders toward the front taking pulls; the rest lined up on the edge of the asphalt trying to get a draft. When I saw Mignon dropping back after taking a pull I let her into the paceline ahead of me because the headwind was about to become a crosswind. She had been telling me last weekend how frustrating it had been getting dropped on these windy days and I encouraged her to try to stay near the front where there was a better draft and lower chance of having the paceline break ahead of her.

So things were going along OK as we rode through Kenner and I found myself on Big Richard's wheel six riders from the front. We were on that long stretch between the parish line and The Dip with a strong quartering crosswind. The pace had already jumped up a notch as the road curved back toward the west, and only a few were still consistently taking pulls at the front. Suddenly the speed surged up again, taking us above 25 mph. Woody was testing his legs and thinking about the training ride he was going to do with the Herring guys on Sunday. I was still getting a bit of a draft along the left edge of the bike path, but I didn't dare look back. I knew there was nothing behind me but pain. Then I heard Keith say, "we lost everyone else." A moment later we came to a jogger in the oncoming lane and Richard had to move over to the right out of the draft. Bam! A gap opened immediately. I looked down at the computer and it said 27 mph. We got past the pedestrian, but the damage was done. The front group was still accelerating. Richard took a hard pull and blew. I came past, closed a few meters, and then started losing ground again. The wind was strong enough that I couldn't sustain the necessary 28 mph for more than thirty seconds, if that, and there was just no draft to be had. I watched the group of four pull away ahead of me and didn't even need to look back to know that I was all alone in the wind. As Erich (who was on his track bike with a 48 x 16) said a bit later, "There's only a table for four" in that kind of crosswind.

I rode the rest of the way to the turnaround alone at around 21 mph, which wasn't easy.

On the return trip the wind wasn't quite so much of a factor, so I spent a lot more time at the front. The pace nonetheless got fast and the number of people pulling started to drop. We were down to three in the rotation for a while, then just two. The pack had split again somewhere out there - I don't know exactly where - but eventually the speed dropped a notch and things smoothed out. So I ended up with a good training ride with just a couple of fairly brief excursions into anaerobic territory and a good long time in that winter training zone where I want to be this time of year. After a brief stop at Zotz for a cup of dark roast and turbinado sugar I was feeling pretty good.