Sucking Wheels

From the start, I knew I'd be sucking wheels today. I mean, it's been kind of a long week so far and when I got up this morning I was already dragging. First, there had been a really windy and fast training ride on Tuesday morning. The next morning our traditionally smooth paceline Wednesday ride had turned out to be quite a bit faster than usual. I rushed home in time for an early conference call, rushed over to Starbucks to fill up my cup with dark roast, rushed to the office, and then just kept rushing. We finally got in touch with the ever elusive Julie at City Park who told us that the course we want to use for the Tour de La would be available. It remains to be seen how much it is going to cost us, and we will have to be done by 12:30, but since just about every other venue in the city is currently torn up for street or levee repairs our options are limited. A little bit after that an innocent conversation escalated to the point where I will now be setting up a LAMBRA table at the upcoming Tour de Lis, also in City Park (I wonder how much they're paying, BTW) where we will dispense information on the local racing scene, including NOBC, Tulane Cycling, the Tour de La, the Criterium Championships, etc., while showering the unsuspecting public with tidbits of knowledge from the New Orleans cycling cognoscenti. Of course, this means that I won't be able to ride that morning's Giro Ride. Later in the evening I met the 6:00 Tulane Cycling group for an easy 20 miles on the levee, arriving home just before dark and rather hungry. I ate whatever I could find for an hour or so and then crashed on the couch for the duration. Had I remained awake, I would have started gathering up all of the materials I'll need to hold the officials' clinic that I'm doing on Sunday morning, which I will once again miss at least most of the Giro Ride, or worse, a Northshore Ride. Can't be in two places at one time, I guess.

Unfortunately, my wine-induced napping once again provided inadequate recovery benefits, a fact that I noticed immediately as I rode out to meet the 6:15 Thursday morning ride. So I roll up the little hill to the meeting spot and look around to see no fewer than six TT bikes including VJ's tricked out Look with Shimano Di2 (for which my entire bike would constitute an inadequate down payment) and Matt's color-coordinated Cervelo P4 with its integrated (ahem...) "water bottle." Fancy Time Trial bikes notwithstanding, there was plenty of surplus horsepower in attendance.

When the pace started to ramp up, just past the Playground, I was sitting there behind Mike W. watching his wandering rear wheel do its little dance and getting ready to make the jump to light speed in order to close the rapidly developing gap to a small group just up the road. Just then, Matt came past us on the left to make the bridge and Mike accelerated to catch his wheel. I guess he must have also decided to shift to the big chainring at the same time because next thing I knew Mike was wobbling around with bike chain flailing in all directions, trying unsuccessfully to get the thing back onto the chainring where it belonged. It wasn't happening, though, so everyone except the small group already up the road waited for him while he stopped to remount it. For the next ten miles or so there was a kind of half-hearted chase. The group up the road was still pulling away, though, so after ten miles or so our group kind of lost interest and let them ride off into the sunset. We were still half a mile from the turnaround when we saw some of them coming back, so I turned around early and caught up with them. Most of the rest of the group didn't, however, so we ended up with just four or five all the way back. Ordinarily I would have really enjoyed this, but between the headwind and my very unhappy legs I was suffering just sitting on the back sucking wheels.

Le Fleur

I'm sitting here at home on a Monday night with the light of an almost full moon streaming in through the Levelors and a long list of uncompleted tasks hanging over my head,contemplating the meaning of the last 98,000 miles. At least it was a good weekend, eh?

It was 4 am on Saturday when the alarm went off. That was about as close as I could cut it. Dave was scheduled to arrive at 4:30 and we were planning on hitting the road for Jackson Mississippi shortly thereafter. The recently revived Tour LeFleur had been moved at the last minute from Saturday to Sunday. It was probably a good call. Just 30 miles north a tornado had flattened a swatch of Yazoo City. Regardless, I was still having a lot of trouble getting psyched up for this particular race. I guess in the back of my mind I just knew it wasn't my kind of race. An 2-race omnium consisting of a 3 mi. time trial and a 45 minute circuit race on a very non-technical course offers little advantage for me. Nonetheless, Dave and I arrived right on time, got a great parking spot, and started getting our acts together for the 8 am start.

The Time Trial, as luck would have it, was three miles of strong tailwind on a nice rolling course. I took one look at it and determined that the big powerful guys were going to have a good day. I mean, a tailwind is great and all, but realistically the big guys who could push the 54x11s were going to be in their elements today. I guess that overall I gave the TT a 90% effort which landed me, quite predictably, in the middle of the field which, in this case, was 6th place. Since the weekend event was a 2-race omnium, I really couldn't put too much stock in my TT placing. The afternoon criterium turned out to be much more of a circuit race, again playing to my weaknesses. In fact, I mentioned so someone that the course and conditions were pretty much exactly the opposite of what I would consider good for my own chances.

The Time Trials started late because of some police department confusion, so at least it was starting to get a little warmer by the time I went off. The course had a pretty significant climb jsut after the start, so I was trying to be careful not to blow up on it. Even so, it was a struggle coming over the top. On the plus side, there was a strong tailwind the whole way. I had a max speed in excess of 37 mph and yet my time of 6:18 didn't even come close to the fastest times in the Cat. 1/2/3 race. I guess I did the TT at around a 90% effort level and as a result ended up solidly in the middle of the small masters field, in 6th place. Twelve seconds can make such a big difference in a 3 mile time trial, can't it? I mean, just how much harder would I have had to push in order to make up the 12 seconds between me and 1st place??

The afternoon "circuiterium" was on a rolling non-technical 3-mi. course that included a fast downhill right before the finish. I remarked to a couple of people that it was essentially the opposite of a good course for me. Even before we started, I knew I was going to have trouble. As it turned out, the race was very confusing, at least to me. Donald D was being uncharasterically defensive. I guess I was too. Half of the field was basically sitting on. Halfway through the race there was a 5-deep hot spot. I probably should have paid some attention to the race flyer because I didn't realize that the points went 5 deep until the next day! About a mile before the hot spot Peter Stephens took off with my teammate Dave Schreffler. I backed off and they quickly got a big gap. Dave got the 2nd place hot spot points, moving him up significantly in the overall standings. There was a half-hearted chase with the rest of the field apparently content to battle it out for the remaining hot spot points. Since I didn't realize that the points went all the way down to 5th, I didn't really put in that much of an effort. Mistake number one.

After the hot spot everything came back together at which point I should have launched an attack, but for some reason I never was able to really get into this race. I knew what I should be doing but I was never quite able to execute it. There were a couple more attacks but nothing stuck until the last lap when two riders rolled off the front with only a mile or so to go. I was really expecting more of a response from the other riders, and I guess Donald Davis was too. He got stuck at the front of the pack and nobody would come past, including me. Really, it was like both of us were unable to make a commitment. Mistake number two.

The finish was basically at the bottom of a long shallow downhill. With the top two places already up the road, it was Donald with me on his wheel half a kilo before the line when we got streamed on the left by the sprint. I dumped it down into the 12 but by then we were already going pretty fast and it was pretty hard to come past anybody. I still had a little left at the finish but the door in front of me closed suddenly and I had to back off for a moment. So I ended up 6th in the circuit race. On the plus side, Dave put in another great sprint and got 4th overall in the circuit race right behind Jaro. That moved him up into a tie with Jaro for 3rd GC. He ended up in 4th because the tie was broken based on the circuit race finish order, but nonetheless I don't think I would be exaggerating to say he was excited. I think he called his mom to tell her the news. So we ended up with 4th and 6th, which was respectable.

The combined Womens/Juniors race had been run just before ours and that one worked out fairly well. An early break by Debbie Milne, with junior rider Tyler Hutchington in tow pulled out an NOBC chase group of Mignon Guerin and junior rider Robert Monahan. I have to say it was really neat to see that duo working so smoothly together. Later, I looked at the results and realized that they had posted idential time trial times earlier in the morning, which explains why they were so smooth. Anyway, they were out there for almost the whole race and finished 3rd and 4th overall, which was 2nd for each in their respective classes. Meanwhile, Vivian was monitoring the remnant of the pack. She somehow got confused about the laps and sprinted on the bell lap. A lap later she sprinted for the real finish and took the pack sprint, so she and Mignon finished 2nd and 3rd in the Women's race.

We split after the Masters race, stopping in Jackson for a nice early dinner before making the 3 hour drive back to NOLA. I'm looking forward to a bigger and better Tour LeFleur next year. Man, I really miss that downtown criterium couse they used to use! So this morning I went out for an easy spin just to loosen the legs up a bit. Along the way I saw a bald eagle perched up at the top of a tree being harassed by a couple of noisy seagulls. I took yet another fuzzy photo. Later in the day I received my official Starbucks "Gold Card." Well, I guess I've arrived, eh??

Wednesday Weather; Whether or Not

I sacked out early last night after finally getting my antique home printserver working again, eating shrimp étouffée and salad, drinking altogether too much wine with some of the neighbors, and subsequently blowing off a couple of little tasks that are still hanging over my head. It was, therefore, quite the heavy lift to get myself over to the levee in time for the morning training ride. The air was noticeably cooler today, hovering around the 60º mark, the wind was calm, and the sky was clear. I pulled on two jerseys just to make the ride out there a bit more cozy, knowing full well that I'd be hot by the time I got home. The group was fairly large for a Wednesday, but as I said, the weather was awesome.

We rolled out a couple of minutes after sunrise and soon blended into a steady paceline with the speed creeping up, ever so gradually, from 20 to 24 mph. Mignon had told us she needed to be at work down on Magazine Street by 8 am, so although we weren't hammering by any means, we didn't dawdle at the turnaround. Even though we had to stop for a couple of minutes while a big street-sweeper cleaned the road over the levee that goes to the riversand place (most of the sand ended up in the air, or our lungs), we were back around 7:45 which should have left plenty of time. I, however, had been dreaming about a cup of coffee since I'd walked out the door, so I headed straight for Zotz. By the time I walked in the door Mattie already had my customary small cup of dark roast sitting on the counter. Perhaps I should start mixing it up a bit with some iced coffee this summer. I am such a creature of habit.

As I sat outside on Oak Street with my coffee in one hand and my blackberry in the other, I got an email from Rich, the promoter of this weekend's Tour leFleur, asking whether or not it was possible to move the races from Saturday to Sunday. I called him back and told him it wasn't a problem on my end, but he needed to confirm the availability of officials, courses and volunteers, and would need to check with USAC about getting the date changed on the event permit. He'd also need to offer refunds to anyone who pre-registered. The weather forecast for Saturday in Jackson, MS is looking pretty bad, but Sunday is expected to be great, so despite the obvious confusion that such a last-minute date change may cause, I suspect it will turn out to have been the right call considering that the main event is a criterium. Anyway, no official word from him yet.

This evening we're trying to pull together a Tulane Cycling ride leaving from campus at 6 pm. Hopefully we'll get a decent turnout and this will evolve into a regular Wednesday evening ride. Should be interesting anyway.

Once they start racing . . . . .

It's still not quite summer around here, which is to say that the pre-dawn temperatures have remained below 80°F. In fact, it was overcast and a little on the chilly side this morning when I went out to meet the early morning group for the weekly Tuesday hammerfest. The speed ramped up fairly gradually today and although it eventually got plenty fast, most of the group was able to stay with it most of the way out to the turnaround. I attribute some of that to the fact that there was little in the way of crosswind today. Lately I have been shifting more and more away from early season training mode and more and more toward harsh intensity. Today was certainly no exception. I closed a few little gaps early in the ride when the pace was quite fast and otherwise did about as much high-level work as I could handle. Granted, I'm still lagging behind a bit and toward the end had to skip a few pulls.

We were just about to go under the Destrehan - Luling bridge when the paceline came upon some pedestrians on both sides of the bike path. Jon and I eased up a little too much as we wove our way through the traffic and quickly lost contact with the group. I looked over at Jon and said, "well, we should still get pack time!"

A little while later as we were starting back downriver, Rob rode up next to me and said something like, "I never have a problem staying with those guys until they start racing." Indeed. Once the races start it always seems like the guys who are doing that every weekend suddenly start making quantum leaps. I think he was referring to Tim, Woody and Jered. The pulls just get a little faster and a little longer, and there never seems to be a break in the speed.

Anyway, despite some really fast stretches, the pace was steady today, making it relatively easy to stay in contact, even for the guys who never really got into the rotation at the front. It was a good one.

So I should be working on updating the LCCS rankings right now, but I went through a couple of bottles of wine with the neighbors this evening and so I'm thinking I should hit the sack and save that for another day.

Transition Police

It was a great weekend for riding around here, and ordinarily I would definitely have racked up a couple of long hard training rides. What I actually ended up doing was, in manner of speaking, equally hard even though most of Sunday was spent on foot instead of on bike.

Saturday morning at 6:10 am Jon and I met up to ride out to the Starbucks on Harrison for what has now become the traditional pre-Giro coffee stop. The number of people showing up there has grown slowly but steadily for months and for all practical purposes has become the de facto starting point for the Giro Ride now that Lakeshore Drive has been rendered uninhabitable for the summer.

It was comfortably cool and not very windy as we rode out there, our route skirting around the treacherous ongoing road construction on Carrollton. I was trying out an old wheel that I had recently put back into action. The alloy nipples on this wheel were pretty much frozen to the spokes and the hub bearings are rough, but it still rolls without hitting the brake shoes, so I think it will do for training for a little while. Since a number of the stronger local Cat. 1/2/3s were up in Alabama for the Sunny King criterium where Frank Moak kicked some barely post-adolescent butt, I was thinking that we'd have a pretty tame ride. Not quite. In fact, Saturday's ride turned out to be consistently fast. Since I knew I wouldn't be doing a big training ride the next day, I figured I may as well take advantage of the situation and get in a hard workout even if it might mean some leg soreness the next day.

So I did a fair amount of work during the ride, pushed it a bit for the usual sprints, and went hard for the overpasses and bridges. Damn, that felt good.

Sunday was an even earlier wake-up call in order to get out to the Lakefront at 6:30 am to help with the Ochsner 70.3 Ironman Triathlon. Robin had Brian, Laura and me lined up to work the transition, in particular the dreaded "blue line." We were, in effect, the Transition Police. I assume there was somebody somewhere nearby sitting in the shade assigning penalties to the riders who violated the blue line rule by jumping on their bikes too early or getting off too late. Although it was a very long day of standing in the sun, it was not entirely devoid of entertainment value. With numerous waves triathletes, all the way from professionals to people who get the senior discounts at Denny's without asking, we saw our share of the unbelievable. There were people heading out for 50+ mile bike legs on mountain bikes, 30-year-old steel bikes with racks and reflectors. The really depressing ones were the dramatically overweight ones on $8,000 tri bikes to which had been attached half a gallon of water, eight gel packs, mysterious black bags and bouncing seat-mounted bottle-launchers sprouting Co₂ cartridges like teats on a cow's udder.

Anyway, aside from the obvious superhuman abilities of the professional triathletes, I was impressed to see Matt R. come flying in at the end of the bike leg (he was on a relay team) on his color-coordinated Campi water-bottled TT bike well before some of the Professionals despite his team's wave having started a good ten minutes behind them. Right on his heels were Mark G., Todd H. and Jorge P., too. We even had an all-NOBC women's team of Vivian, Mignon and Judith. All I know about that is that Mignon came in looking like she had put in a pretty hard effort. I have no idea how any of the relay teams finished, but I'd love to see the bike splits. The overall winner of the event had a bike split that worked out to about 27 mph for 50.2 miles. I'm impressed. I also heard that they set a new swim split record for 70.3 Ironmans (Ironmen??). Mark had apparently crashed like a ton of bricks shortly before the finish and came across the line with one elbow covered in blood and significant chunks of his skinsuit unaccounted for. He looked to be fine after getting cleaned up, though.

There were still people coming out of the water when the leaders started coming in at the end of the bike leg, so things got pretty busy where we were. There were quite a few triathletes who had trouble unclipping and ended up toppling over at the end of the ride. Others tried for a fast cyclocross style dismount. Some executed it beautifully, others flubbed it completely, and a number of them lost their left shoes (there were still three of them sitting in the transition area when we left. The last couple of hours were really long. It was getting pretty hot, I was getting pretty sunburned, and the riders were getting fewer and farther between. I was simply amazed that the last few riders (a) would have ever even considered doing a half-ironman, (b) actually made it to the end of the ride, and (c) continued. It was around 2:00 pm by the time the last riders came in and started the 10+ mile run. By then a number of the Professionals had finished, partied in the Quarter, gotten their awards, come back to the transition area, and picked up their bikes and gear to go home.

Regardless, it was a fun and satisfying day, the weather was great, and I think everybody had a good time. The event seemed to be extremely well organized, thanks to Premier Event Management, and there were lots of volunteers when needed. By the end, though, the transition area crew had dwindled down to just Laura, Brian and me. It felt kind of like the end of the Tour de Louisiane as we walked around picking up traffic cones. As I rode back home around 2:30 I realized I'd had only a Powerbar to eat and a few sips of water to drink. I rode home sunburned and dehydrated with aching feet and tired legs wondering if I was more wiped out than some of the triathletes.

Taxing Training Travails

Well despite my best efforts I'm afraid my old Cane Creek rear wheel is history. That 4-hour training ride in the rain a couple of weekends ago apparently delivered the coup d' grace to the "sealed" bearings. The wheel would barely turn. I made a valiant effort to get the thing disassembled but everything was basically welded together and after resorting to an unsuccessful final fling involving vice-grips I finally accepted defeat. This development, of course, left me without a sacrificial training wheel, so I ended up putting my training tire and Miche-cog-rescued Campi cassette onto one of my racing wheels, at least until I can find a suitable replacement.

I had just replaced four worn out cogs with some cheapo Miche replacement cogs and was anxious to see how they would do. It seems that they are just a hair thicker than the Campi ones, and clearly not as well made, but they seem to work fine. The only problem is that the 12 isn't quite as well engaged in the splines as I'd like, and one one wheel the lockring was actually touching the inside of the dropout. Anyway, it's kind of an experiment and it'll do for now. One thing I wasn't willing to compromise on, however, was a new pair of sunglasses. My trusty old Oakley M-Frames disappeared after a training ride a few weeks ago. I visited a couple of the shops to see what they had, but most of the currently fashionable designs sit too low on my face so that when I'm on the drops, the top of the frame completely blocks my view of the road. Very aggravating. The new version Oakley "Radars" are available, but frankly I don't like the design at all. Sorry Lance! So I eventually tracked down a pair of new M-Frames with the small Hybrid lens. I love 'em. They fit, they stay put, and I can see where I'm going on the drops without having to crane my neck so much that it hurts. The other change I made recently was to get the Specialized footbeds for my old Nike shoes. After many years of suffering with neuroma-type pain in my right foot on any ride over 50 miles, I am absolutely floored that these things seem to have practically eliminated the problem. Amazing. I mean, they don't really feel all that much different and I put just one of the shims in that particular shoe.

So today is Tax Day, and as usual I procrastinated for the maximum possible amount of time. The idea of sending a big check up to D.C., especially now, especially with a Congress and President that seem to be feverishly writing checks that we can't cover without taking out a second mortgage on the country, is a little on the painful side. So I waited until around midnight, made a cup of coffee, fired up TurboTax and did it. My financial life is pretty simple. It didn't take long to finish. Unfortunately, I discovered that drinking a big cup of Starbucks Verona, black, at midnight, is not conducive to getting a good night's sleep. I forced myself to bed around 2 am after rebuilding the Mississippi Gran Prix results page with updated tables that the Chief Ref had sent that evening. Anyway, suffice it to say that getting out of bed at 5:45 am was a chore. The fact that Wednesday's ride, traditionally a smooth paceline ride, had kind of gotten out of hand and turned into a much harder workout hadn't exactly left me with fresh legs either. At least I can't complain about the weather. At the moment (it's around 1:30 pm) it's 76 F. Ahhh, summer!

The morning temperatures have been in the mid to upper 60s for days, and it looks like they will stay that way for a while longer too. The only problem this morning was the wind. When I arrived at the start there were already a number of people there, including guys like Kenny, Rob, Tim, and Woody. There was a tailwind. I knew what was going to happen. Right after we got rolling Jered joined the group. Oh, good. More horsepower. Three hours of caffeinated sleep. This was going to be challenging. The pace shot up quickly and the number of riders at the front dropped equally quickly. I was still coming through to take my pulls but they were starting to hurt and I still had a good thirty miles to ride. I wondered if I had enough cash to get a cab ride back home from Destrehan. Probably not, so I skipped a pull or two or three. It had been a few miles since I'd seen anything except the five or six riders in front when the pace surged again. I was sitting on Kenny's wheel and heard him mumble something to the effect of, "F#$% this." He eased up for a moment and Rob, I think, came flying around us. A little gap opened and Mark came around and took a monster pull. I followed through and we started making up some ground, but it was too little too late. Soon it was just Mark, Kenny, Erich and me. We kept the pressure on, but the gap was growing like cat's claw in the springtime and within a few miles they probably put two minutes on us. In the meantime we lost Mark and Erich, so we backed off a bit for the last few miles to the turnaround.

I knew the return trip into the wind would be harder. Luckily, I wasn't the only one in need of a little recovery time, so we spent a few miles at an easy pace while Erich told us about how Mike W. had told one of the Jefferson Parish police officers to get his f-ing car off the road as they went by and how the aforementioned police officer subsequently came after them and apparently engaged Mike in a discussion about which I'd rather not know. Hopefully we haven't all been branded and they're not ordering a batch of 10 mph speed limit signs as we speak.

The ride back gradually got more and more taxing, but most of the group stuck together. As we approached the curve at the country club I thought it would be a good idea to try for a photo or two. We were going pretty hard at the time, so it probably wasn't the wisest decision. Then again, I was -- still am -- sleep-deprived. Anyway, I fished the camera out of my pocket and out of the plastic bag and snapped a few as the paceline rounded the bend. Then I had to sit up to put it back into my pocket, and of course a big gap opened up just as we were turning into the wind. Not good. It didn't take me long to abort the chase and coast in the last few miles. It was a good ride. I just wish I'd been awake for all of it.

The Rest of the Weekend

I sat in the hotel room, laptop humming quietly on my lap, drifting in and out of sleep as I waited in vain for the Chief Ref. to send me the MSGP results from Saturday's races. I guess it was around 12:30 am when I finally gave up. It was not a good sign. So I was rather relieved when we arrived at Sunday's criterium to find the results posted. My 6:31 time trial time had been good for 9th among the old guys, which, under the circumstances, was about the best I could hope for. I figured I had at least a shot at moving up one place on GC if I could get a bonus, but there were a couple of things that would likely make that rather difficult. For one, there were a lot of good sprinters still in the hunt. For another, Donald Davis would be riding on the defensive in the crit., which would make it hard for a break to get away. Although I might have just decided to play it safe and just go for an easy pack finish, I just wasn't really in the mood for that. My legs had survived the prior day relatively unscathed, the weather was awesome, and basically I had little to lose. The best thing I could hope for was to get into a small break. Yeah, I knew it was a long shot, but at least the strategy gave me an excuse to stay near the front.

The final stage of the Mississippi Gran Prix could most accurately be described as a "Circuiterium." The course is a bit over a mile long and includes a short fast descent and an equally short and steep climb. It is, however, run under criterium rules in that the free lap rule is in effect. Anyway, there were no big fireworks at the start but the speed ramped up quickly and stayed pretty fast. The wind had already picked up, so I was focused on staying in the draft as much as possible on the headwind section. The mid-race hot spot bonus seemed to be keeping the aggressiveness level down just a bit, but even so we were regularly hitting 27-29 mph, even on the headwind stretch. I took my best shot at the 3-deep hot spot, but came up a couple of places short. For the next few laps there was some action, but as we got closer to the finish of the 1-hour race the pace became more and more erratic. With three to go things started to get interesting. Riders I hadn't seen the whole race started crowding the front and fighting for wheels. I was really wishing that one of the teams had saved a few guys to do a nice fast leadout so the group would string out, but no such luck really. In fact, the last lap included some pretty sketchy bike handling, complete with the usual dumb panic moves in the corners. Somehow we all remained upright, but as we flew through the fast downhill curves just before the climb up to the finish line I momentarily let common sense get the better of me and had to back off for a moment in the interest of survival. It was just a couple of soft pedal strokes, but I guess two or three guys went past as a result. Still, I felt pretty good sprinting up the hill and across to the finish line, even though I wasn't able to pass more than one or two. I came across the line in 6th, which was good for a nice stage prize but on GC, pack time is pack time, so I stayed in 8th overall.

So all in all it was a fun weekend -- slightly frustrating, but still fun. Jon was in the Cat. 1/2/3 race after ours. That one turned out to be kind of unusual. Typically the 123 race on this course is extremely animated with lots of breaks and chases and shuffling of the deck. This year it seemed plenty fast, and a number of riders came out of the back of the pack, but the only really successful break came from GC leader Matt Davis. Somewhere before the mid-point of the race he took off with Jered Gruber in tow and never looked back. I don't remember the numbers, but Kenny told me that Jered said that even in Matt's draft he was putting out the watts equivalent to a very long interval. That continued until they had lapped the pack about five laps before the finish. Matt went straight through the pack and off the front again, but this time I think the pack had already been embarrassed enough and they pulled him back.

We stayed around long enough to see the Masters results posted, but Jon, Ali and I took off for the two hour drive back home well before the Cat. 1/2/3 results were done. I was feeling reasonably satisfied with my weekend and as we got closer to New Orleans I was already dreading having to go back to reality. In this case, it meant a quick shower and a bike ride through the park to my mother's house for dinner. We rode through the park alongside a couple of guys on horses for a long time. Unfortunately there wasn't time for me to post the partial results I had copied to a flashdrive prior to leaving Brookhaven, so it was probably close to 10 pm before I got that up on the website and about ten minutes before I started getting emails from people who had left before their results were posted and had now found mistakes. We got a few of them straightened out during the course of the day and I think we just need to resolve one tie before carving the results in stone, which means uploading them to the USAC database. The results are here, mand there are a few photos from Sunday here.

So I was so tired Monday morning that I skipped riding. Then at work I got a surprise delivery of a Blue track frame from a friend in Texas, and then a call from Kenny who had flatted nearby and didn't have a pump. I met him, Tim and Woody in the courtyard so he could use the little pump I carry around in my messenger bag. As I walked back to the office I watched the ride off and thought how much I'd rather be riding.

Up in Brookhaven

It's Mississippi Gran Prix weekend. I've been up here in Brookhaven since Friday evening when I got to watch, and help officiate, the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium. Compared to some of the prior years, Friday's crit was relatively tame. The term "relative," however, means different things to different people. There was a whole group of riders who got dropped pretty early in the race and ended up being lapped. Results were kind of difficult because the race finishes up in the dark, which the finish camera does not seem to like.


So this morning we headed over to the road race course, arriving early enough to get a nice parking spot. The weather was a little bit chilly, but the sky was clear and I knew it would warm up quickly. I was entered in the Master 40+ race, which entailed two laps of the 25 mile course. I really had no idea what to expect. Thankfully the race started out at a fairly civilized pace, but it didn't last long. There were attacks being launched continuously and as a result I spent a whole lot of time up near the front, mostly chasing them down but occasionally going with the breaks. Finally, maybe a third of the way into the first lap, I got into a 6-rider break that looked really promising. Most of the teams were represented and everyone was pulling. I really thought we were gone for good because we were rolling pretty fast. Unfortunately we had neglected to include Donald Davis. By all accounts, after we'd been out there for maybe ten miles, he went to the front or a number of miles and pulled what was left of the field up to us. They caught us right after the 1st lap hot spot sprint. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed. I had really invested a lot of energy in that first lap, so at that point I dropped back to the middle of the pack to seek a bit of recovery. Next thing I knew a 3-man break was off the front. Somebody up at the front of our group must not have wanted anything else to get away. We caught them fairly quickly, and as we came up from behind they sat up. Well, except for Donald. He just kept going. The guy is an animal. Anyway, he dangled out there for a while, but then he just started pulling away until he was out of sight. Things didn't really slow down all that much back in the pack, although to me it definitely felt a bit easier than the first lap. Then, with about 5 km to go Frank and another rider pulled away on a climb and separated from the field. Another rider tried to bridge up to them (not sure if he actually made it). Suddenly I saw Jaro moving up toward the front. I hadn't seen him for practically the entire race, as he'd been sitting on the back the whole time. I think we were sprinting for 4th place at the end, and I guess I got maybe 8th. The results have been kind of a problem today. There was some sort of camera malfunction for a couple of the road race finishes.


So we arrived at the TT course only half an hour before the first riders were scheduled start, but the Chief Ref didn't arrive with the RR results until just before 5 m. Amazingly, the first rider started only about 15 minutes later than scheduled. I scratched out my usual substandard time trial, turning in something around 6:40 for the 3 mi. affair, which looks rather lame next to the 6:08 that Donald did or the 5:40something that a couple of the Herring guys reportedly did. Unfortunately, I still haven't seen the results (it's 11 pm).

3-Day Week ... End

The weather always seems to balance out, and despite Saturday's spray-fest on the northshore, Sunday morning started out pretty good and then just got better and better. Just before heading out the door I rang up Jon to see if he was going to stop by for the ride out to the lakefront, but he said he'd awakened with a sore throat and figured he'd best play it safe with an easy spin on the levee later in the day. Outside, the air was finally warm enough for me to head out in just shorts and jersey, so Spring has officially arrived. Yeah, I know we'll still have some chilly mornings over the next few weeks, but I have the feeling we're over the hump now. The city is full of bright green new leaves, azaleas and camellias, and of course oak pollen.

So I hit Robert E. Lee right at 7 am and rode over to Marconi where there was a little group assembled near Matt's house waiting for the first part of the Giro to come past. I was quite surprised how many people we accumulated along the way, considering it was Easter Sunday. The ride itself picked up momentum along Hayne Blvd. and got going pretty hard in places, but on a scale of one to ten, where ten is "strong guys getting dropped like rocks" and one is "sitting up discussing politics," I'd give it maybe a seven. That was just on the way out, though. After we turned around it seemed like everyone called a truce and the pace was mostly conversational. I suspect there were a few tired legs in the group at the end of this three-day weekend. Diego had ridden something like 120 miles the day before with Jason so even at the tender young age of 18 he must have been feeling just a little bit tired, right? I guess "a little bit tired" at 18 is pretty much equivalent to how I feel getting out of bed on a good day. For myself, I could certainly feel the effects of four good training days in a row, but on the other hand I was pleased to find that my legs were still pretty functional. Anyway, it was mostly a nice steady ride back with just a couple of brief efforts going over the bridges. As soon as I got home, The Wife told me that the AAA truck had just arrived to fix a flat for the neighbor whose father had slashed a tire on a corner on the way there and had then tripped in the driveway, cut himself up pretty badly, and was already on his way to the emergency room. It seems to have been a bad week for car tires around here.

Sunday evening we went over to my mother's place next to Audubon park. Things over there were completely out of control down at street level. There were hundreds of people stuck in gridlock in their wagon-wheeled cars and loud motorcycles blasting crappy rap music, drinking daiquiris, driving against traffic, pissing in the bushes, trying to take shortcuts onto the Fly by driving on the bike path (there was a police car guarding it, though), and generally being about as loud and obnoxious as possible. It's a good thing I don't have a sniper rifle. Instead, I called the 2nd district police station a couple of times. They usually have to send a detail down there every weekend evening in the spring because of this crap. Yesterday they probably should have doubled it. Anyway, it finally settled down about an hour after sunset since they close off the Fly when it gets dark. By then there was trash all over the ground because these people generally don't give a rat's ass about who they irritate or how they leave their own city.

Warm, Wet and Wheelspray

Finally a few warm days in a row! After Thursday's hard ride I headed out Friday morning at the relatively late hour of 7 am to meet the Good Friday levee ride, fully expecting a nice conversational pace. Yeah, well that didn't last very long. A bit of tailwind, a big group, and warmer weather made a fast pace almost inevitable. This time, though, when someone attacked I hesitated. Bit of a mistake there. It probably would have been easier to have gone with it, though, because I soon found myself in a small group that included Howard on his TT bike. So rather than a nice steady paceline it was a series of surges interspersed with slowdowns - basically a study on how to maintain a not quite fast enough average speed while using the largest possible amount of energy. Anyway, the weather was really nice and many of us were off work for the day, so a few of us wandered over to Starbucks afterward. That was nice.

Somewhere along the way Jon and I decided to do the Saturday northshore ride up at Enon rather than the usual Giro Ride.

The Saturday morning weather radar could definitely have looked better and as we got closer to the northshore the sky started looking darker and darker. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot at Enon the question wasn't whether or not we'd get wet, it was just how wet we'd get and how long it would last. Ten miles down the road we knew the answers - very wet and very long. The Saturday ride had a good group of eight or so, of which two were planning on doing an extra loop after the rest of us finished the 65 miles.

The ride itself was both fun and miserable. After the first couple of downpours we were all soaked to the skin, but luckily it was warm enough that we weren't too cold. Jon, however, was having some major problems with his brakes. It was bad enough that we were riding in the pouring rain with constant wheelspray in our eyes, but Jon was also dealing with a slipping front brake cable and basically nonfunctional brakes. After a few stops to try to tighten the cable clamp, most of which were of limited success, we came to a stop sign and a major highway. We heard Jon coming by on the right yelling, "I can't stop, I sure hope there's nothing coming!" In fact, there was a big red Coca-Cola truck coming, so he made a sharp right turn and luckily that lane was clear. Meanwhile, I was having my own problems. The night before I had replaced my headset and chain. The headset was fine, but unfortunately my old chain had worn the cassette badly enough that it was skipping whenever I was on the 13, 14 or 15 cogs. Every time the pace got fast, I had two options: Junior gear limit or 53x12. Luckily the pace never got too much out of hand. The course up north of Enon has some great rolling winding sections and a route with so many turns that we always miss a couple. The rain, along with the fact that Jon couldn't really stop, kept our pace down a little bit, so that minimized my cassette problem. Considering the fact that we rode for a good three hours on wet roads, it was amazing that we had only one flat.

When we got back to the cars I was excited to find a pair of dry socks in my bag. Just as I was pulling them on and enjoying the feel of warm dry feet, we discovered that the car had a flat tire. I put the spare on and headed home, rushed over to meet The Wife for a late lunch, and then went straight to Sears for a new set of Michelins and the unwelcome news that some of the front end bushings are so worn out that they couldn't check the alignment. I think it was around 7:30 pm by the time I finally got a shower and could wash the grit out of my hair.

Did That Seem Fast?

I was primed for a good workout. I can't really explain why. Somehow, though, as I rode down the dark streets of Carrollton, I had a feeling it was going to be a fast one. I wonder what combination of cues my brain was reading, but apparently I was not alone. We started out with a good number of riders that included Brett, Tim, Woody, Brady, Erich, Max, Jon, etc. You get the picture. The handwriting was on the wall.

By the time we hit the playground we were already going pretty fast. Brady pulled off the front and then Tim got out of the saddle and, basically, attacked. I had to dig pretty deep to stay with them. After that, I never looked back, but I'm pretty sure that's where the pack split. The paceline was soon whittled down to four or five with a few more hanging on the back. I guess the speed was hovering in the 27 mph neighborhood for a long time, and I was in full wheelsucking mode -- hands on the drops, head low, eyes focused on the four-inch gap between my front wheel and Tim's rear. I was still taking pulls, but the were getting shorter and shorter, despite the fact that I was largely well sheltered on Tim's smooth and stable wheel. Once Tim turned back around The Dip things eased up a little bit, but by then I was already skipping pulls here and there since I knew I didn't have enough cash for a cab ride back from Ormond. When we finally got out to the turnaround I was surprised that there were still a few riders who had been back there all along but who I'd never realized were there. I was impressed.

As we started back down the river, Woody looked back at me and said with a smile, "Did that seem fast to you?" Ahhhh, yeah. We were probably halfway back before I felt reasonably recovered, but regardless, it was just the kind of good workout I'd been looking for.

No work tomorrow, so we're starting the morning ride at the relatively luxurious hour of 7 am.