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.