Rainy Day Rides

It wasn't raining when I looked out the window, but the streets were wet. I took a few extra minutes to check the radar, which didn't look very good, and went down to the basement to pump up the tires on the rain bike. I was still hoping I'd miss the rain, but there was no way I was going to miss the wet roads, so I figured fenders were called for. By the time I headed out for the levee bike path I was running a few minutes late, but then again I wasn't really expecting anyone to be there. So I was a bit surprised to see a small group up there. We rolled out onto the wet road at a moderate pace, glancing occasionally up at the very busy sky, wondering just how far we'd get before the rain started. As was the case yesterday, and will probably be the case for a while, the police had the bike path blocked off under the Huey P. Long bridge because the bridge construction guys are now driving piles and stuff right around there. This meant we had to go down onto River Road where there's no shoulder. There are also big trucks, water-filled holes, and no shoulder at all. I think I'd rather take my chances with the pile-driver. Anyway, the first raindrops started out around Kenner so we decided to turn around at the parish line instead of doing the usual long ride. It was the right decision. It rained. Mike flatted around the pipes, but by then the rain had pretty much stopped.

Thanks to the rain and the soaking wet clothes, I started thinking about hot coffee, so I stopped at Zotz where I met the guy who owns the little bike shop down the street.

Now since we are currently without a car, I knew we'd have rain, right? At least it held off long enough for me to return my mother's car and ride over to the office on the little folding bike, which I had to stash in my office because I'd forgotten to bring my lock. That turned out to be a good thing because it rained pretty much all day. Right around 5 pm it looked like it had stopped and so I figured I'd better make a run for home. I didn't get one block before it started raining again. I stopped to put on my raincoat, at which point it went from a light drizzle to a tropical downpour. I got back home with soaked pants but a nice dry shirt. Better than soaked pants and a soaked shirt, I guess!

The Easy Day

We had just turned onto Chef Highway from the service road and there was a momentary lull in the pace as riders waited for everyone to make it across. Someone next to me looked over and said, "I thought Sunday was supposed to be the easy day." I just smiled and replied, "Yeah, right." It was another hot summer morning in New Orleans and my second Giro Ride of the weekend.
Things had started out nicely enough over at Starbucks where I'd indulged in a nice cold iced coffee as we lounged around outside prior to the ride. I'd even gone for a "regular" sweetened iced coffee, including milk. Yes, I know. I was rolling the gastrointestinal dice on that because the combination of caffeine and milk on an empty stomach is a combination that only my taste buds and intestinal flora fully appreciate. Despite the prospect of potentially copious production of various gasses more typically associated with rocket boosters and cattle, I was feeling indulgent. It was, after all, the Sunday Giro, which is typically a bit more civilized than the infamous Saturday Giro. Nobody knows exactly why, of course.

The day was not unlike Saturday, which is to say it was hot, humid, and not very windy. The group was definitely smaller, though, and I was expecting to spend a little more time in the wind and a little less time following wheels. After the usual "neutral" rollout to Hayne Blvd., it didn't take long for the pace to ramp up, and once it did, it didn't really ease off for most of the way out to the turnaround. I guess we were about a mile from the turnaround when we passed a couple of unlikely looking cycletourists. Despite the fact that it was already about 90 F, one guy was wearing army fatigue pants, boots, and a Harley Davidson T-shirt with the arms cut off. His bike, with its vertically mounted bar-ends, was loaded down with stuff that looked like it had come from the Army surplus store. Still, judging by what he had lashed to the bike, it looked to me like this was definitely not his first long day on the road. We were probably going 29 mph when we passed them, so I made a note to try and get a photo after the turnaround. When I pulled out my camera, the guy in front smiled, waved a peace sign, and waved. He was obviously having a great time. Or perhaps he was just stoned. Hard to tell.

Anyway, my legs were feeling pretty good so I got in some good efforts on the way back down Chef, and things were still going pretty fast along the service road when Jerry flatted. Almost everyone stopped. The first thing I did was look around for some shade because by then you could just feel the heat radiating from the asphalt. I turned around and went back to where Jerry, Eddie and Woody had stopped and immediately the sweat starting streaming down into my eyes. They had already retreated a few yards off the road into the scant shade afforded by the service road, so while they fixed the flat I rolled around in little circles in order to keep from melting into the asphalt. The rest of the group huddled in another spot of shade near the intersection. That delay kind of took the wind out of everyone's sails for a while, but after we got back onto Hayne there was one last surge before the sprint to the top of the Seabrook bridge. By then I was starting to run seriously low on water. I guess it's time to put one of those huge oversized bottles on the bike for the duration of the summer. I rode back home at an easy pace, taking a little detour to check out the new dog park in City Park, and finally, a few blocks from home, sucked the last drops of water from my bottle. Sixty miles, moderate dehydration, a white mixture of sunscreen and sweat covering my arms and legs, and empty bottles. It must be summer.

That afternoon we went down to the Amtrak station to pick up The Daughter and six or seven others who had come down for training camp across the lake. After a stop at the house to rearrange luggage we sent them on their way in the neighbor's van. We had earlier swapped cars with the neighbor so that the girls wouldn't have to rent a car. The only downside is that we will be without a car for a few days, but since we really don't use the car much during the week it isn't really a big issue anyway. Later that day I read that Vivian had crashed all by herself while riding on the levee. They have apparently gone and put fresh asphalt into the numerous lengthwise cracks in the bike path between the country club and Williams Blvd., and it sounds like she either caught the edge of one of those strips or just slid on the smooth fresh tar, but regardless, the outcome was a whole lot of road rash.

First Storm

I've given up for the night. The bathroom painting project is about 90% done and I've got paint pretty much all over myself. Damn, I'll be glad when I'm done with this. At least the paint should be dry, just barely, when The Daughter and her gymnasts arrive from Chicago tomorrow evening on The City of New Orleans for a week-long training camp.

So I was happy to take a break from the painting this morning to ride out to the Saturday Giro Ride. As expected, it was hot and muggy, and by the time I arrived at Starbucks to meet the group I was already well past "warmed up." There was a big group on hand today for the Giro, including Eddie C. with his brand new color-coordinated Trek. I should have gotten a photo of that, but I guess I was too preoccupied with my cup of Verona to think about it.

Today's ride was fairly fast, but since there was no crosswind the group pretty much stayed together It's funny how the Giro changes in the summer. When it starts getting really hot like it was today, the really fast stretches seem to get shorter. Anyway, I was kind of in a fog for most of the ride, occasionally moving up to the front briefly, but mostly just wheel-surfing farther back. I was probably doing about as much work back there as I would have been doing if I'd just stayed in the paceline at the front.

So it looks like hurricane season has officially gotten underway with the first storm just about to enter the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't look like it will threaten New Orleans, at least weather-wise. The problem, of course, is all that oil floating around out there and the southeast wind that the storm will probably give us.

I guess it'll be another Giro Ride for me tomorrow, then a few more hours of painting. I'd rather be racing somewhere interesting!

And Then There's Jeannie

We are getting in to the meat of the summer now. Most rides now end with sweat-coated glasses, wet clothes, empty bottles, and road grit plastered all up and down my shins. And there are the smells - the rather unique smell of helmet straps and pads from which the sweat never quite evaporates between rides, and the similar but distinct smell of festering riding gloves. Ahhhhh, summer! Along with the heat and the sweat, however, always comes the rain. This time of year it can pop up any time. Yesterday morning, for example, it was raining steadily when I awoke, so I slept an extra half hour and then, after it had stopped, went over to Starbucks and took the opportunity to actually sit down and drink a cup of coffee in the air-conditioning rather than rushing out the door and taking it with me to work. This time of year my coffee consumption always drops and my carbonated beverage consumption always increases. At the moment I have two "free drink" cards that I haven't used because I hate to waste them on my usual small cup of coffee, so I need some suggestions for over the top Starbucks creations. The only problem is that I really can't handle too much milk. I'm thinking something like a caramel macchiato. I wonder if that works with soy milk instead of regular milk. I'll bet it's about 400 calories either way!

So Wednesday afternoon Kenny had another training race organized out on Almonaster. I'd not been able to make any of the others, but things were looking promising for this one. After work I quickly changed in to my riding clothes and jumped on the bike to ride out to the east. The distance was only eight miles or so, but getting there involved riding through some busy and occasionally sketchy areas around downtown and I figured all of the stop lights and traffic would slow me down a lot. I heard "Ride that bike, white boy!" from the sidewalk at one point. I'll take that as a "racial slur." I wish I could say that sort of thing was uncommon around here. Even so, I arrived in plenty of time. Unfortunately the only other person who arrived was Kenny. I guess that with all of the rain we had during the day a lot of people made other plans. Anyway, we rode a few miles and I headed back home feeling satisfied that at least I'd gotten in some riding.

Today's long ride was pretty civilized. Maybe it's the heat, or just the summer doldrums, but most people seemed content to roll along at a relatively steady speed. Granted, that steady speed tended to be from 26 -29 mph, and at least half of the group wasn't in the rotation, but it still seemed a bit more relaxed than usual. Along the way we got to hear some of Lawrence's stories about the Ochsner team's Race Across America race. Sounded like it was a blast. I think doing that race as a relay team is definitely the way to go.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the bathroom walls and ceiling are done and the woodwork is primed. Since I rode yesterday evening, I blew off painting for the night, so I will have to try and catch up tonight. It's amazing how a little project like this always seems to take so much more time and effort, mostly mental, than I expect. I'm now at the point at which I can say for sure that some compromises will be made. There will be some latches that get painted over, some scratches and gouges that don't get filled, some sanding that doesn't get done. Nobody will notice except me, of course.

And then there Jeannie. I looked at VeloNews this morning and there's an article about Jeannie Longo winning the French Time Trial Championship. Jeannie is 51. That's old. Trust me, I know. This was her 57th national title. 57th! That's nearly two a year for the last thirty years. And she won by over a minute in a 25 km Time Trial. Damn. Those other French girls need to put down the pastries and step it up a notch.

Lemons and Raindrops

I had grand plans for last night. There were two gallons of paint waiting at home with my name on them and I figured I could knock out a good portion of the bathroom repainting project after work. I had already hastily painted around where the light fixture was so that I could re-install it when I got home and thus see what I was doing. Ahhh, the "best laid schemes o' mice and men ....."

Well this one went awry the moment I got home and was reminded that our neighbors across the street, who just moved to the D.C. area, had been brought back to town in connection with a oil spill fundraising effort that one of the kids (Lemonaid for the Gulf) had recently started while between homes in Alexandria. They were setting up their lemonade stand on the riverfront down in the French Quarter and were scheduled for a live interview with Anderson Cooper some time between 6:30 and 8:30. So along with some of the neighbors (the ones who are still here!) we went down to Woldenberg Park to offer our support and get in on the action. Naturally we soon learned that the actual interview wouldn't likely happen until around 8:30, so we headed over to the Crescent City Brewhouse on Decatur for a bowl of seafood gumbo and a big and badly needed glass of Black Forest beer. By the time I got back home the bathroom painting was definitely on hold until the next day.

So this morning I went out to ride and was almost surprised to find that there were clouds in the sky. It's been mostly just blazing sun around here lately with the pre-dawn temperatures in the 80s, so a little cloud cover was not entirely unwelcome. Interestingly, the group today was quite civilized, especially for a Tuesday, and I ended up just chilling out near the back of the paceline for most of the ride. Some days you just need to kick back a bit, and today seemed like a good day for that. As we rode up the river the clouds continued to thicken and build and I knew it was going to rain somewhere. Well, somewhere turned out to be between The Dip and Kenner. It started with a sprinkling of those huge raindrops that you can hear hitting your helmet, and then just gradually increased until it reached monsoon proportions. I was rapidly soaked to the skin and pretty soon I had to stop to stuff my camera into the ziplock bag that already contained my phone. Luckily, both survived. By the time I caught back up to the remnants of the group, well into Orleans parish, the rain had stopped. In fact, the streets were still dry, at least for a while. As I was preparing for work it started raining pretty hard at home, so I waited until it stopped before leaving. Before I did, though, I carefully positioned wet shoes, helmet and gloves in front of a fan down in the basement.

Rollover

Everything hurts, but surprisingly it's not from the two Giro Rides I did this weekend. It's from scraping paint and sanding and painting. I hate painting, especially when it involves twisting myself into unnatural positions while balanced atop a shaky ladder in a cramped bathroom. Fortunately, scraping and painting weren't the only things I did this weekend.

Saturday morning I got out to the Harrison Ave. Starbucks nice an early prior to the Giro Ride. I was looking forward to a good fast training ride and I wasn't the only one. There was a pretty good crowd at Starbucks, but as soon as we got underway Erich flatted. He got that fixed right away and we headed for Robt. E. Lee to meet up with the rest of the group. Then, as we turned onto Lakeshore Drive, we merged with the triathlete group which probably brought the group size up to 50 or 60 riders. Just after crossing Bayou St. John Erich flatted again. I stopped to help, along with Tim and a couple of others, but the group didn't. It seemed like it took forever to get Erich's second flat of the day fixed, and by the time we got back onto the bikes, Tim was chomping at the bit, wanting to catch the group before they started going fast. So pretty soon we were going flat out down Leon C. Simon in TTT mode. When we hit Hayne Blvd. the group was still out of sight, but Tim was keeping the hammer down.

We decided to turn at Bullard and take a little shortcut. We'd been going 27-30 mph, and as we were approaching the Interstate on Lake Forest Blvd, we spotted the group as it was turning onto the service road. I guess the gap was still a bit over a minute. By then I was already skipping pulls as Tim drove relentlessly at the front. There was still a pretty big gap when we hit Chef Highway, and Eddie D. and I were hanging on for dear life and beginning to wonder just how much longer we were going to be able to handle the pace, but somehow we finally made contact with the group. It took me quite a while to recover, and by then it was getting pretty hot.

After the turnaround I was thinking I'd finally be able to get back into the action at the front, but just after we turned onto the service road I felt my rear tire go flat. Game over. So I stopped along with a handful of other guys to fix it and let the group go. Then, as our little group was coming back down Leon C. Simon I spotted Erich sitting under an oak tree. Yep. He'd flatted yet again and was waiting for Roseanne to come pick him up. By the time I got home I was pretty well toasted.

Sunday morning I checked the odometer on the computer and knew that today would be the day. The trusty old Campi Ergobrain was going to roll over to 100,000 miles at some point during the Giro Ride. Since it was father's day, the group was pretty small this morning, which was fine with me because all sorts of infrequently used muscles were sore as hell from all of the paint scraping and sanding I'd done Saturday afternoon. The ride was relatively uneventful until the Goodyear Sign sprint. There was already a little group a bit up the road, so I thought I'd see how close I could get to it before the sign. I tapped on of the guys as I went by and he latched onto my wheel. I had just gotten us up to 34 mph and passed a couple of people when Kenny, who had dropped off of the lead group, suddenly looked back and swerved across the road just as we approached him. Whoa!! That kind of took the wind out of our sails, but it was more of a surprise than anything else. A few miles later I looked down and saw that the computer was within a mile of rolling over to 100,000 miles and everybody eased up for a while so I could take a picture. Of course it never actually rolled over to 100k since there aren't enough digits for that, so I watched as it rolled over from 99,999.9 to 0.0. Oh well. Back to square one.

Hot and Humid on the Oil Coast

It's been a busy week thus far and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon down here in the oily part of the Louisiana. My riding has been hot, humid -- routine stuff for mid-June. Every day this week I've arrived back home after riding with sweat-coated sunglasses, a sticky wet jersey, and a craving for cold fluids. The BP oil spill, or oil leak, or simply oil disaster, has really been taking center stage lately. Nothing about this is good. Although there aren't any immediate direct effects on the city, I expect the indirect effects are mounting up rapidly. The universities are all trying to position themselves to respond quickly if research funding becomes available (aside from the $5M or so that went directly to LSU already), so we've been doing capability assessments, tracking current activities, etc., and even have a website set up (oilspill.tulane.edu). To tell you the truth, this whole oil spill thing has got me kind of in a funk. Just the thought of having oil all over those beautiful sugar sand beaches around Gulf Shores, Pensacola and Destin is pretty depressing.

I've almost gotten the LCCS results updated following the last two race weekends, the USAC post-event reports and payment for the Tour de La is in the mail, most of the race equipment has been put away, and I even fixed the bell! I'd bought a new brass bell for the LAMBRA race equipment collection earlier this year. It worked great for a while, and then it completely lost its ring. It just went flat. We knew there must be a crack somewhere but until I held it up to a light in a dark room last night I couldn't find it. Turned out it was cracked around its circumference where there was a groove that ran all the way around the bottom of the bell. Granted, I knew it was a cheap piece of foreign-made junk, but I did expect it to ring. Well, a few judicious blows with a ball-peen hammer neatly removed the bottom inch from the bell, so after a little filing and a field modification to the clapper it now rings quite nicely!

This morning's long levee ride had a nice group on hand, and although the pace got fast here and there it wasn't too hard for people to hang onto the paceline. I put in a good number of pulls on the way out, took a little break after the turnaround, and did a little work near the end. It was good. It was hot. One the way home, riding down Oak Street, I came up on that "little old lady" who we often see up on the levee. I managed to get off a couple of photos, but they aren't very good since I was (a) rushed, and (b) about to get run over by oncoming traffic. Gotta take what you can get sometimes.

Tonight I'm going to some restaurant that is donating part of its proceeds to some kind of animal thing - SPCA? I dunno. All I know is that I get to eat dinner and drink wine, and depending on how much of the latter I get into, I may or may not finish up the LCCS scoring later tonight.

Dénouement

I'm sitting here at my desk surrounded by the debris of another Tour de Louisiane. There's a thick stack of entry forms from which I still need to pull the one-day licenses to include with the post-event reports that are in a folder somewhere in my bag. The tape recorder that I use for finish judging is here too. I just went over my recording of the masters race finish looking for a rider who we DNF'd but who actually finished with the lead group. A bit stack of handwritten scoring sheets are within arms reach because I know I'll get a few emails from people who didn't check the results at the race and then, when they look up the results on the website, discover some mistake. Most are minor, really, and I always try to make corrections if at all possible. I've still a lot of work to do before I can call the 39th annual Tour de La a wrap, but at least the results are up on the website and nobody went to the hospital. I haven't even done the LCCS scoring for the District Championships yet, and I'm dreading that because they are always kind of messy. Then I'll have to format and upload the Tour de La results for the USAC results & rankings database and score it for LCCS. The latter, at least, will be relatively easy because we score stage races on GC. I doubt any of that will happen tomorrow, however, because believe it or not I do have a real job and there's a lot going on there right now. Just to complicate things I have a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon that I know will spawn additional dentist appointments. I hate dentist appointments. So the Tour's denouement will play itself out over the course of next week. The forms will be filled out, payments will be made, reports will be submitted, and soon things will get back to whatever constitutes normal around here.

Anyway, this year's Tour de Louisiane went off fairly smoothly, I think. Although it was a particularly hot weekend, and total registrations were down a bit from the last couple of years (seems to be a trend everywhere), the racing was lively and competitive and nobody went to the hospital. The Cat. 1/2/3 had a particularly good field and the race came down to the wire with the top three places separated by one second each. Our club members and volunteers all did a tremendous job, and Ricky, our chief referee, did his usual magic with the cameras and got almost everybody placed in every race so that we could post results quickly. The City Park course was great, except for the sun and heat, although those five police officers that we had to pay for mostly just sat in their cars and watched pedestrians and bike riders wander onto the course at will. It would have been a lot cheaper and more effective if we'd not had the officers and instead just rented barricades and used volunteers. I really need to have a conversation with someone on the Board at City Park about events like ours and how their fees are just pushing them away to other cities. I guess I'll just worry about that tomorrow and go to sleep now, "after all ... tomorrow is another day."

Blueshirts

So I think things are about as ready as they will get for this weekend's Tour de Louisiane stage race. Of course, I'm never really sure about that. There's always that nagging feeling that I've totally forgotten about something that absolutely needed to be done. The race numbers are sorted, the old race scribblings have been removed from twenty or so clipboards and fresh paper has been inserted, pre-registered riders' release forms have been downloaded and printed, blank entry forms and one-day forms and volunteer release forms have been printed, tables have been bought, batteries have been changed, orange traffic cones and water coolers stand at the ready. Tomorrow morning, I'll pull on my official's shirt and for the rest of the weekend I'll morph from rider to blueshirt, standing on the side of the road worrying about traffic and center lines and cameras and recorders and pack sprints. I find it far more stressful than actually racing. On the bike, things seem more or less under my control. On the sidelines things seem more or less out of control. There are always things that fall through the cracks. In a way, it was simpler back in the 70's when nobody expected follow cars or corner monitors or motorefs or neutral feeds or even accurate placings past about fifth. There were some years when I'm sure we didn't even tell the police we were having a race and we ran the whole race on about three hundred dollars and donated bike parts from Betat's for prizes. This year our costs just for police and course availability probably top five grand.

I'll be heading off to the northshore in a couple of hours with the car, or Mark's truck, or both, packed full of race equipment and by 6:30 pm we'll be handing out race numbers.

Here we go again . . . . .

The Tour

The humidity this morning was positively off the charts, but then again, it's sum, sum, summertime in New Orleans so whatcha gonna do? This morning I was trying out a new handlebar. I've been using the 40 cm TTT Ergonova (no, not the expensive carbon one) for close to a year now and never could quite get used to the extremely short reach. Otherwise, I liked the shallow drop and even the unusual shape where the drops flared out just a little bit so that when your hands were on top of the brake levers they were a little closer together. Even so, when the going would get hard I always felt like I was digging my hands into the hooks a little too hard. I think it's just that I've always been most comfortable with my arms more or less straight rather than bent when I'm riding. So anyway, I put on the 40 cm TTT Ergosum bar last night. It still has a relatively shallow drop, but offers a bit more reach than the Ergonova did. I don't guess I'll really be able to tell much of a difference until I spend some quality time with them, so we'll see how it goes. Removing the old handlebar tape is always kind of disgusting process in the summer. Underneath even the most nicely anodized aluminum will host a nice crop of white oxidation and salt that seems to have its own peculiar smell. So a nice new bar and nice clean handlebar tape (I'm trying out some grey Fizik tape this time) at least freshens up the front end of the bike.

In spite of the heat and stupidity, or humidity as the case may be, there was a nice crowd on hand for the Wednesday ride. When I looked back to see who all had arrived I was shocked to see an old Herring jersey with Brad Hecker's head on top of it. Brad's in town visiting from NC (or SC, I can never remember which) where he's been working since moving away from New Orleans back around 2002. I don't know if it was just because he was there or not, but the ride was definitely faster than our usual Wednesday ride, and my legs are still definitely not fully recovered.

Last-minute preparations for the 39th annual Tour de Louisiane are in their customary state of chaos. Our nice LAMBRA race clock that we use for all three stages is currently being repaired in California after having been slammed to the ground by a sudden gust of wind during the brief but intense rainstorm at the West Feliciana Classic criterium. We've been hustling around for one to borrow Robin found an old one that requires a separate car battery, but I think we'll be able to use the one that Kona Cafe' has, which is one of the newer models with an integrated battery. Robin stopped by the house after the ride today so I could print out the Race Bible, which I finished up last night around midnight, and make the 200 copies that we'll need for Friday. I don't know what the problem was, but although the preview looked fine and the pdf file looked fine, when I sent it to the printer one of the big map images got moved on top of the sponsors page. I tried a couple of things and re-printed it, but to no avail, and then after trying to cancel the job the printer got all confused and started printing out code, so I decided to try printing the pdf version on my other printer. That went fine until it ran out of black ink halfway through the document. Luckily I had picked up a new ink cartridge yesterday. Anyway, it must have taken half an hour to finally get those ten pages printed out.

Then this morning there was some confusion about hotel rooms that we were supposed to have reserved for our motorefs. It sounds like the hotel had already booked everything except rooms with single king size beds. They're telling us that they may be able to switch them over to double beds but won't know for another day or so. So anyway, some motorefs may end up at a different hotel. On the plus side, enough riders booked rooms at the Hampton Inn that we should get at least one free room, which will definitely help if we end up having to book extra rooms somewhere in order to keep our motorefs from having to sleep together. They're good friends, but not that good. Next on my own agenda is to make sure the results workbook is fully functional and able to produce our TT start list, calculate times for riders pulled or lapped in the criterium, pull rider data from the USAC database, deal with the new time bonuses for finish and hot spot placings, etc. Then I'll go through our race equipment to see which stopwatches and tape recorders and megaphones need new batteries, charge up the radios, sort out the number sequences for the various groups, print out a bunch of entry/release forms, etc. It's amazing that we do this stuff for free, and even more amazing that, despite having attracted a significant amount of sponsorship cash and having a relatively small prizelist, we will undoubtedly miss breaking even, and probably by a very large amount. Of course some of that is entirely because of the cost of putting the criterium in City Park. That one stage is costing us in excess of $3,500 in fees and police. I mean, are five police officers really necessary to close off a course in a park on a Sunday morning? And then there's the $2,500 fee for using the streets in the first place. Damn, I sure wish Covington would re-pave their streets so we could get back there sooner!

Tonight I'm going to have to miss the Arena training criterium once again, this time in order to attend a meeting of the Complete Streets Advisory Committee. That should be interesting. I'm just going to consider it to be a good networking opportunity for a possible future French Quarter criterium.

Head Writing Checks Legs Can't Cash

So despite my disappointing race on Saturday, I went ahead and signed up for the Cat. 1/2 road race on Sunday. After all, I'd driven all the way up to Natchez, so I may as well take advantage of the nice road course for another 72.8 miles, or as I prefer to think of it, 14 more times up those two damned hills that had kicked my butt on Saturday. Thankfully, the race started in the morning, so it wasn't nearly as hot as it would be later for the Cat. 4s and Women. My usual MO for these situations is to sit in and conserve as much as possible, let the attacks and hills do their work, and hopefully survive long enough to keep the last twenty miles from feeling like a death march. So I rolled up to the start line and look around to see nothing but blue Herring jerseys. Tim looks over (OK, over and down) at me and says, "Looks like it's Herring against Randy today." Since the Cat. 1/2 race was separate from the Cat. 3 race (they are sometimes combined if turnout is low) we had only ten riders! This was not going to be conducive to my aforementioned plan. Sometimes, when there is a larger group or we're combined with the Cat. 3s things stay more or less together for the first thirty or forty miles before the real racing starts and it's not too hard to remain sheltered and stay out of trouble. I had a feeling that wasn't going to be the case for this race.

After a few laps at an easy pace a small break went off the front -- and I went to the back. I could already read the writing on the wall. A Herring break gets off the front, the gap grows quickly, the chasers get tired, and then a couple of other Herring guys attack the pack and bridge up to their teammates. I knew the attack was coming. The problem was that my legs were already hurting on the climbs just twenty miles into the race and I was pretty sure that by entering this race my head had written a check my legs wouldn't be able to cash. I had been sitting at the back with Brent from Bike Barn for a few laps and had already told him that I'd be happy to make five laps before getting popped off the back, which was probably a good indication of my mindset for this race, and not one I recommend, by the way. Anyway, sure enough the attack came on the hills right on cue. The Herring guys hadn't initiated it, but they sure as hell responded to it. I think I could feel the breeze as they flew past me up the hill. At that point I uncharacteristically cashed in. It was just too early and I was hurting too much to make the relatively small additional effort it would have taken to close the gap.

So that was basically it for me. I rode three or four laps alone at an easy recovery pace contemplating on which lap I would drop out. Eventually what was left of the group lapped me on the 5.1 mi. course and since I knew I was already DFW and it wouldn't affect anyone's placing I tacked onto the back. They were starting to look a little ragged in the heat, and thanks to my little siesta my legs were feeling much better so it was no challenge to stay with them. On the last lap I was expecting Frank to attack the group on the hills, and I guess maybe he did, or perhaps he was just reacting to someone else's attack, but at any rate I figured I'd back off at that point anyway. As I came over the top, though, I found Frank going backwards. His legs had cramped up pretty badly and he had already lost contact with the group. I eased up to give him some company and encouragement. After a mile or so he started to recover and by the time we made the sharp right turn onto the shady back stretch he was in full chase mode. He looked back at me and said, hopefully, "Can you pull?" I told him I was a lap down and there was an official car behind us so I couldn't. Well, the car behind us turned out to be the lead vehicle for the 2-man Cat. 3 break (the lead solo break had already passed us) that had caught up to us. They passed us, and then I think Frank passed them back with a mile or two to go. I eased up so I wouldn't interfere with anything and was able to watch Francis and Brad sprint it out for 2nd place. At that point I was hoping the Chief Ref would excuse me from doing the last lap, but as I went by he said "One to go" so I finished out the last lap.

By then it was getting really, really hot and I felt sorry for the Women and Cat. 4s who were scheduled to start after us. I stayed around to help hand up waterbottles for the next couple of hours, which didn't help my level of dehydration and sunburn one bit, but under the circumstances I couldn't leave my teammates to fend for themselves with the neutral feed. Mignon almost pulled off an upset by attacking the hills on the last lap of the Women's race and going solo, but she got reeled in a couple of miles before the finish and had to settle for 4th. Viv and Judith stuck together and finished that way. Anyway it was a long hot day. On the way home I stopped at the first gas station I came to and downed two bottles of cold V8 juice to go along with the pickles and oranges I'd eaten after the race (yes, they had a big pickle jar).

So today is Tuesday and I was still feeling the effects of the weekend during the morning training ride. On the way home I stopped to take a picture of the brand new striping on Carrollton Avenue for the new bike lane. Never thought I'd see that! I guess it'll be another day or two before I feel normal again. Too bad. I hate normal.

Off the Back and Out of Air

The drive up to Natchez was going smoothly until I turned west. Up ahead the sky was black. I checked the radar and it didn't look very promising. Fortunately, it was still just 9:30 am and my race didn't start until 2:00 pm. At least there was hope. The Juniors raced mostly in the rain today, and with a lap or two left to go the wheel truck had exactly one wheel and no indication to whom it belonged. Very few had put wheels into the follow car despite the rain and wet road. Last year under similar circumstances the Cat. 4 wheel truck had gone through something like 40 wheels on this course.

So when I learned that Michael had left his spare wheels at home I put mine into the wheel truck for him before the Cat. 5 race started. A couple of laps later the pack went by and he wasn't there. The next thing I heard was "Thanks Randy" as he and my front wheel went by a little while later. He wasn't too far behind and the pack seemed to be going pretty slowly, so I really thought he'd be able to catch, but no such luck. Meanwhile, Charles was hanging in there nicely and ended up finishing 6th.

The Master 35+/45+ race, which ended up including also a few 30+ riders, had a good-sized field and considering that there were three well-represented teams on hand I figured I'd just sit in the middle of the field and let them battle it out amongst themselves. Ha! The race was pretty fast and a break went off the front right away. I was struggling a bit and already regretting my aforementioned "plan." On the plus side, the roads were more or less dry. So riders kept going off the front of the pack and soon I was completely confused about who and how many were up the road. I'd also lost count of the laps (we were to do nine) on, like, lap 2. I guess we were about halfway through the race when someone attacked the big hill. Woody and Frank exploded past and just like that there was another break up the road and a lot less horsepower left to chase anything. Thing were not going well. It was just a lap or so later that we went flying through this one fast downhill turn that I felt the rear wheel go all squirmy. Not good. I bounced a couple of times and felt the rim hit the ground, so I backed out of the group and looked back for the wheel truck. A few minutes later I was back on the bike. The wheel truck graciously gave me a couple of minutes of draft, but at the rate the race had been going I knew I wouldn't be seeing the group again. So that was it. I rode out the last three laps for the exercise and really have no idea where I ended up overall, although apparently I was 7th in the 45+ division. That last break, the one with Frank and Woody, was the one I should have gone with. Not that I had much of a choice, of course. They must have caught the break because Woody won the 35+ race with Tim in 2nd, and Frank the 45+.

So I guess I'll ride the Cat. 1/2 race tomorrow and see how far I get before I'm dropped.

Up the River

Heading out early tomorrow morning for Natchez State Park and the 2010 LAMBRA Road Championships. I guess it'll be either hot or storming down rain. Whatever. Even though the masters races don't start until 2 pm, I realized a little while ago that since I have all of the medals, I need to be there in time for the end of the races that start at 10 am. Oh well. That way I start getting dehydrated early. This will be maybe the fourth year we've used this course and it has never failed to kick my butt, so I'm quite sure this year will be no exception to that rule. This is a fairly short loop of only 5.2 miles of which half is rather hilly and the other half is fairly flat. Within the first couple of miles there are two good climbs that come one after the other. The first one is longer, but I think the second is steeper. I guess I've been dropped on both at one time or the other.

Thursday's long levee ride had a big group and the pace got pretty intense at times. I remember Mignon looking over at me and saying, "Don't those guys ever get tired?" We'd probably been going 27-30 mph for five miles at that point and I was thinking the same thing myself. There was really only a handful of people doing any pulling. The rest of us were sucking wheels most of the time.

This morning we had a nice easy spin that left my legs feeling rather good for a change. Yeah, I guess that won't last much longer .....

Crashes, Katrina Boats and Oil

I was rather surprised Tuesday morning when the speed increased and I finally had to put a little pressure on the pedals. My legs were still not quite fully recovered from the weekend's races. To be honest, they hardly ever feel fully recovered any more. Fortunately, there was a big group on hand for the Tuesday morning long levee ride, so I had lots of cover. Then, when VJ flatted, I was only too happy to stop and lend moral support while he changed the tube. During the ride I found out that there had been a crash at the Sunday Giro Ride that took four people down. One of them, Chip, is going to need surgery to fix his shoulder. He had been training to be on a relay team for the Race Across America. Rumor has it that Lawrence may fill in for him.

When I got home I rushed around a bit in order to be sure I could get down to the French Quarter in time to see Kenny give his speech at the unveiling of the new exhibit at the Presbytere museum that features the now-famous Katrina boat. I don't know what was more shocking. The fact that they actually recovered the boat and made it into a memorial at the Presbytere, or that Kenny was wearing a suit in the middle of the day. It was pretty hot down there in Jackson Square by the time the ceremony was over, and I was glad I'd taken the car instead of the bike because otherwise I would have been a bucket of sweat by the time I got to the office. I went out again after work for an easy ride, but we turned around early when we ran into some rain. Luckily we stayed ahead of the heavy rain all the way home, so although I got a little wet, I never got really soaked.

There's a lot of stuff going on in the academic research community right now related to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil "spill." We're assuming some federal funding will become available from various agencies, so the jockeying for position is already in high gear. As someone said today, "There's not just oil in the water, there's also blood." Nobody really knows how that will all work out right now, but we're pretty sure there will be some serious ecological and human health consequences, not to mention economic, regulatory and policy ones, that will take many years to play out. So anyway, this whole thing has certainly kept us busy at the office lately.

The Wednesday ride was a fairly typical one, except that the pace seemed to be surging every now and then. Jay was there wearing a lot of Tegaderm and telling his version of the story about the Giro Ride crash. I was still not feeling very sharp for some reason, so I wasn't taking any long pulls. On the way back I stopped at Zotz for a cup of dark roast and a few moments of caffeinated peace. Anyway, it's late and since I keep falling asleep in mid-sentence, I guess I should shut this thing down and go to bed......

West Feliciana

OK, this might be a little sloppy. Things have been busy around here lately, but considering the fact that the situation shows little sign of improvement any time soon, I'll download my recollections from last weekend's West Feliciana Classic anyway.

I was up early on Saturday waiting for Dave to swing by an pick me up for the drive up to St. Francisville for the 2nd annual West Feliciana Classic. We all knew it was going to be a hot weekend, but at least the temperatures for the morning time trial were relatively pleasant. This TT is held on a small winding road with lots of trees and a couple of significant climbs. It's a really nice TT course, but opportunities to get a good warmup are minimal. I started out 30 seconds behind my teammate Dave Schreffler, and within the first minute I knew I hadn't gotten a good enough warmup. Gasping for breath, I plugged on, finally settling down a bit after a little coasting on the downhills. I already knew my time would be weak. It was. My 6:46 for the 5 km course was good for only 9th in the small 15-rider Master 40+ field. Dave didn't fare any better, posting a time about ten seconds slower. Keith Duet was also there, but I don't think he really made much of an effort for the TT.

The criterium was held that afternoon on a really fun and very challenging little course in St. Francisville. There was a flat three-block finish straight, then a left turn, followed immediately by two tight right-handers and a steep drop down the hill and around a smooth sweeping right-hand bend that brought our speed well up over 40 mph. After a little flat there was a sharp right-hand turn over a bridge (if you fell here you'd go flying off the side of the bridge under the skimpy guardrail and fall about fifteen feet into the creek). Then there was a short but very steep climb back up to the final right-hander. I climbed this hill in the big ring every lap, but probably should have risked the front-chainring shifts and used the 39 more. I don't think we'd gone more than a couple of laps before Jason and Dave got off the front. They weren't really killing it or anything, so the gap didn't grow very quickly at all. I immediately backed off, as did the Jason's teammates, which didn't leave too many guys to mount a chase. In fact, I think the hill had a lot of them on the ropes and they didn't dare make the effort to chase. There were, however, a number of surges and a couple of attacks on the hill that brought us to within maybe ten seconds, and I thought for sure we'd just roll up to them, but for some reason Donald Davis and the others didn't close the deal and after that the gap really opened up for good. After the hot spot, someone attacked the hill hard and a gap opened with me on the wrong side of it. I didn't think we'd be able to close it, but when we came screaming down that long downhill, I saw the three riders ahead of us spread out across the road and knew it would be my only chance, so I buried myself and made the bridge just in time to sprint up the hill again. Soon it was down to just four of us in the second group - Shan Smith, Jerry Simon, Donald Davis, and me. I don't think we went up that damned hill more than three times when there wasn't an attack. As we got down to the final laps I was really starting to struggle on the hill, mainly because Jerry was attacking it relentlessly. On the last lap there was another hard attack that I just couldn't answer so I rolled across the line last in our group of four, 6th overall. Meanwhile, my teammate Dave won the sprint for first, so at least half of the master plan had gone well!

I had been looking forward to Sunday's road race. The course is hilly and fun, and I've raced on most of the roads in the past. Since the event was an Omnium, there were five riders all clustered within just a few points of each other, so I knew there would be a battle. Unfortunately, this soldier never really got to participate. What I hadn't been expecting were the early attacks. There was one initial attack within the first mile or two that was closed down quickly, then just a little while later another one split the pack while I was twiddling my thumbs at the back. By the time I realized that all of the horsepower was in the front group it was practically too late to do anything about it. Also, since it was so early in the race, and Dave was up there in a 5 or 6-man group without a teammate I *really* wanted to be there. Still, I didn't want to pull the rest of my group up there, so along with Keith I just tried to set tempo so that the gap wouldn't grow too large just in case something happened that might give me a chance to make the bridge. Well, that didn't last too long, and by the time we were halfway around the course the gap was up to over a minute and I decided I'd use the rest of the race to get in some training.

Then we missed a turn. Completely. The "corner monitor" was apparently sitting in a truck in the shade with one of those shade things blocking the windshield. I was at the back when we went past the intersection and looked over thinking, "isn't that Jones Vaughn Creek Road?" I hadn't seen a course map, so I wasn't sure if there was perhaps some other way to make the loop, but I didn't think there was. I asked a couple of the other guys if they knew the course. They didn't. We eased up and did some mileage math and after a mile or two decided to turn around. Indeed we'd missed the turn. We knew that because when we went by the truck at the corner and called in to person sitting inside it she told us so. So anyway, when we came to that intersection on the next lap (I think they were 20-something miles each), after having picked up another rider or two, I decided I'd push it up a couple of the hills. I knew that particular road pretty well and knew that there were a few steep but short hills early on, and then it kind of smoothed out. Plus, it was a winding road where it was relatively easy to get out of sight. So once a gap opened I just kept going. I doubt there was any significant effort to chase since we were already racing for 6th place which wouldn't have much of an effect on the omnium results anyway. Even so, I figured it was a good training effort, so I motored the best I could over the remaining 7 or 8 or 10 miles and was pretty well toasted by the time I finally crossed the finish line. I was glad to find out that Dave had won the sprint, jumping early when Jerry was unexpectedly stricken with one of those "whole body cramps" you get when you try to attack hard on an uphill at the end of a long hot race.

In the end I was 8th overall, tied on points with Charlie but losing out on the tie because of his better TT placing. This particular race has come a long way since last year, and if they hold it again next year I expect it will be even better. The courses, especially that criterium, are really good and their ability to provide lots of refreshments, and even sandwiches, was quite welcome.