Cracked

Well, I finally made it out to one of the weekday evening time trials on the lakefront. I'd told Kenny I'd bring him some leftover race numbers and pins, so I was committed at least to the ride out there and back. Once I was there I figured I may as well get in the extra 10 km anyway, so I inserted myself into the 39-rider line, inching forward every 30 seconds until it was finally my turn to go. Of course, I was on my regular road bike, so I was kind of riding "retro style." I wasn't inclined to kill myself on this TT, so I started out at a moderate speed with a plan to wait until the last couple of kilometers before putting the hammer down. Just as I was approaching the turn-around pylon I caught a couple of riders. I passed the first one before the turn, but almost ran into the second one halfway through it. Man, those triathletes sure turn slowly! Two miles before the finish the course goes over the Bayou St. John bridge, and just before I got there Brady came flying past me. I picked up the pace a notch and practically sprinted up the bridge, but after that he steadily pulled away. His time, the best of the evening, was a minute and a half faster than mine! After crossing the line, he was so toasted that he crashed while turning around. No real damage done, though.

So Thursday morning I headed out to the morning ride and was a little surprised to find that the wind direction and speed felt more like Fall than Summer. Once again, the ride got really fast, especially the first half of the way out. It was a pretty hard ride for me, and by the time I got home I was feeling like I'd been ridden hard and put up wet.

This morning I was still feeling pretty dragged out for some reason, and even the 20 mph pace of the Friday recovery ride sometimes seemed like a struggle. The day before I'd gotten a call from the Jeep dealership up in Iowa telling me that The Daughter's car has a cracked block. This was after we'd already replaced the radiator and a/c compressor and resurfaced the cylinder heads, so we've already put $2,600 into a 2002 car and this evening they tell me replacing the engine block would be another $3,600. The car's probably only worth $5,000, so I think we're going to have to pull the plug on this one. Anybody want to buy a nice Jeep Liberty with a cracked block? Oh, yeah, it's in Iowa City. Is it better to fix it and then sell it, or try and sell it as is to someone willing to deal with the engine repair?

High Pressure

I went out to ride Tuesday morning with the best of intentions. It is getting noticeably darker now when I leave the house at 6 am, which is a somewhat depressing sign of things to come, namely Fall. I suppose I'll be able to get by without lights for another week or two, unless its cloudy, but soon enough I will be digging through that pile of stuff on the table down in the basement looking for blinky lights and wondering where those extra AAA batteries are. Yesterday's morning group was about average, and as usual the pace started getting out of hand somewhere out near the country club. There I was, sitting in the paceline somewhere around sixth or seventh wheel, looking at a gap starting to open a couple of bikes ahead of me. The usual alarms were going off in my head, but my legs were having nothing to do with them. It was one of those slowly growing gaps that you hope will close despite ample prior experience to the contrary. Mark G went around and started to bridge, but by then the little gap had expanded into a ten second crevasse. We were going around 30 mph and I could sense that things were coming apart quickly. A couple of minutes later the four or five riders were still riding away from us, our speed slackened, and the entire paceline breathed a collective sigh of relief as things settled down to a more sustainable level. I kicked myself, ever so gently, for not having gone when I knew I should have. The urge to suck wheels is indeed strong. We regrouped at the turnaround and wasted little time in kicking up the pace again, this time into a growing headwind. The group shed a few riders along the way, but that's not really unusual for these Tuesday rides.

After lunch I decided it was time to dig in with the new computer and spent some time crawling around under the desk sorting out the electrical spaghetti so that I could temporarily have both the old and the new running concurrently for a while. By the time I had to leave for a 3 pm meeting I had downloaded and installed Office 2010 and configured Outlook to get my email (well, most of it anyway).

This morning the effects of the high pressure area that's moved in were obvious. It was hot. The sky was clear and blue. We're expecting more of the same, with highs well into the 90s, for the next few days. Not bad riding weather, but the kind of stuff that makes me happy I'm not a runner. The Wednesday ride was nice and smooth today. It has become customary for this ride to stay in the 23-24 mph range with riders taking long smooth pulls. When Mike W got to the front and surged, Scott said, "Mike, what are you doing?" and he immediately eased up. Mo and I stopped off at Zotz for some coffee (we owe them 50 cents - we'd forgotten that they are cash-only) before I headed back home and ultimately to work. Today has more or less been dedicated to getting this computer set up. I've been buying and downloading and installing software, changing preferences, and transferring files via flashdrive pretty much all day. Flashdrives can be painfully slow when you're moving gigabytes at a time! Right now it's nearly 5 pm and I'm looking at the dialog box on my old computer that says "177 minutes remaining." Sheesh. At least I got all of my email archives transferred over this morning because I'm not waiting around this evening. I'm thinking I'll make my way out to the lakefront for the little 6pm 10 km time trial. I'll probably do it retro-style, on my regular road bike without the aero helmet or skinsuit or clip-ons since I'll be riding out there and back anyway.

Attitude

I knew I was going into the race with the wrong attitude. The LAMBRA criterium championship was held last Saturday over in St. Francisville on the same course we'd used for the West Feliciana Classic back in May. This was a course that didn't exactly play to my strengths, which is to say that the ability to suck wheels wasn't very helpful. So when I headed off for I-10 that morning for my early afternoon race I was kind of dreading it. The course has a short but painfully steep climb on it that totally dominates the race.

So I wasn't feeling particularly optimistic when I lined up with Dave for our 45 minute Master-40+ race. In contrast to my own attitude, Dave was totally psyched for this race. He'd been anticipating it for weeks, doing hill repeats to be ready for the sprints up the wall. He had the right attitude. If all that wasn't enough, there was a King of the Hill bonus that awarded points for the first five times up the hill. Kenny was there too. This was going to hurt.

For the first few laps I was feeling reasonably good, and in fact was no having any particular difficulty with the climb, which is to say it wasn't quite as terrible as I'd been expecting. Up ahead, Kenny and Dave were battling for the KOH points (Kenny got the $100). Nonetheless, I was only a few laps into the race when I thought to myself, "This is like a criterium course with all the fun parts removed." Once we got through the first five laps without a break going off the front, things settled down a little bit, but I was starting to struggle on the climb. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

We were probably down to five or six laps when a big gap opened up on the climb. Luckily Donald Davis lit the afterburners on the downhill and pulled us back up to the lead group. That took a lot out of him ... and me. We were down the second to last time up the hill when Tracy Martin attacked hard halfway up the climb. When I saw him launch, all I could do was look down and say, "shit!" I'd really been hoping they would wait until the last time up the hill. The front of the pack responded, but I didn't have anything left and found myself off the back with Chuck and Peter. With the lead group, now down to only six including Donald who was not quite in contact, chasing Tracy full-bore, there was no way we were going to close it up on the bell lap. Chuck pulled us around for most of that lap and we sprinted for 8th place. It took me forever to cool down after that one. I had a splitting headache and felt seriously overheated. I guess maybe I was a little dehydrated. I found a first-aid kit with some Tylenol in it and washed it down with a bottle of beer. Eventually I started to feel better, but I never even considered entering the Cat. 1/2/3 race later in the evening. On the plus side, although Tracy held out all the way to the finish, Dave was able to take the pack sprint for 2nd place. Anyway, it was actually a pretty nice event despite my lackluster attitude.

Sunday morning I thought I'd wake up with sore legs, but instead I woke up to pouring rain and perfectly fine legs. By noon the sun was shining, so I went out to the levee and rode all the way out to the "new" end. They recently added another mile and a half to the upriver end of the bike path, making for a nice 45 mile out and back from my house. I'm still wondering why I didn't have sore legs on Sunday. I guess my problem must not have been in my legs.

Meanwhile, back at the office, my new computer arrived on Friday. This will be replacing my six year old machine and I am not really looking forward to the transition. I am looking forward to the new faster computer, of course, just not the whole process of switching from one computer to the other. I set it up on the edge of my desk this evening. Next I'll have to get Outlook and email set up so I can download Office and WS-FTP and Acrobat Pro and Dreamweaver and Firefox and Photoimpact and get it working with the network printer and institutional networked applications, and transfer over twenty or thirty gigabytes of archived email and other documents. I'll probably be running back and forth between the two computers for a couple of weeks.

A Hard Week

The cold, foggy, unforgiving, and highly anticipated climb up the Tourmalet still loomed many miles ahead for the Tour riders as our group headed out for the usual Thursday morning levee ride. It had already seemed like a hard week to me, and with a difficult criterium coming up on Saturday I knew I needed recovery time more than another hammerfest up the river. The Tuesday ride had been fast and furious, and Wednesday's was no walk in the park either. Even so, I was planning on doing the training race criterium over at the Arena after work because, well, because they're so damned hard, I guess.

The weather this week has been particularly hot and humid, and I've really been missing those nice little afternoon showers that tend to cool things down a bit. When I stepped out of the office yesterday afternoon to ride back home, it was probably still in the mid-90s with nary a cloud in sight. There was also a pretty good wind blowing, which is kind of unusual for a mid-summer afternoon around here. At home I filled a couple of water bottles and headed off for the Arena, which is located immediately behind the Superdome, for another impromptu criterium. The ride out to the Arena always seems like a bit of a luxury to me compared to the after-work ride to the lakefront that I've done for the training races of years past (when they weren't tearing up Lakeshore Drive). Even at an easy relaxed pace, it takes me only about fifteen minutes to get there. Yesterday we had a group of around twenty, I guess. The first 20-minute race started out with a neutral lap, but as soon as that was over, Diego shot off the front with me, barely, in tow. Surprisingly, he stayed up there hammering away for at least three or four laps as I tried desperately to keep from getting dropped. Finally, he eased up a bit and we got a slight respite from the 28 mph pace. A few people rotated through, and I immediately noticed that Tim wasn't one of them. That could mean only one thing. Sure enough, the moment the pace slacked off, Tim attacked down the left side and promptly rode away from the rest of us, ultimately lapping the remnant of the field with four laps to go. I think we were down to just three or four by then. Anyway, despite a significant lack of motivation on my part, I managed to get in some much-needed intensity. The next race was a win-and-out. Five laps to start out and then a sprint every other lap. I waited until the third sprint to make an effort, and then continued to ride around the course for a few more laps to cool down.

The Thursday morning levee ride turned out to be faster than I'd expected. Thanks to a little tailwind on the way out, it got fast pretty early. Rob and Erich were off the front for a long time, but Erich had to turn back at some point, so it all came back together eventually. I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, not to do too much work since my legs were feeling a little tired, but just staying in the paceline at those speeds often requires a bit more than just "a little" work. I was also anticipating a hard ride back into the growing headwind. Indeed, it seemed like the return trip took forever today. When I got home I was anxious to get to the office so I could catch the last hour of the Tour. This time I got a nice video feed that was in Spanish, so I just muted that and opened up the live audio feed from Eurosport (which BTW, was lagging about a minute behind the video). It looked like it had the makings of an epic stage, but Contador and Schleck are just too evenly matched on these hard climbs and aside from a single unsuccessful attack, Contador seemed perfectly content to sit on Schleck's wheel the whole way up the mountain, knowing that he'll probably put big time on Andy in Saturday's time trial anyway. I was glad to see Horner and Armstrong finish in the top 20 in this stage. They have had a pretty hard week too!

Another Day, Another Giro

I was up early again this morning, but it wasn't to ride. You see, our garbage collectors are very reliable. Every Saturday morning at precisely 4:45 am, I am awakened by the melodious sounds of the garbage truck and its crew as they make their rounds way over on the other side of S. Claiborne Avenue. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and it this case it's the fact that I often forget to put the garbage out on Friday nights. Since they don't actually get to my house for another couple of hours, I get the questionable advantage of an early warning. On the downside, it usually costs me an hour of sleep.

So an hour later I got my sleepy self out of bed again, filled the water bottles to the brim, and rolled out toward the lakefront. Well, to be specific, I rolled out to Starbucks. The lakefront would come later.

By the time I sad down with my iced coffee, a fairly large crowd had already gathered. A bunch of the Herring guys were there, including Realdo who is still in town. I looked around, added up the horsepower, and knew it would be a fast one. With access to Lakeshore Drive blocked off once again because of the levee work, we headed off down Robert E. Lee Blvd. for the usual warmup, picking up more riders along the way. It was the calm before the storm.

As usual, it started on Hayne Boulevard, and within a couple of miles the pace went from easy to 29 mph. Next thing I knew there was a small group already off the front. We chased. They eased up at the end of Hayne, so it was grupo compacto as headed toward Hayne Blvd. It didn't really slow down a whole lot, though. As the group got rolling again after making the turn onto Chef Highway, I pulled out the camera and, with great effort, rode up near the front to take a few pictures. They never seem to come out very good when we're going like 27 mph, though. By the time I got the camera back into my pocket and got back into the draft I needed a rest. Photography can be very tiring! Fortunately, the wind today was light, making it easy, relatively speaking, to sit in when necessary, and yeah, it was occasionally necessary. It was good training, though.

Anyway, the Giro was good but uneventful today. I put in a couple of short sprints up the overpasses. Halfway up the Seabrook bridge I could have sworn my rear tire was soft. It wasn't. Must have been my legs.

Rust and Clouds

I sat up in bed, taking inventory of the morning's crop of stiff joints and muscles. One calf muscle in particular was complaining, amid the usual dull cacophony of reluctant leg and back muscles. I remembered what Bob Perrin had said to me once when I was first starting to notice the effects of aging (which was over twenty years ago now). "It takes a long time to warm up old meat." He followed it up with something like, "Just wait until you hit 40." Indeed. I stepped out of bed and felt a sharp but familiar twinge in my right hip. It's been acting up lately. Although there's always the temptation to give in and pull the covers back over my head, I know better. Nowadays, it seems the moment I stop moving, I start to rust. Five minutes later I was out the door.

Up on the levee it was the usual quiet Friday morning ride with just four of us. I rode alongside Donald most of the way out, probably one or two mph faster than I would have gone if I'd been alone. The sky was just a bit overcast today, and I was enjoying the temporary reprieve from direct sun, especially after we turned around and headed back to the southeast. As we started back I noticed some dark clouds off to the south, but they seemed far away and not likely to interfere with the morning ride. By the time we got to the bridge I could see that those clouds were building very rapidly into a big thunderstorm. I looked over at Scott and remarked, "Man, those clouds sure are building up fast!" In the span of five minutes we went from a normal summer morning to the edge of a thunderstorm. Suddenly we were hit with a strong cold downdraft and crosswind that threatened to blow us right off the levee. We picked up the pace a bit, passing Vivian, hoping to beat the inevitable rain. I split off at Oak Street and looked up at the sky. It seemed a bit improved and I didn't have the feeling it would rain right away, so I decided to stop at Zotz for a quick coffee before riding the last mile or so to the house. Sitting at one of the little tables out on the street, I had just finished checking my email when I heard a loud clap of thunder behind me. Not good! I jumped up, grabbed my coffee cup, and hopped on the bike. Thirty seconds later I felt the first raindrops. I'm racing down Oak Street and Carrollton and then Spruce on wet streets in a light drizzle with a cup of coffee in my hand, hoping I don't need to stop suddenly and just waiting for the sky to really open up. Luckily, I made it home before I got very wet. Then, of course, the rain stopped completely. On the plus side, my ride to work was a lot cooler than usual today!

Big Gears

It was another hot and humid morning down in New Orleans. This is the time of year when things on my bike start rusting, corroding and generally getting all gummed up from the gallons of sweat they're exposed to. It's a constant battle. This morning I put a little drop of oil on the rusting thumb-shifter mechanisms on each shifter. Of all the things I've tried, good old 3-in-1 oil seems to work the best for that. As I do every morning in the summer, I cleaned the lenses of my sunglasses with a little soap and water. By the end of the day's ride I knew they'd be covered with sweat once again. The first pair of gloves I grabbed was still damp from the day before, so I pulled on an old pair of team gloves instead.

We had a pretty big group for the long Thursday ride today. We also had a rather unusual, at least for summer, northwest wind. That didn't seem to slow things down very much, though. The ride out to the turnaround was your basic hammerfest and I soon found myself well into the big gears just trying to stay in the draft. I was determined to stay in the rotation at the front today. It wasn't easy. I don't think it was easy for anyone. After the turnaround, it took a long time for the pace to ramp back up, but once it did, I stayed there. I got back home a few minutes after 8 am, completely drenched in sweat.

I caught the last 10 km or so of the Tour today, watching it in a little window on my computer thanks to Eurosport.com. The sprint today started out like a big free-for-all, but once the leadouts really got started things at the front thinned out pretty quickly. Julian Dean came over and tried to move Renshaw, Cavendish's leadout man, over toward the barricades with about 300m to go, but Renshaw held his line, delivering a couple of head-butts to Dean in the process. Seeing the possibility that the door might close on him, Cavendish saw daylight between Renshaw and the barricade and started his sprint early, blasting past his leadout man. Renshaw then glanced to his left, saw clear air and swerved over to try and catch a bit of Cavendish's draft, nearly taking Tyler Farrar, who was accelerating down the left side, into the barricades. I was impressed with Renshaw. The officials were not and kicked him out of the Tour, which I think was way too severe a penalty. In my humble opinion, based on the helicopter video, Dean was more out of line than Renshaw. I guess they'll be arguing about this for a while.

Out to the Lake

The Daughter was headed back to Iowa City early Tuesday morning, so I skipped my ride in favor of breakfast at La Madeleine before driving out to the airport. Coincidentally, the Tour de France was just starting the mountain by the same name as we left. I told myself I'd get in a ride after work. Yeah, right. By the time I got home all I wanted to do was vegetate on the couch with a glass of wine. I felt so guilty -- at least until the second glass of wine.

So naturally I was up early for the Wednesday levee ride, which started out at a nice moderate pace as usual. A bit up the river, however, we picked up a few more riders, and a bit farther up the river we picked up Realdo and a couple more. The pace, which had been holding at around 22 mph, soon started to creep up and up, finally stabilizing at around 25 mph. Mignon's worries about getting to work by 8pm soon vanished. The ride back nice and fast too, so at least my guilt level dropped down a notch or so. Even so, I had already decided to ride out to the lakefront after work to watch the training time trial that Kenny runs and then watch some of the Tour de France at Kona Cafe.

Back at work, my 3 pm meeting ended a bit after 5:00, so I was back home around 5:15 or so. It took me a while to find my bike lights and pack a little backpack so I would have a pair of shoes other than my riding shoes. I wasn't sure exactly when the TT was supposed to start, but since I wasn't planning on riding it I didn't really rush. Anyway, as it turned out, the time trial had close to 40 riders. I toyed with the idea of riding it myself, but since I was on my regular road bike and wearing a backpack, it just didn't seem like it would be worth it.

It was around 9 pm by the time I headed back home. I decided to ride down Lakeshore Drive to Wisner rather than taking the slightly shorter route on Robert E. Lee. I was surprised to find that they had closed the road to traffic (naturally I ignored the traffic cones). I was even more surprised to find that there were absolutely no lights. None. It was really pretty neat to be riding down the darkened road along the lake as the sailboats returned from a little evening regatta. Then, when I got onto Wisner, I found that there were no streetlights there either! I was glad I'd brought my little headlight. I really enjoyed the ride home.

Unexpectations

Although The Daughter is in town for a few days, I had been expecting a fairly routine weekend -- a couple of regular Giro Rides and maybe an afternoon in the French Quarter. There are certainly times when I enjoy kicking back and sinking into the relative comfort of familiar routine. This weekend it lasted only until about 12:30 on Saturday, at which point our dog attacked her dog in a dispute apparently involving a piece of deer antler. As one might expect, the little dog got the short end of that stick and after much excited yelping, mostly of the canine variety, we found a deep inch-long gash in his neck. That meant a trip out to the Metairie emergency veterinarian to get his neck sewn back together and a rain check on the planned afternoon excursion to the WWII museum while the little guy recovered from the anaesthesia. So I set my sights on Sunday. . . . .

I was up early yesterday and arrived at the Starbucks with plenty of time to sit down with a cup of coffee as the other riders filtered in. The Sunday Giro Ride is typically smaller and easier than Saturday's ride, and judging by the relatively small number of riders who showed up, that's exactly what I was expecting. Of course, anyone who has done as many group training rides as I knows full well that the only thing you can safely expect of such rides is the unexpected. So I wasn't too shocked when, shortly after we came down onto Hayne Blvd., Woody, Rob and a couple others suddenly launched off the front of the group. A gap opened immediately as the riders near the front seemed quite disinclined to mount a chase. When I saw Mike W. go by, I went with him and soon we had a little group of four in full-on chase mode. Mike took a monster pull at one point and got us really close, but the surge was a little too hard and none of the rest of us had enough to finalize the deal, so there we were -- no-man's land. Our pace settled down to a more sustainable speed and after we made the right turn toward Chef Highway we lost on rider, leaving just Francis, Mike and me. We were going pretty good, though, so we continued to sort-of, kind-of chase, despite the obvious fact that we were ever do slowly losing ground on the guys up the road. Somewhere down Chef Highway, VJ suddenly appeared, having bridged up to us on his TT bike. He went to the front and pulled for at least a mile. Mike pulled off around Highway 11, and eventually a small group caught us somewhere before the turnaround, but it was a good workout nonetheless. The ride back featured a few more fast stretches, punctuated by a stop for a flat tire, and I arrived back home with another 60 miles in the legs without feeling too terribly wasted.

So we decided to take the streetcar down to the French Quarter for a quick little shopping trip. It was warm and muggy, but with all the windows open we were having a nice ride. Half-way there we suddenly we heard a clap of thunder that made half of the passengers jump right out of their seats. The torrential rain started shortly thereafter. Fortunately I'd brought along a backpack with three umbrellas and a rain jacket for just such an occasion. Unfortunately, it was raining so hard that by the time we'd walked from Canal Street to the Jax Brewery my pants and shoes were thoroughly soaked. We didn't stay too long and an hour later headed back to the St. Charles Ave. streetcar just as the rain was starting to let up. Great timing, eh?

So this morning I figured I'd go for an easy recovery ride. As is usual for a Monday, there was nobody at the meeting spot, so I pushed off in a 39x14 and headed upriver on the bike path. When I got to the playground, however, I could see the flashing lights of a couple of police cars up ahead. I knew immediately what it was. They've been working on the supports for the Huey P. Long bridge expansion and have been periodically closing a short section of the bike path. I decided that instead of going around it via River Road, I'd just turn around and ride down to Audubon Park. There I rode a few easy laps of the old 1.8 mi. loop under the oaks amid the morning walkers and joggers. Not a bad way to start off the week, actually.

Big and Fast

Finally feeling almost normal again, I was up early and out the door on my way to Starbucks by 6:05, looking forward to a good Saturday Giro Ride. I had finally given in to the mid-summer heat and squeezed one of those huge blue insulated water bottles we'd received at a recent race into the bottle cage. The sun was still behind some clouds way over on the horizon, and so I started out thinking I'd go for a regular coffee, but by the time I was halfway there I was already dreaming about iced coffee. When I arrived, I was surprised to see so many people already there. Realdo, who is in town for a few days from Mauritius, was already there, and a little while later Kenny rode up with Frank in tow. I looked around at the crowd and all of the carbon fiber wheels and thought, "this is going to be a fast one." Then I looked up at the clear blue sky and thought, ".....and also a hot one!" I was right on both counts.

After the traditional warmup, the big Giro group came over the Casino bridge and down onto Hayne Blvd. where the pace gradually ramped up, finally settling in at a steady 29-30 mph. There was a light tailwind, and so even at that speed one could sit in the draft halfway down the paceline without hardly breaking a sweat. Well, at least without having the sweat pouring down from your face onto your glasses. Once we got onto Chef Highway the pace kicked up yet another notch, but since it remained so smooth, we didn't lose many people despite the steady 28 -31 mph speeds. After the sprint at the turnaround I looked down to see a maximum of 38.1 mph. I wasn't even near the front.

The return trip had a lot of interruptions today. Someone flatted about midway down Chef Highway (I think pretty much everyone stopped and waited). Then there was some sort of issue leading up to the Goodyear Sign sprint that left me asking, "What happened?" I never really found out, but the result was that I didn't get to sprint and things slowed down again for a little while.

When we had been heading out over the Casino bridge earlier in the ride, we could see a film crew working up on top of the other side, so I figured it would be closed, but when we got there everything was open, and I put in a good effort to the top from which it took me a while to recover. I did the same thing going over the Seabrook bridge, but halfway up I noticed something was wrong. By the time I got to the top, my rear tire was as flat as a pancake. I rolled cautiously down and, violating my own flat tire rule*, stopped at a place without shade to change it. It was like changing a tire in a sauna while standing under a heat lamp. The Neuvation rear wheel that I got recently has a slightly deeper rim than any of my other wheels, and I had to fight with my little pump to get enough of a seal to put any air into the tube with a short valve stem. I doubt I managed to get more than 40 psi into it, but that was enough to get me home. A few people had stopped, so at least I didn't have to ride back alone.

* Always stop in the shade to fix a flat!

One More Day

I went out to meet the levee group on Thursday still feeling rather ragged. The throat was still scratchy and the chest congestion was in full force. Even so, I just couldn't take another day of not riding. I had a plan, of course. I figured I'd stay protected near the back of the paceline and back off any time I was tempted to do any heavy breathing. The group was big, and once the pace got going we strung out into a long, long line. I was feeling pretty decent, under the circumstances, sitting in the draft as the speed hovered in the vicinity of 28 mph. Somewhere around the country club we had a close call with a small group of riders that was coming from the opposite direction. There was a walker or runner or something in the right lane, and the front of the paceline had lots of room to go around and get back over to the right before the oncoming riders got there. The riders near the back weren't so lucky, however, and at some point all three came together. I saw the riders coming and had just enough time to get back over to the right, then I heard someone scream something behind me and a little while later found out that one of the oncoming riders had needed to bail out onto the grass.

Anyway, the pace remained fast and around the dip the group started to come apart. I had already decided to back off at The Dip anyway, so I sat up and enjoyed the scenery for a while, finally jumping back onto the back of the paceline when it came back. Even though I'd taken it about as easy as possible for the Thursday ride, I still felt pretty tired for the rest of the morning as I struggled with a runny nose and chest congestion and the foggy head that goes along with that and the OTC cold pills I was taking.

The Daughter was supposed to arrive from Iowa last night, but between broken airplanes and weather it wasn't until this morning that she finally got here. Once again, it took longer to fly than it would have to drive. First, the plane out of Moline had mechanical problems and their flight kept getting pushed back farther and farther. Once it got pushed back so far that they wouldn't be able to make the last flight out of Chicago to New Orleans, we got them re-booked on a different flight through Dallas. That would have worked out OK, except that the bad weather in Dallas had caused all sorts of additional delays. They ended up taking the very last flight out of Moline and missing the last flight out of Dallas, all the while smuggling the little min-pin past the ticket counters and hotel managers in a backpack.

Anyway, since I hadn't been able to breathe well last night, and had to make a trip out to the airport in the morning, I figured I'd take off one more day from riding and hope that things would be more or less back to normal for the Saturday Giro Ride. So for a week that should have been a big-mileage week for me, I ended up with one recovery ride and one shortened Thursday ride, and of course, a cold.

On Hold

Well, after a nice morning ride on Monday that included a bit of the sloppy stuff, I fired up the computer and got to work. The weekend's results got posted to the LAMBRA website (still waiting for some of the Cat. 5 results that weren't entered), and then I moved on to some real work that involved wading through about a hundred capability statements and/or research proposals. It was more tedious than difficult, but nonetheless consumed most of the afternoon and evening. The scratchy throat I'd been fighting since morning slowly grew worse, and by 7 pm I had to concede to the inevitable. I was coming down with a head cold. Crap. There was little mystery as to it's origin. A couple of the gymnasts who had been staying at the house since Friday had been sick, so the source was obvious. On the bright side, at least the medicine cabinet had been restocked. By bedtime I was sucking on Zinc lozenges and wondering if I'd be able to ride in the morning.

Tuesday morning it was raining and wet and nasty and the head cold had continued to progress, so I put my training plans on hold and dove back under the covers. I spent a lot of the day in front of the laptop and TV, shuttling back and forth between work and TDF coverage (an epic stage for sure) and the medicine cabinet and the refrigerator. It seems that whenever I'm sick like this there's a little voice inside me that keeps telling me it will all be better if I eat more. (It's the same little voice that tells me that the co-eds on campus don't notice I'm older than their parents.) Anyway, Jerry is having surgery on Friday to repair whatever ligaments were torn when he crashed last Saturday, so that will probably put him off the bike for a couple of months. It's almost preferable to break a collarbone if it saves the ligaments because even without surgery a collarbone usually heals enough to let you start riding again in about five weeks; even less if it's repaired surgically. Vivian has also just found out that she had some ligament damage from her crash during training over a week ago.

So this morning I again put the training ride on hold despite the dry streets, which BTW have been in very short supply around here lately. The throat was less sore but the head and chest congestion was now in full force. I didn't think I could take another day of rattling around the house, so I swallowed some Sudafed PE and headed off to work by way of Starbucks. I'm not entirely sure I'll make it to the end of the day, but we'll see how it goes. I'd really like to make it to the training race at the Superdome Arena this evening. It may turn out that all I can handle is just riding out there and back, but even that would be an improvement at this point. We'll see.....

Acadiana

The work week was nearly over by the time I started to give serious consideration to what I would be doing on over the July 4th weekend. My first choice was to travel to the heart of Acadiana, Lafayette Louisiana, for the "La Vuelta de Acadiana" omnium. That option was not without its complications, however, since I was without a car, and The Daughter and a small horde of young gymnasts was due to arrive at the house on Friday prior to their Sunday morning departure back up the river to Iowa. Challenges, however, are what we all live for, aren't they? By Thursday evening I was pretty sure I'd be getting a ride to Lafayette with Vivian. She also offered to have Rick bring the new LAMBRA generator home from Freret Hardware so I wouldn't need to figure out a way to pick it up. So on Friday morning I borrowed our car from the neighbor and picked up the clock from the office where it had been delivered after being repaired. We planned to leave around 5:00 am to be at the race just before registration closed at 7:30. After a whole week of abbreviated training rides in the rain, I didn't know what to expect. Pre-registration for the masters was looking pretty thin, which I guess could be both good and bad. Personally I always prefer a nice big field, but of course my chances of winning back my entry fee are a whole lot higher with a smaller field.

This year the Vuelta had a new TT and Criterium courses, both of which were vast improvements on prior years. The RR would be contested on the same long flat and hot circuit through seemingly endless sugarcane fields. The TT course was rather unusual in that it used a relatively short section of road that included three U-turns. Damn, I sure had a struggle getting back up to speed after those U-turns. The first one, in fact, was a bit of a disaster for me because I inexplicably shifted the wrong way coming out of it, dumping it into the 12 and practically coming to a stop before I could shift back up four cogs to the one I'd intended to use. Sheesh! Anyway, thanks to having Rolan ahead of me to keep me motivated I still managed 5th in the small masters field. After that we got together with Donald D., hung out at the hotel for a while, and went over to the local Chili's where he got them to put the Tour de France TT on the television. Nice!

The masters criterium didn't start until 5:45 pm, so we missed the worst of the afternoon heat. In addition, there were some big clouds and thunderstorms in the area that offered a nice break from the sun, along with an occasional sprinkle during the earlier women's race. The course for this race was really technical, featuring 8 turns over its 0.8 mi. length. This was my kind of criterium course. The masters race was pretty fast with lots of action, but none of the breaks stuck for very long. With around 5 laps to go Tracy Martin got off the front and, since he hadn't ridden the TT and therefore was already behind on omnium points, the pack didn't respond right away. With about 3 laps to go the speed was starting to ramp up as riders were setting up for the finish and it was looking like he'd be soon be reeled in. I was up near the front as we flew into a double set of sharp right-hand turns when I heard a big crash somewhere behind me. I was already setting up for the next turn and couldn't even look back to see what happened. Things got kind of split up for a little while, but within half a lap I found myself in a group of three chasing Tracy. Someone wisely said, "Let's work together, OK?" to which I promptly agreed. I think if we'd had another lap or two (or a couple of sacrificial teammates!) we would have caught, but when we got the bell a couple of laps later the pace slowed a bit as riders started to think about the impending sprint for 2nd place. In the ensuing sprint I was happy to place 2nd in our group, giving me a 3rd place finish. That's when I found out that Jerry Simon was still lying on the corner with an apparent collarbone fracture. I rushed back over there to see how he was and find out where the ambulance was taking him. As they were loading him into the ambulance he told me to call Mignon who had already picked up his bike and was en route to the wrong hospital. A while later we learned that he hadn't broken the collarbone, but had instead suffered a fairly serious shoulder separation. It'll probably be some time next week before he finds out if there was any ligament damage in need of surgical repair. Thanks to Jerry and most of the rest of the masters throwing themselves to the ground, I moved up from 5th to 4th on the overall.

There was a big group on hand for the road race the next morning. I was kind of dreading this race for two reasons. The course is a dead-flat 16 mile circuit that offers no real opportunities for breakaways. It also features a long straight unprotected finish with sugarcane fields on both sides. You can see the finish from at least a mile and a half away, which usually means a long drawn-out drag race that favors the big powerful riders. Once our 64 mile race got underway I was surprised by how it was going. I think that the combination of heat, distance, lack of terrain, and defensive riding conspired to keep the pace remarkably slow most of the time. Practically the only relief came from one of the Texas riders who definitely won the most aggressive rider prize for the day. He attacked at least ten times, often in succession. The final time, on the last lap, he pulled a rider along with him and the gap grew to at least 45-60 seconds. I found myself spending more and more time on the front just trying to keep the speed within a respectable range. The pack finally started to respond, and once they hit the headwind section they were finally absorbed. By then I was down to my last few sips of water and it was apparent that some of the surviving riders were suffering because of the heat and resulting muscle cramps. For some reason my own legs were feeling pretty good. As usual, someone jumped a bit too early for the sprint and a small gap opened, but when that effort started to fade the rest of us closed and the real sprint fired off just before the 200 meter flag. I was pretty happy, and surprised, to finish 2nd in that one. A little while later when the (excellent, BTW) officiating crew posted the final results I was shocked to find that I'd tied on points for 1st overall and that the tie had been broken in my favor since Jed Darby, who had been leading, had somehow lost contact during the road race and missed out on a lot of points.


So now I'm at home getting ready to put in a few hours working on a slew of research proposals that we are collecting ahead of some probably new oil-spill related funding. The proposals have been coming in as a steady stream all weekend and all day today as well, so it's a challenge to sort though them all and get them categorized and organized in a manageable way. It's kind of fun too, and I'm really impressed to see so many of our faculty working over the holiday weekend on this.

Three in a Row

For the third morning in a row I was out riding in the rain. This is getting old, especially considering that I've also ridden home from work in the rain twice. I guess it could be worse. It's not cold, so an hour in the rain on the bike isn't all that terrible, especially with fenders to keep the spray off your feet and back. It does have its down side, though. For one thing, I can never really push myself very hard when it's raining and I'm all alone. The other problem is that I probably get a flat on 30% of the rides I do in the rain. Thursday's ride was one of them. I keep meaning to put some Mr. Tuffy's in the tires of my rain bike, but of course I never think about the rain bike until it rains. So apparently I picked the worst possible week to be without a car. But wait. There's more.....

The Vuelta de Acadiana is this weekend over in Lafayette and I have a couple of problems I haven't had time to work out yet. The freshly repaired LAMBRA race clock is sitting in my office. There's a brand new LAMBRA generator waiting for me over at Freret Hardware. Did I mention that I don't have a car right now? Both need to be in Lafayette early Saturday morning, preferably along with me.

At least the bathroom is finally kinda sorta finished. Everything is painted, a couple of shiny new cabinet latches have been installed, a transom chain has been added to the laundry hamper door, and the paint cans have been relegated to the basement where they will probably languish until I forget what's in them.