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!