Pulled

This time of year I always start to feel like I'm being pulled in ten different directions at once. As soon as the days start getting shorter, and the mornings just a bit cooler, people around here start to emerge from their heat-induced August hibernations. There are a few Fall races and rides still to do, some travel looming on the horizon, Tulane cycling club activities, and of course a little surge of activity at work. It's all good, of course, but I find myself doing some things I otherwise hate to do, like not reading some email until the next day and putting off some of the cycling-related work in order to keep up with the work-related work. Fortunately, there's coffee.

So Thursday morning I rode out to meet the morning ride. The gradually waning day length seems to be most noticeable this time of year, probably because sunrise gets pretty close to the start of the rides. On the plus side, the morning temperatures have been relatively pleasant lately, which is to say they've been below 80F. There's even a little cool front that is supposed to be coming through, which should make the weekend weather pretty nice. With the road racing season just beginning to wind down, the training ride speeds begin to fluctuate this time of year, and Thursday morning the pace remained conversational for a long time before finally starting to ramp up. By the end of the ride I was, for a change, not completely drenched with sweat, so I stopped off at Zotz on the way home for a cup of dark roast and a quick check email check. I had to ride downtown for an 11 am meeting, so I just worked from home until 10:30 rather than add the extra four or five miles going to and from my uptown office. Everything was going smoothly. I packed a nice fresh shirt, hopped on the bike, and, with some time to spare rode at a nice gentlemanly speed down Fontainbleau to Broad Street, expecting to have lots of time to change cool down and change shirts before taking the elevator up to the big board room on the 24th floor. Just after crossing Washington Avenue, however, I felt the rear rim hit the ground. Flat tire. I sought out a shady spot on the sidewalk, pulled a sharp sliver of rock out of the tire, and replaced the punctured tube with my spare. It took a little too long to pump up, but I figured I must not have gotten a good seal on the valve, so with maybe 40 psi in the tire I packed up and headed off again down Broad toward the overpass. I didn't even make it to the top of the overpass before the tire went flat again. I was out of options. I glanced at my watch and figured I could probably still make the meeting even though I'd have to ride the last two miles on the flat. It was close, but I made it there, changed into my fresh shirt, and walked into the meeting just about half a minute late with a cold Coke in my hand. Luckily The Wife had taken the car to work, so after the meeting I was able to get the keys and drive the bike and myself back home where I fixed the flat, smeared some olive salad on a slice of bread for lunch, and rode over to the uptown campus for a three hour "subsurface oil sampling" session with the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command and forty of fifty researchers. It was actually pretty interesting. It would have been more interesting if they'd told us who was going to get the next $10M in research funding that they are about to announce.

By 7:30 I was over at Zotz again working on a sponsorship proposal for the Bastille Day Criterium project. Some good progress was made on that, thanks mainly to other people "nudging" me to finally sit down and really get it started. Sometimes I need a little nudge, you know, especially when I'm feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. Anyway, I'm hoping to get in some miles this weekend. Six Gap is approaching and no combination of ultra-low gearing will compensate for insufficent miles when you're seventy miles into a 104 mile ride in the hills.

This morning's Friday ride (that's the photo way up there at the top) was nice and steady. We rolled along in a good paceline taking long pulls at 23-24 mph as we enjoyed the slightly cooler morning air. It was good. Amazingly, I can *still* feel the damage I did to my quads last week. Wow! That is not good.