Unseasonably Fast

The incongruity was impossible to ignore.  It was the third week of February, my air-conditioner was running, and the pre-dawn temperature was 70° F with a predicted high of 80°.  Short-sleeve jersey weather.  I peeked through the Levelors expecting to see fog, but instead noted only a strong south wind.  It's hard to believe how long this stretch of spring-like weather has lasted.  The lowest temperature that the ten-day forecast currently has on offer is a unimpressive 47°.  The only problem with this fortuitous situation is that about half of the local ridership is acting like it's late March already. I have to admit I'm probably one of them, even though my head is still writing a few checks that my legs can't cash.

So thanks to the unseasonably warm stretch of weather, along with a racing season that is beginning to poke its head over the horizon, this morning's turnout was probably the largest we've had thus far in 2011. As we headed off up the river I looked at the long line of twenty or so riders, felt the steady crosswind, and thought, "This is going to get ugly."  Fortunately the wind direction was offering a scant but noticeable tailwind vector.  Unfortunately, that just meant that the guys in front went even faster.  It wasn't long before I was seeing steady speeds in the 27-30 mph range, and when I dropped way back near the tail end of the paceline I knew I'd probably made a mistake.  The string of riders was already showing some stress and I figured it would just take one or two little surges and stretch of crosswind to undo the whole thing.  We weren't too far past the parish line when it happened.  A couple of riders who had been left too long out in the crosswind started to blow and a gap opened.  I sucked it up and went around, latching onto the wheel of another rider who had found himself in a similar situation.  The front part of the group was starting to pull away.  Suddenly the rider in front of me eased up, momentarily trapping  my front wheel between the edge of the road and his rear wheel.  "Go, go!" I yelled.  No response.  I slowed even more in order to extricate my rear wheel and was finally able to go around on the left.  The gap to the tail end of the front group was still growing - maybe five seconds or so - as I stood on the pedals and made that all-too-familiar last-ditch effort.  Somehow I made it into the draft; the last rider to get across.  For the next few miles all I could do was hang on to whatever thin sliver of draft I could find as the road wound its way along the Mississippi.

After such an unseasonably fast ride out to the turnaround, I wondered if there might be some mercy on the return trip, which I knew would involve considerably more headwind. Although the speeds were more in the 22-25 mph range, the headwind was making things difficult.  By the time we were halfway back the group had already fractured in a few places.  A surge took a handful of riders off the front of the front group and I put my head down to try and limit the losses.  As I pulled off I was surprised to see Howard sprinting past me with another rider on his wheel.  Thanks.  Somehow I managed to claw my way back up to the group when its speed slacked.  I think we were down to six or so chasing Tim, Woody and Mark.  We got a rotation going and were holding our own, but luckily Tim and Mark turned off to go home, so at that point Woody eased up so we could catch.  Things were a little less severe for the rest of the ride, and after we got back to the playground I hung around for a while to wait for Zack who needed to follow me home in order to borrow a Tulane jersey for the Austin race this weekend.  I think tomorrow is going to have to be an easy day for me, especially with the NOBC training camp coming up this weekend.

Weekend Decisions

It was like springtime in February down here in New Orleans last weekend, and with a lot of things going on that made for some difficult decisions.  You just can't be in two places at once.  Saturday morning I was up early for the Giro Ride despite the fact that the city was pretty well fogged in and there was a small weekend race up in Monroe.  As usual, I wore an extra layer since I figured I'd be wet most of the time, and headed out for Starbucks with blinky lights flashing and my glasses in my pocket.  Although I was wearing knee-warmers, it was certainly warm enough by 7 am to go with bare skin, which is the approach that most of the riders took.  I figured that my old knees would appreciate the extra warmth and kept them on, if only because it was easier to carry them on my legs than in my pockets.  Not surprisingly, the warmer weather made for a rather brisk Giro Ride, even though the fog didn't start to burn off significantly until we were nearly finished. The only problem was the increasing amount of mud that has been accumulating on Chef Highway, thanks to the nonstop stream of dump trucks working on various levee projects.  The fact that the morning's fog had left all of that mud nice and sticky didn't help much.  I'm thinking I may as well just blow off cleaning anything on the bike except the drivetrain until April.  On the way back, just after the Goodyear sign sprint, we all ended up on the debris-strewn shoulder because of a dump truck convoy.  By the time we were approaching the turn onto the service road Lenny already had a flat tire, and as we were waiting for him to fix it, Charlie looked at his tire, then at me, and asked, "do you hear something hissing?"  Lenny went through three tubes before finding one that had a long enough stem and didn't explode, so Charlie had lots of time to get his flat fixed. A brief post-ride club breakfast at Kona meant I didn't get home until nearly noon.

Saturday evening was the Krewe du Vieux down in the Quarter, and we planned on an early dinner at Santa Fe on Esplanade followed by an attempt to get close enough to the parade.  Well, dinner was great, but by the time we got down to the quarter it was obvious we weren't going to find a place to park without suffering through forty-five minutes of parade gridlock, so we decided to bail since one of the party has been fighting a back problem and wasn't up for a long walk.

Sunday I had to decide between the Sunday Giro ride, where a group was going to extend the ride to Slidell and back, or the regular Northshore ride. The weather was looking really nice so I decided to do the northshore ride since I haven't made that one in about two months. We had around fifteen for the ride and once again the temperature felt a lot more like mid-March than mid-February. Just after turning off of Tung Road, I heard a commotion behind me and everyone stopped.  At first I thought it was just a simple flat, but it turned out to be a little more complicated than that.  One of the riders on a tri bike had flatted and then had the flat tire wedge itself into the frame, stopping the rear wheel and causing her to skid to a stop.  The result was a two-inch long hole in the tread.  Luckily, I had a piece of Mr. Tuffy stashed in my spare tire bag for just such a problem, and another rider had an old tyvek race number handy, so we were actually able to fashion a good enough boot to get her rolling (back home of course) again. I was feeling a little uncertain about this ride since I hadn't been getting my usual saddle time and certainly hadn't been riding any hills.  Fortunately the general testosterone level in the group remained mostly within normal parameters and despite Saturday's efforts, my legs were feeling pretty good.  By the time we were halfway through the ride I was starting to feel a bit more confident and it was getting harder and harder to fight the urge to push the pace.  I had to keep reminding myself that it was still only Feburary.

I was glad to see that a number of the Tulane riders had made the trip up to Monroe for the Criterium and Time Trial, and now I'm really feeling conflicted about next weekend.  Although it would be a lot of fun to accompany the team to its first South-Central Collegiate Cycling Conference race over in Austin, it happens to be on the same weekend as the NOBC winter training camp up in Natchez.  Since I wouldn't be able to ride if I went to Austin (I'd just be helping with wrenching, logistics, and wound care duties), and since I need all the miles I can get right now, I had to make the decision to go with the training camp, which I expect to be fun too.  Now I'm looking at the March 5-6 collegiate race, Tunis-Roubaix, which is actually offering an Alumni race.  Hmmmmm.  That could be interesting.  Decisions, decisions.

Detoured

I had to check the thermometer twice just to be sure. It was actually in the mid-50s at 6 am Thursday morning.  I might have been tempted to go out with bare legs, but experience has taught me a thing or two about early mornings on the levee.  One of those things is that the ice cold river water does a great job of refrigerating the air in its vicinity.  So I pulled on the knee-warmers and left the shoe covers in place just to be on the safe side. This was going to be an unusual Thursday ride anyway.  The Huey P. bridge construction project was scheduled to shut down both the bike path and river road from Thursday through Sunday, and the only viable detour would involve merging into all of the morning auto traffic on Jefferson Highway.  I figured it was worth a try anyway.  We had a handful of riders for the usual start, so when we got to the road closure we headed down through a heavily industrial area toward Jefferson, waited at a couple of incredibly long red lights (why are the ones in Jefferson Parish so damned long?) and hit Jeff Highway en masse, taking over the right lane without incident, and finally rejoining the bike path near the Harahan PHI heliport.  Once we were on the other side of the closure we came up on a number of other riders who had all started over there rather than brave the traffic. After that, the pace picked up and it was business as usual for the long Thursday ride.  Because of the extra distance and delays involved in getting around the road closures, a number of us ended up turning around at the "big dip" instead of going all the way out to Ormond.  On the way back I managed to lead the group down two dead-end streets hoping to find a better route around the blockage, but we eventually found out way back to the downriver side of the problem.

Thursday evening we took in my mom's orphaned dog and luckily there was no canine bloodshed as he and our other rather neurotic dog got acquainted. We optimistically left them together when we took off for work this morning.


Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

So with the bike path still closed Friday morning, I figured I'd just play it by ear and go out for an easy spin.  The temperature was around 60F and the wind was calm, so naturally there was a pretty thick fog.  I figured I'd be by myself anyway, so I just left the blinky lights on, rode down to the road closure, and then headed back downriver for a couple of easy laps around Audubon Park before heading home.  The weekend weather is looking good so we may actually make it down to the Quarter for the Krewe du Vieux this year.  If, like me, you've always appreciated the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence and its relationship to biological architecture and nature, you'll love the Nature by Numbers video above!

Craziness

The weather was warmer on Tuesday, and I was glad to be able to get out to the levee for the regular morning ride.  When I arrived, however, I was surprised to find the meeting spot deserted.  I checked my watch. Since things have been so chaotic lately, I even checked the day of the week.  Could the group have left early?  Finally a few riders showed up, and as we headed out we could see another group coming our way.  For some reason everyone was just running a few minutes late that day.  With the warmer air had come a bit of fog, but it was really just enough to add a little interest to the background scenery.  The ride itself was fairly low-key.  Woody was still in recovery mode from last weekend's races in Austin and nobody else in the group seemed interested in anything more than a nice smooth training ride pace.  We were probably halfway out to Destrehan when I saw Woody drop quietly to the back with a soft rear tire, mentioning along the way that we should just go on without him and he'd catch us later.  On the way back, after he'd been back in the paceline for a while, the same tire went flat again, leaving him cursing his bad luck.  He'd recently bought that tire and it had been picking up every sharp object from the pavement for a week, causing a number of flats.  Sometimes the rubber on a new tire is just too "green" and seems to get shredded within the first couple hundred miles of use.

Yes, that's Crazy Guy gesturing to his
imaginary supporters.

Anyway, after we got back to the playground and most of the other riders went off on their merry ways, Tom and I continued on toward uptown.  We were near Ochsner when I heard Tom say, "Here comes Crazy Guy."  This particular psycho has had some kind of vendetta against cyclists on the bike path for years and will always walk right on the center line as we come past.  Basically, he's looking for a fight.  I was in front of Tom as we approached him, and as I went past I heard Tom yell something behind me.  As I was to learn later, Crazy Guy had thrown his shoulder into Tom as he was going by, nearly taking him right off his bike. I coasted for a bit and looked back when it was safe, only to see Tom making a U-turn. Since I didn't know at the time that Crazy Guy had assaulted him, I wondered why Tom seemed so incensed. Another rider, who had been coming the other way at the time had also stopped.  When I realized that Tom wasn't just going to let it go right away, I turned around myself, since this guy is, after all, crazy.  I pulled out my camera and got a couple of shots as they were yelling at each other, but by the time I got there Crazy Guy was already walking away and Tom was just shaking his head saying, "that guy's crazy."  No kidding?

Wednesday morning's ride was pretty tame by comparison.  The group of ten or so rotated smoothly in the 22 mph neighborhood, taking five minute long pulls.  Just what I needed after all of the craziness I've been through in the last few days.

End of the Road

It was once again in the low 30s on Friday and I was glad that David, a rider in town from NC, had agreed to meet me at my house for the morning ride.  I was pretty sure that we'd be the only ones out there, since Fridays are typically sparse and cold Fridays even more so.  Even better, he'd gotten his friend to come out as well. We'd ridden together on Thursday morning when the cold and wind had once again scared off everyone else, but by Friday the wind had died down a bit and there was at least a little hope for sunshine. 

We had a really nice easy ride out to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish.  On the way back David did a few moderate intensity intervals, but he let us know when he was about to ramp it up, so it was a simple matter to stay on his wheel and drop it down a cog or two for a few minutes at a time.  I was already looking forward to the Saturday Giro Ride, especially since I wasn't sure how things would work out on Sunday since I'd have family in town.  On the way back we ran into Vivian and after riding alongside her for a few minutes I heard my phone ring.  It's never a good thing when my phone rings before 8 am in the morning.  It was the sitter at my mother's place calling to tell me she's just called 911.  I dropped off the back and stopped, fumbling with my phone until I finally pulled off the double layer of gloves so I could call my sisters and my brother who was on his way from Orlando to New Orleans for a visit and so that his son could run the Mardi Gras Marathon.  I rushed home, changed clothes, and headed to the hospital.  The news was not good and by eleven o'clock my mother had passed away without ever regaining consciousness.

With most of the arrangements having been made on Saturday, and my nephew scheduled to run the MGM on Sunday, I was planning to ride the Giro and then see if I could find him when we returned.  It was a cold morning but the sky was clear and I knew the temperature would warm up by fifteen degrees by 9:30, so I headed out for Starbucks rather lightly dressed, at least by my standards.  There was a pretty good group for the ride, although a few of the regulars were testing their legs over in Texas at the Tour of New Braunfels race.  During the ride a few people commented on the Tulane riders who had come out to the Giro on Saturday.  They are all trying to get ready for their first Conference race on the 26th and 27th in Austin.  Although one or two of them were new to group training rides and a bit sketchy in the pack, they all handled the pace OK.  

Anyway, Sunday's ride was really good in that the pace was neither too slow nor too fast and the weather was practically perfect once the sun came over the horizon.  We arrived back at the corner of Marconi and Robert E. Lee about half an hour before my nephew came by at mile 20.  I'd been signed up to get text messages from the chip timing system when he crossed certain checkpoints during the race, so it was easy to figure out where he was and what pace he was running. Later, I made my way down to the finish line in City Park and met up with my brother and his family and Candy. After the finish they decided to go over to Whole Foods for lunch, so I had to hustle back home, change into my civilian clothes, and drive over to to Magazine Street.  I got there just a couple of minutes after they did, so it all worked out pretty well.  Tomorrow will be a busy day, of course, and by the time I get through that I'm sure I'll be looking forward to returning to work on Wednesday.

Shrinkage and Sunshine

It was in the low 30s when I arrived at Starbucks on Saturday and I could already tell that the shrinkage factor had taken its toll on the Giro Ride turnout, if not on certain aspects of male anatomy.  We rolled out under a grey sky with a skeleton crew of about a dozen and a tempting west wind.  It was the first time I'd been on the bike since Tuesday, and the cumulative effect of my drastically reduced training volume really started to hit home once the pace ramped up on Hayne Blvd.  There are a couple of things about group rides or, for that matter, road races, that don't always seem obvious at first but soon etch themselves into every rider's brain.  The first is that any ride feels harder with a small group, even if you stay off the front.  The second is that it's ofter harder to stay with a group or close a gap when there's a direct tailwind than when there's a direct headwind.  So there I was in our small group blasting down Hayne Blvd. with a direct tailwind as a small group started pulling away ahead of us. One thing about a Giro ride when it's cold and windy is that the riders who actually do show up are probably not the ones who are accustomed to sitting at the back chatting about the weather.  The result yesterday was a good fast ride all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. The ride back was another story.  The combination of a stiff headwind and a small group made the return trip a long one.  By the time we were back to City Park I felt like I'd been ridden hard and put up wet.  Don't you just love that feeling?

So family duties being what they are of late, I had to pass on a couple of good ride options today.  There was a long northshore ride that I would have liked to do, and there was also a joint Tulane/LSU ride up in St. Francisville.  Considering my current fitness level, the latter might have been the better choice, but since I had to be back home by 11 am I didn't have to make a decision anyway.  For me it would be another Giro Ride.  The ride out to Starbucks felt a lot like it had the day before except that there wasn't any wind.  We were also expecting a lot of sunshine, once the sun came up, so even though I wore one fewer layer I knew I'd be warm once the Giro got going.  Even so, those knee warmers under the tights and that nice NOBC winter jacket were well-appreciated as I made my way down Carrollton Avenue with around thirty-six degrees on the thermometer.  The ride itself had a somewhat larger turnout than the day before, and although there were a few fast stretches, it felt considerably smoother and easier than the prior day's Giro.  Oh, while I'm thinking about it, I'd like to thank the New Orleans Police Department for not ticketing half of the group when it rolled through a stop light on Chef right in front of one police car and right behind another.  If we'd been in Dallas I'd probably be writing this from the county jail.  I would have taken more pictures the last couple of days, but working the little buttons on the pocket camera while riding with two layers of gloves just wasn't worth it.