Greener Days

Well another week has somehow slipped through the time portal and I have little to show for it except for a few empty wine bottles and six days of missing blog posts.  It always seems that when I'm busy doing fun things I somehow find time to update the blog, but when things are kind of on auto-pilot and there's nothing really exciting going on, I just can't seem to find the time.  This time, though, I think that the thing that threw the monkey wrench into the works was The Daughter's annual training camp.  This year there were, I think, seven gymnasts and a couple of parents (one of which slipped away mid-week).  They spent most of the week training across the lake, but returned to the house on Friday for a couple of days of sightseeing before boarding the train back to Iowa City.  It all went pretty smoothly, though, and I felt lucky that in a house with 1.5 bathrooms and nine women, I still managed to get into the bathroom when necessary.  Also, although I had to reluctantly pass on Sunday's northshore training ride, at least I was able to do both of the weekend's Giro rides.

On Wednesday I rode out to the lakefront to watch and help with the officially unofficial time trial.  Since we've gotten back into our more normal summer weather pattern (30% chance of scattered afternoon thunderstorms), the area vegetation has been looking greener and greener.  On the downside, one must pay more attention to the weather radar.  An afternoon shower, or perhaps a brisk and shifting wind, was probably responsible for a slight reduction in the number of time trialists on hand for the Wednesday night 10-mile time trial, but the turnout was nonetheless pretty good at about 35 riders.  Frank Moak happened to be in town that day and just happened to have his time trial bike with him, so he proceeded to take 25 seconds out of Brady's time, and everyone who finished remarked that the wind had been a major factor.

Saturday's Giro ride once again had a pretty big group, and as would be expected, the pace was fast.  Even so, it was definitely a notch below that of the prior weekend's Saturday Giro. As I rode home in the rapidly rising summer heat I remember thinking that I should have spent more time at the front.  There wasn't much wind, and so it had been oh so very tempting to roll along at 27 mph safely tucked into the draft.  Since I knew I wouldn't be able to make this coming weekend's races, I guess I was a little short on motivation as well. 

The girls train wasn't scheduled to depart until around 1:45 on Sunday, so I had lots of time for the Sunday morning Giro. Riding out to meet the group at Starbucks I noticed that it already felt warmer and more humid than it had the day before.  The turnout for Sunday's ride was relatively slim, likely a combination of the rising heat and the concurrent northshore ride, but that didn't seem to be slowing things down all that much as we headed out along Hayne Blvd.  I swear, sometimes the rides with the smaller groups feel harder than those with the larger groups, even though the speeds are usually a little slower.  This ride was no exception.  After the turnaround we had a brief recovery period before things ramped up again.  When someone flatted on the service road, I heard at least two people mumble, "thank God!"  By the time I got home I was tired, hungry, dehydrated, and happy to twiddle along in a 39 x 15.

This morning's long levee ride had a good turnout, but when I saw that Rob had brought his time trial bike I knew there would be trouble.  By the time we were five miles down the road the number of people taking pulls was down to about four and gaps were opening all over the place.  It seemed like nobody really wanted to be going that fast, but they also didn't want to get dropped.  It all made for an inconsistent pace.  At one point Donald decided to counter one of Rob's fast pulls and basically attacked.  Rob responded, and a big gap opened that took a little while to close.  That happened a couple of times on this ride, and I think a lot of the riders were kind of sitting at the back of the paceline and enjoying the show. I was glad to see Courtney riding strongly again.  In fact, she was getting particularly frustrated by the uneven pace, and eventually motored to the front for a while to straighten things out.