Summer Gunk

I jumped onto the bike this morning, took a few pedal strokes, and realized it was still on the big ring from the prior day's ride.  I pushed on the left shifter, felt it click three times, and waited for the chain to drop down to the small chainring.  It didn't.  I reached down and felt for the cable alongside the down tube to see if it was slack. It was.  That meant that, as usual for this time of year, the derailleur or bottom bracket cable guide was all gunked up.  This kind of thing seems to happen around the end of the summer each year.  After a few months of dripping sweat, and often Gatorade, all over the bike, it's not exactly unexpected.  I know the inside of my shifters must be looking a little gunky, but as long as they keep working I'll probably put off doing anything about it until winter.  I'm quite certain that if I were to remove my handlebar tape I'd find the aluminum bars marked with dusty white clumps of oxidation despite the anodized finish. Just the other day I noticed that Taylor was riding his old bike and when I asked him about it he said that his good bike was at the shop where they were trying to figure out how to get the crank arm off since it had welded itself to the axle during the summer. 

The weather forecasters around here are pretty much throwing their hands up about this weekend.  There's a developing depression in the middle of the Gulf right now and it's possible we're in for a stretch of heavy rain. Or maybe not.  Meanwhile the next storm is about to become a hurricane out in the Atlantic. Guess we'll know in a couple of days if we're in for some trouble.

Another Forty Kilometers

I was loading up the car at 5 am and seriously wondering if I really should be considering doing another 40k time trial.  I certainly had ample excuses - a bad night's sleep, a likely headwind, and of course the fact that I was also supposed to be officiating.  There were also the undeniable facts that I'm not very good at it, and I was basically riding a regular road bike with clip-on aero bars. I suppose if I'd been racing every weekend for a couple of months I might well have decided to sit this one out. As it turned out, however, the NBO guys had pulled together plenty enough volunteers, Mark was there to help officiate, and Robin was there to handle course setup.  So I figured, "What the hell?"

After wrapping up registration we got everyone together and started the stopwatches and race clock at precisely 7:50 am and the start line crew headed off to get things going right on time at 8 am.  My start time wasn't for about an hour, so I had lots of time to get my act together.

I still wasn't really up for a full-on time trial effort, and was looking at this one more as a good hard training ride, so when they said go, I took off at maybe an 80% effort level.  By the time I got settled in, I knew this would be a hard one.  The course headed almost straight into a significant north wind for 20 km, and within the first of those I already knew I wouldn't be doing a very good time.  The whole way out I kept fluctuating between going hard and backing off, all the while fearing that I might overdo it and blow up before the end.  My lagging motivation wasn't helping the situation either, and I ended up spending way too much time in the low 20s.  I'd started out at a nice pace, around 26-27 mph, but over the first few miles I saw that speed drop considerably and was soon struggling to hold 24 mph.  Even that didn't last too long.  I'm sure I saw my speed drop down to 20 mph a couple of times.

After the turnaround it quickly became obvious why I'd felt so lousy on the way out.  With the wind at my back I was able to spend a fair amount of time in the 27-28 mph range.  Still, I already knew I wasn't going to go sub-hour that day.  In the end, I posed a time of 1:00:17, finishing just behind Jorge who had started two minutes after me.  After a quick cool-down, I got started on the results.  I was pretty impressed with the winning time of  53:50, considering the wind.  By 11:45 I was back home working on posting the results.

So last night, or should I say this morning, I was awakened by a loud crash right outside my bedroom window. Looking through the blinds I could see that a police car had run into my own parked car.  It was around 4:30 am.  Sheesh.  I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs as three other police cars appeared. I guess it must have been s slow night.  Anyway, I guess I'll be finding out how good the police department's insurance company is.

Little Changes

There's a whole lot of hot weather still to come, but already I'm seeing those little changes that make me think of Fall.  All week, on my commutes up and down Lowerline and Pine streets, there were Tulane students with loaded-up cars and U-hauls moving into the many apartments around here.  On Tuesday I had finally broken down and put the headlight onto the handlebar for the 6 am ride out to the early levee ride.  Although the temperature hasn't really been noticeably cooler, the shortening days are becoming more and more obvious.  People are starting to think about the local MS Tour and our annual pilgrimage to Dahlonega for the Six Gap Century. Today is move-in day at Tulane, which means a steady stream of confused drivers with luggage on their roofs and foreign license plates on their cars.  Meanwhile, The Wife is working on making dinner for about a hundred students for the catholic center.  I spent some time yesterday evening on the start list and results spreadsheet for tomorrow's LAMBRA time trial championship.  It's looking like there will be about zero chance of rain, but a pretty good chance of a north wind.  Yes, I said "north."  With a big high pressure area drifting to the west of us and the big Hurricane Irene to the east, we're getting a little taste of drier air around here.

This morning I rode out to meet the pre-Giro coffee group with both lights blinking and my sunglasses in my pocket.  Since a number of the local riders are planning on riding the time trial tomorrow, including me, I was expecting a relatively civilized Giro Ride today.  Since I'll be both officiating and riding tomorrow, I'm not too focused on doing a spectacular time trial.  I'll be doing this one mainly for the exercise, and probably without much of a warmup, but since it looks like we'll have enough people on hand to handle the start and finish lines, I think I can get away with it.  Based on the Start List that I put up last night, I'll be starting about in the middle, almost an hour after the first rider.  Anyway, as I'd expected, today's Giro wasn't too much of a leg-crusher.  I spent most of the ride toward the back, and although we spent a fair amount of time in the 27-30 mph range, it was definitely a bit less aggressive than usual.  Now I just need to stage everything so I can get out the door by 5:50 or so tomorrow morning -- generator, clock, stand, table, chairs, traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, PA system, extension cord, etc. Then I'll need to get my bike cleaned up, tire fixed, and race bag packed.

Lakefront Pile-up

I was feeling unusually tired all day at work yesterday, which was keeping me kind of on the fence about doing the Wednesday Night Worlds out at the lakefront. By 4:00, though, things had gotten pretty quiet and I had a chance to catch the finish of the US Pro Cycling Challenge on Tour Tracker as they raced in to Aspen.  As the pack, mostly all back together after the earlier climb, was closing in on the finish the video feed started getting worse and worse.  Finally, it cut off altogether and they started showing video from earlier in the day and pictures of cute children waiting at the finish line. It has started to rain and, since they were probably already at around 10,000 feet, the helicopter apparently started to ice and had to pull up.  So finally the video comes back on, much to the relief of Phil Ligget, and we get to see a pretty exciting final few kilometers that rather surprisingly ended with a win by that old guy George Hincapie, once again proving the old saying, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill."  Not that George is particularly lacking in the skill department.  So with that, and an opportunity to slip out of the office ten minutes early, I decided I may as well ride out to the lakefront and jump into the training race.

I rode up Carrollton and Wisner at a nice easy pace, arriving at the Elysian Fields traffic circle at precisely the right time, merging smoothly into the 25-rider group as it started its half-lap warmup.  The wind was light at the start and although there were a few attacks and brief breakaways, in general the training race yesterday was staying firmly within the "moderate" range, relatively speaking.  I had decided before the start to sit in for the first two (of four) 6-mile laps before putting my nose into the wind, so when we started lap 3 I moved up and did a little more work, occasionally finding myself off the front when the pace would slacken. At one point there was an acceleration at the front and a gap started opening ahead of VJ.  As often happens, VJ didn't respond, but for some reason the riders behind him were having a hard time making a commitment to go around.  It was as if they were sitting in a nice soft easy chair in a house that was on fire, but didn't want to get up because it was so comfortable.  Of course, eventually riders started jumping around from behind and things got caught up, but not without a fair amount of unnecessary effort.

With about half a lap to go the group was still mostly intact and although the pace was getting faster and more aggressive, it still wasn't putting too many people in difficulty.  The wind had started picking up and was coming from the lake as we headed east, which resulted in a pretty long line up against the right-hand curb.  I was up near the front six or seven with Daniel, Kenny, Francis, and Allie, among others.  There had been a little surge that had just subsided and just ahead of me and to the left Kenny and Francis suddenly eased up.  Apparently they had both started to attack through the same gap at the same time and when each realized that the other was doing the same they both backed off at the same time. From behind I thought they had actually bumped shoulders or something, but anyway the effect was that a couple of riders went past them on the left and the rest of us, including the rider in front of me, went right, which put us right up against the curb.  It all happened very quickly, and just as quickly we got straightened out and everything seemed fine.  I had time to say aloud, "What was that about?"  I'd no sooner gotten the words out of my mouth when I heard the sound of crashing riders behind me, complete with some rather harsh "vocalizations."  We eased up and turned around, and I was surprised to see so many people on the ground.  I guess that the sudden slowdown, together with the light crosswind, overlapping wheels, and end-of-race jitters had made for a bad combination.  By the time I got back there Charlie D. was sitting on the curb with the back left shoulder of his jersey shredded and what looked like an obvious collarbone break. Robert M. was still lying on the road with blood all over his lower face, and a few others were still trying to untangle themselves from the pile-up.  The fire department and ambulances arrived shortly thereafter and a few of us spent some time searching the roadway for a couple of broken teeth that Robert was missing. I think it was Doug who also had a shoulder injury - maybe just an acromyoclavicular joint issue - and Elizabeth had jammed her wrist badly enough that she couldn't pick up her water bottle.  In addition, there was a fair amount of road rash and broken wheels all-around.  Once the first riders had gone down, it looked like most of those behind them had no option but to plow right into, or over, them. It was a pretty big crash, but it had been caused by a combination of four or five little things that, by themselves, wouldn't ever have caused problems.  As I rode with Allie back uptown, feeling like I'd really dodged a bullet, I was glad I had left the blinky light on the bike from the Tuesday morning ride because it was a bit later than usual by the time I got home.

The Blue Shirt

The Saturday Giro was remarkably civilized this week, probably because a number of the regulars were planning on doing the LAMBRA Team Time Trial Championship the next day.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was scheduled to officiate that one with Mark D. since it was fairly nearby.  That meant that I had no reason to conserve on Saturday and was therefore able to ride at the front now and again with reckless abandon.  Seriously, though, it was really quite a nice Giro Ride -- good and fast at times and otherwise respectably brisk.  The night before I had cleaned the bike, something I seem to do less and less frequently the more I ride.  It took some time for me to remove the sticky spots and streaks down around the bottom bracket where HammerGel-laced water had repeatedly dripped and dribbled over the previous week.  It reminded me why I don't usually like to put anything except water in my water bottles.  After the ride and back at home I charged up the LAMBRA clock, double-checked the registration and results spreadsheet, and staged all of the needed equipment in front of the basement door in anticipation of a 5:00 am departure.  Registration was set to open at 7 am down in Labadieville, LA where there is mostly just sugar cane and water, and 37% of the population claims French or French-Canadian heritage.

At 4:30 am the alarm went off and I slipped on The Blue Shirt for a day of official officiating.  Somehow I got the car loaded up and was on the road Sunday morning about five minutes ahead of schedule, and with the Garmin lady giving directions made my way across the Luling suspension bridge, coming down onto those long flat lonely highways that connect towns with names like Thibodeaux, Pierre Part, and Napoleonville.  The local club, appropriately named Bayou Country Cyclists, arrived in force just ahead of me, and within half an hour we were all set up for registration. This was the club's first race, which they were co-hosting with Tiger Cycling out of Baton Rouge, but since we had been working on the details for a few weeks, everything was working pretty well.  Of course there were the usual riders who had forgotten their licenses, or had, presumably, renewed their licenses online the night before, etc.  Anyway, things went quite smoothly since there were only 21 teams on hand.  Now that the Team Time Trials no longer count toward individual LCCS points, I think we need to combine some categories for these events to make it easier for clubs to put together their teams.  Something to think about for next year.  Results were done about one minute after the last team finished, so I just had to bring the laptop back to the registration area, print out the results, and hand out the medals.  The only problem was that, after spending about an hour in the sun, the laptop's mouse stopped working.  It's happened before when it got hot like that.  I think I need to be more careful about keeping the laptop, and myself, in the shade.  The course must have been pretty fast because the Herring team posted a 1:00:22 time for what was apparently a 29.4 mi. out-and-back course, which means they were rarely looking at anything under 30 mph the whole time.  A Cat. 4 team posted the next fastest time.  Perhaps some of those guys need to be thinking about upgrades.

This morning's ride was the usual early morning levee route.  I was up a little earlier than usual and today was the first time I put the headlight on the bike for the ride out to the levee.  I always find it kind of depressing when the days start getting shorter like this. The group was pretty big today and the pace was fast out to The Dip, but about half of the riders turned around there, or before, so after that the pace settled down into the 23-24 mph range for most of the remainder.

Mechanicals

It all started Tuesday night.  Around 9:30, The Wife, who would probably be perfectly comfortable sleeping in a refrigerator with a fan blowing on her, announced, "It's 77 degrees in here."  Her tone made me feel like it was somehow my fault.  In fact, I quickly realized that the central a/c blower wasn't blowing.  Hoping it was something simple, I went down to the basement to check the circuit breaker, but alas, it was fine.  Something was broken.  Just a couple of days before this the icemaker in my freezer had stopped working and I'd ended up ordering a new one since the part I needed to fix it cost almost as much as a whole new one. Anyway, since the low temperatures around here have rarely been below 80F, it was a rather uncomfortable night despite the ceiling fan.  The next morning I called the a/c folks who had installed the unit just two years ago, and by 11:00 or so the technician arrived.  He spent at least an hour checking things and making phone calls, and finally narrowed it down to either the circuit board or the blower motor.  This did not surprise me, since those were really the only two possibilities.  The problem was that in order to run the diagnostic on the electronics he needed a testing device that, at the moment, happened to be on another job in Belle Chasse, so he took off to meet up with whoever had it, and returned a few hours later.  Then, after another hour or so of testing, he decided that the problem was indeed the blower motor, which, of course, they didn't have in stock since it's a variable-speed blower controlled by no fewer than sixteen colorful wires.  We'd have to wait until Wednesday afternoon for the part to arrive.  I stuck my little emergency backup window unit into the bedroom window, cranked it up to high, and closed the door.  It was probably around 85F in the house by then.  Some time around 1 pm on Wedesday I got the call and headed back home to meet the technician who spent another couple of hours installing the new blower and scratching his head.  In the meantime, the replacement icemaker showed up, so I installed it.  Things were looking up.  Eventually he got the blower working, checked the compressor, checked the air temperature, and took off with my check for $300. Luckily, the motor itself was still under warranty, so that was just for the labor. I was never convinced that he really knew what he was doing, however. By then it was really hot in the house, but I wasn't planning on sticking around long since there was a team time trial out at the Lakefront that I'd agreed to ride.

I'd actually been looking forward to this little Team Time Trial, since I knew I wasn't going to be able to ride in the district championship one this weekend, having, in a weak moment, volunteered to officiate it.  So the night before I'd bolted on the aero bars.  By the time the a/c guy was gone I was running a little late, so rather than ride out to the lakefront wearing a geeky TT helmet after being stuck in a hot house all afternoon I figured I'd throw the bike in to the car. I got one of the last parking spots across from Kona Cafe, pulled the bike out and took off in search of Charlie.  As it turned out, Mark G. couldn't make it, so we were already one rider short, but we quickly recruited Diego who was there looking for a team.  We went out for a little warmup, since we were the 27th team to start and had a little time to kill.  I was feeling pretty good and the team of Charlie, Squeaky, Diego and me seemed to be really smooth. Finally our turn came up, and we took off, quickly getting organized and rolling along at 27-28 mph, which seemed like a good starting speed.  Well, we weren't a mile down the road when I heard the sound of air escaping from a tire -- mine.  Crap!  If you're going to flat in a team time trial, you don't want it to be in the first mile.  You want it to be near the end when you really need the excuse, hanging on for dear life and barely able to get onto the back of the paceline after taking a pull.  I pulled out of the paceline and told Diego I'd flatted. Feeling extremely frustrated, I changed the tube, pumped it up, rode back about 200 yards, and realized that it was going flat again. I ended up just riding the rest of the way very slowly on the flat front tire because I was just too pissed off to stop again and change it.  When I got home the house was cooler but it still wasn't down to normal.  In fact, it was still 77F at 10 pm.  This morning the a/c had finally caught up with the thermostat, but I'm a little worried that something got screwed up.  I guess I'll find out this evening when I get home.

Escape from the Giro

During a normal summer, which this has thus far definitely not been, the Giro Ride serves as a convenient training ride on the one or two non-race weekend a month.  Just after 6 am on Saturday I headed out from home for another Giro.  I'd completely lost count of the number of Giro Rides I'd done in a row.  All I knew was that it was a lot. It was a pretty big turnout and things were rolling along as normal as the speed started to ramp up along Hayne Blvd.  Suddenly there was a loud bang up ahead and I saw Mignon coasting over to the curb with a flat front tire.  A number of us stopped, but since the speed had been pretty high when it happened, I didn't really expect everyone to wait.  The tire had blown through the sidewall in a place where the casing had separated from the tire bead.  I had a piece of an old Tyvek race number in my bag and we put in a temporary patch, but there was no telling how long it would hold.  Mignon headed back with a couple of others and the rest of us got going again.  I was surprised to find that pretty much everyone had waited for us.  So it turned out to be an otherwise normal Giro.  As we were on the way back I asked Jay if the northshore guys were planning on doing the regular training ride on Sunday.  For a change, I didn't have anything on my card for Sunday. I was more than ready for a ride on the northshore.

Later that evening, after a few emails, I learned that Jay, Jason and some of the other northshore riders were planning to do the MS Tour training ride route, but that they wanted to start at 7:30, ahead of the official 8:00 start.  It was a little early, but I quickly decided to do it. Jordan had mentioned he was interested in a northshore ride, so I arranged to pick him up on the way.

We arrived at the Tammany Trace trailhead with about half an hour to spare, and by 7:30 we had a nice little group of six or so as we rolled north on the bike path.  The official route was only 45 miles, but we added a little loop on Kenzie and Section Road to add a few miles.  We picked up a few additional riders along the way and in general the pace was what I'd call moderately fast.  It felt good to be riding the little rolling hills, but for some reason my legs were really burning on the climbs.  Perhaps I'd pushed it a little too hard on Saturday.  Anyway, it turned out to be a good training ride and the early start got me back home well before noon.

There's an unofficial 4-person time trial on Wednesday out at the lakefront.  I think I'd like to do that if I can find a team willing to have me., especially since I won't be able to do the TTT championship this weekend because I have to officiate it.  I spent a good three hours today cleaning up the final results of the Oxford races for which we finally got the license numbers that I need for the club and team information.  As usual, there were a number of riders who didn't have valid licenses, had wrong license numbers listed, and even one who was a Cat. 3 but raced in the Cat. 4 race.  I still have to format the results of all three races for the USAC database upload, and then score it all for the LCCS, which I really should get done in the next day or two.  But not tonight.......

WNW

I walked out of the office promptly at 5 pm, trying to ignore the stifling heat as I made my way over to the bike rack.  For a change, I wasn't running too late for the local Wednesday Night Worlds training race out at the lakefront.  The weather around here lately has been pretty warm, and although we've been getting little afternoon rain showers here and there, it hasn't interfered too much with riding.  I'd done the long levee ride on Tuesday morning, and then the regular morning ride today, and as I rode the commuter back to the house I briefly considered the wisdom of putting in another thirty or forty miles, but really, the training races are just too much fun to pass up.

Back at the house I filled up the water bottles, put on the still-damp gloves I'd worn that morning, and headed off into the Carrollton Avenue traffic.  Somewhere around Canal Street, Jordan rolled up from behind and we rode together (OK, mainly he pulled and I drafted) out to Lakeshore Drive, arriving just in time to catch the group during its half-lap warmup.  The next four 6-mile laps were pretty fast, animated in the beginning by Diego's relentless attacks.  My plan for the day could be easily summed up with, "Don't get dropped."  It wasn't as easy as it sounds, and by the time we were halfway through we'd already shed a number of riders.  Of course, despite my best intentions, I still found myself closing a few gaps and putting my nose into the wind occasionally, mostly when the pace wasn't too fast.  Amazingly, everything was still together at the end.  I think it was Jordan who finally jumped, way too early for me, drawing a few riders with him.  I waited patiently, mostly on Kenny's wheel, and finally but in a little 34 mph effort at the end. It seems lately that I'm only good for about 150 meters or so before I blow up.  There's actually a little video of the finish on the WNW facebook page. 

No Coffee, No Race

It was another hot weekend of Giro Rides for me, although up until around 8 pm on Saturday I'd still been considering the solo 5.5 hour drive up to Oxford to make the Sunday criterium.  Needless to say, it didn't happen.  Saturday started out with a slightly diminished Giro thanks to a fair amount of missing horsepower in the group.  That horsepower was up at the Oxford Endurance Weekend.  I made the best of it, though, and got in a pretty good workout despite the rapidly rising temperatures.  I imagine it could only have been worse up there in Mississppi for the time trial and circuit race.  That afternoon we packed up and moved most of the remaining contents of my mother's condominium after having spent all of Friday in the company of a couple of movers from "Mr. Move." This wasn't a simple case of taking everything in one house and moving it to another.  My nephew drove over from Baton Rouge with a U-haul truck, we picked up a U-haul trailer for the niece in Jackson, and of course the movers had their big truck. We had tagged all of the furniture and boxes so that, ultimately, it all got distributed among three houses in New Orleans, an apartment in Baton Rouge, a house in Jackson, and a storage unit in Jackson (ultimately to find its way to Orlando).  Anyway, there was still a lot of stuff at the condo on Saturday afternoon that required attention, including multiple trips to the Salvation Army and the local dumpster, and I think it was almost dark by the time we gave up for the day.  When the dust settled around 10 pm I briefly contemplated the wisdom of getting up at 3 or 4 am and driving up to Oxford in time to make the Master 40+ race, but ultimately decided that my chances of falling asleep at the wheel were significantly greater than those of a good placing.

So Sunday morning I was once again making my way down Carrollton Avenue trying to decide between Iced Macchiato (which at Starbucks is really more of an iced Latte) and regular coffee when, just as I passed the Mexican bar at Tulane Avenue (which was still going strong at 6:15 am), I heard the whack, whack, whack, of something stuck in my tire. The first thing I thought was, "Damn, I'm not going to have time for coffee."  My rear tire had been impaled by one of those damned sheetrock screws which I had to carefully unscrew from the tire.  I changed it out and pumped it up as best I could with my little mini-pump, sacrificed a bit of precious water to rinse off my hands, and continued my trip to rendezvous with the Giro Ride.  Once there, I figured I may as well skip the coffee, and instead walked across the street to where Mark G. was parked to borrow his floor pump.  The group on Sunday was even smaller than it had been on Saturday, but I guess we eventually accumulated 25 riders or so.  Anyway, just as I'm putting my helmet back on and everyone is getting up to start the ride, Mark walks out of Starbucks with a fresh cup of coffee which he ended up carrying with him as we warmed up along Lakeshore Drive.  There were at least four riders on TT bikes this morning, so I knew it was going to be a nice smooth paceline ride.  One of the TT bikes was piloted by Mike W., who recently returned from masters nationals with a couple of medals in an age group that to which we can all still aspire.  He seemed particularly unstable this morning as I watched him swerve from center line to curb along Chef Highway trying to put a water bottle back into one of those triathlete seat-mounted bottle launcher things.  Anyway, as I'd expected, the ride was a bit on the inconsistent side, depending on who happened to be on the front. By the time we were halfway down Chef Highway, still on the way out to the turnaround, it seemed like the number of people interested in being at the front had already gotten pretty small, but luckily we had a nice little tailwind that kept the speed up.

After the turnaround where Mike W went hammering off the front with one rider in tow, things got substantially slower.  Between the headwind and the heat, the group started to get pretty anemic as the pace hovered around the 24 mph mark.  After making a small effort over the Seabrook bridge with Noel, who continued straight on Leon C. Simon to head home, I came around the curve onto Lakeshore Drive and looked back to see the remnant of the group still going up the bridge. So it was a long solo ride back home as I rationed my remaining water and dreamed of vanilla ice cream.

Recovering and Drying Out

After a couple of very rainy weeks down here in New Orleans, the remnants of that big blob of high pressure that had lately been baking most of Texas is now sitting on top of us instead. Fortunately the local forecasters have not given up all hope of afternoon rain. Even so, when I got out of the car today after running some errands around 1 pm, my first thought was, "Man, this feels just like a Texas shopping center parking lot in August."  Everything is going very quickly from soggy to dry around here.

It has been a busy week.  With the act of sale on my mother's condo rapidly approaching we have been spending a lot of time over there sorting through a lifetime of possessions, allocating everything among my brother and sisters, making arrangements for moving, dealing with the last-minute legal and real estate issues, and inhaling far too much house dust to which I am rather allergic.  Despite all of those complications, I did manage a decent week of riding even if I have, by now, all but conceded any hope of really getting in shape any time this season.  Saturday's Giro was fairly typical of a mid-summer Giro Ride. After the usual conversational pace along Lakeshore Drive the speed picked up quickly on Hayne Blvd. It was already pretty hot and exceedingly humid, and I think that tended to keep things more or less under control. Although it was by no means an easy ride out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles, the really fast sections were short and there were a number of places where the pace eased up enough to allow those approaching the red zone to recover.  By the time we were halfway back you could tell that the heat was starting to get to everyone and the pace definitely eased off another notch or two.  I got home just slightly dehydrated and an hour later was over at the condo packing and sorting.

Sunday morning seemed hotter but maybe a little less humid, and looking around the Starbucks patio I was wondering what kind of ride we'd have.  Todd and a small group of riders had left around 5:30 am for a 140 mile ride around Lake Pontchartrain.  Sometimes I wish I could do one of those rides.  This, however, was not one of those times.  Even before we hit Hayne Blvd. my jersey was already soaked with sweat and, looking down at my big water bottle that barely fits between the bottom bracket and top tube, I was glad I'd thought to pour in a big scoop of electrolyte mix that morning.  I'd ridden pretty hard on Saturday, a fact that my legs had apparently not yet forgotten. Basically, I was tired, which made an otherwise nice routine training ride just a little bit less nice. As I sometimes do on these rides, I broke the route down into sections and used some to work and others to recover, which worked out pretty well.  When we were about a mile from the Goodyear Sign sprint, the front of the group started to surge.  They pretty much always start too early for this one, since it's just a long, straight drag race.  I was around mid-pack feeling undecided about making an effort.  This is always dangerous here because some riders near the front will typically just sit up when the sprint starts, effectively opening huge gaps.  That, of course, is exactly what happened.  We were still a long way from the Goodyear sign.  I hesitated for a moment, went around a few people who were backing off, and looked up ahead.  The riders ahead of the gap had momentarily gotten disorganized and started to mushroom across the right lane.  I figured, "what the hell," and put my head down, motioning Tim to catch my wheel as I went by him.  Ramping it up to 30 or 31 mph I closed on the front group pretty quickly and with my legs starting to load up hammered past most of it on the left, easing over as I started to fade so Tim could attack, which he did.  Woody must have been expecting it, though, because he jumped just as Tim came past him and they battled it out for the sprint, which I think Woody won.  Apparently having a leadout from someone who's a foot shorter than you is not a recipe for success.  When Woody and Tim turned off on Bullard (they had parked out there) the pace eased up quite a bit.  I think everyone was getting pretty well fried by then.  I limped back home with Daniel dreaming of ice-cold Coke and Popsicles.

So after another afternoon and evening of packing and sorting, followed by a sweaty two mile walk back home, I checked out early with plans for a Monday morning recovery ride.  It was nice out there this morning as I spun along by myself, rarely exceeding 16 mph, and contemplating the recent rumor that the Jefferson Levee District is planning on putting up signage restricting group rides on the levee bike path. Ironic.  They were the cyclists who originally pushed for the bike path, which is technically a "multi-use" path, but if enough iPod pedestrians make U-turns in front of enough cyclists and crack their earbudded heads on the pavement the risk management people always see restricting, or eliminating, the cyclists as the solution.  I suspect that the morning training ride group isn't really the problem, however.  Whenever I've ridden up there in the afternoon I've seen a lot more crazy riding, and walking.  People on aerobars wearing earphones swerving around pedestrians wearing earphones.  Yikes.  Accidents waiting to happen.