Chocolates and Cold

Saturday morning was pretty cold and fairly windy, and as usual I was running a few minutes late after debating what to wear for the Giro Ride. There wasn't really a chance I'd miss the ride itself, but I was definitely going to have less time to sip my pre-ride coffee.  Fortunately, I got there early enough to put a pretty good dent into my cup of Christmas Blend before we rolled out. 

Considering the cold and wind, I was expecting a fairly smooth ride with a lot of rotating paceline work.  I couldn't have been more wrong. The first clue was the relatively fast pace along Lakeshore Drive.  I heard some time later that there were some rider who had missed the group entirely because we were ahead of our usual schedule.  The cross/headwind along Hayne Blvd. kept most of us pretty close to the gutter while a small contingent at the front pushed the pace. Once we made the turn onto Paris Road, the wind was more at our backs, though, and the speed ramped up.  When we came to the place where we cross over two lanes of interstate traffic, though, things didn't go too well.  (We really should be using Bullard on the way out to avoid this!).  The front of the group cut across in front of a Semi that had slowed down for us, but then, coming around the truck on the outside, was a dualie pickup that was not slowing down.  So the back part of the group, including me, had to back off and wait until it was safe, which opened a large gap. 

The front of the group continued hammering away down the road, so Howard went to the front and pushed our pace up to 30-32 mph.  After a little while on his wheel I checked my December training plan and couldn't find anything on it about going 30 mph chasing down ill-gotten breakaways, so I backed off a bit as the rest of the riders who'd survived went around me.  I figured that things would probably come back together on the service road anyway. Wrong again. Looking up ahead I could see Rob attacking off the front of the group as it made the left turn to cross under the interstate on the way to the service road. I knew I was, well, in trouble. Although I was holding the gap for a while, there was no way I was going to close it once we got onto Chef Highway, so I ended up riding the rest of the way out to Venetian Isles alone before turning around and getting back into the group for the return trip where the irregular pace continued.  On the ride home I commented to someone, "The Giro is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get."   It was still pretty cold by the time I got home.  I doubt the temperature had risen more than five degrees.

So Sunday was an NOBC group ride that was planned to be a no-drop 50 miler at a fairly easy pace.  It was still pretty cold this morning and even colder across the lake, and it didn't look like we'd be seeing much of the sun, so I piled on the clothes for the well-attended ride that had attracted nearly twenty riders to the Abita Springs start. I guess it was somewhere in the 38-40 degree range at the start, and although I knew I'd probably get a little sweaty underneath my nice warm NOBC winter jacket, I had a feeling it wasn't going to warm up a lot and I'd rather be warm and wet than cold and dry.  Cold diuresis was in full effect and a nature stop was called for not to long after we'd rolled out.  There's nothing like the combination of coffee and cold to precipitate a group nature break!  Anyway, it was a good ride at a good pace, and after the ride, many of us headed across the street to the Abita Brewpub for lunch.  In my case that was an oyster loaf, fries and a pint of Turbodog (I wasn't driving).