There were just a few of us on hand for the 6:40 start of the Friday levee ride, which was actually a couple more than I'd expected. We started up a paceline, taking long pulls and enjoying the occasional tailwind stretches on the way out. I had been thinking that the ride back would be nothing but work, however it turned out to be pretty nice. Although we were riding mostly into a quartering headwind, it was one of the most consistent headwinds I've ever seen. That kept things really smooth and made it easy to stay in the draft. Being a Friday the pace was by no means fast, but considering the wind and the small group I'd have to say it was faster than I would have expected. My legs were finally feeling almost normal again, so I guess the decongestants I've been taking are helping. Then again, maybe I was just all doped up and performance-enhanced on pseudoephedrine and just lucky nobody from USADA was waiting at the end of the ride with a plastic cup. Fortunately you have to be over a certain threshold to test positive for that, unlike clenbuterol for which they can apparently test down to the technological limits of detection ("The simple fact is that anyone who has a prohibited substance in their system is a cheat"*), or albuterol for which half of the peloton has TUEs because they all apparently suffer from asthma. Go figure. I stopped at Zotz for a quick cup of coffee (caffeine is also a WADA-legal performance enhancing drug up to a certain limit) and contemplated their coffee-drinking king cake baby sign that seemed to me to hint at some socially questionable pre-war ethnic stereotypes. Considering the likely age and political tilt of the artist, I have to assume any such references were purely unintentional.
*except for those substances that we decided you could use just a little bit or for those people who we randomly decided didn't really mean to cheat.
Last night the parades braved intermittent rain and rolled as scheduled, which turned out to have been a good decision. It's looking like tonight's parades will be fine unless things get delayed. I guess that's why they have moved up their start times by half an hour. Even so, with three parades running one after the other, it will be fairly late by the time the last one makes it all the way downtown. The chance of rain goes up around 10 pm, then drops down to 10% until the early morning hours, but by 7 am tomorrow, when the Giro Ride starts, it's up to 80% with most of Saturday looking to be pretty wet. Saturday night is the Endymion parade that we're supposed to go see downtown at Tulane's Tidewater Building. By the time they make it all the way downtown, and assuming their usual substantial delays en route, most of the rain should have moved through with the next cold front. It's a little too close to call right now. Also too close to call is whether or not I will decide to make an early (like 4:30 am) drive up to Monroe for the TT and Criterium on Sunday. The TT will definitely be on the cold side and likely windy too, but by criterium time in the afternoon things should be a little better. I'll have to see how things go on Saturday night, I think. I know a number of the Tulane riders are going. It's one race that I rarely make because it's always so early in the season and often runs afoul of Mardi Gras parades. Still, it would be nice.......
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