Unrecovered

It was winter again last weekend, and to make matters worse, it was windy as hell too.  The Saturday Giro group was looking a little thin when I arrived for my pre-ride caffeine treatment.  Since the temperature was down in the 30s and a strong wind was blowing, I wasn't the least bit surprised.  I'd dressed warmly, expecting the worst.  After all, this was the weekend of the Herring Gas training camp, and even the National Weather Service knows that almost guarantees some sort of meterological misery will be doled out by mother nature.  Under the circumstances, I was just happy it wasn't snowing.  From the start, I knew it wasn't going to be a good weekend for me.  I don't know if it was just the cold, or if somehow I was unrecovered from the prior week's training, but for whatever reason my legs were feeling kind of dead and achy.  In fact, today is Tuesday and they still feel that way.  Anyway, it was a pretty typical Giro and once I finally got more or less warmed up I made a few brief visits to the front, despite the persistent reminders from my quads that they were not ready for prime time.  Fortunately many of the usual riders were absent, the Herrings at their training camp and some of the Tulane riders over in Tallahassee for a pre-season collegiate warmup with the Southeast Conference riders whose season started a couple of weeks ago. That kept the overall speeds down a notch, for which I was not complaining.

I'd decided to do the northshore ride on Sunday, even though the best the forecast was offering was 32F at 8 am with a strong north wind.  I figured it wouldn't be much warmer at 7 am on the southshore anyway, so why not ride in the hills with some scenery rather than another hammerfest down Chef Highway?  Driving across the causeway I looked down at the choppy waters of Lake Pontchartrain and knew there would be no hiding from the wind.  Of course the turnout over there was a little slack too.  I left the parking lot with knee-warmers underneath long tights and a wind vest over my awesome NOBC winter jacket.  Turning into the freezing cold north wind for the first four miles to Tung Road I wondered if maybe I'd made a bad decision.  It was definitely the coldest my face has been all year, in spite of the layer of Chap-stick I'd put over my cheekbones and nose.  I don't think I was the only one, either. In fact, I was probably dressed more warmly than most.  I noticed Mignon struggling to pull up her slipping knee-warmers and could tell she was uncomfortable.  Within one mile all conversation had ceased.  I guess there were only about nine of us at the start.  Mignon and Mark dropped back on Tung Road.  By the time we were 20 miles into the ride we were down to four or five, and half an hour later I think it was just four. Jorge had ridden over 100 miles alone the day before, so that was helping keep him in check, so our speeds stayed fairly low most of the day.  The strongest of the group that day was the lone triathlete whose name I inquired about and subsequently forgot due to my well-known name memory defect that must have something to do with that time hit my head on the concrete in grammar school.  But I digress. At least we managed to keep the average speed above 19 mph for the 65 miles, thanks in no small part to the triathlete who went to the front and time-trialed the final five miles of tailwind. I arrived back at the car with my base layer(s) completely soaked with sweat and generally feeling like I'd been hit by a bus.  I'd already decided that Monday would be a rest day!

So Tuesday morning I got up, still feeling kind of unrecovered, to meet the Tuesday levee ride group. I swear, taking a day off the bike just does not seem to matter for me.  I probably would have felt just the same if I'd done an easy hour and a half on Monday. It had rained in the early morning and I briefly considered taking the rain bike, mainly because of the Mr. Tuffys in the tires, but ultimately broke down and mounted up on the Orbea anyway. As I walked out the door in the dark I went to start up Strave on my phone to track the ride, only to discover that it had updated itself during the night and now wanted me to re-enter my ID and Password, neither of which were coming immediately to mind.  Not that it would have mattered anyway since there was no way I was going to be able to type them in while wearing gloves in the dark without my glasses on. It was considerably warmer but still rather windy, and I struggled all the way out to the turnaround. Soon after we started back I started feeling even worse and contemplating the possibility that I might be coming down with something I retreated to the end of the paceline for the last ten or fifteen miles.