Back to the Lakefront

Yesterday saw the first of the annual "Wednesday Night Worlds," which is the nearly universal term for the local training races that happen all over the country.  I'd ridden the regular Wednesday morning levee ride, and was still feeling a little dragged out from Rouge-Roubaix and an apparently insufficient amount of recovery time.  Of course that didn't stop me from rushing home at 5 pm and jumping on the bike to ride out to Lakeshore Drive for the 6 pm start. This informal catch-all training race actually constitutes a significant portion of my training program (I use the term "program" extremely loosely), since it basically substitutes for the interval workouts that I never seem to be able to make myself do.  The weather was warm, and there was a pretty good east wind blowing out on the lakefront.  There's always a pretty good wind blowing on the lakefront.  I was glad to see a good turnout of 26 riders for this first Wednesday in DST.  The race started out fast, and then just got faster.  Once we came around the old Armory (which isn't actually there any more, thanks to Katrina) and got the wind to our backs, Woody went to the front and put the hammer down for what seemed like three miles.  I was second or third wheel at that point and pretty much on the rivet the whole time just trying to stay on a wheel.  We do four laps of the 6-mile circuit and I was planning on staying in the draft until at least the half-way point.  Eventually the pace eased up a little bit, but of course there continued to be painful surges and attacks, as is the nature of such a race.  The fun thing about a training race is that there's nothing at stake and you are free to try some things that you might never be bold enough to attempt in a real race.

I was surprised that my legs didn't feel all that bad and that I was at least able to survive the attacks without incident.  The hardest part for me was the tailwind stretch where the speed was consistently ramping up into the low 30s and the draft offers relatively little comfort. I let myself drift back in the shrinking group as we got into lap number three.  At some point a break of two or three went off the front on the last lap and although there was a brief effort to chase, all hope was lost within three miles or so. When the pace really started to lag I went ahead and took some pulls in order to keep things moving, and then ended up on the front again about a mile from the finish, so my legs were really toast by the time the sprint started.  It was dark by the time I got back home. I was glad I had my little taillight with me, but wishing I'd brought the headlight too. Average speed for the race was about 25 mph with a maximum of 36.8, despite the fact that I had not contested the sprint.  Ouch.

This morning was another damp, dark and foggy ride on the levee.  Woody, who was on his TT bike, and one or two others were soon driving the pace at the front.  Let me tell you, it can be a little frightening going 30 mph in the dark in a paceline on that narrow little strip of asphalt.  The flashing headlights shining on the butts of the riders in front of me made it all that more difficult to see anything  up the road, so basically you're six inches from the wheel in front of you, and that wheel is basically all you can see.  It requires a lot of faith, somewhat more than half of the group had.  Eventually a gap opened and three riders rolled away, which finally brought our pace down by a notch or so.  After they turned around at the little dip, the rest of us continued on to Ormond.  I was really starting to feel the effects of the past five days and by the time we were headed back I was just taking occasional short pulls.  I kept telling myself it was OK, however, because I won't get to ride at all this weekend.  I'll be officiating a collegiate race which will no doubt be a little on the chaotic side.  Collegiate racing has some twists to it that really make officiating and scoring more difficult than usual.  For example, depending on category there is a required number of points primes for criteriums, and they need to be scored four-deep.  For some of the races it will probably work out to something like a sprint every third lap, making it more like a points race than a criterium.  Should be interesting.....