Slow Recovery

This head cold has really been hanging on.  Here it is, Thursday, and my upper respiratory tract still feels kind of raw, I can't take a deep breath without opening my mouth, my eyes burn, etc., etc.  I'm sitting here debating whether to pop another couple of tabs of pseudoephedrine and Advil, which I haven't done since late last night. I guess I'm still recovering, however slowly, from this thing but it's incredible frustrating right now.  This is precisely the week when I should be adding some significant intensity to my otherwise routine training. Instead, I'll have a really low-mileage, low-intensity week.

It was warm this morning, as in shorts and jersey warm, and there was a pretty big group up on the levee for the early ride.  It's been nice being able to start the Tuesday and Thursday rides with enough light to see, but unfortunately that will all change March 11 when we move to daylight savings time.  For those of us who ride mostly in the mornings, all that saved daylight doesn't really do us much good.  It'll be dark again for those early rides.  I hate that.  Anyway, not wanting to push my luck and risk interrupting this slow recovery from whatever virus I've been fighting this week, I decided I'd just do the shorter ride out to the parish line and back today.  Riding near the end of the paceline I was kept busy dealing with the surges and slowdowns that always happen back there, all the while trying to keep a little distance between myself and the somewhat unpredictable mishmash of wheels ahead of me.  Of course, at one point the pace shot up suddenly and, of course, that was because Howard had surged up at the front.  That set up a little counter-surge that opened another gap once that one had been closed.  I just tried to keep it steady so the paceline wouldn't shatter completely since the pace hadn't gotten completely out of hand.

I was glad to find some company on the way back, first picking up David and later Mignon, which made for a nice little paceline at a respectable speed as we rode back downriver into a little headwind.  The annual NOBC training camp is this weekend, so I'm hoping I am more or less fully recovered by then because the weather is supposed to be turning a bit colder. Hopefully I can find some time today and tonight to get the Team Time Trial event permit, which is already late, all taken care of. I also need to put the Mercury logo on the LAMBRA site since they are giving us some sponsorship, in the form of expensive wheels, for our soon-to-be-announced LAMBRA Championship Series in which the upper category riders will be able to accumulate points at the road, time trial and criterium championships.