Into Summer

It's beginning to feel a little like Summer around here.  Granted, a hint of pre-dawn coolness still lingers, but within half an hour after sunrise the temperature rises relentlessly into the mid-80s.  Of course we haven't even begun to hit our mid-summer stride, but even so, it takes a little time to make the adjustment.  Last weekend was a two-Giro weekend for me, and I finished both straining to see through sweat-smeared glasses.  There are already four pair of riding gloves next to the bike.  They all stink and the most recently worn ones are still damp the next morning. They'll all go in the wash again tonight.  At least they're a lot better than the old leather and cotton mesh ones we used to use. Those didn't just smell bad, they would sometimes start to actually disintegrate by mid-season.

So last Friday I agreed to do a little half-hour "interview" on one of those mid-day radio talk shows.  You know, the ones hosted by guys who go by names like "Spud."  It was a bit of a gamble, as the topic was whether or not bicycles actually belonged on the road, and it was a call-in type of show.  Fortunately the host was reasonably sympathetic to cycling, especially for someone of his, shall we say, ample size.  There was only time for a few callers while I was on, so I think more good than harm was done.  If you're really bored, or just morbidly curious, you can listed to it here.  Also on Friday was the Red Stick Crit in Baton Rouge.  There were a lot of mixed feelings about this event within the racing community since it was being promoted by individuals who were clearly pretty clueless about bicycle racing. Fortunately we got the promoter and his event to a point where the course looked fairly safe, there were some normal classes and categories, and there would be actual officials on hand.  Although the turnout for the Cat. 4/5 and Cat. 1/2/3 races were quite thin, that may have had a lot more to do with the timing than anything else.  The Cat. 1/2/3 race was scheduled to start at 11:00 pm on Friday night.  Anyway, I think it was a great learning experience all-around.  The promoter came a very long way over the last month or two and probably has a much better idea of what will work and what won't should he decided to do the event again.  I myself was really quite surprised at how much I have come to take for granted from even our less experienced race promoters. Generally, those are guys who have some race experience, and have at least a general understanding of what a bike race looks like.  They know a criterium from a road race, they know about USAC licenses and the usual classes and categories, etc., etc.  Fortunately we were able to have four experienced officials on hand that night, so although the turnout might have been a little disappointing, the races themselves went off fine by all accounts, and I heard nothing but positive comments from those who went.

After two rather low-volume weeks, last week was, for me, all about getting back to some semblance of normal mileage and intensity.  In fact, I was intent on adding a little more intensity to my workouts than has been the status quo for the last few weeks. Most of that was focused on the weekend Giro Rides. Since I don't ride with any kind of power monitoring electronics, I can't quantify the increase objectively, but suffice it to say that I spent more time in the wind, pushed a little harder, and rode just a bit more aggressively.  It's that time of year.  May has always been a transition month for me.  Yes, I know it's rather late in the season for that, but for reasons that elude me, that's just how it always seems to work out for me.  Saturday's Giro was fairly fast, averaging a bit under 25 mph 35 miles that constitute the meat of the ride, even though the maximum speed remained relatively low at 32 and change.  Since there was a big fundraising ride in Thibodeaux for local rider Scott Hoppmeyer who suffered a serious spinal cord injury earlier this year, I wasn't expecting a big crowd on Sunday. Normally, I would have done the Thibodeaux ride, but The Wife had a contractor scheduled at 1:00 that afternoon to start negotiations on a kitchen renovation and as a matter of fiscal self-defense I felt it important that I be there. So I sent in a donation and set my sights on another Giro Ride instead.  Anyway, with so many of the regulars out of town, the group for the Sunday Giro was indeed smaller than usual. 

A quiet day on the levee.

We rolled out at an easy pace and for a while I wondered if I'd really be able to get the workout I was looking for.  As it turned out, though, that wasn't really a problem.  Aside from the fact that I spent more time in the wind than usual, the fast parts of the ride were just as fast as usual.  They just didn't last as long since there weren't enough riders to sustain the speed once things got up over 27 mph or so.  As a result, the sprints were even faster than they had been the day before, since more riders had fresher legs for them, which in turn yielded a max speed for the day that was a tad over 35 mph.  On the other hand, the Thibodeaux ride looked to have turned into a bit of a race because the usual Giro riders covered the 67 miles through the swamps at an average speed of 24.2, topping out with a maximum of 35.9.  Not exactly a sightseeing ride, I suspect.

This morning the legs felt pretty good, considering, but I did a pretty easy recovery type ride up on the levee anyway, even backing off on the way back to chat with a local triathlete.  As is typical for a Monday morning, the levee was really quiet.  The only other regular riders I saw were Celeste and, I think, David who were on their way out as I was coming back.  Otherwise, though, the morning weather was practically perfect for riding with a cool but humid mid-60s temperature and practically no wind at all.

Blue-shirt Weekend, Screwed Again

It all started Friday afternoon.  I skipped out of work early, loaded the Volvo up to the ceiling, and headed up to Baton Rouge for a long weekend of officiating the South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference road championships.  There was a Friday night registration that ran from 6 pm until around 10:30 pm, and then it was probably not until midnight that I was satisfied with the registration data and finally hit the sack.  Officiating collegiate racing is a bit of a different experience.  Since everything is done on a shoestring, the conference assigns "permanent" bib numbers to each rider.  They keep a less than perfect record of those numbers, and the riders keep less than perfect track of them. When riders upgrade they get different numbers, when they forget their numbers they get different numbers, and by the end of the road season a good 30% of the bib number data are wrong.  And then there's the whole category thing.  Despite the new USAC rule (7H1 if you are one of the few people who read the rulebook), collegiate riders below Category A tend to register in whatever category races they want, so the license categories in the USAC database can't really be trusted.  We had Cat. D riders in the Men's A race, and the majority of the Category B Women's race were actually Category D.  Go figure.  Anyway, despite those complications we got most of the riders registered Friday night and somehow managed to get the Saturday morning road races started on time, which is to say they were only ten minutes late. 

It was unseasonably cold on Saturday, and although it was ideal for racing, I spent most of the day wearing my Goretex rain jacket since I hadn't brought an appropriate wardrobe.  At least it was blue!  Maybe I should attach an official's patch to the front?  Shortly after the last group started, a guy in a clean starched shirt with a cellphone in his ear found us.  He was not happy.  Apparently the promoter hadn't actually gotten official permission to use the school parking lot (and rest rooms).  It was an election day and guess what?  Yep, the school was a polling location.  Little old ladies with handicap tags were confused.  We did our best to smooth things over since the promoter was somewhere out on the course racing in the A race.  Results went pretty well, there were not crashes, it didn't rain despite a 50% chance of thunderstorms, and we reconvened at the Team Time Trial course down on River Road late that afternoon.

Team TTs are always complicated.  Teams will wait until the last minute to decide who is riding on which team, categories get mixed, etc.  Somehow we once again got it all sorted out and started right on time.  Once I finished starting all of the teams I drove down to the finish, about half a mile away, and started plugging finish times into the computer, so ten minutes after the last team finished I had the results ready.  Unfortunately that's when the printer, or more likely the spooler, decided to go south on me.  I think it thought it was out of ink for some reason.  Anyway, that cost us about half an hour until we got the backup printer connected, rebooted, and printed out the TTT results.  After dinner I uploaded the results to the LAMBRA site and got things ready for Sunday's criterium around the Capitol building.

When we arrived at the criterium course I immediately noticed a rather big problem.  Right in the middle of the final 200 meters there were two crosswalk caution signs sticking up IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD.  The local capitol police had refused to allow the promoter to remove them.  I sent someone looking for a crescent wrench and at least got the one closest to the finish removed.  Amazingly this did not result in the complete breakdown of the state's pedestrian safety infrastructure.  Also amazingly, none of the riders hit the remaining one all morning.  The races went quite well, staying right on schedule.  Remarkably, there was not a single crash all weekend, at least as far as I know.  I particularly enjoyed the Men's Cat. B race.  Toward the end of the race a 2-rider break rolled off the front and gradually accumulated a 30 or 40-second lead on a fairly large pack.  Tulane wasn't represented in the break, but one of the Tulane riders, Ben Bradley, went to the front and held the gap steady for a few laps.  Then, with four or five laps to go they launched their teammate Stephen Noya off the front of the pack.  He put his head down and within two laps had caught the break as his teammates controlled the pack.  The three-rider break came through on the bell lap together and we anxiously watched the final corner for the sprint.  Somewhere on that last lap, though, Noya had attacked and he ended up coasting across the finish line with ten seconds to spare.  One of the other Tulane sprinters then took the pack sprint.  Nicely done.  They won the division II conference championship.

So the rest of this week was quite busy all-around and by Wednesday afternoon I was looking forward to the Wednesday Night Worlds training race out at the lakefront.  For a change, I actually got home and then out the door on the bike with enough time to make the start, or so I thought.  Somewhere on Carrollton Avenue, about halfway between home and the lakefront, I managed to put a screw neatly through the center of my rear tire and nearly through the rim as well.  I actually had to pull out the little Swiss Army Knife on my keychain in order to unscrew it from the tire.  The whole process set me back about ten minutes and about 50 psi (my little mini pump is subject to diminishing returns past about 60 psi), so I missed about a lap and a half.  A 3-man break was already off the front, so I latched onto it for a little while to get warmed up.  I watched from the back as Tim and Stephen reacted to Mike's rather erratic riding (he was riding a disc wheel in a strong crosswind, probably on a TT bike.....).  Eventually, Stephen attacked in order to drop him.  We were absorbed into the pack a little while later, and the break was caught.  I was feeling OK except that the low rear tire was not inspiring a lot of confidence, so I stayed off the front and followed wheels.  There was a lot of attrition as the pace would ramp up to 28-30 mph in the crosswind, so staying on the back was by no means an easy task.  The finish stretch was the worst of the crosswind, so when the leaders jumped everyone beyond about 5th wheel, including me, was pretty much screwed.  "Live by the draft, die by the draft."

Rob's back after having twins
a few weeks ago

Today's long Thursday ride started out pretty easy, but eventually things got animated at the front and together with the strong wind it turned out to be a pretty hard ride both coming and going.  I was not feeling particularly strong, but did a lot of work on the way out, so by the time we were half-way back I was content to ride wheels while certain other riders pretended to be racing.  Now I'm just plain tired.....

Rain and Routine

The legs were feeling OK on Monday, so I went out for an easy ride on the levee to loosen things up. It was just a routine ride - more about time on the bike than actual training. 

The streets were good and wet Tuesday morning, but I went out anyway. I'd checked the radar and it looked clear (it wasn't, however - just a weather.com glitch apparently). Since the temperature was warm I figured a few miles on the Rain Bike couldn't hurt, even though there was no chance that the routine Tuesday long ride was going to happen.  I was fully expecting to ride alone, of course, but soon after I hit the levee bike path, a rain-jacketed Brian rolled up to me and moments later Howard turned around to join us. The rain started a few miles later and continued for the rest of the ride.  It was warm enough, though, that I knocked off 23 easy miles and arrived back home with dry feet and air in both tires.  It had been a good call because it rained pretty much the rest of the day.  When I got home I checked the radar again and discovered that the one radar frame I'd looked at happened to be lacking the rain data.

Wednesday was another routine levee ride, at least until my rear tire went flat about halfway out.  I took ten minutes to fix it after prying a particularly well-embedded shard out of the tread with my pocket knife. Having told the rest of the group to continue on without me, I met back up with them around Williams Blvd.  The Wednesday Night Worlds were scheduled for 6 pm, but during the day there were reports that the storm that had come through earlier had flooded Lakeshore Drive and it was therefore full of dirt and debris.  This happens fairly routinely out there, and the police just barricade it off for a few days until the guys come out and put all of the dirt back where it came from.  I was a little late getting out of the office, and so I arrived at Lakeshore Drive a few minutes after the race had started, joining the group out near Franklin Avenue.  They had decided on a modified route that went from the fountain to Franklin, then up and over the levee to a U-turn and then back to Lakeshore Drive. The only problem was that the group had to negotiate barricades three or four times per lap.  One of them required single-file.  None of that stopped the training race, however.  I wasn't feeling too sharp and spent a lot of time hanging around near the back, which eventually resulted in my getting gapped off when Eddie sat up about halfway into the last lap.  Oh well.  Live by the draft, die by the draft.

This morning the weather was awesome.  Clear blue skies, light winds, temperature in the mid-60s.  That brought out a fairly big group for the long Thursday ride and within a few miles of the start the pace really started to get fast.  I guess we averaged close to 25 mph most of the way out to Ormond.  The return trip was somewhat less intense.  Otherwise it was a pretty routine ride.

So this weekend I'll be officiating the LSU collegiate race, which is also the South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference championship.  That means I probably won't get to ride all weekend.  Unfortunately it also means I'll miss the other stuff going on this weekend, such as the Ochsner triathlon, the Blue Angels air show, etc.  The weather forecast for Saturday is not looking good at all with the chance of rain well above 50%.  That would mean officiating a road race in the rain and possibly an evening team time trial in the rain.  Rain really complicates that stuff a lot.  I'm going to need to bring extra socks!  Hopefully it will be over by the time they have the criterium on Sunday morning because I think that course will be kind of slippery when wet.

The MSGP

The Mississippi Gran Prix is a regionally significant stage race held in Brookhaven, Mississippi.  Now in its 11th year, it is really the offspring of the Natchez Classic stage race that had been held for about the same number of years in nearby Natchez.  The godfather of the race is Frank Moak, commander and chief of the Herring Gas team. This year's race featured a new road race course and nearly flawless race results.

So I rushed around late Friday afternoon in order to get myself and some of the LAMBRA race officiating equipment up to Brookhaven in time for the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium (Video!) that evening.  By the time I got through the New Orleans rush-hour traffic I was running a little late and as I sat waiting at the train crossing in Brookhaven I got a text from the Chief Referee, Ricky, asking me what my ETA would be.  The crit is fun to watch and usually quite animated since everyone is fresh and there's a pretty hefty stage prizelist in addition to the overall GC prizelist. Only the Cat. 1/2/3s have the Friday night criterium.  For the rest of us, the race starts on Saturday with the road race.  Local rider Jacob Schoen and new NOBC rider Mat Street were staying with me at the local Day's Inn which, despite being rated better than a couple of the neighboring hotels, was definitely nothing to write home about.  The Herring team, however, was staying right on the Criterium course at a new and freshly remodeled luxury bed and breakfast place.

The Master's field was a little on the small side with about 30 riders and the road course looked to be manageable with mostly low rolling stuff punctuated by about five miles of more significant hills mid-way around the long 20-something mile loop.  Midsouth had all of their riders on hand for this one.  The NOBC had Mark McMurry, Steve J., Rolan J., and John Egan.  In the field were strong riders like Donald Davis, Hunter East, Glenn Richard and others from area teams.  The road race started out at a pretty moderate pace for the first of the two laps required to make our 54 mile race, but somewhere along the line a group of three rolled off the front.  At the time I was too far back in the pack to do much about that, and since three teams were represented in it there was barely any response at the front.  I looked up the road and thought to myself, "Really?  None of these other guys are going to react to a break with Hunter East, Glenn Richard, and Jason Miller??"  Sometimes I just can't figure out what riders are thinking.  Anyway, it was a couple of miles before I worked my way up to the front and decided to see if I could get anything going amidst the blocking.  It was, however, too little, too late and I eventually gave up, rather frustrated at both my ineffective fitness level and the group's apparent willingness to settle for racing for fourth place.  Since there were still a few strong riders in the pack, however, I figured there would be some fireworks when we hit the hilly section on the second lap, so I set my sights on that.  Well, wouldn't you know it?  As we flew down the first big downhill before the first big climb I nailed some rock or something with my front wheel and a moment later heard the dreaded pssssst, psssst, psssst. Worst possible time to flat.  Well, I got a pretty fast wheel change, but I figured my race was essentially over.  (I would later discover a completely loose spoke and healthy wobble in my rear wheel.)  After a little while I could see the group follow car about a minute up the road and was surprised that I seemed to be actually gaining ground on it.  I soon caught VJ and Eddie and thought that if we worked together right away before there was an attack we might catch and salvage pack time.  Unfortunately they were both pretty cooked and when I wiggled my elbow at the top of one of the climbs nobody was there.  I figured it was as good a day for a time trial as any and just motored on, still surprised that the group up ahead wasn't pulling away.  Little did I know at the time that there had been an attack shortly after I'd flatted that had split the pack and the group I was chasing was already a good two minutes behind the other group, which itself was two minutes behind the break, unless you counted Hunter who would finish another minute and a half ahead of the two other riders who had been in the original break. I was essentially seven minutes back, and it's probably a good thing I didn't know it at the time. Anyway, six or seven kilometers before the finish I looked back and saw the entire Cat. 3/4 field that had started out with 60 riders closing in on me.  When the lead motor came by I motioned to him and let him know that the Masters group was right up the road and that they would probably all come together right at the finish (they did, much to the consternation of the officials).  I eased up as the Cat. 3/4s passed and sat a few bikelengths off the back of them for the last few miles, picking up Lenny who had flatted out of the Masters group too.  I ended up only about 20 seconds behind that second Masters group, but since there had been ten riders ahead of them and they numbered nine or ten themselves, I was already out of GC contention, way, way down in 21st place. There had been a fair amount of carnage in the other races.  Jacob had crashed and done in his mom's Zip 404 in the Cat. 4/5 race and NOBC rider Chris M. had crashed and DNF'd in that race as well. One of the women had gone to the hospital with a broken arm or wrist and a number of others had crashed as well. 

The evening time trial was a short 2.8 mile affair on a rolling course with a significant tailwind of which I apparently totally failed to take advantage. Although I'd intentionally started out well below maximum, I thought I was going pretty hard en route to my time of 6:39.  That turned out to be a damned slow time that ranked only 21st in the Masters and the less I say about that the better.  The fastest time in our field was Ed Novak's 5:44, practically a minute faster in only 2.8 miles. That was pretty demoralizing even though the TT was pretty pointless for me from the outset since my GC hopes had already gone down the tubes.  I decided there and then that I'd race the next morning's circuit race more seriously and if I blew up at then end, well, so be it.

Sunday morning was windy and a little overcast as we lined up for the 4-lap, 26 mile circuit race.  The course (http://app.strava.com/rides/6791898) featured one big climb up to the finish, one or two much smaller ones, and was otherwise pretty flat.  Considering that the Midsouth guys, and likely Hunter East who was leading, would probably be riding defensively, the chances of a break getting off the front on this course seemed pretty low.  If one did manage to go, however, I was determined to be in it.  Other than the big climb at the finish, which we would be doing only three times, the only other place likely to allow for a breakaway was a rather brief section of really bad asphalt where there was a really strong crosswind.  The first lap started really fast as we flew down the longest descent on the course going from zero to 42 mph in about a minute, but with a hot spot bonus in store at the end of the second lap I wasn't too surprised that things weren't very aggressive.  We went up the big climb at the end of lap one without a big attack.  Then, on the crosswind section of that lap someone at the front really put the hammer down and strung things out pretty badly.  Mark, who was in full-on sprinter mode for this race, nearly got shelled along there as he took a little ride in the dirt.  I guess a few were dropped along that stretch, but then it eased up as riders started thinking about the hot spot.  For me, the hot spot presented only the danger of getting dropped since I was so far down on GC anyway, so I was just trying to maintain a decent position near the front of the group.  Naturally there was a sprint to the top that opened up some gaps, and the leaders kept the pressure on coming over the top and into the long downhill on the other side.  The rest of us had to really hammer down the hill at about 37 mph in order to close the gap, but once we did things slowed down again. With one lap to go we climbed the big hill relatively slowly and it was looking like it was going to come down to a pack sprint.  With a mile or so to go riders started crowding the front of the pack and maintaining a good position required a lot of focus. I noticed Mark kind of stuck in the middle when things kind of opened up along the right side, so I tapped him on the hip and when I saw him start to move over onto my wheel I went all the way up to the front of the group without looking back again.  I later found out that someone had pushed him out of position.  Fortunately, being an experienced sprinter, he found his way toward the front anyway.  For some reason the front of the group slacked off just before the 200M mark, but then the sprint up the hill started in earnest and immediately a big gap opened between the front six and rest of us.  I cursed myself for hesitating so long and hammered up the hill finishing 7th with Steve and Rolan right behind me.  Mark had exploded up the hill and taken 3rd, ending up 7th on GC.  Anyway, I was reasonably satisfied with my finish, considering the circumstances.  I should note that I'm including as a "circumstance" the fact that I suck at time trials.  Anyway, results are on the LAMBRA website.  I'd put up some photos, but my camera spend the weekend sitting on my dresser plugged into the charger all weekend.  At least I didn't leave my Shimano Di2 battery plugged in at my hotel room causing me to miss the road race like one rider did.

Uninspired

After a good solid 300+ mile week and a very late bedtime I didn't feel the slightest twinge of guilt about sleeping late Monday morning, which is to say that I skipped my usual 6:30 am ride.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel much better at 5:45 this morning when the alarm went off.  Although the weather has been great for riding, I just felt so uninspired.  So it was one of those mornings when I had to push myself out the door and grind out the miles, knowing it was the right thing to do while all the time wishing I was sitting on the front porch drinking coffee. It's not like I'm over-trained.  Over-aged, perhaps, but definitely not over-trained.  Perhaps I just need to get to sleep a little earlier for a couple of days.

When I arrived at the start today I was surprised how few riders there were.  There had been a report that the bike path would be closed under the Huey P. Long bridge, but apparently that has been delayed.  I wondered if that had scared some people away, but as it turned out it hadn't.  By the time we got to the playground we'd picked up enough additional riders to at least double or triple the size of the group, which is to say there were maybe 15. The pace going out was a little erratic, mostly around 24 mph, but occasionally surging closer to 28 for no apparent reason.  Every now and then Lenny would randomly attack.  I quickly retreated to the nether regions of the paceline where the temperament better suited my mood, reacting reluctantly to the sudden gaps with long steady efforts rather than quick out-of-the-saddle bursts. At any rate, the ride out to the turnaround was fairly fast today, which is probably good because I certainly needed a little push.  If I'd been riding alone today I have no doubt I would have ended up going 15 mph and looking at the scenery.  The return trip was considerably slower and I found myself raising the speed by a couple mph to 25 mph on those rare occasions when I'd hit the front.  I guess I wasn't the only one feeling lazy today.  Toward the end Lenny inexplicably attacked a couple of times.  I wondered if he was trying to do a little interval workout. Sometimes I may start a ride feeling sluggish and uninspired, but by the end I'm back to normal.  Not today.  Group training rides are like a box of chocolates......

Springtime Giro

I had been expecting a pretty small Giro Ride this morning.  As it happened, however, there was a pretty good turnout.  I guess the race in Mobile and Holiday weekend didn't take many of the local riders away.  Although the predicted high for the day was around 80F, it was nice and cool as I rode out to the start. My legs didn't feel exactly refreshed, but on the other hand they didn't feel all that bad either.  I figured I'd hang out near the back for most of the ride and then see if I had anything left later.  There was a pretty good ENE wind, and although the pace ramped up pretty well on the way out to the turnaround, it was easy to sit in.  I put in a little effort at the turnaround and then as usual there were a couple of slow miles as everyone regrouped.  Well, almost everyone.  A few riders rode off the front and by the time the group got back together they were a good 40 seconds up the road.  Once we picked up a little tailwind, however, the chase was on and they were caught by the time we were a mile or so from the Goodyear sign.  I was pretty far back when the actual sprint started, so for me it was mostly just weaving through riders who were blowing up.  Anyway, I think that the last five miles before the Goodyear sprint averaged close to 30 mph. I made just a couple more efforts, up the two overpasses.

As Good As It Gets

When John Dias sent out an email earlier this week looking for people to do an 80 mile Friday ride with him I thought to myself, "it must be nice!"  I'd completely forgotten that I was off from work this Friday.  Finally, some time Thursday, I realized that I could actually do a long ride on the northshore on a Friday.  So I picked up Ben at 7 am, stopped for some coffee, drove across the causeway and arrived at the Lee Road Middle School, well, a few minutes late.  Fortunately, the other three riders, John, David and Chuck, were still there.  It was cooler than I'd expected, and there was a pretty good north wind blowing, but otherwise the weather was absolutely spectacular.  We set out under a clear blue sky surrounded by the bright green foliage of spring with a nicely matched group.  I looked over at Ben and said, "It doesn't get better than this."

We were planning on doing around 80 miles, starting out along the standard winter ride route.  This group was clearly not interested in slowing down too much to take in the sights, but on the other hand the pace remained pretty steady and well within the sustainable range.  John and especially Ben were taking really, really long pulls with the rest of us coming through with more normal ones.  Way up at the top of the course we turned onto Highway 439 and finally picked up a little tailwind.  Ben was on the front and just stayed there for at least five miles.  He was definitely "in the zone" and I wasn't about to interfere.

Rather than take the usual shortcut at Sie Jenkins Road, we decided to tack on some additional mileage by going all the way in to Bogalusa before returning back to Enon.  At that point we headed back out and did the Tulane road race loop backwards. For some reason I had figured that would bring us back to the start with just about 80 miles, but as it turned out I was about ten miles off.  We ended up with right around 90 miles instead.  Oh well.  Ten bonus miles! I guess it'll be the Giro for me tomorrow.  Way too much stuff piling up right now to make the trip to Mobile for the Sunny South criterium.

Bumps in the Road

By Wednesday evening it was looking like we'd have a break in the rain, at least until the next line of rain was scheduled to arrive later that night, so the Wednesday Night Worlds was "on" despite the fact that the prior night's storm had closed a fair amount of Lakeshore Drive.  Being desperate for a ride, however, I decided I'd at least ride out to the lakefront to see how bad it was, and hope a few others would be there so I could log a few miles. Just after I made it to Lakeshore Drive I saw the group, understandable smaller than usual, heading the other way.  Rather than turn around and try to catch them, I decided to continue on and see how bad the road was.  I had already gone past one line of traffic barrels closing off part of the usual course and much of the lake side of the road was covered with a layer of dirt, rocks and miscellaneous debris that had washed up over the seawall. Another line of barrels awaited at the Elysian Fields traffic circle.  None of this, of course, deterred the intrepid WNW crew, and a couple of minutes later I merged into the group, dodging traffic barrels, sand, rocks and related debris on an abbreviated 3-mile circuit from the Elysian Fields traffic circle to the "fountain" traffic circle.  The smaller than usual group was going a little slower than usual, and the first lap was intentionally "neutral" so everyone could figure out where the course of the day was and how best to negotiate the various obstacles.  Once things got going, though, I soon found myself going more or less flat out chasing the first break of the day.  Suddenly I hit something big that I didn't even see, felt something hit my chest, and heard something tumble onto the ground at 30 mph.  I thought for sure I'd pinch-flatted since the impact had been so hard and eased over to the left to get out of the way.  Then, looking down, I saw that the tire was still holding air.  I looked around to see if something on the bike had broken and then noticed my computer was missing.  My venerable old Campi Ergobrain had launched out of its mount (I sometimes struggle to get it off the bike and after at least 110,000 miles have never had had one eject itself before), hit my chest, and landed somewhere on the muddy street.  Matt and I backtracked looking for it while the group continued and luckily found it still working.  I snapped it back into place just in time to get back into the group that was, luckily, not going too fast.  Anyway, Tim soon took a flyer, the pack caught, and we ended up all together for the last lap.  It wasn't the hardest WNW by a long shot, but considering the weather I felt really lucky to have gotten in any sort of ride at all.  It stormed later that night, as predicted, and everything was still soaking wet in the morning. Once again I skipped the morning ride.

So I'm thinking I'll join John Dias and others for a long ride in the country since I'm off work tomorrow.  That is likely to leave me pretty wasted, but I feel like I need a long ride in the hills right about now.  There's a little criterium in Mobile on Saturday that I probably won't be able to make because I have a fair amount of work to do over the weekend, not the least of which is to get my tax return stuff together.

Now it's time to head home from the office and I just remembered that my rear tire had gone flat about a block from here this morning.  Damn.....

Too Much for a Ride

A very impressive and slow-moving storm visited the New Orleans area in the early morning hours today - the same one that was throwing around semi trailers in Texas yesterday.  Although it was already raining when I went to bed at around 10:30 pm, I think it was around 3 am when the lightning, thunder, pouring rain, and terrified dog woke me up from my already inadequate and badly needed sleep.  The thunder and lightning show continued for the better part of the next four hours.  I ended up trying to sleep with the lights on in order to keep the dog from seeing the flashes of lightning.  Even so, I had to stop him countless times from trying to dig a hole in the carpet.  It was all still going strong at 6:30, and although I've been known to go out for an hour's ride in the rain, the combination of wind, rain, lightning and flooded streets was a little too much for a ride this morning. I made some coffee and eventually fired up the laptop which provided enough email to keep me busy until after 10:00 when the rain finally eased up and I was able to consider riding to work.  The Wife had a doctor's appointment today to look into a cold that she hasn't been able to kick, so taking the car wasn't really a good option.  I put extra pants and shoes into my messenger bag, zipped up my rain coat and felt quite lucky to have arrived at the office relatively dry.  Things seem to be improving now, so I'm thinking about trying to make the Wednesday Night Worlds out on the lakefront, although there are a couple of complications that might prevent it.  The photo above was definitely not taken by me.  It was posted to Facebook by a friend of a friend and looks like a shot down Bourbon Street around 2 or 3 am this morning.  Anyway, I really like it.

Multitasking

It was around 5:15 am when I got up, pulled on my "blue shirt" and shuffled to the kitchen to boil a couple of eggs while I loaded up the car.  It was going to be one of those multitasking days where I officiate, race, and then officiate some more.  The term "Jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind......   The Volvo was pretty well packed with two big bins full of clipboards, paper, stopwatches, radios, etc, another bin full of signs, the big finish line flag, the race clock and stand, the surprisingly heavy PA system, the big pop-up shelter, a folding table and chair, a couple of coolers full of water, the generator, and of course my own race bag, computer, printer, etc.  The bike went on the roof and I ended up squeezing my front wheel into the passenger seat alongside my race bag. There was some patchy dense fog for the 30-minute drive to LaPlace, and along the way I saw the police setting out flares along I-10 in Metairie where there must have been a serious accident.  Later, at the gas station just off the interstate at LaPlace, there was a big cluster of state police cars and wreckers loaded with wrecked cars.  There must have been a big pile-up in the fog somewhere nearby and as I filled the generator with gas I hoped nobody had been seriously injured.

We were missing a couple of our regular race volunteers this year and since this was a 2-person time trial there were a lot of race-day registrations.  Naturally most of them showed up about fifteen minutes before registration was scheduled to close, so there was a longer line than I like to see, but we somehow managed to get everybody into the computer, print out and post the start lists, and get the first team on the road on time for the 9 am start.  That left me about fifteen minutes to squeeze into my skinsuit and find my 55+ teammate Dennis.  Shortly before we were scheduled to start I stopped to redirect riders who were warming up in an area that the local police didn't want riders, and so I ended up sprinting from there to the start line with zero seconds to spare before we started.

Dennis is just starting to get back into shape after a very long time, maybe ten or fifteen years, away from racing.  Since I didn't really want to do a team time trial without warmup that would rip my legs off, and then have to compile the results, this seemed like a good match. Dennis started out with practically a full-out sprint from the line and right away we were up to about 28 mph, which I knew was entirely unsustainable, even despite the moderate tailwind we had.  Eventually we settled down to something in the 25 mph range, but I could tell Dennis was suffering right away.  Being the big guy in a 2-man time trial with me means scrapping around for relatively little draft.  So my pulls started getting longer and longer as we neared the turnaround and I dropped the pace a few times to keep us together.  On the way out we were doing a pretty good job of holding the gap to our minute-man, or minute-team, until the last few miles.  After the turnaround when we started into the headwind we really had to slow down a lot to keep it together and I spent a lot of time on the front at 22-23 mph which was a whole lot slower than the teams that flew past us were going! Needless to say our time was nothing to write home about. I think the surprise of the day was the team of Ben Bradley and Stephen Noya, both riding for the Tulane team, that posed the second fastest time of the day (54:39). On the plus side, after the finish I was still able to focus, there wasn't a thick layer of salt caked on my face, and my legs felt fine.  So I jumped into my car, changed back into my officiating clothes, and got started on the results within five minutes.  That all went quite smoothly and we had everything posted and awarded on schedule. Then we packed everything back into the car, unloaded it into my basement, and I went upstairs to clean up the results and post them and some podium photos to the website.  It was probably about 4 pm before I finally took a badly needed shower.