Finally we have arrived at that time of year when I don't even think about looking at the thermometer in the morning. Down in the basement, next to my race travel bag, is a little pile of arm-warmers, shoe-covers, long-finger gloves and other items of winter wardrobe that I haven't needed in a month. I guess it's safe to throw them all into the washer for a final cleaning before stashing them in some obscure location around the house that will make me late for the first chilly ride of the Fall season. The only rain that's been in the area were some scattered thunderstorms yesterday afternoon that somehow missed most of uptown but dumped a lot of rain elsewhere, most notably Lakeshore Drive where the Wednesday evening training race is held. I stood at the office window around 4 pm, looking at the heavy black clouds to the north, and wondered if I'd have to miss another training race. The radar looked promising, though, and by 5:30 I was doing battle on Carrollton Avenue, heading for the lake. The streets were mostly dry, but there were a few places on Lakeshore Drive that were full of standing water. The street storm drain system out there is pretty much completely broken, so water collects in the low spots and sits there until it eventually dissipates through the combination of gravity and vapor pressure.
I arrived at the Elysian Fields traffic circle just in time to loop around and catch the end of the group. The start and finish of the WNW changes kind of randomly from week to week, and this week it was the westbound levee crossing nearest Bayou St. John. On the plus side, I had actually arrived before the race started. On the down side, there was some street flooding in the Elysian Fields traffic circle and in a few spots between Franklin Avenue and the Seabrook loop. Each lap we'd try to avoid the water, but invariably a few at the back would get forced right through it, myself included. The race itself was reasonably fast, but never got entirely out of hand. I think some credit to that has to go to the fact that there was very little wind, making it a lot easier to sit on and recover, or to close the little gaps that would open up every time there was an attack. And there were a lot of attacks. The three Herring riders who were there seemed to be taking turns attacking. Each time one of them would get a gap, I would start looking for the others because I knew one of them was eventually going to try to bridge up. Even when I was fully expecting it, each of those attacks required huge efforts just to stay in contact. On one of them I had been expecting Woody to attack, so had caught his wheel immediately when he did. He yanked me up to 30 mph or so and then glanced back. When he saw me on his wheel I immediately backed off, so rather than let Tim and whoever else was with him ride away from us, I had to put my head down and close it the rest of the way. So despite lots of attacks and surges, everything was still together for the last 6-mile lap (we do four of them). I was thinking it would be a good day to contest the sprint, so I was right up there near the front when Kenny attacked about a mile and a half before the end. I responded immediately and caught his wheel as a little gap opened. I knew there was no way he would be able to hold it all the way to the finish, and I also knew there was no way I would be able to hold off the group once he was done, but since it was a training race I figured I'd go with it and see how far I could get. So we come into the traffic circle at Elysian Fields going about 28 mph just as a car is coming into the circle from the left. The car gets there first, but we're going a lot faster than it is and I'm wondering what we're going to do when Kenny goes left of the car. There was maybe two feet of clearance between the car and curb on the inside of the traffic circle, and there was no way of knowing if the car was going to continue around the circle and cut us off or turn onto Lakeshore Drive. My survival instinct kicked in and I backed off, turning sharply to the right to pass the car on the other side. A moment later the pack came streaming by and by the time I got back up to speed I was practically at the back. Oh well. The sprint started early, as it always does for this finish line location, and then two riders in front of me both sat up at the same time. I hate it when people sit up in the middle of a sprint! So that was that.
Having done the levee training ride that morning, I was pretty tired by the time I limped back uptown, and was falling asleep by 9:30. The NOBC work still on my plate for the Tour de La would have to wait at least another day. At least I had already wrapped up the post-event results work for the Racing Rapides race - website updated, results uploaded to USAC, LCCS rankings updated. The new LCCS scoring will make for an interesting year. Some people will hate it, some will like it, some won't even notice. At any rate, this was the first event for which I had to go through and drop points for riders who, in this case, had scored points in more than one stage race. Only one stage race, the one in which he scores the most points, counts toward a rider's LCCS total. The same will kick in after five road races, five time trials, etc. It's kind of a pain to do.
I made it out for the long levee ride this morning already feeling pretty dragged out. Fortunately it wasn't a particularly fast one except for a few sections. I'm thinking I need to take it easy tomorrow morning. There's a road race up in St. Francisville on Sunday that I plan to do, but I'll probably ride the Giro on Saturday anyway so I'm not really expecting to be at my best for this particular race.
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