Road and Track and Back

The weekend was a repeat of last weekend, only a bit more painful. Saturday morning Jon Tenney and a friend of his stopped by the house at 6 am to ride out to the Giro Ride with me.  The weather around here for the past week has been a series of random thunderstorms interspersed with humidity, so we just go out and ride and hope for the best. The turnout was a little on the low side, which wasn't too surprising considering the radar images. Fortunately, we were in-between the rain, so we headed out, picking up more and more riders as we went. We'd just started down Hayne Blvd., when Matt flatted.  I guess half of the group kept riding, the rest of turned back to help. On a group training ride, "helping" means standing around the rider with the flat tire and criticizing his tire-changing technique.  Matt had deep rims but his spare tube didn't have a long enough valve stem.  Luckily someone else had one that would work, so eventually we got back the road. Of course, we'd lost quite a big of time by then.  Even so, I was surprised to see the front of the group coming back as soon as I did.  We turned around and merged back in.  I was not feeling too sharp at all, but fortunately the fast sections were fairly short that day.  I got back home, took a shower, and promptly fell asleep.  A couple of hours later I was awakened by text messages and phone calls from a few people asking if the afternoon track races were still on.  They were.

So by 1:30 I was on the road to Baton Rouge with Graeme and a couple of track bikes for the second race of the LAMBRA Track Cup Omnium.  Checking the radar, I could see a huge rainstorm moving south toward Baton Rouge, but behind it there was no rain showing up.  I figured it would rain for sure, but would probably be over by about the time the racing was to start, which was 4 pm.  Graeme mentioned that he needed to replace his cleats because they were starting to get pretty worn down.  I cautioned him to do it soon because they usually break when you're out of the saddle sprinting.

As expected, it started raining lightly a few minutes after we arrived at the velodrome.  The severity of the rain, however, had diminished considerably, and the track was good to go by 4:30 or so.  Unfortunately the rain had scared most riders away and we had only seven on hand.  Of course, that didn't stop us from racing.  Graeme started warming up on the track and a few minutes later, right in the home stretch, we heard a crash and looked over to see him sliding across the pursuit finish line.  His cleat had broken!  Luckily there's a bike shop practically around the corner from the track, so he was back in action half an hour late.  We just grouped everyone together for the mass-start events.  I started out feeling really lousy.  Fortunately, all of the time trial events were first, and the difference between my time trials when I'm feeling great and when I'm feeling terrible is negligible.  The scratch race, points race, and even the win-and-out were a lot more fun, however.  I guess it was around 8:30 by the time we were done and heading back to New Orleans.  It was a fun day, but I could already tell I'd some some substantial damage to my legs.

Sunday morning there was a northshore training ride on tap, so I was up at 5:30 wondering how I was going to handle 65 miles in the hills when my quads were already feeling like blocks of wood.  Actually, I knew how I was going to handle it -- no well.  Luckily there was a big group waiting for us when we arrived at the Lee Road school.  Considering who was there, I knew it wouldn't be an easy ride.  It wasn't, at least for me.  We started out pretty fast and I wondered if the guys at the front realized we'd be riding back into a headwind.  I was feeling just a little bit better than awful.  For the whole ride I felt overheated and achy, and my legs were complaining on every climb.  Fortunately we were stopping at the intersections to regroup, so somehow I survived, but I can't say it was the most fun I've ever had on a bike.  Basically, all of the efforts on the track, combined with the fact I've been taking it kind of easy for past couple of weeks due to the ribs, which still hurt, had trashed my legs. That's often how I feel after a few hours at the track, so it was situation normal.  I think Monday is going to have to be a recovery day.