The Cruel Truth - Take Warning

It's not called "The Race of Truth" for nothing, and the cruel truth was that I wasn't even remotely prepared for it.  Anticipating disaster, I'd stopped by Vivan's house on Saturday and picked up her time trial wheels, hoping they might at least minimize the impact of what I was already expecting to be a lackluster time trial performance.  Donald Davis was arriving at the house Saturday afternoon, so I had already gotten the results spreadsheet and officiating supplies ready, and had even picked up a new pop-up shelter for the club to replace the one that had been flattened by the storm at the Tour de Louisiane back in June.  Everything was ready, except of course me.

Sunday morning I was on the road to LaPlace just before 6 am with the car loaded up with stuff for the event -- generator, shelter, chair, race clock, traffic cones, table, flags, banners, clipboards, computer, printer, etc.  I was already tired.  Maybe it was that half bottle of wine I'd had over dinnner? Peake Racing was on hand with lots of volunteers, so once we handed out all of the race numbers and got the first few riders started, I squeezed into my skinsuit and rolled around for a few minutes before my start time.  I wouldn't call it an actual warmup, but my plan was to start out easy and work my way into it.  There was what felt like a light ENE wind blowing, so I was expecting a mild crosswind with a bit of a tailwind on the way back.  I started out smoothly, rolling up to 26 or 27 mph rather quickly with what felt like a little tailwind.  A couple of miles later the road turned just slightly to the right and my speed started dropping quickly.  I felt like I had no power at all, and I guess I was only five miles into the 40 km Time Trial when I saw 22 mph on the computer and thought, "This is ridiculous!"  If all I could muster was a pathetic 22 mph under those conditions, I was seriously questioning why I was out there.  I forced myself back up to 24 or so, but knew my ride was basically over as whatever motivation I might have had went right out the window.  Some days you just don't have anything to offer, and this was one of those. Mitch, who had started a minute behind me, went sailing by before the turnaround.  A few miles later as I rounded the pylon at 20 km Jorge powered past me as well.  I held his pace for a couple of miles, but eventually backed off again, dropping down to 22 mph.  Grant passed me about halfway back.  I'd have to say that was about the worst time trial I've done in twenty years.  I dried off and sat down at the computer to start entering finish times, and about halfway through realized that they didn't look right at all.  The starter had not written down the actual start times, but instead had written down the time of day, so I didn't have the easy cross-checks that I normally do.  It took me quite a while to figure out that I had forgotten about the 5-minute gap between the 20km riders and the 40km riders, and had to then correct all of the start times.  Anyway, we eventually got everything done, with a couple of mistakes in the Cat. 1/2s because I got a couple of incorrect times that were relayed via cellphone from the finish line.  Amazingly, Frank Moak came on top with a 54:33.  How does he do that?  On a good day I would have been thrilled with a 58:00 myself, and this was definitely not a good day (I coasted in at 1:03:35).

By mid-afternoon on Sunday the news media and city in general was going in to full-on hurricane panic mode as the storm track for Tropical Storm Isaac had shifted more to the west and was now heading directly for the city.  At some point in the early afternoon I was sitting at the computer working on the results when I heard a loud noise.  I got up to see if something had fallen in the kitchen, and checked down in the basement to see if maybe the big pop-up tent or something had fallen over, but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.  Later than night when I was removing the clip-ons from my bike I picked up the wheel bag containing the front wheel I'd borrowed from Vivian and noticed that the front tire was flat.  When I opened the bag I found everything coated in a white powder.  The sidewall had completely blown out.  I guess the tire was a little old.  At least it hadn't happened during my time trial.  Well, actually, maybe that would have been a good thing, under the circumstances, as I distinctly remember wishing I'd get a flat so I could quit.  Anyway, I got the results posted to the website, uploaded them to the USAC database, and then met with the Tulane Cycling officers to get a start on the club's plans for the year, budget, etc.  By 10 pm I got about halfway through updating the LCCS points rankings before I started falling asleep at the keyboard and decided to call it a night.  Unfortunately I was then "urged" to go out into the night in search of gasoline thanks to the increasingly alarming newscasters.  The closest gas station had a line about two blocks long, the next two were not selling gas, either because they had sold out or were waiting for the price to go up.  I ended up filling up the car way out by Elmwood.  Anyway, this morning the forecast, IMHO, looks more encouraging and I'm not really expecting to have to evacuate the city for this one.

As I climbed the path  up to the levee this morning I glanced over my right shoulder at the red sky and thought, "...sailors take warning."  A Tropical Storm was heading our way.  It was relatively cool and breezy, and of course there was nobody to ride with, but I figured I'd better put in a few miles since the weather would probably become an issue on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Out near the turnaround I ran into a rider who recently moved to town and with whom we'd had breakfast after Saturday's Giro Ride (and whose name of course I can't recall right now), so at least I had some company for the return trip.