The Long Weekend

It all started Thanksgiving morning.  Earlier in the week Mignon had innocently sent out an email suggesting a 7 am start time for a Thanksgiving Day ride.  We will often put together these "holiday" rides when a lot of people are off work on a weekday.  Of course, I was thinking this would be a nice smooth little group ride with some light conversation and just a sprinkling of actual training.  Apparently a number of others, however, were thinking of a long hammerfest race simulation to atone for the gluttony in which they were planning to indulge later in the day.  The group soft-pedaled for a while as it waited for a couple of late arrivals to catch up from the Playground, but as soon as they arrived the speed went up to 26 mph and pretty much stayed there. We lost a number of riders right off the bat.  The return trip felt more and more like a race the farther we went and when yet another surge took it up to 29 mph somewhere around the country club I decided it was time to dial it back a bit and let them go. The front group was basically sprinting for the bridge, I guess, because we caught up to them around the playground as most were heading for their cars. My daughter flew in that afternoon and we had a big Thanksgiving dinner that night, so I was more than happy to do a nice easy ride Friday morning.  Riding alone, I was able to enjoy the scenery and spotted a bald eagle near the bend in the river at the country club.  This is the time of year when I always seem to see eagles around here.

So on Saturday morning Joey D stopped by the house and joined me for the ride out to meet the Giro.  There was a pretty big group that included some of the LSU riders.  Apparently a few of the riders had deicded amongst themselves that the traditional warmup section of the Giro was too slow and decided to make it faster. Normally, riders roll out from Starbucks in a long disorganized string with lots of big gaps because they know that the group will be going slowly and everything will come back together halfway down Lakeshore Drive.  Well this time it didn't because the riders at the front were pushing the pace way above "normal."  Some riders had to chase hard to catch.  Others got dropped for good in the strong crosswind.  There was even a crash that I'm sure nobody at the front even knew about.  The rest of the Giro that day seemed like a windy road race in south Florida. There was a pretty strong northwest wind that kept the speed low but the effort level high. When the speed ramped up about a mile before the Venetian Isles sprint I backed off as the group started to shatter.  A moment later I saw the group coming back.  They had turned around way, way early for some reason.  In the process, they had left Brett Regan and Mike Williams, who had raced all the way to the usual turnaround, behind.  They ended up chasing all the way back and were not too happy about it, either. 

It was deep in Lakeview after Katrina

The return trip got pretty fast as well, especially when the route took us westward with the tailwind, and we spent a lot of time in the 26-30 mph range. It wasn't an easy ride, nor a very civilized one.  Afterward I stopped at NOLA Beans on Harrison Avenue for a club meeting to discuss our 2013-14 team kit and didn't get home and out of my own team kit until nearly noon.  A little brass plaque on the wall near the bathroom noted the Katrina water level.

Sunday morning I had to take The Daughter to the airport, so I missed the Giro, which was probably a good thing under the circumstances.  It was pretty cold in the morning, so I waited until around 10:30 and set off for a long solo ride on the river bike path, staying mostly in the 18-20 mph range and enjoying some pretty great weather.  I was still feeling guilty about all of the pecan pie, lemon merangue, turkey, turkey soup, stuffing, and wine I'd consumed when I went out this morning for what I expected to be 25 miles at a moderate pace. It was cloudy but the last weather forecast I'd seen had put the chance of rain at around 10% until later in the day.  It was wrong.  Five mile in I started to feel the drizzle and promptly made a u-turn for home, arriving rather damp but not yet drenched or cold.