Out with a whimper

You would think that the week between Christmas and New Year's Day would be filled with long training rides and piles of miles.  Indeed, it should.  In fact, it wasn't.  Last weekend I did two Giro Rides, both in uncomfortably cold weather and with uncomfortably sore legs. The legs were sore because I spent a few hours on Friday removing part of a large Sweet Olive tree so that the chimney repair guys could get a 40-foot ladder in the right place to re-point my chimney.  It's been leaking whenever there has been a driving rain, and as it turns out, the brick were being held in place primarily by gravity rather than mortar.  So while the gutted kitchen awaits the post-holiday return of the contractor, the chimney guys spent about six hours working on the chimney which is now only the vent for the furnace.  It was not inexpensive, but at least it's no longer clogged up with the remnants of a squirrel or bird nest and should now be more or less watertight.  Meanwhile, I spent hours and hours scraping paint off of an old door that had been down in the basement for probably fifty years so that I could use it to replace the one that the burglar kicked in a few years back.  I put a third coat of polyurethane on one side of it tonight, and a third coat of stain-killer paint on the wall stains from the chimney leak.  Anyway, all of this extracurricular labor left me sore all over for the Saturday Giro.  It was bad day to have sore legs. A cold front had come through, leaving us with a morning temperature in the upper 30s and a cold wind that can be described only as "brutal."  I wasn't going to be able to do the long ride to Slidell anyway, but in this case I was not feeling particularly deprived in that respect. There were a few riders in town from Lake Charles for the Saturday Giro, and the predictable result was that the pace got really fast once we hit Hayne Blvd, despite the wind.  Halfway down Hayne, when the pace once again surged, I eased up behind another rider to look for a little more shelter nearer the back.  Bad move. As it turned out, the back of the pack was already off the back and the few riders left behind us immediately streamed past at way too high of a speed for us to be able to latch on.  So before I knew what had happened, three of us had been spit unceremoniously out the back.  The paceline ahead was still accelerating, so when I saw us coming up on the intersection with Bullard Avenue I said, "Take a right here!"  That little shortcut usually gets you a couple of minutes by the time you meet back up with the group a few miles downrange.  When we arrived at the service road, however, the group was nowhere in sight. As it turned out there had been a flat near the end of Hayne Blvd.  Eventually they showed up, at about 30 mph, of course, before easing up for a moment on Chef Highway to regroup.  Then a long rotating paceline formed up as the pace again increased.  As Matt dropped back past me I noticed his front quick release was completely released!  It took me a little while to get back to him to tell him.  I guess that's why they still put those lawyer tabs on the fork ends.  At the turnaround a number of crazy people continued on to Slidell, so relatively speaking the return trip was civilized.  Then, as we were coming back down Hayne Blvd., Chip mentioned that his handlebars had come loose and said he thought he could probably make it back. Really?  Loose handlebars on a bike are not to be taken lightly, and since I had a multitool with me we stopped to tighten it up (he had just gotten it back from the shop!). 

Sunday was practically more of the same, except that it was even colder at the start and there was even less horsepower in the group.  On the one hand, that kept the pace within normal bounds.  It was still kind of a miserable ride for me, though, since my legs felt like blocks of wood the whole time.  Even this morning it was still pretty cold when I met a couple of the guys up on the levee at the relatively luxurious hour of 7 am. The night before I'd had the idea that I might get in one last long ride for 2012, but it was not to be and I returned home after a modest 30 miles.  The Corps of Engineers has its "Mat Sinking" rig tied up near Oschner this week.  I guess they must be putting down some more concrete matts to prevent the river from scouring out a new path at the bend.

So we placed orders for an actual official finish line camera, which was around $5,000, plus another laptop, an iPAD, and an expensive tripod and camera mount for LAMBRA.  Should be interesting at the first few races when we're still trying to figure out how it all works!

So 2012 wasn't a very great year for me.  In addition to a less than stellar racing season, along with at least a couple of broken bones and a fair amount of time of the bike, I lost a few friends this year.  One who I saw often, and a few old friends who I hadn't seen in a while but who I liked a lot. I'll try and look on the bright side and expect 2013 to be better.  Maybe by then my parts will finally arrive and I can build up this new bike!