Weekend Up the River

(Yeah, I left my camera at home so the phone was pressed into service)

The annual NOBC Training Camp is as much a social event as it is a training event. With such a diverse membership, the weekend up at the Natchez State Park is largely spent getting to know new riders, talking informally about racing plans, equipment, etc.  Since I was, and still am, driving around in that big rental Chrysler minivan, and I was cleared to take it up to Natchez for the weekend, I sent an email out to see if anyone needed a ride.  So after work on Friday I folded down four of the seven seats, rolled three bikes, with wheels still attached, into it, and Isaac, Mignon and I headed for Mississippi with room to spare.  It turned out to be a good place to be last weekend because the weather there was much nicer than it was down in New Orleans.  After arriving around 9:30 pm or so, I moved my stuff into one of the cabins with Chuck and Robinson where, thanks to a couple of last-minute cancellations, I had an entire bed to myself.  We ended up sitting around, talking, and drinking wine until nearly 1 am.  Fortunately we were not planning on starting the Saturday morning ride until 9:00. 

Despite the late bedtime, I was up as usual at 5:45 am which allowed for lots of time to make coffee, boil a few eggs and generally lounge around.  It was in the low 40s, but the sky looked clear and the air was dry, so a number of riders went pretty light on the clothing, knowing that it would warm up into the 60s by the time we returned from our traditional ride up the Natchez Trace to Port Gibson.  All eighteen of us rolled out together for the first ten or twelve miles before stopping and splitting into two groups. The front group then picked up its pace, averaging around 22 mph for the next 20+ miles.  The Trace is very deceptive because of the way the road is graded.  Although it looks like it's mostly flat, it is in fact mostly not.  Instead, it is a series of long, long uphills and downhills that often left me wondering if I was really that out of shape or if we were actually going uphill.  Just before the turnaround we get off of the trace and ride half a mile or so to a gas station on Highway 61.  By then we'd dropped a number of people from the lead group and of course the second group was a few minutes behind, so I turned back and rode the other way for a few miles before turning back to ride in with some of the second group.  Somehow, in the interim, Adrian, who had been just behind the first group, missed the turn and as far as we knew was MIA for the rest of the ride. We thought he had turned around and headed back ahead of us while we were at the gas station purchasing nutritious gas station snack foods, but I think he somehow ended up alone anyway.  As usual, the return trip gradually got faster and faster until there was just a handful of us left.  When we got to the place where we turn off of the Trace to ride back to the park I turned around again and rode back on the course for a couple of miles to pick up the others.  A few of us ended up going out again in the afternoon for a few more miles around the State Park road, so I ended up the day with 87 miles.

Saturday evening we all packed into one of the cabins for a big community dinner while watching Chasing Legends and, of course, American Flyers.  By then my legs were feeling a bit sore.

Coach said to work on climbing!

Sunday morning was chilly again but since it was supposed to warm up quickly under a clear blue sky I dressed relatively lightly for our ride into Natchez.  This year we took the back roads, stopping at the Emerald Mound Indian mound before coming into town the same way we raced there back in the 80s for the infamous Race Across Louisiana.  Although it had been nearly twenty years, I recognized much of the road, including the spot where the surprise finish line had been (only the local guys had known for sure where the finish was, as there were no signs or markers prior to it).  We stopped again at the coffee shop and then rode down the bluff (came up just short of 40 mph on that little downhill) and slogged back up the steep climb (in both directions) before making our way back to the Natchez Trace.  There we split into two groups, although I admit I was a little surprised when all but four chose to be in the slower group.  The plan was to let the slower group start first and then have the faster group start five minutes later so that we might all arrive back at the park around the same time.  It actually worked out pretty well.  Adrian, Mignon, Robert and I rode smooth paceline (aside from Adrian's sporadic attacks up the hills) and started catching riders from the earlier group about twenty minutes later.  We passed the remaining riders from the first group just about a mile from the turn, so the timing couldn't have been better.  That ride was only 44 miles, but despite the stops and sightseeing it still provided a solid fifteen or twenty miles of legitimate training.  When we got back the temperature was in the low 60s, the sun was shining, and I was wondering why I was going back down to New Orleans where it had been cloudy and rainy all weekend.

This morning after a night of thunderstorms it was still raining when I went over to Champs Collision to retrieve personal effects from the old Volvo.  Meanwhile The Wife already has us lined up to check out a new car that will probably but the brakes on my equipment purchases for years to come.  The insurance company will be giving us around $8k for the totalled car, which is probably less than the down payment I'll be making for a new one.