Weird and unpredictable weather around here lately. On Wednesday I had been planning on going out to the lakefront for the training race, but it was pouring rain at my office at 4:30 so I pretty much wrote it off. I left work around 5:30 on wet streets under dripping oak trees, but a couple of miles up the road at the house the street was almost dry. I don't think it ever actually rained at the lakefront. So I set my sights on the Thursday evening race at the NOLA motorsports track. At 5 am that morning it was pouring rain. An hour later the rain had stopped but the streets were wet, so I dusted off the old Rain Bike, thinking I'd probably be the only person on the levee. Not so. There was a group of seven or eight up there despite the damp asphalt. It would have been a nice ride except for Howard who was on a TT bike and insisted on pushing the pace to an unsustainable level, which of course split the pack. I dropped off the back pretty early since both me and my 1972 Pennine with steel fenders and $9.95 tires were not quite up to the task of drafting behind Howard's random surges, even though there was a pretty significant tailwind. I think most of the group turned back early anyway. I rode out to the Big Dip, aka LaRose, meeting up with Judd who came up from behind on his TT bike. We both turned around at the Dip. After taking a few pulls into the headwind, I dropped back onto Judd's wheel and he spend the next ten miles practicing his time trialing while I practiced my drafting. It felt like a hard ride anyway.
So Thursday evening I rushed back home, changed, jumped in the car, and drove across the river to the motorsports park expecting a big crowd. Unfortunately there were all of fourteen or fifteen people total. Perhaps the still-strong wind had something to do with it. The track over there of course has no wind protection at all, so it's basically like riding in central Texas. We did a couple of warmup laps that were way faster than warmup speed and I remember thinking to myself, "this isn't much fun!" Then we split into two groups for a little handicap race where Kenny, Stephen, Ryan and I gave the rest of the group a couple of minutes' head start. I had already told them I'd be sitting on most of the time, which is exactly what I did. It felt a lot easier this time, probably because those riders were riding consistent lines around the sweeping curves rather than the random ones that I'd experienced earlier. Ryan somehow got out of the draft too long and came off the back, so I took a few pulls to give Kenny and Stephen some recovery, and we caught the group with a lap to go (laps are something around 2 miles, I think). So anyway, I got in a good afternoon workout.
This morning I was happy to do a fairly easy ride on the levee, after which I stopped for a cup of organic fair-trade rocket fuel at Zotz and contemplated all of the stuff I still need to get done before the race next week.
The Tour de Louisiane is just a week away now and the club is busy tying up loose ends. I was rather late getting the race bible finished this year, but finally posted it yesterday. I still have to get copies printed, of course. Entries are trickling in slowly as usual. Tomorrow we will be riding the road race course, marking intersections and sweeping corners.
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