Unwanted Intervals

We had a great training race out on the lakefront Wednesday evening.  Sometimes the pace is just too brutal, and sometimes there aren't enough people there to make it fun, but yesterday's training race turned out to have just the right combination, at least for me.  For reasons I cannot even begin to explain, I was feeling pretty good after rushing down S. Claiborne Avenue during rush-hour traffic, risking my live through the Palmetto Gauntlet, and finally locking up the rear wheel when some ahole tried to take me out with an unannounced right turn.  After that I decided that I was probably going to be late for the start anyway, so I may as well back off a notch, enjoy the ride, and get to the lakefront alive.  So I met up with the group as they were on the second half of the first lap, around Franklin Avenue, where I made a very quick U-turn and sprinted to catch them.  For the next few laps there were a number of attacks, a couple of which were mine, that kept things interesting. 

It is probably no coincidence that I sometimes oversleep the morning after those two-ride days like yesterday.  This morning when I awoke, after falling back asleep when the alarm went off, it was already 6 am, which is when I am usually leaving the house.  Somehow I made it out to the levee in time to meet the group.  Once things got rolling the group settled into a consensus pace of around 24 mph.  Unfortunately, Howard was in the paceline on his time trial bike.  Every time he would come to the front he would up the pace to 28 or so, so every now and then we would have an unwanted interval, usually followed by a slow-down below the speed we had been going in the first place until things settled back down to the 24 mph pace. I did manage to try out my new Nikon Coolpix AW110 camera, although I do need to change some of the defaults and figure out what will work best for those photos taken while riding.  I don't really know yet if using the combined motion detection/ vibration detection is a good idea or if it will mess with image resolution enough to irritate me.  Anyway it's a fun new toy, compliments of The Daughter, and since it's waterproof and shock resistant I can dispense with the ziplock bags.