Independence Day Giro

It was late Wednesday night and I could still detect no consensus on a July 4th group ride.  The leading options seemed to be the regular weekend Giro route and time, and a long levee ride also starting at 7 am.  Finally I sent an email out to the NOBC group saying that it sounded like it would be the Giro.  In reality, there had been little feedback, but I knew that filling the void with something that sounded like a decision would create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It did. 

I headed down a very quiet Carrollton Avenue toward Starbucks around 6:05 wondering how many riders would show up.  The rumor that it would be an easy ride because of the upcoming Vuelta d' Acadiana weekend was kind of funny to me.  Out of the entire Giro group there were maybe five riders who might actually be racing it.  It felt just a bit cooler than usual for this time of year, which is to say it was probably only 80F before sunrise.  By the time we rolled out at 7 am the group was about the size of a regular weekend Giro.  Fortunately the pace was in general a bit slower, because I really didn't want to do so much damage that I'd still be feeling it on Saturday.  Back when I was in my 30s and 40s I could ride hard on a Thursday and be fully recovered by Saturday morning.  Nowadays it's more a roll of the dice.  On the other hand, it now seems that if I haven't gotten in some significant exercise by 10:00 am I will have already started gaining weight!  It's kind of a Catch 22.

Anyway, it was a very nice Giro.  I spent some time sitting comfortably in the draft as the group rolled along at 25-28 mph, and generally stayed out of the wind.  We were in a long skinny paceline heading east on Chef Highway when there was a loud explosion up ahead.  Brian had recently put some new clinchers on his bike and the latex tube he had used on the front must have gotten pinched under the bead because it blew out in rather dramatic fashion, wrapping itself around his front axle between hub and fork end.  It was bad enough that we had to pull out my little Swiss Army Knife to cut the tube a number of times in order to unwrap it.  It was very lucky that it didn't lock up his front wheel, and that he didn't lose control when the tire came unseated from the carbon rim.  On the way back on Chef Highway Daniel flatted, so we got another little unplanned rest stop.  It was just the kind of ride I needed today.

So yesterday we (LAMBRA) sent our contract and payment in to USAC for the new RaceClean program.  For what it's worth, we were the first in the country to do so.  USAC and USADA had just, finally, come to agreement on the program and costs, the result of which was that it cost us quite a bit less than the $3,000 that we had originally allocated.  With USAC matching, the program promised to provide USADA drug testing at one LAMBRA event this year. Of course, we have no control over which event USADA chooses.  Should be interesting, but I really see it as a deterrent more than anything else.  USADA can always show up at any licensed rider's door or at any race anyway, but other than specifically targeted riders I would never expect to see them at any of our races otherwise.  It's still a lot of money for us to spend on something like this, so we'll see how it goes.  If it's well received and not too much of a burden on the event organizers we can then consider doing it again next year for one or two events.