Through the Rain

The Katrina flood line at Starbucks

It was still too dark to see much of the sky when I hit the road this morning to meet the Giro Ride.  A balmy south wind made it feel easy, and ten minutes later as the sun came up over the bayou I could see the threatening clouds off to the southwest.  Sipping coffee at Starbucks I checked the radar, which didn't offer much in the way of hope.  Even so, a pretty good-sized group headed out, perhaps a few minutes late, with little real chance of staying dry.  By the time we were approaching Chef Highway it was starting to rain.  I wasn't planning on doing much work today. 

During the Wednesday training race (I think there were only four or five of us, so it was more like a hard training ride) we had come up behind three rather large guys on mountain bikes.  At the time we were about to go over the levee west of Elysian Fields.  We were going maybe 27 mph.  They were going maybe 10.  As we started around them, one rider suddenly swerved to the left.  We had to hit the brakes fairly hard, and in the process of yanking my bike around I must have pulled something in my left ribcage like an intercostal or something. It started to hurt in the way a side stitch hurts, and toward the end of the next lap I pulled up alongside John and told him I was going to back off and head home.  Well, it's still bothering me a bit when I have to exhale strongly, which for me happens a lot during a Giro Ride.  So I decided to latch onto Matt's wheel for the ride down Chef Highway.

There was a nice group rotating at the front, and with the little tailwind we had we were soon rolling along steadily in the 27-31 mph range.  Matt was on his TT bike, staying a couple of bike lengths behind the paceline, so riding his wheel was smooth and steady.  When we were a couple of miles before the turnaround the pace at the front surged and suddenly riders were dropping out of the paceline all over the place.  Matt was keeping the same pace, weaving through the droppage, but now a big gap had opened up so he amped up the pace another notch.  I dropped off of his wheel at about 32 mph, just before he closed the gap.  By the time we were on the way back the rain had passed over us, but the group seemed to have lost its motivation.  Then Jaden flatted.  He was riding tubulars and didn't have a spare, but luckily a couple of people in the group had cans of sealant.  It was messy, but it worked and he made it back with maybe 60 psi in his tire.

At the moment we're still holding out hope that we can pull off the track races this evening at 5:00.  If nothing new pops up, it looks like the worst of the rain should pass through Baton Rouge before that, but we're kind of playing it by ear for this one.