Detours and Virgin Asphalt and an Anniversary

Solo breakaways in team time trials are not encouraged.

It's been a hot week down here in the Crescent City, but that didn't stop a good turnout for one of Kenny's bandit time trials out on Lakeshore Drive last Tuesday.  This one was a 10+ mile 4-man TT for which I'd been asked to join Steve, Rolan and Pat for twenty-five minutes of after-work gear-mashing (four hyphens in one sentence!).  In order to give the appearance of being motivated, and also to enhance my already finely honed drafting capabilities, I bolted the aero-bars onto the bike the night before.  After work that day I briefly considered riding out to the lakefront, but the thought of going out on public roads wearing a TT helmet was just more than I could handle, so I threw the bike into the car, turned up the A/C and drove out there in luxury.  I'd already ridden 42 miles that morning, so there was no guilt involved in that decision. 

With some minimal warmup I joined the rest of the NOBC team as we waited patiently in line for our start.  We had decided that I'd lead it out at a moderate speed in order to keep from having anyone blow up due to lack of warmup.  Kenny said "Go" and I clipped in smoothly and accelerated onto Lakeshore Drive.  After about ten pedal strokes, and still with my hands on the brake hoods, I glanced back to make sure everyone was in place. Yikes!  The rest of the team was still practically at the start line!  Rolan had flubbed clipping in.  I slowed down and waited, and when we were finally back together I started ramping it up again.  The next time I glanced down I saw 28 mph, and although we had a light tailwind I thought that was maybe a bit optimistic so I backed off just a touch before pulling over.  Those first few miles felt pretty nervous since I haven't been in a paceline on TT bars since some time in 2012.  We were only a mile or two out when I dropped back to discover that we'd lost Rolan.  I'd been counting on him to provide a lot of the horsepower.  He has a bit of a heart rhythm problem and apparently his heart rate started to spike above 200 so he wisely backed out of the paceline.  Unfortunately that put Pat, the tallest rider, on my wheel. Even so, we held a fairly respectable pace out to the turnaround, but as we started back without the benefit of the tailwind I could tell that Pat was starting to suffer.  While we had averaged around 27 mph on the way out, we were starting to see numbers closer to 23 on the way back. Pat and Steve swapped positions, but Steve isn't a whole lot bigger than I so it probably didn't make much difference.  We were about halfway back when things started to come apart a bit and we had to slow to 20-22 mph for a little while.  The pace was kind of up and down the rest of the way and we finished with a time of 25:01, probably a good 30-45 seconds slower than we could otherwise have gone.  As usual, I had a relatively easy time of it since I was getting the best draft of the group.

I ended up skipping the Wednesday training race, as apparently did most riders, and instead trimmed hedges at home where I dropped at least three pounds of sweat.

So Thursday morning we found the levee bike path blocked off where they had started the two-year construction project for the Pump to the River drainage project in Jefferson Parish.  It wasn't too difficult to bypass it on River Road, although there is one stretch that can be pretty sketchy because of traffic and dump trucks.  They still haven't even started replacing the bike path on the levee between the Corps of Engineers building and the parish line, so this kind of added insult to injury.  The police chief said that the contractor was already complaining about being harassed by cyclists trying to sneak through the construction zone. 

When one door closes, another door opens.  Meanwhile, the re-paving of Broadway, which has been a major headache for the past couple of months, is nearing completion.  There is nothing that warms a cyclist's heart quite like a long smooth stretch of virgin asphalt like that, especially when the road surface it is replacing was practically unrideable. I might even be able to ride to work that way.  It has always been the most direct route, but I have never used it because it was so rough and had so much traffic. They were putting down some of the last sections today near the river where I work, so it looks like it will be essentially complete by the time the students come back for the fall semester in a few weeks.  Of course, this being New Orleans, the huge machine that lays down the asphalt had already broken an underground water pipe.  No surprise there.  The only question is how long it will take for them to fix that and whether or not it will introduce a big new bump into the otherwise silky smooth asphalt.

They just announced a plan to resurface part of Nashville Avenue, taking out one of the two traffic lanes and replacing it with a bike lane.  Nice. I will almost be able to ride all the way from my house to the lakefront via bike paths.  I'll probably still take Carrollton Avenue and battle with the cars, but it will at least be an option. 

Mark McMurry, who is up at the Major Taylor velodrome for Masters Track Nationals, was 4th in the 500 today.  He had been in 2nd place until the last two riders, both of which beat his time.  I think he got a medal in the flying 200 as well, and just missed out in the Matched Sprints.  Mike Williams lapped his 70+ field in the Points Race.  I presume he'll take home a couple more medals from that age group.

Oh, almost forgot.  This is 9th anniversary of this blog - 1,839 posts.