The Wednesday Protocol

The morning shadows are getting longer and longer on the levee rides lately

So late last night or early this morning the Pensacola Cycling Classic posted the still-preliminary results of the stage race that was about ten days ago.  They're giving people until midnight to protest those results, after which they will finally be laid to rest.  It won't be over for me, however, because I will still need to get the spreadsheet with license numbers and GC times so I can use that to essentially build a whole new workbook that pulls in the actual correct rider names, club names, ages and categories that I need in order to re-score the combined races to award points for our LCCS rankings. Since I'll be leaving Saturday morning for 6-Gap up in Dahlonega, I'm guessing I might not be able to do that until next week.  I could probably do it the hard way using the pdf files that they have posted, some of which lack license numbers that I would have to look up, but at this point I may as well wait.  It looks like many of the club names they posted came from BikeReg, so they are not consistent with the official USAC club names that I need for the team points ranking.  Some riders, like Tim Reagan and Mark McMurry, are for some reason listed as unattached.  Anyway, it will be at least a couple of hours' work to get the final LCCS rankings out.

I guess I'll call the shop (Bicycle World in this case) some time today to get an update on the Bianchi's bottom bracket.  Hopefully they will be able to get the necessary parts in time so I can ride it this weekend.

There was a pretty good sized group on hand for the Wednesday levee ride this morning.  This ride has evolved to be a good ride for the riders who aren't up to the 25-28 mph pace of the Tuesday and Thursday rides, but are more comfortable with a 20-23 mph pace. Some time ago, this ride would stay right around 20 mph but it seems that the consensus pace has started to creep upward in recent months.  The Wednesday protocol nowadays calls for smooth paceline, long pulls, and a reasonably steady speed of 22 mph plus or minus one mph.  Of course there are always a couple of people who violate the protocol and push it a little higher, but in general it has been pretty consistent.  As a result, we see a number of the Tulane riders on this ride.

So the annual pilgrimage up to Dahlonega is coming up next weekend for the Six Gap Century.  I'll be going with the Tulane group this year, staying down the road in Dawsonville and driving up in a couple of rental extended cab pickup trucks, which is a bit of an experiment I guess.  Yesterday I talked the folks at Enterprise car rental into letting me pick up the trucks on Friday evening instead of Saturday morning because they don't open until 9 am on Saturday.  That would make it nearly impossible for us to get to Dahlonega in time to pick up packets that evening (they close at 6:00 and we lose an hour to the eastern time zone), so being able to pickup the trucks early will allow us to leave earlier, around 7:30 or 8:00 rather than 9:30 or 10:00.  It depends a little bit on whether the car rental folks can get the trucks to their Carrollton location on Friday evening, but I'm sure we can work something out there.  Assuming my Bianchi will be back in action by then, I'll be riding with a low gear of 39x25 this year since I never got around to getting a new cassette with a 27 for the 11-speed group, mainly because they cost a lot and I'll be paying for the bottom bracket work already.  That means I'll probably be standing up a lot more on the steeper climbs, most of which are in the 7-10% range.  I've done it with a 25 before, so I should survive.  Right now it looks like it's going to be pretty chilly in the morning up there.  It looks like the low will be in the mid-50s and the high in the mid-70s.  That's two-jersey weather with arm-warmers for me normally, although knowing how much it will warm up on the climbs starting about ten miles in, I might just decide to be cold for the first hour or two.  At least the chance of rain seems to be minimal. I didn't finish last year because of the freak crash and resulting broken collarbone, but even when I'm moderately motivated, a 6-hour finish time is about the best I can hope for.  Who knows, maybe I'll just decide to enjoy the views and gorge myself on free food at the rest stops this year!