End of Dark

The wind's been shifting back around to the south lately, lifting the morning temperatures well out of arm-warmer range, at least until the next front arrives Halloween night.  Since I'll be departing for Mountain Time on Friday, I'll be off the bike for three days.  I hate that, but it will actually be a shorter lapse than usual.  For the past few years the USAC Local Associations conference has come immediately before the NCURA conference in D.C., and as a result it was usually five or six days before I saw the bike again.  This year the D.C. conference has been moved to August, so at least my losses will be limited.

Sunrise around here is currently at 7:12 am, so even the relatively late 6:40 am ride is starting in the dark.  Fortunately, however, this week will be the last of the dark rides for a little while.  For me, tomorrow will be my last.  By the time I'm back we will have moved our clocks backward and on Monday the sun will rise at 7:12.  For a few weeks the lights can come off the bike, but the reprieve won't last long as the days continue to shorten.  By November 30 sunrise will be back to 6:38, and by Christmas we'll already be a few miles down the road before the sun peeks over the horizon. To further complicate matters, the levee construction work that started earlier this month will, on some undetermined date, close off critical parts of the bike path and we'll all be looking for alternate morning ride solutions.  The infamous WeMoRi (Wednesday Morning Ride) around City Park and Lakeshore Drive starts at the insane hour of 5:45 am and I don't know that I will often be desperate enough to get up at 5 am in order to get to the start. One group is already pushing for another morning ride around City Park at around 6 am on Tuesdays.  Personally, I'm thinking that 6:30 would be more reasonable, especially if most of the ride was on Lakeshore Drive rather than a battle with stop lights and early commuter traffic on Wisner and Marconi.  It'll be bad enough just getting home from such a ride at 7:45 or so on Carrollton Avenue, so I can't say I'm looking forward to it.  There was a time, however, before the levee bike path was completed, that I routinely rode out to the lakefront on Carrollton to do my training ride on Lakeshore Drive, so I may be back to that some time in the next month or so.  We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm at least glad that there's no race or other big ride that I'll be missing next weekend (although it would be a great weekend for a long ride on the northshore).  The following weekend will be the cyclocross race up in Jackson on Saturday, followed by a 100 mi. collegiate ride with LSU from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, assuming of course I survive the cyclocross.

This morning's levee ride had a group of around ten, I guess.  There was a moderate breeze out of the southeast that didn't present too much of a problem and provided a bit of a tailwind for much of the outgoing part.  Tomorrow we're having our annual Halloween open house, so if you are in the neighborhood any time before 10:30 or so, stop by for a drink and something to eat.

A Bit of Fall Weather

After last weekend's mudfest in New Orleans it was with much relief that I noted a weekend forecast consisting mostly of clear skies and fall-like weather.  I was scheduled to officiate the cyclocross race over in Baton Rouge, and although I'd clamped the bike to the roof I wasn't really  holding out a lot of hope that I'd get to race.  The course at Highland Road park looked great.  there was some good elevation change, some fast sections of grass and hard-packed trail, and of course a number of artificial barriers.  The turnout was similar to the New Orleans race, which is to say it was excellent, and I was looking forward to keeping my feet dry and having as good a time as one can while officiating.

The races themselves went very well, although I can't really say the same for the results.  The multiple-category race had riders being lapped very early, with a couple lapped more than once, and sorting that out took me a whole lot longer than I'd have liked.  There was a little confusion with some riders who were sporting the wrong numbers since they were registered in more than one race, and so basically things started running late. The final race, for Cat. 1/2/3, had only six riders (we don't have many cyclocross riders around here above Cat. 4). The winner, William Sheftal, was the sole Cat. 2 in the field and basically rode away from the rest of the field immediately.  Even so, it was obvious how much faster these guys were going than the Cat. 4s had been going earlier.  The winner's lap times were all a bit under 5 minutes, which were at least a minute faster than the Cat. 4s had been going.  He was so much smoother going over the barriers that there was simply no comparison with the rest of the field.  Anyway, I don't think I got out of there until around 3:30.


Feeling a little mileage-deprived I went out to the Giro Ride on Sunday.  It was still fairly chilly at 6 am, and I was glad I'd pulled on the arm-warmers before leaving.  The ride itself was very nice.  The pace stayed fast and steady for most of the ride, which was just what I was looking for. Afterward, Ben and I rode straight over to Tulane's Reily Center to meet a few of those riders, including The Daughter, who were leaving at 10:00.  This was a nice easy ride through the park and along the still-closed Orleans Parish section of the levee bike path, and then all the way out to The Dip.  That gave me a bit over 90 miles for the day, so I was feeling satisfied by the time I got home.  I watched some TV while I sorted out the 1-day licenses from the prior day's race and updated the series standings.  This morning I took those standings off the LAMBRA website, however, because the promoter was re-scoring everything in a fairly strange way that I just can't comprehend.  Frankly, I think it's so convoluted and complicated that the riders are never going to understand it, and some of them will probably be pissed off when they see someone ahead of them on points who they never actually got to race against.  I think I'm just going to have to let them handle the series points.

Fleece and Film

I guess this morning was the coolest we've yet had this Fall, which isn't really saying much since it didn't even merit knee-warmers. I knew I'd be chilly anyway, so I dug out my long-sleeve jersey with the fleecy lining. Riding out to the levee felt downright cold, however, and I was kind of wishing I'd pulled on some knee-warmers.  Of course once the pace got going I warmed up considerably, but I never felt really warm.  After the turnaround the pace stayed relatively slow, which eventually made me feel even colder as the sweat started to evaporate.  I guess I should get used to it though.  It's that time of year.

After the ride Brian, Danielle and I pulled up to Zotz for a coffee break and noticed that there were No Parking signs all up and down the street there.  A film crew was just getting things set up for something. There was a black hearse parked on the block that was obviously for the film, along with a cluster of people getting things set up. This happens fairly often on Oak Street. There was another film crew on Carrollton as we rode home, and they've been filming 22 Jump Street on campus for a few weeks now. 

Gumbo Mud and Westbank Giro

I awoke before dawn on Saturday and waited to lift my head off the pillow until a car went by.  I listened intently for the sound of tires on wet pavement, but to my surprise it sounded dry.  I looked out the window and could see that it had not rained.  My first thought was, "This is bad!"  It wasn't that I was looking forward to a rainy day of cyclocross races.  The forecast earlier had been calling for rain overnight that would be tapering off by mid-morning.  With the first of the DSGP cyclocross races scheduled to start at 10:00 am, I was hoping that the cool front would have come through by then. Immediately I pulled up the radar map and what I saw made me jump out of bed and pull on some pants.  The rain was literally a few minutes away.  I ran downstairs and, as quickly as I could, loaded up the car with the race equipment I'd need to officiate - two pop-up tents, generator, race clock, clock stand, flag, banners, table, chairs, and two bins full of clipboards, stopwatches and other miscellaneous stuff.  As I slammed the Volvo's rear door closed the rain started.

When I arrived at the cyclocross venue in City Park, about an hour and a half before start time, the crew was about halfway through putting up the stakes and tape to mark off the course.  I found a couple of the race volunteers and gave them a quick lesson on race registration since the registration would be located quite a distance from the start and I knew I couldn't be there.  I rushed over the the start location and got the tent set up and gear unloaded in a light rain.  The Daughter arrived and helped get things set up as riders started to filter in.  Considering the weather I'd been expecting maybe 30 riders, which would have been an excellent turnout.  As it turned out, the actual number was more like 50, and with a number of them riding multiple races the number of actual entries was nearly 70.  Amazing.  The rain went back and forth from drizzle to outright rain a number of times during the first few hours and the course went from soft and muddy to rutted gumbo mud, especially after the first race.

The first race was the biggest with 34 riders on the line for the Cat. 4/5 race.  Many were racing on 1-day licenses and thanks to some deplorable penmanship we were just guessing on a number of their names.  Bob M. had arrived to help officiate and despite the rain we got the first race started less than fifteen minutes late.  The course times during practice sessions a few days earlier had been running in the seven to seven and a half minute range and indeed the first riders in this race came through at under 8 minutes, so we figured their 30-minute race would be about 4 laps.  Big mistake.  The speeds slowed to a crawl as the course got churned up and bikes became loaded down with mud and grass, so they ended up riding for more like 44 minutes (55 for those off the back).  It was a challenge keeping track of lapped riders but otherwise it was fun. At some point a spectator asked permission to plug a blender into the generator to make frozen daiquiris or something.  There was also free beer on hand, some of which found its way into somewhat illegal handups. 

The other races went pretty well and the rain eventually stopped, although we were falling behind schedule pretty significantly because of some difficulties with scoring resulting from the registration problems plus the extra time needed for riders who were off the back to plod in to the finish.  I felt sorry for the riders on over-geared narrow-tire singlespeeds!  The promoter had not been able to print out the pre-registered riders' entry forms, nor the blank release forms, because of printer problems the night before.  I had a few release forms on hand and we had lots of the multipart 1-day forms, so they used those.  That resulted in a number of riders for whom we didn't have license numbers since the 1-day forms don't have a space for those.  Then, when riders decided to ride additional races, there were some problems with race numbers not being swapped out or noted, but all-in-all it wasn't too bad.  At the finish line I had my own set of problems, not the least of which were the red ants that kept climbing up my left sock and stinging me on the ankle.  My tape recorder must have gotten wet and that was what I was using to record finish times.  Granted, finish times weren't essential, but it's nice to have them.  Luckily The Daughter had been standing next to me and was writing down the times as I called them out into the recorder.  I'd brought my own bike, holding out some hope of being able to ride the masters race, but there just wasn't enough time for me to do that comfortably.  Besides, it looked like a swamp out there by that time and I had my doubts about the fun to suffering ratio.  It wasn't until after 3 pm that I got home and unloaded the car.  The event was unquestionably a huge success and has set the cyclocross event bar quite a bit higher than it's ever been before in this neck of the woods.  The next race is this coming weekend in Baton Rouge.

Sunday there was the annual Tour de Jefferson, which is supposed to be a nice fun 50-mile charity ride over on the Westbank.  Over the past few years, however, it has evolved into the "Westbank Giro" because most of the regular Giro riders participate and it turns into a pretty fast ride.  This year I went over with The Daughter for whom this would be the longest ride of the year.  I told her how I though it would go and advised her to start at the front with me and the rest of the Giro crowd, expect it to be fast, and hang with the front group for the first eight miles until we got off of the levee.  I figured that by then the speed would have shed the more casual (aka dangerous) riders and she could find herself a nice group going at a more moderate pace.  The lead group split off a little bit before that point after a particularly fast surge, but that was OK.  So for me the rest of the ride out to the turnaround was pretty nice.  I mostly hung out toward the back of the lead group, which numbered about 20, I guess, occasionally closing gaps and responding to surges, but mostly drafting and enjoying the scenery.  The return trip was similar, and I was actually a little disappointed that nobody attacked the climb up the bridge.  Our group averaged 24.5 mph for the 48 miles.  When I got back to the start I stopped for a few minutes and then rode backwards on the course for a couple of miles until I found The Daughter safely tucked into a small group.  Her legs were pretty much toast but she was hanging in there pretty well.  After stuffing myself with jambalaya, red beans and rice, and chicken wings, we headed home where I failed to do much of anything productive for the rest of the day.

Weather Watch

"Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."  I couldn't help but remember that phrase on this morning's ride as we turned back to the east.  At the time, the wind was still out of the southeast or maybe southwest, but things were definitely changing. At any rate, I was glad there was no rain on the radar map.  The Thursday long levee ride was fairly sedate today with riders taking longish pulls at moderate speeds.  I was fine with that.  It's early afternoon now and the wind has already shifted to the NNW at 9 mph and will no doubt swing fully around to the north later today.  I don't really understand what's going on with the weather right now, but the hourly forecast is calling for a nice day on Friday and then rain chances increasing after midnight on Friday all the way up to 70% at 6 am Saturday.  Then the chance of rain drops quickly to only 20% at 10 am., which is when the cyclocross races start.  That's cutting it pretty close, and really it's still a little too far out to be counting on the hourly forecast like that.  One thing seems certain.  Between now and then it's going to rain, and that means that some parts of the course are going to be wet and muddy and slippery.  Those are conditions that some in the cyclocross world truly embrace.  I am not one of them, although I'm sure I will find some fun riding out there anyway. With apologies to Mark Twain, one might advise, "Get a cyclocross bike. You will not regret it, if you live." 

What I'm most concerned about is actually getting the race finish and judging area set up without getting all of the equipment and myself soaked.  We will be basically out in the middle of a very low-lying grassy field, so I would greatly appreciate it if the rain would just come and go before sunrise.  For now, though, I will be including plastic tarps, plastic bags, umbrellas, rain gear, and extra socks and shoes on the "stuff to bring" list.

The Next Front

Wednesday morning seemed noticeably darker than Monday had.  Perhaps it was just that I'd been awakened around 5 am by the garbage truck outside my window trying unsuccessfully to negotiate the turn onto Neron Place after entering Pine St., as always, from the wrong direction.  They eventually gave up and headed back onto S. Claiborne, but not without ten minutes of back-up beeping and yelling back and forth.  On the plus side, no side-view mirrors were damaged in the process.  So I go down to the basement and put the bike on the ground only to find the rear tire flat as a pancake.  I quickly swapped it out for my race wheel and headed out to the levee.  It was still a bit cool but definitely more humid than it had been the last few days.  The wind had shifted around to the southeast, I guess.  There was a pretty good group this morning and thanks to the slight tailwind and moderate pace, the ride out to the turnaround was pretty smooth.  With a clear sky I was able to turn off the headlight by the time we were halfway out.  Today there were enough people in the paceline, and they were taking long enough pulls, that my turn never actually came up all the way out to the parish line.

We had a bit of a headwind on the way back, but the pace was fairly slow so it didn't really matter much.  It's late afternoon now and the clouds have started to move in ahead of a very slow-moving cool front that I think will drift through tomorrow. That should bring a shift of wind direction to the north and probably a bit of rain. The Friday forecast seems to be fine, but for Saturday they're presently predicting a 60% chance of rain.  The cool front won't be particularly cold, so by mid-morning on Saturday I guess it will be in the low 70s, which will be great unless, of course, it's also raining.  The cyclocross races in City Park start around 10 am, which means I'll be out there by 8:30 or so, and although it might be fun to do the course in the rain and mud, standing there wet all day officiating is not something I'm looking forward to. Fortunately, there's still plenty of time for the forecast to change.  The plan is to officiate the first race at 10:00, race the second one at 11:00, and the officiate the ones at 12:15 and 1:45 with Bob M. standing in as the official for the 11:00 one.  Luckily, if the weather is really lousy I can always claim I'm needed as an official and save myself from falling into puddles of mud. Actually, it should be fun as long as the weather doesn't get too miserable, and really, this is New Orleans where miserable October weather conditions would resemble a nice summer day in Belgium.  There was a nice article about the race in Cyclocross Magazine (which I didn't actually know existed until this morning).

Cross to Bear

The Giro heads out past the Lakeshore Drive floodgate.

The weekend's weather was nice and although I have been fairly unmotivated to push myself, I did manage to make both Giro Rides plus a little stroll through the City Park cyclocross course.  Turnout for the Giro was strangely low last weekend.  Perhaps it was just that there is so much going on around here this time of year.  As D and I rode to the Giro on Saturday we passed the big field in City Park where the Seafood Festival was set up.  Down along Harrison there was a big music stage also set up near Marconi.  Elsewhere, there were at least two other festival type things going on, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but the weather was so nice that  you would think more people would have made the effort to get in a ride.  Anyway, that's not to say that the groups were too small, just that they were smaller than usual.  On the plus side, the pace was also more steady.  I'd even go so far as to say that Sunday's Giro was pleasant.

Well, the first race of the Delta States Grand Prix cyclocross series is this Saturday over in City Park and the local Facebook groups are all atwitter about it.  Hardly anyone around here has enough relevant experience with cyclocross to be able to offer valid comments, but of course that isn't stopping anyone.  For me, it's just a fun change of pace where I'm more focused on riding around in the dirt and grass without falling too much than on actually being competitive.  However, a bunch of the local riders have recently acquired actual cyclocross bikes of one flavor or another and many are trying to cram in as much experience on them as possible.  It's basically like trying to get in shape for cyclocross all in one week.  I'll be officiating except for the race in which I'll hopefully be riding, and it's looking like turnout will be pretty strong.  By strong, I mean there will probably be at least thirty riders.  Considering that we haven't had a cyclocross season around here since 2011, and even then the turnout was pretty low, that's actually quite encouraging. Of course, everyone has a different opinion about the course.  The group that's been helping put on the race has actually put in a huge, huge amount of work creating a cyclocross course basically from scratch in an area of the park that was once part of the golf course but has been basically abandoned for at least the past seven or eight years.

I went out and rode it on Sunday after the Giro after having tried it out briefly a few days prior to that. (Kenny posted some video of the course on youtube.) This time I had the tire pressure down to about 50 psi, which I think helped. I might even be able to go a little lower.  Interestingly, I found a pair of not very knobby cyclocross tubulars at home and could make up a wheelset from some old 5- speed wheels I have hanging around but it almost doesn't seem worth the effort. Almost all of the course feels really, really bumpy, and a lot of it plows through some rather thick grass, so there is almost no place where you feel like you can get up any significant speed.  If you wanted to be competitive on this course you'd have to keep the power on practically the whole time.  It's also basically flat as a pancake, so to make up for that there are a lot of very tight turns, some sand that was no doubt once part of the golf course's sand traps, and a couple of spots that could be really wet and muddy if there's any rain.  I'm hoping we don't have any head-on collisions along a couple of stretches where there is basically two-way traffic. Although it's a challenging course, I can't really say it's a fun one.  Personally, I like the courses with some nice sweeping downhills, hard-packed roads or trails, and maybe an uphill run-up somewhere.  I'm not particularly good at those things, but they do make a course more interesting.  On the plus side, though, it won't be cold and there will probably be some actual spectators to see me stumble over the barriers and impale my crotch on the Pennine's vintage Concur saddle which is probably the newest component on the whole bike.  I really need to lower that thing a bit.  Anyway, it should be a fun event one way or the other.  The next day, on Sunday, there's the annual Tour of Jefferson across the river, so I might go ride that if I don't break anything on Saturday.

Uncontrolled Variables

The cool mornings are still with us for the time being. The weather for yesterday's Wednesday morning levee ride was nearly perfect and it was looking like it would be a nice ride until the crash.  As the group approached one of the access roads a car turned onto it off of River Road at full speed and it was anybody's guess whether he would slow down in time.  I was near the back and yelled "Car!" as the riders in front hit the brakes. Whenever that happens it's hard to know if the guys in front are just slowing down a little bit or braking hard. In this case it was the latter.  Brian was somewhere in the middle and was caught off-guard, crossing wheels with someone in front of him and going down.  He didn't seem to be hurt too badly and did the rest of the ride with us, but even though his shorts didn't tear, he reportedly had a nice bit of road rash under there.

So I went out in the dark this morning expecting similar conditions to the day before.  I was therefore surprised to find the levee covered in a fairly thick fog. Once the pace got going and the fog got thicker things started getting pretty sketchy, especially toward the back.  You couldn't see the pedestrians or other bikes until the last minute, which resulted in a lot of panic braking toward the end of the paceline.  After the third time someone hit the brakes in front of me I sat up and dropped out of the paceline.  There were just too many uncontrolled variables for comfort.  I waited for Jeff and Mignon who had done the same a bit earlier and we had a nice steady ride all the way out to the Luling bridge where we turned back with the group.  The ride back was much nicer since the fog had mostly lifted by then.

Coffee Season

For the second morning in a row it felt like Fall.  Around here that means the morning temperature was, however briefly, in the 60s.  The cold front that came through late on Sunday left us with a windy and cool Monday morning.  Aside from the wind, it was great riding weather, but the levee was predictably deserted.  I think we saw three other bikes between uptown and Kenner.  This morning was similar, perhaps a bit cooler and a bit less windy.  The 6:15 ride now starts essentially in the dark, but there were a lot of riders on hand today and I guess the group numbered at least a dozen.  With the road season over you would think that the Tuesday ride's intensity level would drop down a notch.  Indeed, that's clearly what most of the riders were hoping for.  Most, but not all.  A couple of riders kept pushing the pace, but most of the rest were unwilling to go with the surges, so a couple would ride off the front, get frustrated that nobody was following, and then drop back again.  While I would have been happy to stay in the rotation taking pulls at, say, 24 mph, after the first time I was essentially attacked after taking a pull I decided I'd drop to the back and let them have their party at the front.  Naturally, once we turned around and it was more headwind than tailwind the pace calmed down a bit.

The whole time I was thinking about a cup of hot coffee.  There's something about cold weather that turns my thoughts to caffeine, and the Fall-like weather certainly made it seem like coffee season.  I'm not what you'd call a big-time coffee drinker.  I typically have a cup of coffee in the morning, mainly for medicinal purposes, but that's usually it for the day.  Even so, it always seems so much more satisfying when it's cooler outside. I'm sure we are still a long way from consistently cool weather, but one thing about riding early in the morning is that you feel the changing seasons a lot earlier and more intimately than those who don't step outside until the sun is up.  The other thing that cool weather reminds me of is Cyclocross.  This morning as we were nearing the end of the ride I saw Ben riding his cyclocross bike in the grassy field that used to be the PHI heliport.

Falls and Weather

It was supposed to be a wash-out at the very least, a hurricane at the very most.  By mid-week the media were in a full-blown hurricane frenzy.  The radar didn't really look that impressive, but the storm tracks were consistently predicting landfall close enough to New Orleans to be a problem.  By the end of the week races were cancelled and the annual MS Tour was up in the air. I hadn't yet missed a day of riding, although one of those had been fairly damp, but the weekend was not looking promising. 

I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of car tires on wet asphalt. Looking out the window at the dark streets I could at least see that is wasn't actually raining, so I checked the radar.  Surprisingly, it looked fine, so I kitted up and headed over to Starbucks to see who else would show up for the Giro Ride.  Although the turnout was pretty low, it was still good enough and we rolled out just a bit late.

As we cruised down Lakeshore Drive someone suddenly said, "Look!"  Off to our right a bald eagle was flying right alongside us, but by the time I could get my camera out of my pocket he had perched on one of the struggling live oaks that the levee board keeps trying to grow along a brackish lake.  I got a rather poor shot, but at least I got a shot of the first eagle of the fall season.  They seem to disappear during the summer, so I always look forward to seeing them again in the fall.  Somewhere along Lakeshore Drive a rider on a triathlon bike latched onto the back of the group. 

We rode over the Seabrook bridge, climbed the Casino bridge, and were descending onto Hayne Blvd when I heard people calling out behind me.  Looking back I could see a rider on the ground who wasn't moving and I immediately knew what had happened.  It was the guy on the tri bike.  He had dropped his front wheel into the slot between one of the drain grates and the concrete and gone down basically on his head and shoulder.  By the time I got back there he was sitting up.  He was slightly disoriented and it looked like he might need some stitches around his eye socket but it didn't look like anything was broken.  We called for an ambulance and waited until it arrived.  In the meantime he got in touch with someone.  Surprisingly, the ambulance loaded both him and his bike into the ambulance and they headed off to the ER.  It didn't take too long after we got started for the pace to ramp up and despite the small group we had a reasonably fast Giro Ride.  The weather the rest of the day was not particularly bad, and it was looking like the storm was stalled down in the gulf and disintegrating.

So Sunday morning the weather was quite nice. I had been expecting a lot of wind, but in fact it was nearly calm as I rode out to the Sunday Giro.  Turnout was even smaller than it had been on Saturday. I had been expecting an easy ride.  A number of the riders were planning on riding out to Slidell, but even so the pace got pretty fast on the way out.  Once the rest of us turned around the ride back was fairly easy.

The old Pennine is almost ready for cyclocross season now.  I took off the fenders, put on the cyclocross wheels, swapped out the Look pedals for the spd pedals, and just need to replace the headset which is so pitted that it barely turns.

Six Gaps and Single Digits

My annual end-of-season pilgrimage to the 6 Gap Century up in Dahlonega, GA was a little different this year.  A few days before our Saturday departure we had seven or eight Tulane riders signed up, so Kenny and I put together a second fork-mount bike holder gizmo to fit into the second of two extended cab pickup trucks that I had reserved for the trip.  When properly organized with turned handlebars, we could put five bikes in each truck bed.  As often happens, though, by the time we actually rolled out around 7:30 on Saturday we were down to five Tulane riders plus Kenny and myself.  The 8-hour drive was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Dahlonega around 5:30, which allowed time to pick up our packets before they shut down at 6:00.  Kenny made a snap decision to enter the Cat. 1/2 criterium that started at 6:30, and by the time we finished watching the Women race (Debbie Milne won) and got the trucks relocated to a prime parking spot near the course we were in a dead run to get him and his bike together in time for the start.  With no warmup at all, and starting at the back of the field, the odds were against him. Before he could get settled in there was a big attack at around the third lap and he and a number of other riders were gapped off for good.  Anyway, it was fun watching the races.  We picked up some pizza right on the course and then drove back down toward Dawsonville to check into our Super8 smoking-allowed rooms.  Actually, aside from the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the hotel was quite nice and we convinced the manager to get breakfast ready early so we could get something to eat before driving back to Dahlonega.  Although the start time for the 104 mile ride ("it's not a race") was 7:30, I knew we had to get there before 6:30 in order to get a good parking spot in the school parking lot.  Fortunately everyone in our group was up and out the door right on time so we got some great parking spots about half an hour before there was even a glow in the eastern sky.  The temperature was in the mid-50s, so I decided to wear two jerseys and arm-warmers even though I knew I'd be warm by the time the ride ended.

We lined up near the start about 20 minutes before the start, but within two minutes of the start there were probably 200 riders in front of me and I'd already lost track of Kenny, David and Ben.  The early pace was pretty fast and well before the first real climb there was a big split up ahead of me.  A number of us ended up kind of in-between that big group and whatever was behind us.

I was riding with a low gear of 39x25 this year, since I'd never gotten around to buying a new 11-speed cassette with a 27 or 28.  I knew I'd be paying for that later, but the first couple of climbs actually felt pretty good.  The first "Gap" climb starts at around 22 miles and things quickly got quiet as riders settled into the effort.  I felt nice and controlled at around 9-11 mph for this climb, spending most of my time in the 23 instead of the 25.  Jorge was climbing a bit faster than I, but for the first few Gaps I'd catch up with him on the downhills.

The long Hogpen climb starts at around 54 miles and by then I was really starting to feel the miles.  My calves had been very sore for the past few days (I have no idea what I did to make them that way) and so I was doing a lot of toes-down climbing.  Even so, by the time I was halfway up Hogpen my lower back was killing me from all of the seated climbing.  At one point during that climb my speed dropped below 4 mph, but at least my Garmin never auto-paused!  The downhill from Hogpen is one of the faster ones, and for a change I didn't have any interference by cars this year.  Depending on whether you believe Strava or Garmin, my downhill speed maxed out at either 49 mph or 53 mph.  Either way, it was fun.  The Wolfpen climb was about as painful as Hogpen, again with my speed dropping down into the low single digits.  Yeah, it was painful.  I had lost Jorge on the Hogpen climb which he did maybe ten minutes faster than I.  Fortunately I didn't spend too much time riding alone this year.  After Hogpen, I was playing a kind of reverse leapfrog, latching onto small groups of two or four as they came by, hanging on for a few miles, and then dropping off.

The last downhill is actually one of my favorites.  It's fast and long at 8 or 9 miles in length, and although it isn't as steep as some of the others, it's nice and steady.  This year I came down that section with one other rider who was also a good descender, so that made it a lot of fun.  At the bottom of that downhill there are around ten miles left to go as you come around a very, very sharp downhill U-turn onto a road through a farm.  There are always course monitors there yelling at everyone to slow down.  As we came around that bend we had to hit the brakes to avoid an ambulance that was dealing with someone who had gone off the road and down into a little ravine.  As we got rolling again the other riders looked at his computer and said he thought we could get in at under six hours if we pushed it a bit.  I hadn't been really thinking about that but I figured if I had someone to work with, why not?  Well a mile or two later he pulled off and as I went past him to take my pull I heard him say something like, "Damn!"  The next time I looked back he was a long way back.  I eased up for a while but he wasn't coming, so I guess he had some kind of mechanical issue.  Well, now I was all focused on that 6 hour mark and doing the math in my head I was still very unsure about whether I could make it or not.  The long rollers along that stretch made it difficult to estimate your average speed. When my computer read 100 miles, I figured that I might be able to make it, but then, about two miles later, there was a sign on the side of the road that said 100 miles.  By then I'd caught a group of three riders and could hear them discussing the same thing.  If we still had four miles to go there was no way we could get there in under six hours, so everyone eased up.  A moment later we came to an intersection and quickly realized we were only half a mile or so from the school.  The sign had been wrong.  We picked up the pace again and sprinted into the school to finish at 5:59:00.

It was a really long ride back and we didn't arrive at campus until nearly 1 am Monday morning.  By the time I dropped Kenny off and unloaded, it was 2 am before I hit the sack.  I was out the door by 6:30 for an easy spin on the levee.  Legs were pretty sore!  On the plus side, everyone in our group had a good ride, even though Ben, who had gone out with the lead group, had gotten leg cramps around Hogpen and had to stop for a while to work them out.  I think is actual riding time was probably still substantially shorter than mine.  The winners finished nearly an hour ahead of me, setting a new course record of 4:57.  Wow.