One Day More

Well, last Saturday was a complete wash-out. The weather was just miserable all day.  I ended up finally getting a good start on a little project I'd been putting off for the past, oh, six years.  The basement.  After Katrina it was briefly all nice an cleaned out. If there's one thing good about a flood it's that chance to start over with a clean slate.  It didn't last, however.  Before I knew it, the basement had become a repository for cast-off items from about three different households.  My little corner that I keep for bikes and maintenance and tools and other workshop stuff kept getting smaller and smaller. 

So Saturday I started throwing out stuff. Stuff like old 28-hole GEL 280 tubular rims and venerable Fiamme red labels. Of course there were also other things like the numerous cans of old paint that are still drying out behind the garage.  It took me the better part of two days to straighten out and rearrange that one quarter of the basement, but now all the bikes have their places and there's enough open space to actually walk around and work on a bike.  I'm just hoping I don't come down with a Hantavirus infection after stirring everything up so much.

Sunday morning I got on the bike in the dark and started out toward the lakefront to meet the Giro Ride.  It was damp and a bit foggy and felt at least ten degrees colder than it actually was.  Four blocks from home I said, out loud, I don't feel like riding today. It was only by force of will, or perhaps guilt, or maybe compulsive tendencies, that I kept going.  The turnout was fairly low once again, but after an Americano I felt a little better.  The ride was pretty tame by Giro standards, no doubt influenced by the dreary damp morning.  By the time we were on the way back, however, the sun started to come out and right away everything got better, and warmer.  So what had started out as a pretty miserable ride ended up as a nice brisk day under a bright December sky.  Go figure.  Up in Minnesota Brian Toone was slogging out a few miles with chemical heat packs in his socks on a ride with an average temperature of something like minus 17.  Brian, you gotta draw the line somewhere, man!  Anyway, I spent much of the afternoon on the basement project, but didn't really finish it up until Monday. 

This morning I went out a little late.  I hadn't slept very well and awoke with a headache, probably an allergic inflammation from inhaling all that crap in the basement.  I went out to the levee expecting to be riding alone but ran into a rider from Washington who was in town and looking for the morning levee ride.  A bit later we met up with Donald, so we had a nice 16 mph type of ride.  Unfortunately, the headache just kept getting worse and my neck kept getting more and more stiff, so by the time we were halfway home I was pretty uncomfortable.

There's only one day more in 2013, and when I checked my year-to-date mileage I realized I needed only 25 miles or so to hit the 12,000 mile mark for the year.  Mileage isn't necessarily a good indicator of training value, of course, especially in my case since most of my training miles are done with some sort of group, but even so, 12k is a respectable annual total.  I doubt I've been under 11,000 miles in at least ten years.

So today I saw that David LeDuc got a two-year suspension for testing positive at masters nationals for EPO, and testosterone, and amphetamines.  He's about a year older than I am and I've been seeing his name in masters nationals results since the early 80s.  I don't know what to say.  Doping to try and break into the Pro ranks is one thing, but doping to race in the 60-64 age group is something altogether different.  If he'd tested positive for just testosterone, or Viagra, I could probably see how that might happen, but EPO?

Riding Alone

After the complete wash-out that was Sunday, a cold front finally shuffled through some time after midnight leaving behind damp streets, cold temperatures and wind - lots of wind.  I was off work so I didn't worry too much about getting to the levee exactly on time, especially since I wasn't expecting anyone to be there anyway.  One extra bonus we sometimes get following a good rain is a bike path littered with sticky dead earthworms.  I'm not exactly sure what causes this mass suicide, but it can make for a really messy bike ride.  As expected, I was riding alone on Monday, and although it was cold and windy, I wasn't going very hard which made the riding reasonably tolerable.  As often happens when I'm riding alone, I spotted the bald eagle sitting atop one of the big power line poles on the batture, and although the light wasn't very good I stopped to get a few photos anyway. Preparations for the partial bike path closure seem to be moving along, and on Monday I could see where the fencing was set to close off the path at the upriver end of Ochsner hospital.  I guess that the first section to be closed off completely will be from the Orleans parish line to that point, which is maybe half a mile or so.  Along the batture there were two of the big crew quarter barges that the Corps of Engineers uses, along with a huge tugboat and lots of parked cars.  It looked like they were staging an invasion.

Fortunately the bike path was still open Tuesday morning when I went out a little later than usual.  Since I'm off work there wasn't any good reason to ride in the dark, especially since the temperature was in the upper 30s and the wind probably around 12-14 mph from the north.  I dressed warmly since I was planning on riding for a couple of hours at as easy a pace as the wind would allow. At least the sky was finally clear.  I was out around LaRose, I guess, when I saw Steve and Kurt coming toward me.  They turned around and we rode out to Ormond where Steve headed home.  Kurt rode with me back downriver to River Ridge before turning back himself.  I got home with just enough time to shower, change, and ride over to TISM for a physical therapy appointment and about an hour of back and shoulder strengthening work that will probably leave me a bit sore.  I guess the next twenty-four hours will be pretty busy.  Rumor has it that they may try and move my dad from the hospital to a nursing facility, although which one still seems to be up in the air.

So perhaps I'll find some time in the next few days to complete the new SafeSport continuing education module that I'm supposed to have for my official's license.  The reaction among many officials on the listserv to that new requirement, plus the new background check requirement and cost, has generally been, to put it succinctly, "this is bullshit."  It is becoming very clear that a lot of our officials, especially those who typically officiate just one or two races a year, for free, aren't going to renew.  I think this is going to be a problem.....

Doppler Shift Week

It always happens.  The closer you get to a holiday, the tighter and tighter things start to stack up.  It's like some kind of pre-holiday Doppler effect. The quick bullet list goes something like this:

• Thursday night a week ago Dad breaks his hip, is in the hospital, then a nursing facility, then back to the hospital where he spends all night in the ER because there are no beds;
• Listened to a USAC continuing education workshop on 2014 rule changes on my cellphone while sitting in the ER waiting room;
• My neck still hurts when I ride;
• Bank account has been overdrawn, again, by she who will not be named because she probably bought you a Christmas present too;
• Levee bike path is about to close;
• Weather fluctuating from 38 to 80 degrees;
• Ordering prescription Oakleys to use up leftover FSA funds before the end of the year;
• Neighborhood bank armored car delivery holdup and murder;
• And then last night a drunk hits the curb on S. Claiborne behind the house at high speed and the car goes diagonally across the wide neutral ground, miraculously missing trees, across Broadway, across the oncoming three lanes of S. Claiborne without hitting any cars, and crashes into a fence behind a house.  Totally drunk out of his mind guy gets out of the car and starts walking home down Claiborne toward east Carrollton.  All the neighbors run outside, We call 911 and follow him for a few blocks hoping the police will show up.  Police show up about two hours later.  Should have implied that shots had been fired.
• And yes, I still have to take that 90 minute USOC/USAC required SafeSport continuing education things on how not to be a child molester.

Today I left the office around 11:30 to ride over to Touro hospital so check on my father who finally got a (very nice) room.  When I got back to the office a couple of hours later the door was locked and all the lights were off.  Monday is the last official day of work around here before the holidays, but for all practical purposes things shut down today.

Last weekend most of the Giro Ride ended up doing Keith's TVR ride down Metairie Road and looping around on the levee back to Audubon Park.  TVR stands for The Vagina Ride, which I think it intended to ensure that the pace remains at a level suitable for the fairer sex, despite the fact that a number of that sex's members could readily rip his and my legs off at will.  Anyway, it was a nice ride although this time we didn't find any handguns.

Louisiana Cycling Club 1891

Anyway, I have been squeezing in a barely reasonable amount of riding in the mornings.  Last weekend the Giro rides were once again pretty thin because of the weather, and the mornings remained quite cold until Thursday.  This morning I had to check the thermometer three times before I believed it.  I think it was something like 65 degrees.  Shorts and a jersey on Dec. 20.  Bet that doesn't happen in Minnesota.  Unfortunately, it looks like the morning levee ride routine that has been my bread and butter for ten years is about to be upset.  When we came down the exit ramp after Thursday's ride there were a couple of workmen putting up fencing there.  This morning I was not surprised to find the on-ramp fenced off completely.  I stopped to take a quick photo for Facebook, but up on the levee I could see a few riders waiting for me.  All of the auto/truck access roads were open, and indeed the entire bike path was open.  I fear that by Monday, however, the actual work zone will be entirely fenced off and it will be a couple of years before we have the full bike path back in action. It has been suggested that we just ride on River Road past the construction area, which would probably be a mile or two, before getting back up onto the bike path.  Riding on River Road is not for the faint of heart, however.  It's narrow and there is absolutely no shoulder, just a ragged asphalt edge.  It probably wouldn't be too bad in a group at 6:15 am, but by the time we come back around 7:45 it will be terrible.  Often, traffic is backed up from Oak Street to Ochsner, and since the road is so narrow I'm not even sure we could ride past the line of stopped cars.  I am seriously considering going back to riding Carrollton Avenue out to do a lap on Lakeshore Drive and perhaps also a loop around City Park.  Carrollton is well lit and wide, and the only real traffic issues would be on a 2-mile stretch on the way back.  The other problem, though, is that we'd lose quite a few minutes because of traffic signals and that sort of thing.  Should be interesting, anyway.

So I ordered a pair of Oakley Half-Jacket sunglasses with bifocal lenses from Sport RX for $315.  My old Oakley M-frames are hanging in there and are fine with my contact lenses, but since I had the opportunity to get these I figured I'd go for it. They can't really do the same prescription lenses for the M-frame, so it was a bit of a compromise.  Otherwise, I feel pretty out of shape right now, and the fact that the house is absolutely crammed full of chocolate and candy is not helping one bit.  Although I've been putting in some miles - fewer than I'd like but better than nothing - I haven't done anything that would really constitute training in over a month now.  The twice-weekly physical therapy visits have been fine, but I haven't noticed any dramatic improvement.  Instead it's been a very slow process measured in weeks rather than days.  By the end of the rides my neck and back muscles are still fairly stiff and painful but at this point my attitude is "screw it, I'm riding."

I recently found a photo in the Louisiana Historical Society archives from 1891 of the Louisiana Cycling Club's house just off St. Charles Ave. on Octavia Street. It is still standing across from Daneel Park as a nicely kept home.  I stopped there today and gave the owner a copy of the photo.  Then, on the way home from the hospital one day this weekend I went to see if the old New Orleans Bicycle Club house was still standing and was surprised to find it was finally being repaired after having half the roof ripped off in hurricane Katrina.

Winter Again

Last weekend's Giro Rides were kind of difficult.  The weather was generally cloudy, damp, cold and windy, and the resulting sub-par turnout didn't make things any easier.  For me, the first 45 minutes or so were OK, but I struggled through the rest of the rides as the muscles in my neck and upper back got tighter and tighter.  It was really pretty frustrating, since my legs felt generally fine.  The rides themselves weren't particularly fast.  Saturday morning, while we were sitting at Starbucks before the ride, a number of the guys were planning on riding to Slidell.  By the time we actually got out to Venetian Isles, however, only a handful actually went.  Coming back home in the thick wet cold mist I could only imagine what kind of a death march their return trip would be.

So by Sunday evening I had already decided to sleep late on Monday, and I wasn't really making any firm plans for Tuesday either.  When I was awakened around 3:30 am this morning by the sound of rain I just took it as a sign and wrote off my Tuesday ride.  The roads would have been wet anyway and the 40 degree temperature and double-digit wind speed would have made for another miserable ride.  I am thinking lately that I must have herniated a disk in my back.  Tomorrow morning I have an appointment for physical therapy, so we'll see how that goes.  At any rate, I'm glad it's December and not March.

Next weekend is the final race of the cyclocross series and since it's the LAMBRA championship I'll be going, but I just can't seem to convince myself that it would be anything but foolish to race.  Another crash wouldn't be a good thing right now, and the fact that I have been riding pretty conservatively for over a month now certainly doesn't give me any confidence in my fitness level anyway.  I just put the initial 2014 race calendar up on the LAMBRA website, so at least that's done.  I also sent the RaceClean agreement to our treasurer so she can attach the $1,700 check and send it in to USAC.  Later, I'll have to send a list of all of our LCCS races, and then it will be up to USADA to pick one at which to do drug testing.  We'll include the RaceClean logo on all of the event announcements and websites in order to get the most visibility possible.  I still have to sit down and plow through the SafeSport webinar and exams which I'm not really looking forward to.  It should be an interesting road season next year with two track series' on the calendar plus a criterium in New Orleans.  We still need to make some final decisions about a couple of the championships and we have a couple of people working on what will probably be a complete reorganization of the bylaws and LAMBRA structure.  The old structure was based on the assumption that there were a relatively small number of clubs, all interested mainly in road racing, and all with fairly large memberships and interest in promoting races. It was reasonable then to have a Board composed of one representative from each club.  Things have changed, however, and now we have a number of smaller team-clubs, quite a few clubs that put on mainly fun rides, and the relatively new emergence of relatively independent race directors.  I think it's time to move to an elected Board.  While having a two-state-wide popular election would have been difficult ten years ago, now it should be quite simple, so anyway we'll see where that all goes.  At the very least I expect it will shake a few people out of the bushes and get them more involved.

What's Comin'

It has been a difficult weather week for riding, even down here in the southern delta where it's been unseasonably warm and rain-free.  Why would that be a problem, you ask?  Well the problem has to do with south winds and the Mississippi River, the former being warm and humid and the latter being ice water from the frozen north.  Every morning this week I've ridden out to the levee to find it partially or fully blanketed in fog.  The lower the wind, the thicker the fog.  This morning was the first time all week that I didn't have to keep my headlight on, and that was only because the wind had picked up. It's also the reason I don't have much in the way of photos.  Anyway, that's apparently about to change.  The cold front that has been causing super-low temperatures all the way back to the Rockies is approaching the city like that "rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem" from The Second Coming.  It would be one thing if a big cold front would just blow through, drop the temperatures and move on off to the east, but this one is barely moving now and in all probability will back up out of the Gulf after coming through and cause all sorts of unpredictable nasty wet weather.  Or not.  They don't really seem to know for sure. 

So yesterday I finally went over to the Tulane Sports Medicine Institute to get this neck/back thing checked out since it's been nearly four weeks since I fell on my head and it is still hurting after half an hour or so on the bike.  They took a whole series of x-rays, and the good news is that there wasn't anything there that looked like a major spinal problem.  Granted, we didn't fire up the NMR for this  -- oh, I mean the MRI (the general public is still afraid of the word nuclear, despite a general ignorance of both physics and pronunciation).  The plan for now is prednisone for a couple of weeks and maybe a little physical therapy next week in hopes that the muscles and related soft tissue that I have angered by not lying on the couch enough will calm down.  We'll see.  I'm giving it a 50/50 chance and hoping for the best.

This morning it was over 70F when I went out to the levee to meet Scott and David.  Just as we were about to take off a little group of Semi-tough riders came past so we caught up with them and rode together to the pipes where they turned around and we continued on to the parish line.  We did spot the Bald Eagle perched in his usual spot near Colonial Country Club on the way out, and again on the way back in another tree.  Thanks to the wind, the fog wasn't bad at all this morning, with the only significant accumulation being around the Ochsner bend where the long stretch of north-south river gets the south wind good an cold before it runs into the levee there.  I don't really know what the weather or riding possibilities are going to be like this weekend, except that we'll probably be back to winter temperatures.

The Threat of Christmas Hangs in the Air

Where did I read that?  Somehow that phrase always comes to mind this time of year when the riding gets harder, routines become compromised, the weather goes from unpredictable to random, and my bank account starts bleeding profusely.  After a couple of nice rides Saturday and early Sunday morning, I had to descend into LAMBRA administration for the 11:00 annual business meeting. Right off the bat I realized that the catering had been incorrectly scheduled for Monday, so I quickly ordered some pizza before launching into a little intro for the dozen or so club representatives, plus our USAC Regional Representative Stuart Lamp, who were able to attend.  It was actually a pretty good meeting as such things go.  I should be able to get an initial 2014 race calendar up in a day or two.  There will be a few loose ends as usual, but I was happy to see most of the sponsoring clubs ready to step up to the plate again next year.  I still need to send out a summary.  One thing that I hadn't really anticipated was the decision to eliminate LCCS points for Cat. 4 women, but in light of the fact that none of them has had any real reason to upgrade for years, it's worth a try.  I'll talk with our upgrade coordinator so he understands the situation and is prepared to be sufficiently flexible.  It really makes no sense that although the women start our as Cat. 4s instead of Cat. 5s like the men, they still have to meet the same 4 to 3 upgrade requirements as the men.  We also tasked a couple of the guys to start working on a reorganization plan for LAMBRA.  Things have changed since the days when there were a fairly small number of fairly large clubs.  The organization is currently set up as an association of clubs, but it's getting to be time to change that because of the appearance of small elite club/teams and race director organizations.  I can see us moving toward a Board of Directors elected by popular vote rather than the club representative system we have now.  We also need to get more people actively involved in LAMBRA administration so that the same people don't get stuck doing everything forever. I think an elected Board and various committees should do that.  I just hope they don't all feel obligated to make a while bunch of rules and just keep the focus on helping ensure that we have good events with accurate results. Should be interesting, but at any rate I'm glad to see people taking an interest in this.

So last night I logged on to my USAC account to renew my racing and official's licenses for 2014.  There's also a Race Director's license in play that I think I get for free.  Anyway, it was rather painful.  The racing license was $70 and the official's license was $75 plus another $35 for the new required criminal background check.  That's like the equivalent of two new tires and a chain, and I still  haven't renewed my club membership. It'll end up being over $200.  I remember when it was more like $25.  Then, just to twist the knife, there is a new continuing education requirement for the official's license.  I had to email the Regional Director to find out where the secret place on the website was to take care of that.  Then, I figured this should be fairly easy so I logged onto the SafeSport training site this morning thinking I could at least knock that one out in half an hour.  No way.  They estimate 90 minutes.  I didn't even look at the rulebook update training site that I also have to take care of.  This is all going to make it really hard for some of our volunteer officials who typically officiate only when necessary to renew their licenses.  I'm worried about that.  Basically I have to now prove I'm not a criminal and have been duly trained in the finer points of sexual harassment, bullying, hazing, sexual misconduct, and "grooming behaviors" -- whatever that is -- in order to officiate bike races. The rulebook CEU requirement should be a walk in the park after that.  On top of all that, The Daughter has to have her second root canal in two months next week, not to mention the looming threat of Christmas.  Whew.

Anyway, I did get out on the bike Monday and today, both days riding mostly or entirely alone. Monday was still chilly, but at least I had the whole bike path to myself and spotted the eagle again near the country club. This morning it had just finished raining when I got up and the streets were soaking wet.  I stared at the radar for a while, looked out the window a few times, and made an executive decision to wait until 6:30 in hopes that the streets would at least be a little drier.  The Daughter decided to skip her ride altogether.  At least the temperature was a comfortable 64 or 65 degrees. The streets were still every bit as wet at 6:30 as they had been at 6:00, but at least it wasn't raining so I headed out to the levee and put in some 26 miles at a reasonable pace.  The neck is still an issue, however, and I finally broke down and scheduled an appointment at TISM with Greg Stewart who I'm sure has seen more than his share of people who have landed on their heads. I'll might get the "Why did you wait so long?" lecture, but at least the sports medicine folks understand the mentality that makes a football player with a concussion want to get back in the game.