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.