Wind and Warmers

Every fall there's that day. That fateful, foreboding day. The first day you feel the need to pull on the arm-warmers. That day was today.

The cold front had moved through Friday night and by Saturday morning there was a strong north wind and the air was cool and dry. It wasn't quite cold enough for arm-warmers, but I did stick an extra layer under my jersey to take the chill off as I rode slowly into the wind to meet the Giro Ride. I wondered what the turnout would be like. The annual MS Tour was this weekend, and we are in-between road season and cyclocross season, so I figured we'd be missing a few. Well despite all of that, the turnout seemed almost normal, Despite the rather brutal wind, the ride was surprisingly fast on the way out. Danielle had gone out to meet the Saturday ride that leaves 15 minutes earlier, and I was surprised to see her riding back alone down Chef Highway as we were heading out. Her neck has been hurting her since Six Gap and she had decided to back off before it got too bad. Anyway, the return trip was relatively slow so we never caught the early group. Other than the wind, though, the weather was perfect for riding.

By Sunday morning the wind had died down quite a bit, but the temperature was down to about 60F, so I dug out my arm-warmers before hitting the road. I arrived at Starbucks a bit before 6:30 and wasn't too surprised that I was the first one there. A number of the regular riders had decided to do a Century Ride over near Gulfport, so that, combined with the second day of the MS Tour, would take a bunch of riders out of the Giro mix. Even so, when I walked back out of Starbucks after getting my coffee I was surprised to be still alone. It wasn't until 6:45 before a few more riders showed up, so I knew we'd have a small group today. We rolled out from Starbucks with maybe seven or eight riders. Fortunately we picked up a number more along Lakeshore Drive, so by the time we came down the overpass onto Hayne Blvd. the group had grown to a respectable size. There seemed to be a general consensus to keep the pace smooth and steady today, and about half of the group spent a lot of time in a nice double paceline. The weather was practically perfect today and I had little inclination to suffer and was quite content with the consensus pace of the day.

Later that morning I rode over to meet the Tulane Sunday social ride. I think we had about ten riders for that ride. We decided to brave River Road in order to do a ride on the levee bike path. Fortunately, traffic was pretty light and there were only a couple of impatient drivers willing to risk everyone's life in order to save themselves a couple of minutes. The temperature had warmed up to the mid-70s, so the arm-warmers stayed at home for this ride. We did almost 30 miles at an average speed of 15 mph, stopping at Breads on Oak on the way back. This was the first time in at least two months I'd ridden on the levee bike path.