Back in the Wind

A low fog and light wind made Tuesday's morning ride pretty nice.

The weather has been pretty decent around here lately. Unfortunately, that's about to change. I've been staying close to home for the last couple of weeks, which of course meant back-to-back Giro Rides again last weekend.

On Saturday I returned from the Giro, grabbed something to eat, and went right back out to meet a Tulane Cycling group for an easy City Ride. With no particular destination in mind, we ended up heading downtown, stopping at the original site of the New Orleans Bicycle Club, both to check out old plaque in the concrete and to check out the newly re-opened and re-built Martin Wine Cellar across the street on Baronne. That lead us to continue the trip along Baronne and ultimately Dryades, which is in the midst of a kind of revitalization of sorts. Someone innocently mentioned wanting to go somewhere different, so we rode farther downtown, over sidewalks and the wrong way down one-way streets to get to St. Louis #2 where we practiced bike-handling skills weaving among the tightly-packed historic tombs. Since we were so close, we then stopped at St. Louis #1 and walked the bikes through the tour groups to check out Marie Laveau's tomb. That took us through the Quarter to Cafe du Monde, but the line was halfway down the block, so instead we rode down Esplanade Avenue to City Park and had our coffee and beignets at the Morning Call in the old Casino building, where there happened to be a live jazz band playing. I ended up with like 80 miles, most of them pretty slow.

Full house at the Tulane training center

Monday was one of those days when I sleep late, telling myself I'll ride the WattBike in the evening, but don't really follow up on it very well. The rest of the week has been pretty normal, thus far, except for a few kinks. On Tuesday I was a few minutes late getting out the door, so I missed the group at Nashville Avenue. Heading out to the lake solo I could see them going over the I-10 overpass on Jeff. Davis, but after catching a couple of lights they were gone. Then, along Jeff Davis there was some sort of power outage, which made riding pretty cool, actually.  I was glad my headlight still had a bit of a charge left in it. Of course I eventually met up with everyone on Lakeshore Drive, so I didn't really miss much. Then on Wednesday I somehow got out the door early, so I decided to go straight to Lakeshore Drive, instead of Marconi, and catch the group on its way back from the Seabrook loop. I rode all the way out to the Elysian Fields traffic circle, fully expecting to find the group coming at me at 30 mph, but I guess I was earlier than I thought because I ended up riding back and forth between the bridge and the traffic circle a couple of times before I finally saw the headlights coming.

Tulane Friday Coffee Ride, Bayou St. John

I was well on the other side of Bayou St. John before them came up behind me and I could get in. Of course Jaden attacked right away, but then  it all came back together on Robert E. Lee. Leading  up to the bridge I was near the front when I got streamed by an attack down the left and whoever was in front of me didn't respond at all. I did the second lap around City Park a little faster than usual, and then turned around to ride with the Tulane group that was heading for Lakeshore Drive to do whatever intervals or drills they were supposed to be doing. So I ended up riding an extra ten miles or so.

Not looking good for tonight or tomorrow morning.

This morning the temperature was right around 60, but there was a stiff wind blowing out of the ENE, so I wasn't too surprised to find only two people waiting at the end of Nashville Avenue for the ride out to the lake. Once there we picked up most of the usual riders, so there was a pretty good group, which was good because we were riding straight into the wind all the way to Seabrook. Surprisingly the speed didn't go ballistic after we turned back toward the West, at least not until the last bit of Lakeshore Drive.  Once we got onto the bike path along the lake, however, it ramped up considerably. I think I spent three or four miles sitting on Matt's wheel going 32-34 mph.  The ride back was, predictably, much slower -- like 16-18 mph. By the time I got back to Robert E. Lee there was no sign of the other two riders who I'd ridden out with. I don't know if they turned back early or were popped off the back in the headwind, but anyway, I rode back home solo. A cold front is coming through tonight, so tomorrow morning may be a wash-out.  For that matter, my ride home from work may be a wash-out too.

Winter Interlude

Winter morning rides - just a blur this week.

The past week has been pretty dull routine, despite wildly fluctuating temperatures and, of course, the wind. It was the last week of cyclocross season, at least around here, and now we begin the long winter interlude of cold, dark and windy morning rides as the local racing community awaits the start of the road season at the end of February. As usual, most of the talk centers around the annual Rouge-Roubaix race, and already there are ad hoc group rides being put together so riders can pre-ride the gravel sections of the course. For me, the gravel sections always seemed like the dark clouds rather than the silver linings, and I never found much fun there even though, on occasion, I negotiated them successfully. I've never really committed to that race, I guess, and last year I ended up officiating rather than riding. That might happen again this year. It's been well over a year since that unfortunate crash I had at the October 2013 cyclocross race, and I still get a lot of tension and pain in my upper back and neck toward the end of long rides. Considering the jolting that R-R dishes out to one's head, above and beyond that of a normal 100+ mile ride, I suspect the last forty miles would be pretty ugly for me.

Chilly Giro Morning on Saturday

Anyway, we're now getting to that time of year when the weather really starts to impact my riding. Last week I skipped riding on Thursday altogether because of rain, although I did at least ride both of the weekend Giro Rides, neither of which were particularly hard. Saturday's ride started out at 37 degrees, so turnout was down a bit and motivation was down a lot. It was a nice enough ride, and of course there were a few fast sections, but for the most part the northeast wind and cold air kept the speeds down quite a bit. We had a visiting rider from Oregon on the Saturday ride and I was glad to see that he was having no trouble with the pace or distance. I never really know what to tell visitors who contact me about the Giro Ride. It seems kind of awkward to ask them the questions I really need to ask, like "Are you comfortable enough and experienced enough to rotate through a paceline going 28 mph for, say, five miles without blowing up and/or riding like a dork?" Anyway, it was a cold ride on Saturday and I was glad to get back home.

Sunday was considerably warmer, and although we were missing a number of the faster riders who were apparently doing a long ride on the northshore, the strong east wind kept everyone honest. With the generally moderate pace, I took the opportunity to put in a couple of efforts at the Goodyear sprint and Seabrook bridge that got the heart rate momentarily up into the 170s, but still well below the upper 180s I've occasionally seen in races.

Monday was 12th Night, and since for once the weather wasn't absolutely miserable I rode over to the streetcar barn to seen the Phunny Phorty Phellows start their annual streetcar ride. These are the kinds of things that really make the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans special. Sadly, we lost Boatner Reily the same week, so I wonder if the annual Royal Run, which he started, will continue on Fat Tuesday.

Liz discarding mud-caked gloves at collegiate nats

We had a number of LAMBRA riders over in Austin last week for the cyclocross championships and most put in respectable performances, especially considering the difficult, rain-soaked, muddy course they had to contend with.  The biggest factor, as far as placing was concerned, was usually starting position rather than ability. A few of the local riders had traveled over to Texas a few times in the fall to compete in bigger CX races where they would get better ranking points, but for most, the smaller fields and combined categories we have in most of our races gave them starting positions pretty far down the grid, and on the Austin course it looked to be pretty difficult to get around people to make up any significant amount of ground. We had Liz So riding in the collegiate Division 2 championship, and thanks to her cyclocross experience and the relatively small field of 30-something riders she had a starting position on the front row. She started out in 3rd place but ended up in 6th, covered in slick Texas mud. She was also entered in the women's elite race, but in that case she was seeded near the very back of a pretty large field. Of course, there was the whole disaster on Sunday with the races being cancelled because of an uproar from the local "heritage tree" association. They did manage to compromise and run the races on Monday, but by then some people had already left. Liz pretty much stayed where she'd started, finishing 40th out of 46, but it was good that she was at least able to stay the extra day to compete with her team.

So on Monday the streets were wet from overnight rains, and I sat in bed a while staring at the radar, trying to make a decision. The temperature was still fairly warm, so eventually I decided to go out, rather late, on the rain bike, overdressed, to at least spin my legs a bit. I ended up doing just a very easy 12 miles. I'd started late and ended up having to deal with a lot of traffic and stop lights and slippery asphalt uptown and it just wasn't worth it, so I headed home early. Today the temperature was much colder, and as usual that meant a strong north wind. I got out of bed a little late and was in a dead run to meet the 5:45 am group that, thankfully, had waited a couple of minutes extra. By the time we got out to the lakefront it was clear that the wind was going to be an issue. Waves were breaking over the seawall in places and I could feel the wind tugging at my front wheel as we met up with the other riders near the Bayou St. John bridge. Woody started pushing the pace a bit on the way out to Seabrook and pretty soon there were only a few people willing to come to the front. We rounded the loop at the end and had just started back when a car tried to come past us on the right (we were all over the road right after the loop). That disrupted things enough and put some people into the wind as the road turned west and before I knew it a gap was opening a few riders ahead of me. I confess, I really didn't care. I knew the front group of four or so was just going to hammer all the way down Lakeshore Drive and just couldn't drum up enough motivation to bridge the gap during the twenty seconds of so when I had the chance. We got a little paceline going, but we were probably 1 mph slower so the gap grew pretty quickly. Then things got really confusing. Woody and a couple others turned off onto Marconi, apparently to avoid the crosswinds and water that was rumored to still be draining across the lake bike path. Our group continued on to West End where the Metairie riders headed for the bike path and the rest of us turned down Robt. E. Lee with the idea of meeting up with Woody's group somewhere on Marconi. So we rode down Marconi past Harrison until we saw blinky lights coming toward us. Then we turned around only to discover that this was the Tulane group that had started at 6:30. We rode with them back to Robert E. Lee and then turned toward Wisner, but we never saw Woody et. al. anywhere. By then we were getting cold since we'd slowed down so much, so we pretty much bailed and headed back home. Basically, it was kind of a miserable ride between the wind and the cold. That seems to happen a lot this time of year.

Back to Winter Training

Another wet and foggy ride on the lakefront - Saturday's Giro Ride heading home

When I checked my Strava profile yesterday I was rather shocked to find that I'd ridden over 300 miles last week. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, I was off from work the whole time and the weather, although often wet and messy, was never very cold. And then there was that New Year's Day group ride to Slidell on Thursday. That replaced the usual 40 miles with 94, so together with a longer than usual Monday ride and back-to-back Giro Rides on the weekend, it all kind of made sense. What I remember most about the past week, however, are wet streets, flat tires, and messy bikes.

New Year's Day, heading out

On Tuesday and Wednesday I met a visiting rider from Chattanooga, Tab Tollett, for the usual long Tuesday ride and then the usual WeMoRi. Tuesday the temperature was in the mid-50s, which was nice, but the lake trail was a mess with water still training off of the levee, just as it had been the day before when I'd ridden out there by myself. Both days I stopped to spray the grit off the bike with the garden hose before bringing it inside. Wednesday was cooler, starting out in the mid-40s, which was fine, except that there was an absolutely brutal northwest wind blowing. It was so brutal, in fact, that the WeMoRi riders decided to skip their usual lap on Lakeshore Drive and instead do an extra lap around City Park. Of course, since I usually meet them when the come off of Lakeshore Drive, I was surprised to see the whole group of blinking headlights flying down Wisner Blvd. just as we were coming down the overpass. There was no way we were going to catch them, so we cut across City Park and picked them up on Marconi for the next two laps. That worked out fine, actually.

Store Stop at Slidell

So on New Year's Day we had a big group of almost 20, I guess, that set out for a special "Holiday Giro" out to Slidell and back. It was in the 50s most of the time, and the wind had died down quite a bit, so it turned into a really nice ride that got me home with 94 miles at 20 mph. The group got kind of split up on the return trip, first when Matt apparently decided to adjust his saddle angle just as we were leaving the gas station, and later when someone flatted coming down the bridge at Fort Pike while a little group was 30 seconds off the front. The little group never knew and just kept hammering, since that stretch from Fort Pike to Venetian Isles on the way back is often pretty fast. Once we got the flat fixed and got rolling, we averaged about 25 mph but didn't catch until they sat up.

Saturday Giro, STILL with the wet roads and fog, but *shorts!

My legs were pretty trashed after the Slidell ride, and when I awoke on Friday to more we streets I decided on an easy ride on the old Pennine since I'd just converted it back from cyclocross mode to rain bike mode. I still had the CX wheel on the rear, but decided to put my regular rain wheel on the front since it had a Mr. Tuffy in it. Unfortunately, the Mr. Tuffy didn't stop a leak from developing near the valve hole where the tube must have rubbed through. I have a little adapter in there since the old rim has a hole designed for Schraeder valves and I was using Presta valve tubes. Anyway, I ended up having to make a very messy flat tire repair with everything already coated in wet road grime, so by the time I was finished with that I figured it was a sign that I should just go home, which I did.

The weekend turned out to be pretty nice. It was something like 68 degrees when I left home in, basically, summer kit. After a week of slogging around in knickers and long-sleeves and everything, it felt great to be riding in just shorts. I was still wearing shoe covers, however, because the streets basically never dried up all weekend. I followed that up with a repeat Giro Ride on Sunday where we ran into a ton of fog out on Chef Highway but otherwise had a pretty good ride.

So now it's back to normal, back to work, and back to the routine. The temperature was down around 40 this morning and it looks like it will be typical winter riding with morning temps around 40 until Thursday morning when another cold front is supposed to bring it down below freezing with a low of 26F and winds of "20-30 mph."  Not really looking forward to that.