Bonts and Breaks

I was a little surprised today when I checked Strava and realized that I'd logged four weeks of riding without a single missed day and between 240 and 280 miles per week. It was only during the past week that I started to feel good on the bike again, so although I don't feel like I'm quite 'there' yet, at least there seems to be some improvement.

Last week I finally broke down and got a new pair of riding shoes. I've been riding with Nike Poggio's since 2006.  I think they stopped making them around that time. I was on my second pair and they were, literally, falling apart at the seams. After quite a bit of research I decided to try a pair of Bont Vaypor shoes.  Last year's model, of course.  On sale, of course. There's just no way I can wear the stylish Italian shoes like Sidis that compress toes together. I gave them about a 50% chance of being compatible with my troublesome right foot, especially since I was kind of throwing the dice as to the correct size. Now, these are the heat-moldable kind of shoes, so I popped them in the convection oven at 160F for twenty minutes, stuck my feet with two pair of socks into them and did my best to mold the uppers and to a lesser extent the footbed to fit my feet. Surprisingly, when I wore them on the Saturday Giro Ride they felt pretty good.  They are quite different from regular riding shoes and have a significant built-in arch, but it appears that my toes like them.  I rode them today for a 65 mile road race and really liked them.

Saturday Giro

Speaking of the race, I registered for the Feliciana Road Race with a bit of trepidation. It was looking like there would be a pretty big Masters field and my confidence level was running kind of low. One thing I know for sure, however.  I can't get into race shape without racing. I'd ridden the Saturday Giro Ride, mostly sitting in and taking it easy. Fortunately, my legs felt OK Sunday morning as I drove up to St. Francisville to join the 28-rider Master's race. After an easy first mile or two, the attacks started. I was not having a whole lot of trouble responding to them, and the pack was pulling them back, but the whole time the pace was staying well above 25 mph average, so I knew it would eventually take its toll. We were less than fifteen miles into the first lap when the first break went clear. It had riders from the three strongest teams in it, and none from ours, but the blockade at the front allow them to establish a huge gap very quickly and I knew we wouldn't be seeing them again. I guess there were five or six riders in that group.  A while later a smaller group of two or three got away. That time the gap didn't increase very quickly and a little coordinated chase could have brought it back, but even though there were still a lot of riders in the pack, there just didn't seem to be the will to do anything about it.  I guess part of it was because none of those riders were in the 55+ race, which was combined with the 40+ race, so the 55+ riders basically didn't care.  I hate when that happens.  Anyway, I felt pretty good on the hills, which was a real confidence-booster.  Even so, by that time there were nearly ten riders up the road and I was resigned to just making it a training ride. The last lap was fairly dull as everyone was waiting for the two big climbs prior to the finish.

I was riding second wheel in the last couple of miles, and when the rider in front of me stood up and attacked the second-to-last hill I went with him.  We got a big gap, but as we got to the top he suddenly cramped up, leaving me about a mile from the finish line, in a headwind.  Not good.  I think if we could have worked together we could have stayed out there to the finish.  Anyway, I bogged down on the next climb but managed to get back into the group when they came by and mounted about 75% of a respectable sprint for the 300 meter drag race after the last hill. My placing pretty much sucked, but my happy feet and the hint of returning race fitness made it a pretty good day.

Return to Routine and Unfortunate U-Turns

The only thing that has been routine for the past couple of weeks has been the riding.  In fact, it's been routine enough to qualify as dull, but at least I'm starting to feel like I have a reasonable base again.

The weather has been, in general, pretty nice for riding lately, and as a result I can look back on three solid weeks of respectable mileage and a slowly improving level of intensity. Last weekend would have been a perfect time for me to have taken off for a weekend of racing, but there was absolutely no chance for that. Danielle graduated from Tulane with her MS in Epidemiology on Saturday, which was preceded on Friday by an awards presentation in which she was inducted into the Delta Omega honor society for epidemiology. I really couldn't miss that, especially since Candy wasn't able to be at graduation because of a meeting in Toronto.

After the awards presentation on Friday we went over to the uptown campus for the annual "Wave Goodbye" party, which was actually quite enjoyable.  The weather was relatively cool and the food was great. I don't know what other universities do, but having live music and lots of food that included grilled oysters on the half-shell, gumbo, red beans and rice, salad, various po-boys, and a cash bar was pretty nice.

The graduation ceremony for the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, not to be confused with the huge morning's "unified" graduation production at the Superdome, was held at the renovated Saenger Theatre, just down the street from the SPHTM. I love being in that theatre. I can remember going to movies there when I was a kid and being facinated by the stars on the ceiling and the general design that makes it look like you are in an outdoor amphitheatre. That hasn't changed one bit. On the down side, my little camera was really not up to the task of taking photos under those circumstances. I probably could have experimented with a lot of manual settings until I got it right, but my battery was low and I decided to play it safe and make sure I could get at least one good posed photo afterward. Yesterday afternoon I drove Danielle and the two dogs and a couple of over-weight bags to the airport for her flight back to Seattle/Olympia for the summer. When she returns in the fall she will be starting at LSU Health Sciences Center to begin work on her Ph.D.

Meanwhile, I've been back to a fairly regular riding routine for the past couple of weeks. With the Rocky Mount race going on last weekend up in Shreveport, the Giro Rides on Saturday and Sunday were a little thinner than usual, especially on Saturday. It had stormed Friday evening and I think a lot of people had just decided they wouldn't be able to ride Saturday morning and so didn't even try. As it turned out, everything was dried out by then and we had a good ride. For me, the missing riders actually gave me a better opportunity to mix in a little more intensity than usual, so that was good.

Glenn Gulotta

Last week we had a surprise visit from Glenn Gulotta, father of the Giro Ride. He's looking good and it was great catching up with him, at least until he dropped off the back when things started getting serious on Hayne Blvd.

On Sunday's ride we were flying down the service road on the way out when I heard someone next to me hit a rock which shot out to the left. His front tire immediately went flat, and after I turned around I was shocked to find that two other riders had also pinch-flatted their front tires on, apparently, the same thing.  It was almost comical. Then, on the way back after the turnaround, I found myself off the front with Laron while the rest of the group was still talking or doing whatever they do when they stop by that lonely tree out on Chef Highway. I wasn't planning on staying out there, but after a little while Laron started pushing the pace and when I looked back I couldn't even see the rest of the group. I think I took one pull and spent the rest of the time glued to his wheel.  I think we got all the way back to around the Goodyear sign before the rest of them finally caught up.

So Monday morning I was feeling a little stiff and just went out for a nice easy spin on the levee, which was great. Then this morning I met the usual 5:45 group to ride out to the lakefront. I could still feel the weekeend in my legs.

Jim's Hand

As usual, we met up with some other riders out near West End, and also as usual made a U-turn near Brisbi's to start our lap of Lakeshore Drive. I turned around and started riding easy as the rest of the group came together and then heard something odd.  Looking back I could see a group in the middle of the road and a pickup truck backing up in the right lane. Well, as it turned out, Jim (aka Professor) had started to make a u-turn and the truck, which must have been going substantially faster than the 25 mph speed limit, smashed into his left hand.  It could have been worse, of course, but the result was that Jim had broken all four metacarpals, two quite badly. We had to call for extraction to the ER, and last I heard he was in surgery. That really sucks since he had been training hard for the past couple of months and was planning on racing the Feliciana Road Race next weekend.

Coyotes on the Levee

I have a lot of backed-up stuff to do on the NOBC website, LAMBRA, Tour de La, upcoming 2-Person Time Trial, etc., and I am hoping I can make some significant progress on that stuff this week. Candy returns on Wednesday. I'm meeting with the City of Covington folks about the Tour de Louisiane on Thursday, and I'm planning on racing on Sunday.  Danielle's scooter is having electrical or starting problems that I need to diagnose, hedges and trees need trimming, the house needs painting, the car needs service, I need to schedule an eye doctor appointment (on my last pair of contact lenses right now) and some bills still need to be paid.

Mississippi Grand Prix - As Luck Would Have It

It was finally a weekend I could race.  Well almost.  I jumped in the car late Friday afternoon for the two-hour drive up to Brookhaven, Mississippi for the annual Mississippi Grand Prix stage race. I was scheduled to help with officiating of the Cat. 1/2/3 evening criterium, after which I'd be relatively free to race. I wasn't entertaining much hope for a great placing, but it was already May and I desperately needed to jump into the deep end if I was ever to get in shape this year.

The Friday evening officiating duties went smoothly and despite the bad finish line camera images.  The 60hz flicker rate of the halogen lights and the camera's 1,000 hz frame rate result in the camera storing a number of slices while the lights are, essentially, off. The result is an image with vertical black stripes that make it hard to read the bib numbers. Anyway, by the time I'd sat down to eat dinner at Broma's, Ricky had already sent me the Crit results to post.

Saturday morning was surprisingly cool, but with our master's race start time set for 9:30 am, I knew it wouldn't be a problem, even for me. There was a decent-sized field of 20-something, as we set out for the first of three laps.  The course had a couple of significant hills and lots of little rollers, so I thought that would take it's toll by the end of the almost 60 miles we had to complete. The one really decisive hill was about halfway around the course, and I knew my fitness level wasn't quite up to it yet this year.

We hadn't gone very far when one of the riders rolled off the front without any response from the field.  I motored up to him, initially just to cover it so there wouldn't be a big chase later.  After trading pulls with him for a while it was clear that the pack was letting us go, and although I had no illusions about our being able to stay out there, I started thinking that if we could just make it up and over the big hill we could spare ourselves having to respond to the inevitable attack that I knew Jerry would launch there. We still had maybe thirty seconds when we came to the bottom of the hill, at which point the other rider apparently dropped his chain and I found myself alone.  No worries, I thought, I'll just ride easy tempo over the top and be ready to jump onto whatever was left of the pack on the other side.  Well, as luck would have it, Jerry attacked hard at the bottom of the hill and I was shocked when a string of five or six riders came blasting past me halfway up the climb. They came by me like I was going backwards, and although I tried to respond, I was just too gassed by the top to close what remained of the gap. Moments later other riders started coming by, so I got in with them and we ended up with a nice little six or seven rider chase group that included three of my own teammates.

For most of the rest of that lap we were holding the gap pretty well, but as we started the second lap the cooperation lagged and the gap suddenly shot up to a minute and a half and I knew the chase was over. A mile or two later I felt my rear wheel going soft. I dropped to the back and when we got to a smooth section of road I bounced a couple of times and felt the rim hit the ground. I raised my right hand to get the attention of the follow car, shifted to the small chainring and small cog, and rolled to a stop. With only one person in the follow car, and my own 1-speed wheel buried in the back of the pickup truck, and the quick-release not set up correctly, it was a few minutes before I was rolling again. I still had the better part of 40 miles to ride, and since there was no chance whatsoever of catching even the chase group, I knew my GC chances were shot. I settled into an easy pace and rolled around the course, thankful that it wasn't too hot, and enjoyed the scenery. I assumed I was the last rider on the road, but after I finished I was surprised that there had been a nice little group just a couple of minutes behind me the whole time.

So the afternoon time trial was on a new course that turned out to be about 70% downhill. I really should have pre-ridden it, but since my GC chances were hopelessly down the drain (I think I was well over ten minutes down), and since even on a good day I wouldn't have made it into the 5-deep stage prizelist, I wasn't very motivated. I looked down at the computer about half a mile after the start and saw a speed in the low 30s, which was a little surprising since I was not putting much pressure on the pedals. I think I had a max of almost 36 mph without really trying. About a mile from the finish I finally came to a steep climb that had me out of the saddle and looking at 14 mph for a little while. I ended up with a time about a minute and a half slower than the winner, which was about mid-pack and no surprise at all. At least there was the criterium on Sunday.

Watching the Cat. 1/2/3 Criterium

The Master's criterium was a nice 60-minute one on the same course I've ridden for years. With little to lose, I decided to ride near the front, get some good training, and try to make it into the top five. I tried to do a decent warm-up, and was glad I had. From the start Jerry took the lead and thanks to a quick clip-in I was right on his wheel. The first three laps were very fast, and indeed a number of riders were dropped for good as I clung tenaciously to the wheel ahead of me. When I finally looked down I was dismayed to find I'd forgotten to start my Garmin. The pace eventually eased, and I could tell that Jerry and his teammate Tim were going to wait for the points hot spot before making another big effort. As I'd suspected, they went hard for that hot spot, taking 1st and 2nd place. Scott was 3rd with me on his wheel, but the two riders had opened a bit of a gap in the sprint. That's when I made the mistake of staying on Scott's wheel as he backed off.  Granted, I was pretty much at my limit, but it would not have been impossible for me to have bridged up to the lead duo. As they went around the next corner I saw one of them look back at the gap and then they looked at each other and I knew they were going to go for it. That was about the last we saw of them. With them already leading the GC, the other riders in the group were not showing any real interest in chasing. We ended up having a few real lulls in the pace over the rest of the race.

Finally, with two laps to go there was a hard attack up and over the hill that nearly shattered the whole group and I had to dig pretty deep just to close it. Unfortunately, nobody followed through once it was caught with a lap and a half to go, so it was gruppo compacto again for the last lap. I don't really know when or how Scott opened  up such a big gap on us, but he crossed the line with a second or two to spare and then Michael F. slingshotted past me, leaving me in 5th place. I was actually reasonably pleased with that under the circumstances. I felt like I'd ridden a decent race and considering that I'd been dropped like a rock in the last two races I'd done, at least there was some hope.

Weekends Past and Present

Division II Team Conference Champions

The past couple of weekends have been pretty busy, and although those are really the times when it would be best to keep up with the blog, they are also the most difficult times to do so. The weekend before last was the Green Wave Classic collegiate race, which also served as the Conference Championships for the South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference (SCCCC for short). Planning for the event had been pretty good, but of course there were still a lot of loose ends to tie up the week before. Those relatively minor things, like corner monitors and putting up course signage and finding follow car drivers, quickly started to pale in comparison to the elephant in the room, namely the consistently dire weather forecast. It wasn't a question of whether or not it would rain.  It was a question of whether or not the races would need to be cancelled because of hazardous road conditions. I didn't sleep much on Friday night worrying about that.

So Sunday morning it was wet but not actually raining when we drove out to Enon to get the course set up. We had free PJ's coffee out there, which helped, and the Tulane club was out in force helping get registration and everything going, so everything went fairly smoothly.

As we began to stage the various groups for the start of the road races, right on cue, it started to rain. Luckily, most of the heavy rain missed us, so although most of the road races were conducted in a light to moderate rain on wet roads, it never got really windy of particularly hazardous, and as the last races were finishing up there was even some sunshine.

Results went smoothly despite all of the complications caused by the "permanent" numbers they keep trying to use to identify the riders. I had already set up my results spreadsheets to use license numbers rather than bib numbers to link riders to their season-long points totals (45% of the riders had different numbers than they'd started the season with).

The evening TT again featured some light rain, but nothing to worry about. All-in-all the day's racing went exceptionally smoothly thanks to a lot of hard work over a couple of months getting everything organized and recruiting volunteers.

By Sunday morning the bad weather had passed and we had clear skies and warm temperatures for the day's criteriums at Lakeshore High School. We had gotten permission to use the school grounds for the races and had laid out a nice challenging course. We'd picked up the keys to the main gate as well, so when we arrived early that morning to find the gate already open I started to worry. The first thing I did was drive around the course in the rented cargo van to drop off traffic cones at the corners and intersections.

You can imagine my shock and dismay when I found that something was going on at the softball field at the back of campus.  The only access to that location was right through the criterium course. I sent Kenny to find out what was going on and he reported that there was a softball tournament that morning.  Great. Fortunately it didn't seem to be a particularly big tournament, and once everyone had arrived there was not too much traffic to deal with, so we stationed traffic monitors at both ends of the road leading to and from the field and they did a tremendous job of shuttling cars across without interfering with the races.

As far as the actual racing went, the Tulane riders were doing great and by the end of the road races I was pretty sure they had the Division II conference team championship in the bag. The racing was pretty good all morning, spiced up by one spectacular crash in one of the early races that landed the rider square in a water-filled ditch, and then later when Ben Spain went down on a corner during a solo attack and landed on his face, breaking a couple of teeth. So in the end, Tulane did great, winning the DII championship, scoring the second  highest team points regardless of division, winning the individual omnium for Cat. A men and Cat. B men, along with a slew of other top-five omnium placings. I was very proud of them, and especially my daughter who served a team president and race director.

So the next week I basically started back to a reasonably regular training schedule. I had to officiate the Harbor Master Criterium last weekend, which was a fun event with spectacularly nice weather.

I brought my bike and ended up entering the Cat. 1/2 race where I knew I'd get slaughtered, but it was the race for which I was least needed at the finish line and it was way past time for me to get back into racing mode. I went in with a plan for this one.  The plan was to get dropped early, wait to be lapped, jump into whichever group lapped me, hang on for a few laps, and repeat.  I think I was lapped four times by the lead group (lap times were maybe 1:30 or so) but at least I got in some riding and missed the big crash on the final corner that took out a few people and a couple of bikes.

This was the same course we'd used last year.  It's pretty technical and tight in a couple of places, and I never have quite gotten it figured out.  The 123 race started out with a couple of relatively smooth laps, but then the attacks started and I quickly found myself at the back with Mark and Kenny. It was, of course, the worst possible place to be on a course like this, but I did not want my own lack of fitness to screw up someone else's race, so I was intentionally leaving room for people to come around me when even the smallest gap would open. The not unexpected result was that I got popped off the back after a few fast laps. Luckily the officials didn't seen a need to pull me, so I basically used the race to do four or five 3-5 minute intervals with full recovery in-between.

At the end of the race Stephen Mire went down, presumably hit a pedal and/or rolled a tire, taking a few riders with him. There had been a similar crash on the last lap of the Cat. 4 race that took two of the Tulane riders out.

This week I've been back to a regular training routine, finally, although it's been marred by numerous unrelated flats. In a few hours I'll be on the road to Brookhaven to help officiate the Mississippi Grand Prix Cat. 1/2/3 criterium this evening and then to race the Masters race the rest of the weekend.  I fully expect to get my lunch eaten since I do not feel like I am anywhere close to race shape, but I guess I've got to start somewhere.