Crosswinds and Eschelons

I got home yesterday from work and was glad to find the replacement derailleur hanger for the Bianchi in the mail. After putting some rice on the stove for stir-fry I was planning to throw together later, I went downstairs to bolt it onto the dropout and put the derailleur back where it belongs.  I was surprised to find that after installing a brand new hanger it was still significantly out of alignment (yeah, I have one of these). I was pretty reluctant to put too much pressure on the new hanger, since the problem is more likely to be with the dropout itself, so I just tweaked it a little bit and got it reasonably close and left it that way.  Everything seemed to shift fine and it's not close to the spokes when on the big cog, so I'll see how that goes.  If it really starts bugging me, I'll probably order a backup derailleur hanger first before applying any significant force to it though.

So the pre-dawn weather was kind of like yesterday, only with a bit less wind and a cloudy sky that of course we didn't know about for sure until half an hour later. Summer kit plus arm and leg warmers. Just as we rolled out at 5:45 we felt a tiny amount of misty rain, but it ended as quickly as it had started. Nothing was in the forecast until evening, and as it looks now we probably won't get much more than an occasional sprinkle anyway.

With the prospect of some real hills looming over my head this coming weekend, I didn't want to do any damage this morning, so I was trying to stay toward the back. Taking it easy wasn't quite as easy as it would seem, however, since the wind was mostly from the southeast and the ride was mostly east and west - in other words, crosswinds and eschelons. The pace today was brisk but not brutal, and so the biggest challenge was really just staying in a position that offered a little draft, otherwise knows as riding in the gutter. Despite my best intentions, it did put in a couple of efforts here and there, spending a few minutes in the 80-90% max heart rate range, but mostly I was just cruising along with the group. I've been using the Chrome extension for Strava called StravistiX, that is pretty neat. I particularly like the 75th quartile numbers it provides. For example, while my average speed for the morning ride might have been only 18.5 mph, the 75th quartile figure of 21.5 excludes a lot of the commute back and forth through traffic and stop lights and all, so it's a bit more representative of what the meaty part of the ride actually felt like. It does the same thing for heart rate, power, etc., and calculates a "Toughness Factor" using some methodology apparently not susceptible to normal means of analysis - something about reserve heart rate and other factors. Anyway it does seem to be useful in comparing one ride to another.

Tomorrow I'll have to go pick up the rental minivan from Enterprise and pick up a couple of riders for the 9.5-10 hour drive up to Fayetteville for the Arkansas Classic.  Most of that drive is fine, but there are a couple of long stretches on country roads that can be uncomfortable at night, especially if it's raining like it was last year when we were driving back. It's looking like we won't have any bad weather this time, though. The temperature Saturday morning for the time trial should be in the mid-40s with zero chance of rain, rising into the mid-upper 60s by afternoon, so the road race should be fine. I'm riding the 1/2/3 race that has 17 people pre-registered right now, a couple of whom are Cat. 1s, so I'm expecting to get my ass kicked pretty bad by the combination of hills and riders almost young enough to be my grandchildren. It should be a good workout, though. I won't be doing the criterium on Sunday since it's last and we're going to need all the time we can get if we want to be back in New Orleans by like 1 am.