The Rest of the Week

This morning I went out  into the darkness to meet the WeMoRi at the lakefront. It was windy. I put in 27 miles at an average speed of 17.6 mph.  The wind was faster, averaging 18 out of the southeast, although the gusts were considerably stronger.  Riding along the park on Marconi I sat up briefly to unzip my jersey and a gust of wind almost blew me right off the bike.  That was the last time I took my hands off the bars that morning. At the moment, the wind is blowing at 27 mph.

I rode out to the Bayou St. John bridge, turned around and waited to be caught by what I assumed would be a pack going 30 mph. Somewhere on Marconi a handful of riders came by.  I jumped onto the tail end and glanced back but couldn't see anyone else. The headwind on Lakeshore Drive had decimated the group, which was smaller than usual to start with. So we did a reasonably brisk ride around the park, but by the time we got back to Lakeshore Drive we were down to only three. The rest had already called it a day. Instead of riding all the way out to the Seabrook loop and dealing with both the wind and the traffic, we instead turned around at the Elysian Fields circle, which may become the standard route next week since the ride has been losing a lot of people who don't want to do a full second lap of Lakeshore Drive. I ended up with a decent enough workout for a Wednesday, which for me is typically a quasi-recovery day where I only make a few brief efforts and otherwise try to stay protected.  It wasn't so easy to do today, though.

Tomorrow begins a 2-day NCURA Pre-Award conference downtown here in New Orleans. It also begins a couple of days of sketchy weather.  Between the time constraints and the weather, I may not be able to get in much, if any, riding until Saturday. I'd really been counting on being able to ride the Giro on Saturday. Naturally the forecast for Saturday morning is currently showing a 100% chance of rain. The National Council of University Research Administrators conference will probably consume all of Thursday and most of Thursday night since I'm signed up for a dinner group as some touristy restaurant on Bourbon Street. At least I'll get to hear all about PCORI, NIH, Uniform Guidance, faculty incentives, compliance, ARPA-E, and all the other hurdles standing between university researchers and their funding. Should be fun. I'll also be occasionally staffing the local concierge table where I will be dispensing questionable information about restaurants, local attractions, and various other tidbits of misinformation.

Saturday I'll be heading up to St. Francisville to help officiate Rouge-Roubaix on Sunday. If the heaviest rain misses the area it won't be too bad, but I have to wonder what the gravel and dirt sections will be like if there's a ton of rainfall on Saturday. It's looking like the race itself (I'm not handling the Gran Fondo ride on Saturday) will have around 300 riders across six races, including a Cat. 5 field that's looking like it will hit its 75-rider field limit. Fortunately, we rarely see any big bunch sprints thanks to the course, distance, and generally uphill finish.  We'll be running two finish line cameras anyway since there's some big money involved in a few of the races and over the course of 104 miles there's lots of overlapping of riders in different groups. All I'm hoping for is to have no serious injuries and the ability to read all of the bib numbers that come across the line, which I already know won't be likely. Ricky called me this morning to say that if the flooding in north Louisiana continues he may not be able to come down to officiate, which would be a big loss. Anyway, it will be another busy weekend.