Not So Easy

I woke up this morning feeling stiff and creaky and achy, a situation that seems to be getting more and more frequent as my ear hair gets longer and my telomeres shorter. Right off the bat I decided I'd try and take it easy on the Thursday group ride out on the lakefront.

It was a plan.

Arriving at the meeting spot at the end of Nashville Avenue, I was surprised to see a few more riders than usual and wondered what random alignment of celestial bodies might have precipitated such an occurrence right on the heels of the summer solstice. For the past few days, things at 5:45 am have been pretty nice.  The sun is almost up, so the big headlights aren't really necessary and the tail lights are more of a precaution than an absolute necessity. The wind, once again, was virtually calm, and for half an hour or so the air felt almost cool. I guess there were eight of us as we rolled out toward the lake, and for reasons unknown the pace seemed a little faster than usual. Out on Lakeshore Drive we accumulated a fairly large group that included a couple of TT bikes, and for a little while the pace was conversational. After making the loop out at the eastern end of Lakeshore Drive, however, conversations ended as a handful of guys up at the front started lifting the pace. Speeds that had been 22 mph went to 26 and 27 mph as the group started getting stretched out long and thin. That was only the prelude, though, and once over the bridge a couple more mph were lumped atop the others and back at the back gaps started opening up all over the place. Next thing I knew, my "easy" ride was not so easy as I closed multiple little gaps at 30 mph.

The short transit from the end of Lakeshore Drive to the start of the bike path used to be a recovery segment.  Lately, though, it seems that VJ and maybe a couple others are pushing the pace along there as we negotiate a couple of intersections along with various holes and cracks in the concrete roadway. Once on the bike path things kind of evened out and it seemed like the whole way out to the casino boat was just a long steady line of riders with almost nobody coming back from the front or moving up from the back to the front. Speeds were down in the 25 mph range and it should have felt easy to sit in toward the end of the string of riders on a windless day. It didn't seem so easy to me for some reason, but on the other hand it wasn't really all that hard either. At the end I made an impulse purchase with my legs and sprinted to close the gap up to Brian and a couple others who had gone off the front, resulting in about 15 seconds at 31 mph and a substantially longer period of heavy breathing. It felt good, though.

The ride back was more of the same, although slightly slower. Lately we've been taking Canal Blvd. and Canal St. back uptown from Robert E. Lee. Since the schools closed for the summer, traffic at around 7:30 is considerably lighter, making Canal a reasonable option. Aside from the traffic situation, the other advantage is that we have a much more direct route with fewer stops for traffic signals. It cuts about a mile each way off of our more circuitous "school year" route and probably close ten minutes off of the commute time.