Draggin' and Drippin'

The past couple of days have been pretty impressive, judging by the heat index, but they've been pretty unimpressive, judging by my legs. Wednesday's WeMoRi wasn't particularly fast, but I still felt dragged-out by the time I got back home. I have to assume it's the heat, or to be more specific, the humidity. Both yesterday and today I was absolutely soaked in sweat. I think it's affecting everyone, though. Although the morning rides have had their moments, the really fast parts have been noticeably shorter and the slower parts noticeably slower. Only problem is the fast parts don't seem to feel any easier.

Mold growing on an office chair.

Speaking of humidity, we've been having problems with mold at the office for the past few weeks. They've come in and cleaned and disinfected the a/c coils, which were apparently pretty well blocked up with mold growth, cut down on the fresh air intake, disinfected many of the surfaces where mold was growing, etc.  It's still not right.  They're supposed to be coming in tonight to clean the carpet with some kind of disinfectant.  Basically we're trading chemicals for mold. Not sure which is worse. Anyway, the theory is that the clogged a/c coils were causing the unit to pull in more "fresh" air than usual.  In this case the fresh air was generally in the 85-95 degree range at 70-90% relative humidity. The level of mold growth was actually quite impressive. I'm surprised that it was even possible to achieve that in a space that was, however nominally, air-conditioned.

So back to riding.  When I stepped out the door this morning, half an hour before sunrise, it was like walking into a sauna. I guess it was around 83F with close to 100% relative humidity. Right now, at nearly 3 pm, with some cloud cover and thunder in the distance, it's 93 with 70% relative humidity.  So relatively nice, but still a heat index of around 106. Even though it was hot and humid this morning, everyone realized it would still be the best time to ride, so we had a pretty big group.  I counted thirty as we got going along Lakeshore Drive. I was dripping sweat well before we finished the 10-mile lap.  Out on the bike path to Kenner there was a bit of a crosswind coming across the lake, where the water temperature is currently around 92 -- Fahrenheit. I wasn't quite close enough to the front to get a full draft and since there were lots of walkers and other cyclists out there we were constantly having to move out of the left lane where we wanted to be escheloned.

We were around the last bridge, about a mile from the casino where we turn around, when a couple of oncoming cyclists tried to tell us something as they went by.  Of course we couldn't understand a word they said, but as we crossed the bridge we could see an ambulance and police cars in the distance. I assumed a cyclist had crashed until we got closer.  There was a man on the ground and the paramedics had an automated CPR machine pounding on his chest. We turned back before we got close enough to interfere, but it did kind of put a damper on the rest of the ride. We'll probably never find out what happened or who it was.

I got to see some of the Tour de France TT this morning but had to run off to work before the GC leaders went. Pretty impressive that Froome rode a full TT bike and won the thing. The climb looked pretty damned hard and the last bit of the course looked like it would require some serious bike-handling. Neither are things I'd want to do on a TT bike.