Missing Races

A bright red sky on a Friday morning. Good thing I wasn't going sailing.

Tomorrow I'm heading east, in the general direction of Hurricane Hermine for a little family vacation at the beach, which I assume will be festooned with red flags for a day or two. I'll be missing the LAMBRA age-graded road race in St. Francisville on Sunday.  I hate missing that race since it's a relatively short two-hour drive from home and is on a really nice course and it usually nicely organized by the local club. Of course I'll be bringing my bike to the beach, and am planning on slipping out early in the mornings to battle the wind and traffic. Hopefully I'll be able to get in some reasonable training rides. The hurricane should be well inland by the time we arrive, and most of the rain should be in the northeast quadrant anyway, so I'm not expecting much trouble getting out on the bike. The added benefit of riding early in the morning when at the beach is that I get to miss at least one overeating opportunity, otherwise known as breakfast.

Hermine became a hurricane about half an hour ago.

The past couple of weeks have been pretty routine - lots of group rides. There were a couple of pretty magnificent sunrises last week.  It's that time of year when sunrise starts to coincide with the time we are out on Lakeshore Drive. It's also the time of year when the stars are still out as I leave home in the morning. I always have trouble getting out of bed when it's still dark outside.

Last Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual. It was kind of windy that morning, even more so this morning, and I'd hit the road a few minutes early, so I met the group just east of the Bayou St. John bridge after circling around a few times.  They had been riding into a headwind on the way out, so I guess they were running a couple of minutes behind schedule. It felt like a pretty hard ride to me for some reason. Being near the back of the group makes it extra hard because things always string out a lot on a couple of the turns, which basically means it's a full-on sprint for half a kilometer in order to regain contact, and a draft.

WeMoRi Cool-down on the lakefront

On Tuesday we were hammering down Lakeshore Drive heading west shortly before Elysian Fields when one of the guys in front of me unexpectedly and suddenly slowed down. A couple of us had to make evasive maneuvers to avoid hitting him. I assumed he'd flatted.  Later that day Matt called to tell me that Keith had actually started to have a seizure and had to stop.  Fortunately, someone stopped with him. Apparently he hadn't had any such issues in years, so it was kind of a surprise, but from past experience he could feel it starting and was able to stop safely.

This afternoon is the annual Tulane Activities Expo, which is basically an opportunity for the team to sign up some new recruits. We did a little Facebook campaign, and for my $30 investment got a reach of 1,943 people with a targeted promotion. No telling if that will actually result in more team members, but I figured it was worth a try anyway.

A smallish Sunday Giro Ride group heads out from Starbucks

So next up for me will be the race weekend in Thibodaux with a team time trial followed by a criterium. That will be the last LAMBRA road event for the season, I think.  I'll probably skip the Pensacola stage race again this year, mainly because it's the next weekend after my trip to Florida and also because of the added expense coming on the heels of a family vacation. I'm still planning on doing Six Gap, and maybe some of our track championships, and there are a few other possibilities out there before the cyclocross races start up at the end of October. Meanwhile, we're all just keeping our fingers crossed that the next storm coming over from Africa doesn't turn into a hurricane event for us.  We don't need any of that.