Incremental Improvement and the Disc Brake

VJ always has the latest stuff!

By last Monday I felt about ready to start trying to get back in shape, and that feeling was reinforced the following day when Dr. Savoie told me I was clear to resume my normal activities. Of course I'd resumed normal activities a long time ago but was still holding back a bit, well OK, a lot, on the intensity. I mean, what better excuse than a broken bone, right? Well, anyway, it was time.

So I've been trying to slowly, incrementally, increase the amount of time I spend pushing myself on the local rides. I think it's going fairly well. By Wednesday afternoon my legs were feeling a little sore, but I drove out to the lakefront with the bike anyway. The plan was to ride two of the three laps of the WNW training race, and then take photos of the finishers to document the placings. Michael B. has been keeping a spreadsheet of the top five from each week's race. Unfortunately, just after we rolled out for the half-lap warmup I realized I'd forgotten to lock the car, so I circled back to lock up and then rode about halfway to the Seabrook loop before turning around. I knew they'd have a tailwind and wanted to at least get past the broken-up asphalt around Franklin Ave. before they caught me.  Well, I dramatically miscalculated and ended up riding all the way back around the fountain traffic circle before they came streaming by. I accelerated as the unbroken line of riders went by, hoping to latch onto the tail end before I blew up completely. That didn't quite work out. Just as I got to the back, the group came to the one-lane section over the outfall canal. With a strong crosswind coming from the right, and riders already lined up along the left-hand gutter, there wasn't even a hint of draft left for me. I eased up and was soon caught by Wes and another couple of riders, so that was good. We rode a decent enough pace and I got in my two laps, so I was reasonably satisfied with that. Maybe next week.....  On the plus side, the turnout was again quite good, so I'm feeling optimistic about the training races sticking this summer. If the turnout keeps increasing, however incrementally, I could see groups of 30-40 showing up pretty soon.

So I've been seeing a lot of hype about road disc brakes recently. The whole thing kind of fascinates me. While I don't have anything against the idea, really, it seems like the amount of attention it's getting far outweighs the importance, unless of course you're in the business of selling bikes in which case I suppose it holds the potential for a lot of sales. I've been riding bikes a long time, and although I can't speak for people who ride really fast down really long and steep mountains, I have never, ever felt that my brakes were in adequate.  I'm including there the old Universal Super 68 brakes that got me down the 60 mph hill in Bisbee back in 1980. Overall, it seems like the need to have an entirely new frame and fork kind of outweighs any incremental braking benefits to be gained, so at least from my perspective it's more of a cost issue than anything else. If someone gave me a new bike with disc brakes, I'd be fine with that, but I can't see paying extra for a disc brake road bike right now, at least until some better standards evolve. The only benefit I can see, and I think it will probably be a significant one, is that carbon wheels, especially tubulars, could potentially be made with lighter and/or more aerodynamic rims if they didn't need to have braking flats. But then, what do I know. I still can't afford a pair of aero carbon wheels, and I can't help but think that all of the cumulative incremental advantages of aero frames, aero handlebars, aero wheels, electronic shifting, etc., etc., must be at the point where I'm at some kind of significant disadvantage once the speeds get above 25 mph, which lately seems to be most of the time.

Still on the Sidelines

NOBC Cat. 4 Riders ready to race.

The forecast for Saturday wasn't looking all that good and I was scheduled to officiate at the Vuelta d' Acadiana criterium over in Lafayette later that day. In New Orleans, however, the weather was pretty great, so I went out to meet the Giro Ride crowd even though I knew I wouldn't have time to do the whole ride. Turnout there was a little low, probably because some riders were racing in Lafayette that weekend and a few others, the Tulane riders, were racing in Houston at the Rice University race. We had a new rider, Adam, who had just moved here from a couple of years in Japan with the Navy. He's stationed at Belle Chasse now. The ride, at least as much of it as I was able to do, was pretty normal. Once we hit Hayne Blvd. the pace went up to 25-27 mph and stayed there. We lost Adam somewhere around the end of Hayne, I guess. I stayed with the group until Chef Highway, then reluctantly turned around to head home. I saw Adam was with a few other riders, so that was good.

I figured that I needed to leave for Lafayette around 9:30 am, which didn't give me a whole lot of spare time, so I pushed the pace a bit all the way back home, took a quick shower, loaded up the car, and took off more or less on time. It's a bit over two hours to Lafayette on I-10, so I would easily be there an hour before the start of the first criterium at 1:00.  Along the way I drove through a few rainstorms, and it was still raining a little bit when I arrived. We got the finish set up and started the first race of women and juniors about on time. The street was still pretty wet and there was a light rain falling on and off. One of the women crashed on the U-turn just past the start/finish and as we learned later broke her hip. Those aren't as common as collarbone fractures, but I guess I've seen four of them over the years with people I know. Anyway, pretty soon the sky cleared up and the road dried up, so the rest of the races had pretty good conditions. The officiating went very smoothly and I guess we finally packed up and went to the hotel, conveniently right across the street from the race, around 7:00 or so. Then the other three officials and I went for a quick dinner at a little local seafood place. I spent an hour or two cleaning up the day's results and posting them to the LAMBRA website before hitting the sack around 10:30.  The next morning was going to be a early one with the first race scheduled for 7 am.

Sunday's races were on a course up around Arnaudville that they have used a few times. It's a nice loop with an out-and-back section to the start/finish.  The out-and-back section is not too great for a few reasons.  Traffic always seems to be an issue for the finishes there.  Anyway, we arrived in the dark and got the finish area set up before sunrise and sent the first race off about on time.  All of the other races were supposed to start an hour later, which was going to be a problem since the first race would be probably be finishing as we were still starting the other races. Well, first thing we hear on the radios was that the lead vehicle had turned at the wrong road and so the whole race was off-course. Fortunately, they could just continue and that road would meet up with the correct one. I don't think all of the riders even realized they had been led astray.  Anyway, we got all of the other races started and that's when things started kind of going downhill from an officiating standpoint.  One of the cameras wasn't recording, so we just had the lower camera. There had been a lot of riders who had ridden in different categories the prior day than they were racing in that day, and since they hadn't been assigned new numbers in the correct sequences, we didn't know just from the number which race they were in. Also, some of them were listed on two different results spreadsheets since it was an omnium.  This got really confusing later when the breakaway of the Cat. 1/2/3 race caught the Master's race a couple of miles before the finish and we ended up with riders from both groups coming across the line at the same time.  Since we  had only the lower camera, and the riders had only side numbers, there were a few riders we couldn't identify because they were hidden behind other riders at the line. Basically the results were kind of a mess and it took us a long time to straighten them out.  I was still correcting some things today. The worst part of the whole weekend, though, was not racing. I don't feel like I'm really quite in shape to race right now and had already decided to skip this race and give the collarbone a couple more weeks. I had been thinking I'd go with the Tulane riders up to Rice and maybe get in a nice ride while they were doing the road race, but then Ricky called and asked me to officiate because his wife had been in a car accident and was a little banged up.

Before Dawn

Some years ago, and I mean to say many, many years ago, back when I thought I had some control over things, I would never have predicted that I would ever, under any circumstances, be getting up routinely at 5:15 am in order to go ride my bike in the dark. Just goes to show you, I guess. I've been getting up before dawn to ride for so long now that I don't think I could sleep later than 5:30 if I tried. Truth is, I hate riding in the dark. Problem is, I also hate trying to do training rides in rush-hour traffic. Right now, riding in the early mornings means spending a particularly long time in the dark.  I noted this morning as the sun was just peeking over the Lake Pontchartrain horizon and we were grinding our way eastward into a moderate headwind, that some 27 miles had already passed under my wheels. Never thought that would be the status quo for me.

When we started having training races here that oak tree wasn't large enough to cast a shadow.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I rushed home from work, filled an ice chest with leftover cans of Budweiser beer that I'll never drink, threw the bike into the car and rushed out to the lakefront. By "rushed out to the lakefront" I really mean crawled through traffic and caught every freaking traffic light. I arrived about two minutes before 6 am. I wasn't planning on riding the training race but did want to tag along for the first lap or so since I was out there anyway. The first half-lap is supposed to be neutral. Naturally we were going 26 mph long before that. I let myself drift toward the back. Coming over the levee as we approached the Elysian Fields traffic circle I saw Mike Williams, who was of course riding a time trial bike, dropping back. He slipped in ahead of me. I stopped pedaling and let a gap open. The traffic circle is bad enough by itself, I didn't need to add fuel to that fire. The group of 20 or so was strung out single-file and the front riders didn't slow down at all as they flew through the traffic circle.  There was, however, a car coming around the circle pretty fast. I figured that was a good time to back off rather than get killed. A few others got gapped off there as well. Once through the circle I got going again but there was no way I was going to close the gap that was by then growing at an alarming rate. Fortunately, this was the Wednesday Night Worlds where turning around early and jumping back in is OK. So I did. I found myself at the end of a very short-lived 3-rider break. At the time I thought, "Nice.  I can hang on back here for the rest of the lap, easy." The moment I thought that, Ben attacked the rise over the levee. That forced me to get off the saddle and accelerate, which kind of hurt both the quads and the clavicle, so just like that I dropped off again. I rode around the Seabrook loop and back to Elysian Fields where I put the bike away and took out the iPad and camera so I could document the finish a couple of 6-mile laps later. The weather out there was nice and it was about dark as the last of the riders and I left the parking lot and headed home.

This morning it was just Scott and me riding out to the lakefront. Scott was worried that we'd miss the group, which had happened on Tuesday, so he was kind of pushing the pace.  We ended up arriving early and were all the way past the Bayou St. John bridge before we merged in to the group. The rest of that lap was pretty fast, as was the ride out to Kenner, thanks to a nice little tailwind.  The ride back was, of course, mostly headwind, which kept the speed down in the 18 mph range for the most part.

Looks like I am going to  have to officiate this weekend in Lafayette. I was going to go to Houston with the Tulane team, but Ricky wanted to stay in Monroe with his wife who  had been in a car accident and was a little banged up from when the car slid down the highway on its side and then flipped over. Understandable. I'm think I should be able to get in a short ride Saturday morning since the races don't start until 1:00. Lafayette is about 2.5 hours away, so I'll need to be on the road by around 9:30 or so, but if I have everything ready to go I should be able to make that work somehow.

Starting Back

It's been hard getting back into the 5:20 am wake-up routine.

Back when I was a swimmer there were those times when you had to start a workout in particularly cold water. I remember one season when we were trying to get extra pool time leading up to the state championships and were doing extra workouts in an unheated outdoor pool, in the middle of the winter. Even though it felt like your head would explode when you hit the freezing water, it was still the only viable way to go.  All or nothing, straight into the deep end, then go hard before you have time to contemplate the obvious option of quitting.

After officiating all day Sunday and then taking Monday off, I decided that it was time to get back to training. After four-plus weeks of zero-intensity rides and weekly mileage totals of under 100, I figured there was really no use in dragging this thing out any further.  The clavicle is still achy, and even now, at just shy of six weeks, I am very reluctant to stand up and pull on the handlebars, but I know from experience that progress from here on out will be at a snail's pace.  So I went out Tuesday morning to meet the group on Lakeshore Drive. I was running a bit late and also concerned about some of the dark and bumpy streets so I took Carrollton Ave. rather than meet the group at the end of Nashville. I merged into the ride on Lakeshore Drive and although I was being particularly careful to leave myself a little room and maintain a view of the road ahead instead of the butt ahead, the ride went pretty well.  There was a tense moment when we rode straight over the concrete levee apron at Causeway in order to get around the temporary barricade there, but my lowest gear and basic friction proved adequate and we were soon back onto the smooth bike path.

Good group for the first WNW race

On Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi, which was thankfully not going exactly full-bore that morning, and survived that pretty well too. That evening was the first Wednesday Night Worlds training race on Lakeshore Drive, and although I wasn't quite not quite crazy enough to jump into that one, I did take the opportunity to ride out to the lakefront to watch and take a few photos before riding back uptown with a few of the riders, which was good because by then it was getting dark. Thursday was a repeat of Tuesday and Friday was the Tulane coffee ride, all of which went pretty well, although by Friday afternoon the sudden jump in mileage was starting to have a bit of an effect on both appetite and fatigue.  I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen Saturday and Sunday, but the plan was to ride the Giro both days, preferably without slamming myself to the pavement or into a car.

Waiting for the Saturday Giro to roll.

Saturday's Giro Ride had a big turnout and thanks to warmer weather, a light wind, and a lack of nearby races. The ride went out pretty fast, but I was feeling OK and other than the fact I was staying a bit off to the side in order to be able to avoid any cracks or potholes it was pretty good. Actually, it was staying really fast, but since there wasn't any crosswind and apparently no attacking, it was nice and smooth.  Pretty much just want I needed.

The crash scene

When we got out to Venetian Isles where the sprint and turnaround is, we saw a group of riders off to the shoulder. It was most of the 5:45 am WeMoRi group and it soon became apparent that there had been a crash.  I could see Keith Andrews sitting in the grass and as I rolled up to him I noticed he was holding his arm in the classic "broken collarbone" position. As I heard it, there had been two lines of riders coming up to the sprint zone. The left line was starting to accelerate past the right one and Mike W tried to move from the right to the left, which resulted in a crash involving himself and a few other riders who had been the left paceline, including Keith who ripped a few spokes out of his wheel and vaulted onto the asphalt before he could even take his hands off the bars. He confirmed a broken clavicle later in the day, so I brought him my X-brace.

The Sunday Giro had a significantly smaller crowd - it usually does - and the pace was a little more forgiving, which was good because Saturday's ride had done a number on my quads for sure. By the end of the day I'd logged 278 miles for the week, which was a bit of a jump from the prior week's 104. Later that afternoon I met up with some of the NOBC riders for a bit of a bicycle pub crawl, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We liked the Tchoup Yard so much we stayed until it was almost dark.  Going to have to do that again soon.

Part of the Saturday Giro returning

Restless at Rouge-Roubaix

Splitting off from the Giro before things got fast.

According to my loosely formulated recovery plan I dutifully headed out to Starbucks on Saturday morning to meet the Giro Ride for the first time in five weeks. The clavicle has, I assume, been healing at a reasonably normal rate and for the most part has not been painful while on the bike. I can't say the same for removing T-shirts or lifting the front wheel over bumps, or taking out the garbage, but whatever, it's about where I would expect it to be. So the plan was to have a cup of coffee, ride out with the Giro along Lakeshore Drive where the pace is conversational, and then turn around at Seabrook and head back home to prepare for a drive up to St. Francisville where I was scheduled to be Chief Judge for Rouge-Roubaix on Sunday.  Packed pick-up and late registration started at noon, so by 10:15 or so I was on the road with Danielle who was going to be helping with registration, manning the first feed zone, and then helping with scoring back at the finish line.

It started raining about halfway there, then stopped for a while as we got settled in at the St. Francisville Town Hall for our six-hour registration shift.  That all went pretty smoothly as riders, officials and volunteers filtered in, signed waivers, picked up their fancy fabric numbers, etc. By the end of the evening we had given out packets to all but 45 or 50 riders, which would make Sunday morning a little less intense. The organizers had gotten us rooms practically across the street at the St. Francisville Inn, a nice little bed and breakfast in the middle of town, directly in front of the start line. By the time we ate dinner it was starting to rain again, and I could hear rain all through the night as well.  Fortunately, by the time we headed out on Sunday morning for the 5:45 am packet pickup the rain had pretty much ended, but it was getting rather windy and cold.  I, for one, was glad I wasn't riding. We closed up registration on time and after fishing a piece of broken plastic from inside my little printer we headed over to the start line with start sheets and radios.  I tracked down the lead and follow car drivers and motorefs and got them all to download Zello if they hadn't already, since that was going to be our main "race radio" for the next seven hours or so.  By the time we started the first group, the Pro/1/2s, I was shivering from the cold.  I wouldn't warm up for another three or four hours.

A dirt section without mud

A few minutes after we started the Masters we heard there had been a pile-up even before they were out of the neutral section.  An ambulance had to be called for a rider with what turned out to be a broken hip, and as a result the Cat. 4s had to stop and wait for it to clear.  I'm not sure if the Cat. 5s and Women had to wait as well - the groups were starting at ten minute intervals. Anyway, once all of the groups and lead cars and follow cars and motorefs were gone I gathered up the computer and printer and headed for the finish line where the other two officials and I set up the tent and cameras and clock and computers and everything. As usual, there were church services going on across from the finish line and we had to wait that to end and the parked cars to move from the finish stretch.  In the meantime, we were getting great updates from the follow cars over our Zello channel which went a long way toward reducing the stress of not knowing if a bunch of riders was going to unexpectedly appear coming over the hill 200 meters from the finish line. The riders had been confronted with a sticky, muddy first dirt section rather than the usual loose gravel, and unlike previous years that first section proved to be one of the most decisive of the entire race. Many riders had to stop to clear the packed mud out from between their forks and tires when they came to grinding halts.  Others just powered through and sometimes ripped the derailleurs off their bikes.

Winner of the Pro/1/2 race

The finishes went pretty smoothly, or at least as smoothly as can be expected when five groups get scattered over about fifty miles of the countryside and ten minute gaps between groups start to become pointless. It gets very difficult to assemble results when riders are constantly coming across the line for, literally, three hours and you're trying to sort them out by class and category so you can at least post the top results for the podium ceremonies.  I think we did a pretty decent job with that - certainly better than in the past when the awards were being given out about a mile away from the finish line.  Anyway, it was a long day and a long drive home and the collarbone was a little achy by the end.

After skipping Monday morning (overslept) I went out this morning to meet the regular group on the Lakefront for what would be my first quasi-training ride in five weeks. It was particularly dark and rather cold and very windy but I knew it was now or never.  Fortunately the pace never got really fast, so my biggest concern was dealing with the crosswind eschelons and worrying about hitting something in the dark. A number of riders turned back at the end of Lakeshore Drive, so the group going out to Kenner was only five or six, which was good because that gave everyone a bit of a draft for the long head/crosswind outbound leg.  I arrived back home feeling OK but obviously a little tired. I guess it will be a few weeks before I am back in some kind of shape and not worrying so much about another crash.

Unstrapped

When I woke up this morning I unstrapped myself from the x-brace and headed out for my first ride without it since the collarbone broke. For the record, it's been 4 weeks and 2 days. It was quite a relief to be riding without it, although I needed to be really careful along Carrollton where the bike path is covered with leaves, and up on the levee whenever I'd pass a pedestrian, most of whom were walking dogs, sometimes unleashed. Although the collarbone would occasionally remind me it wasn't fully healed, generally any time I moved my left hand on the bars, it was otherwise not much of a problem. Thanks to the smooth and level asphalt on the bike path I was pretty comfortable cruising along at 19-20 mph when it was clear, slowing dramatically whenever I'd encounter pedestrians or Levee District trucks or Jefferson Parish police.  They have been adding a ton of dirt to the city side of the levee out around Jefferson Playground and the bridge, and on Monday they had it blocked off there with traffic barrels and tape. This morning the signs were there but the barrels and tape had been moved aside and there was no sign of any work going on, so I was able to ride unimpeded out to Williams Blvd. and back and what was probably the fastest speed I've gone for a month. It's also about the slowest speed I would normally go, but regardless, it felt pretty good. The temperature was in the 60s and the wind was light, so it was a perfect morning for riding. Out around River Ridge I saw both of the Bald Eagles around their big nest. I wonder if there's a baby eagle in there this year.  Coming back I saw them again and thought to myself how great it was that I didn't even feel the need to stop and take a photo since I see them so often. It was probably a bit over ten years ago that I first started seeing eagles around here, and back then they were really pretty rare.

So I'm thinking that I will ride out to meet the Giro Ride on Saturday morning, staying at the back and turning back before things fast. Right after that I'll need to head up to St. Francisville to help get registration set up on the computer and then will be spending all of Sunday officiating. I figure that if all goes well I'll start trying to get back in shape on Monday. I may even have to find the heart rate monitor to keep me honest after such a long stretch of easy riding. I figure that the collarbone injury will have cost me about 850 lost training miles by then.  I guess it will be another three to four weeks before I'm back in good enough shape to race or even ride like I normally would. I guess that's about normal, though.  Last time I broke a collarbone it was 5 weeks before I went out to meet the Giro and 6 before I did a whole Giro Ride, so I'd say I'm about a week ahead of schedule this time.

Arkansas Classic Report

Large turnout for the Arkansas Classic collegiate races that included a couple of non-collegiate categories

In what has become a regular thing, I was again off the bike all last weekend. This time it was for a road trip with the Tulane Cycling riders up to Fayetteville for the University of Arkansas' Arkansas Classic. At least I don't feel too bad about missing rides right now. The collarbone break was 4 weeks ago and it's starting to feel a lot better. I may venture out for part of a group ride on Saturday, weather permitting. More on that later. Anyway, I was happy to be able to help out with the driving, since it's a 9-10 hour drive and it's better for the riders to be able to relax, sleep, read, or whatever than to be driving all day. The race itself has some nice challenging courses - especially the time trial and the road race. The criterium this year was your basic parking lot criterium. For this race we had Ben Bradley and Ben Spain in the Cat. A Men's race, Grayson Rosenfeld in the Cat. B Men's race, Jerry Cornell in the Cat. C Men's race, and Joy Jason in the Women's B race. Joy upgraded from D to B during the week after her first ever race weekend. Coming from Tulane's swimming team that closed out its season recently, I guess she'll just be around for a few more races this spring before graduating, but she brings with her a lot of basic fitness and a good competitive spirit. I wish we'd had three or four more riders make this trip since it's a dual-conference race which means larger fields with riders coming from everywhere from Minnesota to New Orleans.  The club put on a pretty good event this year with adequate officials and good results. After the mostly uphill morning time trial, we headed to the road race course for the afternoon races on a 20+ mile loop that featured a couple of pretty significant mile-long climbs and descents that had some riders seeing 50+ mph.

First up was the Cat. A Men's race. They made it maybe two or three miles before there was a big crash that took out at least three riders. One MSU rider had a suspected broken hip and one of the two Lindenwood riders who went to the hospital needed stitches.  Luckily the MSU's rider's bones turned out to be intact, but the ambulances in the road caused the following races to be delayed for around 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the Cat. A men's race was neutralized for most of its first lap. I rushed over to the feed zone at the top of "the hill" to hand up bottles to the two Bens, then back to the finish line to back up the officials if needed (they had three, so no problem, which was good since it was cloudy and too dark for my iPad's camera to get good video of the bib numbers). I could try and describe the A race, but Ben did a better job of that so I'll just paste in what he posted to Facebook.  Suffice it to say, with only two riders in the race they kicked ass and killed some dreams:

9 Lindenwood guys and 5 MSU riders. Course was a loop with a climb at the start and end about 1k long. First lap was neutralized due to really bad crash and dude getting Med evac. Second lap group of four with Ben Spain got off. Lindenwood didn't want to chase. Attacked up the first climb of the last lap. No one came with and I had a small gap. Knew the next 8 miles were tailwind so I put my head down and started drilling. Near the end of the tailwind section I saw the group of 4 in front of me. I recovered on a little roller and the lead group never looked back. Coming off the roller was a descent and right 90 degree turn. I built up a ton of speed and sailed past them. None of them had time to react and jump my wheel. Ben Spain kept them marked and I just kept time trialing. Headwind for last 9 miles. It was like the worse levee ride ever. Stayed around 175 HR. Figured I'd get caught, win, or die from exhaustion. Last climb 3 miles from the finish I was about to pop myself. One of those times your hands go numb from hyperventilation. Finally made it to the finish stretch and looked back for the first time since I broke away. No one in sight. People at the finish line didn't know I was the first rider across. Last hour I was at 4.9W/kg. Main pack came in 40s back. Good times.

Men's A Omnium Winners

Meanwhile, in the Women's B race that had started together with the Men's C race, Joy ended up winning, which was pretty impressive. It was the longest ride she had ever done without stopping. In the same race, Jerry came off the back at some point, and then missed a turn and had to double back, finishing 24th out of 30. In the Men's B race Grayson, who hasn't really been training at all, finished 10th out of 11, but with a smile on his face.  The criteriums the next day were actually pretty interesting and since they had like five officials on hand I got to take some photos which are all on a photo album on Google. The highlights of that race were Joy winning the criterium in a 3-up sprint and Ben scooping up enough prime points that, together with his 2nd place finish, pushed him into the Omnium lead by just four points. So with just 4 riders, Tulane won the Men's A Omnium, The Women's B Omnium, the Men's A Road Race, the Women's B Road Race, and the Women's B Criterium. We got back to New Orleans around 1:00 am on Monday. I went out for a quick easy ride on the levee at 6:30, then stopped by HQ to pick up the keys to the rental van that was left there (we drove in one of the Tulane motor pool vans). I threw the bike into the back, drove to Enterprise to return the van, and rode back home.

So this morning I went out for a ride on the levee only to find that they had it closed off at Jefferson Playground where they've been doing some kind of work on the levee. Just before there, I saw two Coywolves of Coyotes sniffing around the stables, no doubt trying to get one of the many chickens they have there. They ran back across the levee when I got close. I might have tried going around, but with the collarbone still somewhat less than solid I figured I shouldn't push my luck and just turned around, did a lap around Audubon Park and went home.

Looking OK, apparently, at 4 weeks

Just as well, as I had a followup appointment at Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine for 9 am anyway.  A quick X-ray and 5 minute meeting with Buddy Savoie and I was out of there with an OK to start weaning myself away from the brace. I'll be up in St. Francisville Saturday afternoon and then all day Sunday to officiate Rouge-Roubaix. I am thinking that I might ride out to the Giro on Saturday morning and hang off the back for a while until it gets fast before turning back. It's really hard not being able to really train or do the group rides, especially this time of year when everyone is getting excited about the upcoming races and everything. I figure that next week I'll start doing the group rides again. That will be five weeks since the collarbone break. Still, I won't be taking any chances, which means I'll be out in the wind and getting dropped a lot, which I can't really do anything about since I will be pretty out of shape. I guess it will be late April or early May before I'm back to training like normal.

A Long Mardi Gras Weekend

The weekend prior to Fat Tuesday features lots of parades day and night, and more often than not I make a lot of them. This year, however, the LSU collegiate race weekend was scheduled on top of it, and seeing as I am still a little broken and without a plausible excuse, I ended up officiating all weekend along with Ricky and Mike.

Walking to the start line

Turnout for the race was surprisingly light with fewer than fifty riders on hand despite great weather and good courses and fairly good organization. Before the race I was expecting there would be problems with registration and licenses and such because at the first collegiate race of the season they had let a bunch of riders race in the wrong categories and/or without actual racing licenses. As it turned out, though, there weren't many problems like that.

There was a Friday night pre-registration session from 6-10 pm at LSU that turned out to be a huge waste of time. I guess maybe five people picked up their numbers there. It would have been a problem for Saturday morning if the race turnout had been large, but with such a small crowd, everything was fine and the races all got off more or less on time and without incident. The only problem for me, other than the discomfort of having to wear this x-brace and not being able to do some things with my left arm was that it was cold up there in St. Francisville.  I was freezing for the first couple of hours.

Sunday's races were held a the State Police training track between Baton Rouge and St. Francisville which is basically a little car racing track. The course went around the perimeter, so it was a long, windy, non-technical loop. The A race was interesting. After Ben Bradley had won the Road Race and Time Trial, it was time for Ben Spain to take a shot at the Criterium.  He went off the front early with an LSU rider and they ended up finishing about 20 seconds ahead of the second group.  It didn't look easy.  Later that day there were two non-collegiate races that were surprisingly well attended and featured some really nice racing. In the "A" race Ben Bradley basically time trialed the entire thing, finishing almost a minute ahead of two of his teammates, who themselves finished ahead of the pack that was led in by two more of their teammates, so they took places 1-5.

I was glad I didn't have work on Monday and could rest up a bit for Mardi Gras.  I got up early Tuesday morning and put in a few miles on the levee before heading over to Audubon Park to watch the start of the Royal Run.  Danielle met me there and picked up a Rex T-shirt, which was purple this year.  By the time we got home the truck floats were already starting to line up along S. Clairborne outside our house. It was probably around 7:45 am. and some of them would still be rolling at 4:30 as we were walking home from the French Quarter.

Kenny and Danielle and Sofia

With Candy coming down with a cold, Danielle and I headed out to St. Charles Avenue to meet up with Ginger and some of her friends in front of The Columns. Once the first floats of the Rex parade arrived we walked farther down to 2525 St. Charles where they always stop to toast and take a break while they wait for Zulu to complete its turn onto St. Charles from Jackson Avenue.  I took a bunch of photos there, and then once they started rolling again we continued walking toward the French Quarter.

Once there we wandered around for a couple of hours, stopped to eat, and met up with Kenny and Candy for a little while, finally heading back home around 3:30 or 4:00.  The crowd down in the French Quarter was pretty tame this year, and the weather was great so there were a lot of costumes. We always leave before things start getting really crowded and the people start getting really drunk. By the time we got home it was almost dark and my feet and hips were killing me, which is pretty much normal for Mardi Gras. It's about a four mile walk each way, so counting all of the walking around we did while down in the Quarter, I'd say we walked at least twelve miles.