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.