Quiet Week

The Sunday Giro rolls out along Lakeshore Drive

The past week or so has been mostly a dull routine of morning group rides, hot commutes to and from work, and weekend back-to-back Giro Rides. I wish there were more races this time of year because it's hard to keep up the motivation when you haven't pinned on a number in two months. Fortunately, things should be picking up in August with the team time trial, and criterium championship on the calendar. Speaking of the calendar, there's finally some movement on the LAMBRA road championship that had been in limbo since Zack pulled out of promoting it on the Natchez course. I think everyone's in agreement that the course up there has just gotten unworkable because of the deteriorating road surface. It's a real shame because the course itself is great and the state park is a good location. It's also super-easy to control with only one intersection and practically no traffic. So last week I started rattling some cages about getting the race back on the calendar. Initially Stephen Mire offered his place on the northshore near Bush as a staging area. There was a nice low-traffic 10-mile course there that was pretty flat for a championship but definitely not out of the question. Given how late it is in the season and the fact that LAMBRA is going to have to promote it itself rather than getting one of the local clubs to host it, I figured we should make things as simple as possible. With a date at the end of September, I'm not expecting a huge turnout, so it looks like it'll be a one-day event with a few combined races which means that some of the masters will have to chose whether to ride their category races or their age group races. Guess we'll see how that plays out, but anyway it should at least allow for reasonable sized fields at the starting line. Anyway, after kicking around a few dates Scott Kuppersmith suggested a course up by Jackson, MS and offered to help. We had used some of that course before for Tour le Fleur many years ago, and the 11-mile loop he had mapped out looked pretty good. It has only two stop signs to deal with, pretty low traffic volume, few intersections of any sort (really only three turns per lap), and lots of parking. So that's in the works right now and unless the local police and sheriff balk, I think it will work out fine.

A coyote hanging around the water intake at the parish line

So last weekend I rode both Giro Rides, which were fine but otherwise unremarkable. I did do a few of the sprints and felt pretty good about that. We've been riding the river levee on Tuesday and Thursday now and usually have about a dozen people for that. They have kind of patched up the bad asphalt around the green pipes, but haven't done anything with the hole that caused the crash other than put a traffic cone on top of it. On Mondays and Fridays I've been riding mostly solo on the levee, which is pretty nice since I can sometimes go really easy and look at the scenery a bit. Wednesdays have been the WeMoRi, which for me is usually just about half an hour of any sort of intensity, but that works out well if I'm doing 40 mile rides on Tuesday and Thursday.

Patch job. Hope is lasts a while....

Even though it's only the end of July, I'm already noticing the shortening days. When you're out on the road every morning before sunrise, you really notice the small changes like that. It was the beginning of the week that I started using my bigger, brighter headlight again after not needing it for the past couple of months. I got a new tire and Mr. Tuffy for the commuter last week and before installing them I finally broke down and changed the hub spacing to accommodate the frame. For the past decade or two I've been cramming a 27" wheel with 8-speed spacing into an English 3-speed frame. The wheel came out of the shed behind Adam's Bicycle World some time around 2000, I guess and it's been a royal pain in the ass every time I have to fix a flat. It took quite some time to change out the spacers and locknuts on the axle, however, because the threads on the ends were completely mangled. I had to file down the axle anyway to make it the correct length, so it wasn't a big issue, just rather time-consuming. I should be good for a while now. Meanwhile, I flatted the front tire on the Bianchi the other day and noticed those tires are getting pretty worn down now and I'll be needing to replace them soon. Maybe next month. I just spent $800 on tree pruning, so the bank account is pretty anemic at the moment.

50% of racing licenses are in 8 or 9 states.
LAMBRA represents 1% of all USAC licenses.

This time of year I miss all of those races we used to have that offered big prizelists. Coming home from a weekend of racing with an extra $50 was always nice.  Now, the USAC is hearing from people, mostly professional promoter types, that they want to limit cash prizes to just the elite categories. I don't know how that is going to work out in areas like ours where it's a challenge to get people to show up for races. Sure, it would be nice not to have to come up with the cash, but if you remove that incentive and don't replace it with something else, like free beer and food, I don't see how it's going to help. Anyway, we'll  have to see where that goes. I don't think they are thinking about making it illegal to have cash prizes, but I do think they are thinking of ways to reward promoters who eliminate them. Meanwhile, there's the push for equal prizes for men's and women's races. That's something that just doesn't make sense for smaller races where you're lucky to have a dozen people in an open-category women's race but you might have 45 in the men's Cat. 1/2 race. I think this stuff is all coming from the promoters in the areas with lots of riders and lots of competing professional race directors. I see a huge gap between the ten states that have 50% of the licensed riders and the rest of us. Maybe something good will come of it eventually. I think everyone in the USAC road racing world is kind of grasping at straws right now. Licenses, especially road racing licenses, continue to trend down and are currently about 7% below last year, which wasn't exactly a great year either. I have to admit that I kind of fear the triathlon model where there are relatively few events each year, but each event is huge, professionally run, has lots of amenities, and costs a pile of money to enter.  It's great to have some of those of course, but I miss the steady stream of weekend club-promoted races we used to have. I think USAC tends to pay the most attention to the big race promoters since those are the kinds of races that the USAC people are always involved with.

More Rain, More Crashes, More Family

Think we'll get wet? Heading home from the Sunday Giro Ride

The summer rain just keeps coming and it's just impossible to predict. Last Friday around noon I got an email from Chris Harvey saying that they wanted to try again to trim the oak trees that are growing over my house. This was both good and bad. We'd tried to do this on Wednesday, but by the time I got home a big rainstorm was about to hit and they decided to postpone since of course you don't want to be up in a tree thirty feet off the ground during a thunderstorm. I rushed home and the two guys got to work. The only problem was that family had started arriving the day before for my father's 90th birthday (which is actually today but was celebrated on Saturday). Most were staying a couple of houses away at a neighbor's place who does that air b&b thing, which was super convenient. They were away at the Zoo with the kids, so I thought the timing might work out well. Naturally another thunderstorm came along and the tree work got stalled for a while, and in the meantime the brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces and their kids came back from the zoo. The tree guys ended up working until it was almost dark, but fortunately they didn't drop anything on the family members going back and forth between houses.

Yeah, don't think we can fix that here.

Saturday's Giro Ride was a little thin for some reason, but turned out to be a good workout despite the fact I'd had a bit too much wine the night prior. Sunday's Giro had a larger turnout and I was expecting it to get pretty fast, which it did. Shortly after we turned off of the service road onto Chef Highway, where there's always a very brief lull in the action as riders make it across the four lanes of traffic, the paceline started to form up as usual. Up ahead I saw Adrian reach down toward his front hub. I couldn't tell exactly what he was doing, but I've seen riders do this before and it never ends well. Turned out his quick-release was loose and he was trying to tighten it while riding. I instinctively backed off and started heading for the grass because I knew there was a 90% chance there'd be a crash in about half a second. There was. Adrian got a couple of his fingers between the bladed spokes and his fork, broke a spoke or two, and then the whole wheel started to collapse as his bike swerved wildly from side to side before ejecting him neatly over the handlebars. Fortunately for everyone we were going only 24 mph at the time. He popped up right away but there was blood pretty much pouring from his left hand and his front wheel's rim was connected to the hub by only one thin spoke. Jaden called Samantha who drove out to rescue him and his bike, so after a while the rest of us continued on. He ended up having to get two fingers stitched up.

As we were heading back along Hayne Blvd. the sky to the east was looking really bad, which is to say it was black. When we hit Lakeshore Drive, I could see the rain out in the lake and said, "we're going to get wet," which was an understatement for sure. A couple of minutes later we getting pelted with rain as my shoes started filling up with water. It only took us five or ten minutes to ride through it, and by the time we got halfway home the streets were completely dry. Typical summertime rainstorms. Later, someone posted video of Rachel crashing on the slick underpass by Southern University.

The birthday celebration for my father was nice, although not without its challenges. My job was to go over to the nursing home to ride with him in the wheelchair compatible transportation service van that was to be there at 12:30. Well, someone dropped the ball, either at the home or at the van company, but the upshot was that there was no way there would be a van any time soon. Plan B was to get him into my car, which we had tried once before without success. This time, though, we had some help from the nursing home staff, so that was good. We were, of course, half an hour late by then. Fortunately, one of my brother's sons is a nurse and knew how best to get him from the car to the wheelchair. I think we had about twenty people at the two tables at the New Orleans Country Club, and with a hoard of small children it was a loud and animated lunch. It made me think of the opening scene of "Home Alone." Anyway, it all worked out and despite him whispering to me as I was getting him into the car at the beginning, "Let's never do this again," by the time we got him back to his room he said that he had really enjoyed it.

This morning I went out for a nice spin on the levee, and then just as I stepped out the door to ride to work it started to rain. I thought about my options for a minute (Danielle had already taken the car) and decided to go ahead and ride, so I put my bag down and pulled out the rain jacket and took off. Half a mile later I realized I'd left my bag at home and had to turn around, still in the rain. When I got home I thought I'd just ride over to Tulane, lock the bike there, and take the shuttle in order to minimize how wet I'd be. Well after getting to the shuttle stop I realized that because of the summer schedule it would be a good 45 minutes before I'd get to work, which is only about four miles away, so I put my rain jacket back on and got good and wet from the waist down. Looking out the window right now at 5:20 pm, I'm only giving myself a 50% chance of getting home dry.

Cracks and Crashes

The nicely lighted streetcar barn was a convenient place to fix my flat tire  

It turned out to be a complicated week for training. I hadn't been planning anything out of the ordinary - just the usual weekday morning routine. On Monday morning I did a nice solo ride on the levee as usual, with plans for a faster ride on Tuesday. I didn't go in to work on Monday because the air-conditioner had stopped working and I had to wait for the repair guys to show up. Fortunately, we keep a couple of window units down in the basement for just such an occasion. They also come in handy after hurricanes, assuming you can get hold of a generator. We lugged them upstairs and stuck them into the bedroom windows, so it was fine. When the repair guys arrived I explained the symptom, which was essentially that there was power to the shut-off, but apparently no power to the  unit. I'd looked inside but hadn't noticed the tiny little DC fuse. It took the guy about thirty seconds to pinpoint that problem. While he was there, I had him check the rest of the system and ended up having him clean the condenser unit which was pretty clogged up with dirt and gunk, but decided to hold off on re-charging the refrigerant which was just a bit low. I felt lucky to get off with a $250 bill.

This bypass around the pipes is a complete disaster

So on Tuesday I headed out to meet the group on the levee and, just as I rounded the turn from Carrollton onto Willow, heard air escaping rapidly from my rear tire. I rolled to a stop in front of the nicely lit streetcar barn (it was still a bit dark) and had to pull out my pocket knife to pull the packing staple out of the tire. Glancing at my watch, I knew I would miss the group. So once I got patched up and out onto the levee I settled into a nice steady pace, planning on meeting the group out near the turnaround. I figured I'd be about five minutes behind them, and since they take a little bit of a break out at Ormond, I wasn't expecting to miss out on more than a couple of miles at the worst. So I was surprised to see them coming toward me much earlier than I'd expected. Turns out the bike path was closed off at the grain elevator, apparently because they are removing the odd little crossover they had constructed about a year ago when they started building something out there. That evening as I was riding the commuter bike back home from work I again heard the sound of air rushing out of my rear tire. I was only a mile and a half from home, and it was hot, and I didn't feel like dealing with the dirt and fender and single speed and pannier, so I just leaned forward more and rode the rest of the way on the flat tire. Later that evening I pulled off the rear wheel and discovered that I'd worn completely through the tire in one place and then also worn completely through the Mr. Tuffy that I'd apparently been riding on for a while. Guess I got my money's worth anyway. I threw it all in the trash and ordered a replacement tire for the antique 27" wheel with 7-speed spacing that's crammed into a frame made for 26" 3-speed wheels. I pulled a tire off of my rain bike, which also sports old 27" wheels, to use in the meantime. On Wednesday Chris called to say he had a crew nearby and could come over to the house in the afternoon to do some badly needed tree-trimming that I'd gotten him to give me a price on a couple of weeks ago, so I rushed home just in time for a thunderstorm which of course cancelled any possibility of tree work for the day.

Crash precipitated by another sinkhole on the levee bike path

On Thursday I again met the group up on the levee for the long ride. There were some big clouds around but it looked like we had a good chance of missing the scattered thunderstorms that have been the routine around here lately. We carefully negotiated the broken-up asphalt bypass around the Jefferson Parish "pump to the river" pipes. That section was built no more than four months ago and is already a complete and utter disaster. The asphalt is cracking, the roadbed below it is sinking, there's always mud and water washing over it, and it's generally gotten really sketchy. It's a real marvel of bad engineering and sloppy work. A few miles past that we go around the pipes at Florida Street. My turn at the front came up right after that and I had my head down a bit as I pulled us back up to speed when I heard Rich, who was on my wheel, say "look out."

This one caused the crash on Thursday

I looked up and saw the other big section of sinking, broken-up asphalt right ahead of me and curved around it to the left. A moment later I heard Rich say something and realized there'd been a crash somewhere behind me. Apparently the group had gotten a little strung out going around the pipes, which always happens, and the guys toward the back were pushing it to close up the gap when someone hit the broken asphalt, or swerved to avoid it, or something like that. The result was three or four people hitting the ground pretty hard. David banged up his elbow pretty badly (ended up with a few stitches after a visit to the ER) and also broke his carbon seatpost. Tom, whose son Ben was on the ride, also went down pretty hard with a little gash above his eye, probably from his glasses. One rider tumbled down the concrete side of the levee and was pretty slow to get up. I think they all called for extraction, and after the JP police patrol guy showed up and started filling out paperwork, the rest of us continued on with a plan to turn around at The Dip. So I turn around and we're heading back and we see Ben standing on the side of the bike path. He'd broken a spoke on his carbon wheel - the kind that has maybe six spokes on the non-drive side. The tire was hitting the frame, the rim was hitting the brake, and it wasn't looking very promising. After much fiddling around, we finally got it seated in the dropout just off-center enough that the tire, after letting out a substantial amount of pressure, was barely clearing the chainstay. By now we were half an hour behind schedule, at least, so the rest of the group continued on while I rode back with Ben at an easy pace in case things got worse. Somehow it all held together and he made it all the way back.

The Sprint

Great weather and a good group for the July 4th Holiday Giro Ride

With most people off from work for July 4th, there was the usual Holiday Giro Ride last Tuesday. Initiated by a single email with a subject line of "Giro Tues" and a message reading simply "7 AM from Starbucks," the large accumulation of riders rolled out promptly just two days after what had been, at least for me, another weekend of back-to-back Giro Rides. With summer fully upon us down here in New Orleans, it promised to be a brisk and sweaty affair, of the sort that transfers a gallon of salty perspiration from skin to headsets and seatposts and gets you home with wet shoes and a soaked kit that has to be peeled off inside-out and hung out to dry. Being only the beginning of July, it could have been worse of course. We started with a temperature around 84F and ended with it at a relatively subtropical 95 about three hours later. That was just a taste of what's to come later this month and next, no doubt.

With almost no wind and a big holiday group containing a lot of people whose game plan didn't involve being in the front half, it was easy sailing for those who wanted it. The 18 or so miles from the overpasses out to Venetian Isles was completed at a nice brisk average speed of 25 mph, ramping up to 35 at the turnaround sprint for those so inclined. I backed off at about 34, myself. By then the heat was getting hot and the hot guys were getting toasted, which kept the speed on the return trip down Chef Menteur more in the 23-26 mph range, which was pretty casual with such a large group on such a windless day. After crossed under the interstate and got onto the service road I was near the back when Pat came riding up and said that Brian Bourgeois. had a mechanical. I looked back, but we were already around the bend and I couldn't see anyone, so I turned around to see if he needed help while the rest of the group continued on unaware. Shortly after I'd turned another rider came by and said that Brian had told him he was OK and to go on, so I turned around again. By then we were probably two minutes behind the group. We started a nice two person time trial at a moderate pace, knowing that the group had already dropped back down to holiday ride speed, and finally caught back up somewhere around the end of Bullard. Almost everybody who started was together all the way to Lakeshore Drive, which is kind of unusual for the Giro but really nice for a holiday ride.

Two people at a table for one

So I got home, peeled off the wet kit, and got onto NBC Gold to watch end of the Tour de France where things were setting up for a big classic pack sprint. It's the final 200 meters and I see Sagan and Cavendish in pretty good positions as the whole sprint starts drifting right. Sagan sees an opening to the right along the barricade. Cavendish is already trying to accelerate from behind into the same opening. I say out loud, "there's not enough room!" Cav tries to make some space for himself by, I can only assume, leaning onto Sagan, but it's like a little bird trying to push a tank out of the way. Sagan holds his line. Cav practically bounces off of Sagan and hits the barricade and goes down, sliding left right in front of two others who launch into and over him like it's a ski jump.

Lots of theories about that elbow

Sagan, completely unfazed by what's happening behind him, takes a close 2nd place. Cavendish eventually limps across the line with a bandaged hand and holding his arm in that classic "I've broken something" position across his chest. The officials relegate Sagan, presumably because he threw his elbow out and moved a bit to the right when Cavendish tried to squeeze through, and then they think about it more and decided to disqualify him completely. Cavendish has a broken scapula and is out, Sagan is out, fans start armchair officiating. From what I've seen, I can't find much fault with what Sagan did. Cavendish took a big risk trying to come through an opening that was already closing. Had it been anyone but Sagan in the way, he might have pushed his way through, or he might have caused an even bigger crash. Had the leading riders not drifted right, none of this would have happened in the first place, so I think there was a lot of blame to go around. From the officials' perspective, I think the key thing here was that they had earlier warned the sprinters that they would not be tolerating dangerous riding like they usually do, and I think Sagan's DQ was basically used as an example. Certainly we've seen much worse in prior years' sprints that didn't warrant disqualifications.

On Thursday we had a nice big group up on the levee for the long Thursday ride. The weather hadn't changed much except that there were some big clouds scattered around, and the pace was pretty good most of the time, depending on who happened to be at the front, and never got out of hand. On the return trip we averaged around 24 mph with perhaps a bit of an occasional tailwind that kept my heart rate at an average of only 138. As we neared the Huey P. Long bridge I figured that a few of the riders were going to sprint as usual, and after a few of them went by I got onto someone's wheel, but there was already a big gap so after a short effort I eased up. The next thing I know I see Brian Baum rolling down the grassy side of the levee as his bike flies through the air. Apparently he sprinted for the bridge, then eased up just as Matt, who he wasn't expecting, came flying past him to his left, causing him to crash. Unfortunately, he hit the asphalt first, taking a lot of skin off of his arm and leg. He got back on the bike right away and hurried back the last few miles home before the epinephrine could wear off.

Summer Doldrums

A room with a view

It was another weekend of back-to-back Giro Rides, and there was no doubt that summer was upon us. As often happens when it starts getting hot and miserable, I was feeling fine and spent more than usual in the wind, which isn't actually saying much. Saturday's Giro was kind of a series of flat tires - not mine. I turned back to help for the first one, along with a few others, as the rest of the group kept rolling. We made a really fast tire change and I was kind of looking forward to the team time trial that would be needed to get us back to the group. I figured they were not catchable, and was planning on taking the Bullard shortcut, but as is turned out they had been soft-pedaling and we caught them within a couple of miles. Then, right after turning onto Chef Highway, there was another flat. Fewer people stopped for that one, but it went quickly. We had just gotten going when we saw Judd off on the shoulder up ahead. I assumed he'd flatted, but in fact it was slightly more dramatic than that. Apparently Jaden had chucked a water bottle at him when he rolled through the red light at Michoud Blvd., and then there was some kind of confrontation about it that ended up with Judd going down or almost going down and dropping his chain. Anyway, we all got going again and rejoined the group when we saw it coming the other way, a couple of miles from the turnaround. Sunday's ride was relatively civilized. Both days I made a couple of efforts that got my heart rate up into the 178 bpm range, which would be around 92% of max, so I guess that's good. I felt strong sprinting up the overpasses, anyway. On the down side, I haven't been reaching into my pocket for my camera very much since it's been hot and humid and sweaty and in general there hasn't been anything very interesting to take pictures of.

In the middle of last week we finally got the office furniture installed, which basically involved a couple of days of disruption. I've still got a few boxes on the floor and haven't taken time to hang anything on the walls, but at least it's coming along. With today being the day before July 4, things are super quiet around here, not that I'm complaining.

So halfway through the year, I'm showing around 5,700 miles, which is pretty decent considering the low-mileage weeks after the collarbone incident. Since I've been using Strava I have four full years of data with annual mileage totals ranging from a low of 11,724 (another collarbone year) to 12,378, so I guess I'm on track for a normal year mileage-wise. I have to admit that I really use Strava mainly just to keep track of mileage, both mine and my equipment. For example, I know that the Campi group  that I bought used from Matt a few years ago has over 50,600 miles on it now, and the "new" Bianchi has over 30,000. Where it really comes in handy, though, is keeping track of specific equipment items. The current headset is at 18,200 mi., and the most recently installed chain is now at 2,100 miles, which means it's time to start looking for a replacement on sale. Surprisingly, I have over 25,000 miles on the Bont shoes, which are a little beat up from the crash into the car a while back but still serviceable. I really hate having to change shoes. The sizing is always inconsistent, the new models are never the same as the old ones, they're expensive, and the local bike shops never, ever, have the brand and size that I need in stock so I can try them on before buying them, so getting new shoes is always an expensive roll of the dice.

It's neat to kind of know someone in the Tour

The Tour de France started on Sunday, and it's kind of fun for a lot of the local guys knowing that Nate Brown, who won the 2011 Tour de Louisiane, is riding it with the Cannondale team. Even better, he was in the KOM jersey after stage 3. Meanwhile, the USAC National Road Championships were going on over the weekend. There were a number of LAMBRA riders there, but no outstanding results. I got to watch a few of the races on the live web stream via VeloNews, which was great. The commentary, however, was pretty lame. The Women's race had a big crash with five laps to go and they ended up stopping the race and re-starting it with six to go something like thirty minutes later. The two-person break that had been off the front survived, which must have been hard. I was sorry to see Debbie Milne go down hard in that crash. I wasn't sure it was she until today because the commentators never said which riders went off in the ambulances. Apparently she whacked her head, so they didn't want her to continue. Everybody else got to re-start, so in a way it was lucky for some of the riders.

Brings me back!

Anyway, I pretty much killed Sunday afternoon sitting in front of the computer watching the criteriums. I did, however, get rid of an old bike that I'd had sitting around in the basement since 2006. It was a French 10-speed from around 1971 or so that I'd gotten from a faculty member who was moving after Katrina. He'd also given me a really nice Peugeot mixte that I subsequently fixed up for Candy as her commuter. The "Olympique" bike, however, was in pretty rough shape and way too big for me anyway, so I hadn't done anything with it. About a year ago I kind of cleaned it up a bit, thinking I'd put it on Craigslist for $20 or something, but that never actually happened, so it was just kind of in the way for a long time. When Tim posted that he was looking for a frame to build up I told him about it and he came over and picked it up in exchange for a bottle of wine. I think I may have gotten the better end of that deal, but it will be interesting to see if he is able to fix the bike up. It's a solid old lugged steel frame with some vintage parts, so it does have some historical interest. It's exactly the kind of thing that was being sold around here during the 70s "bike boom" when I first started riding.