A Week's Worth

Perfectly sized group for a training ride on the northsore

In the office not feeling too good. Perhaps I'm coming down with something, or maybe I'm just a little worn out and need a little down time. Whatever, I figured I'd update the blog rather than dig back into the ten years of back-and-forth audit stuff I've been rather unsuccessfully trying to summarize for the past couple of days.

Last week was a pretty solid training week for me. I logged nearly 300 miles and, more importantly, a fair amount of intensity. Down here in New Orleans it's been either hot or raining or both, so being able to get in my regular weekday training rides without incident was just dumb luck, I guess.

Saturday Giro warm-up along Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans

On Saturday I did the usual Giro Ride, which turned out to be pretty fast. With a little tailwind on the way out, the group was going faster than normal almost from the beginning. Once we came down onto Hayne Blvd. the speed ramped up quickly into the 28-30 mph range and just stayed there. I hate those first few miles on Hayne. There are a bunch of dangerous lengthwise seams in the concrete that you can't see until you're on top of them, even if you aren't cross-eyed and glued to the wheel of someone a foot taller than yourself and going 30 mph with sweat dripping into your glasses. I usually end up riding more or less in the wind just so I can see what's coming, but on Saturday it eventually came down to "trust the wheel in front of you or be dropped." The average speed for the 5-mile stretch of Hayne Blvd. was 28.6 mph. It didn't slow down much after that, so the subsequent 7-mile stretch of Chef Menteur showed an average of 28.8. After a quick turnaround, the ride back into the wind was slower but not a whole lot easier, and we were back on Lakeshore Drive by 9 am. I was planning on doing a northshore ride the next day and knew I'd be feeling Saturday's ride on Sunday.

Sunday morning I threw the bike in to the car and headed for Lee Road Junior High to meet what I figured would be a small but determined group for a 65 mile training ride. Despite the prior day's effort, I was determined to put some effort into the ride, so at least I was prepared to suffer a bit.  There was a big MS Tour training ride starting from the same location at 8 am (we'd planned to start at 7:30 to avoid them), and I was surprised to find so many people already there when I arrived around 7:00. We rolled out just a minute or two after 7:30 with six or seven riders to do the standard winter training ride route up past Enon and back around through Plainview.

The first fifteen miles or so were surprisingly comfortable. We were rolling along in a nice smooth paceline for the most part, at 20-22 mph, and with the slightly drier air and shade from the trees it felt absolutely cool. It was nice while it lasted. Once we got to the top of the course around 30 miles in, and headed back toward the south we lost the shade and kind of put the hammer down. That 15 mile stretch is pretty much the traditional sprint zone for this ride where we don't take any prisoners, regrouping only at the other end on Sie Jenkins Road. So we pushed the pace along there, up and down the three significant hills, spending a fair amount of time in the 25-28 mph range. Along the way we lost Pat and Mignon, so at the end of Sie Jenkins Road we stopped and I turned back. I figured they should be maybe two minutes back, but after riding a while I still wasn't seeing any sign of them. That's about when I got a text from Pat saying that Mignon had flatted. I tried to reply but my phone and hands were so sweaty I couldn't get it to work, but Kyle had better luck. Anyway, we found them a little farther down Sie Jenkins, thankfully in the shade. We stopped for water after turning off of Sie Jenkins Road (Jim had left his bottles at his car, so he had just my small bottle and was probably already getting pretty dehydrated). We stayed together for Hwy. 60 and South Choctaw, and Dummyline through Enon, where we stopped again for fluids, and then of course we had to make an effort on the climb up to the fire tower. After that I was starting to fade at a logarithmic pace, taking shorter and shorter pulls. Kyle, on the other hand, started taking longer and longer pulls at seemingly faster and faster speeds. For the last few miles it was all I could to do stay on his wheel. Anyway, it was a good training ride and a good end to a solid week.

What's coming this weekend

Meanwhile, we have been planning the LAMBRA road championships for next weekend and carefully watching the weather. There's a Tropical Storm named Harvey out in the Gulf, and the forecast models are having a really hard time predicting where it will go, or when it will make landfall, because there isn't much other weather to steer it. At the moment it's looking like we'll be OK for the road race on Sunday up around Jackson MS, although rain is certainly a possibility. Actually, for a road race in August, a little rain isn't such a bad thing at all. I'll be going up early to help officiate the first wave of races that start at 8 am, and then I'll be riding the master's race at 10:30. Hopefully the weather won't scare too many people away. I'm not expecting a huge turnout anyway since there's always a lot going on this time of year. I'm hoping to be able to drive up Saturday night so I don't have to make the three hour drive at 4 am on Sunday.

Minutes after uploading the earlier storm track, Harvey was upgraded to a hurricane.

Yesterday I did the WeMoRi, getting there almost early enough to do the entire ride start to finish with the group. The speeds were kind of all over the place for that ride, but at the end I found myself on a good wheel and although Woody was already like ten bike lengths off the front at 200 meters I went ahead to sprinted. When he was about 50 meters from the end I saw him ease up for a moment and look back, but when he saw me still coming he put his head down and powered the rest of the way. That short effort with a little tailwind got me up over 38 mph, so I was happy with that. This morning I was feeling pretty lousy, still am, and decided from the start I was going to try and take it easy for the long Thursday ride on the levee. Even so, it felt hard to me, and I still feel like something's not right, so I'm about to take some Ibuprofen and hope for the best.

Current Stats:

• Sempre Pro frame:  32,343 mi.
• Campi Shifters & Derailleurs:  52,696 mi.
• Bont Shoes:  26,855 mi.
• Year to Date Mileage (not counting commuting): 7,768 mi.