Things were going along quite nicely until a couple of weeks ago. Sure, the intensity was dropping and the mileage was getting inconsistent, but those are just normal things that happen every year in November and December. Then I came down with a head cold, and then the weather got nasty, and then I had to officiate cyclocross races. In the last couple of weeks I logged about as much mileage as I did when I was riding around with a broken collarbone last February. It's been pretty frustrating. Ideally, I'd have spent the week or two after the cold symptoms subsided sitting on the back of the group rides, gradually building back up to normal. Unfortunately, the weather, and I guess also the early pre-holiday entanglements, have been making that almost impossible. Of course I have a couple of rather unsavory options, namely riding a trainer indoors and/or riding alone in the dark.
I started the week with high hopes of getting back into the groove even though I still have some nagging head and lung congestion. That didn't last long. Candy had some sort of stomach virus Sunday night and when I woke up with a scratchy throat I decided not to go out into the cold for my usual Monday solo ride on the levee. In retrospect, that was a mistake, but at the time I figured that I'd be doing a good solid 42 mile ride on Tuesday morning, so it wouldn't be much of a loss. Well, Tuesday morning there were only I think three of us. As often happens when the turnout is low and the wind is high, we did a somewhat abbreviated ride, turning around at The Dip. It was a decent enough paceline and I definitely spent a good bit of time pulling into the wind, but I still came up ten miles short. Not to worry, I'd just ride harder the next morning at the WeMoRi.
So Wednesday it's 39 degrees and windy but I intentionally under-dress since I'm planning on a hard ride. I ride out to the lakefront in the dark and jump into the group somewhere along Lakeshore Drive. The group splits when it turns onto Marconi because some of the riders at the front turn in front of an oncoming car. The car slows, the rest of us slow, eventually we get through and chase back up to the front half of the group which is much smaller than usual because it's cold and windy. We make the turn onto Robert E. Lee and I feel my rear tire going flat. I haven't even recovered from the effort of jumping into the group without an adequate warm-up. It's still dark. My fingers are freezing. I pull a piece of glass from the tread and struggle to get the tire bead off the rim with my gloves on. I put the new tube in, re-seat the tire, and pump up the tire with my CO2 inflator. I remove it and then ever so carefully start to unscrew the cartridge. There's always residual pressure in the cartridge, of course, but it's so cold out that as it escapes, it's making CO2 snowflakes. Once it eases I unscrew it all the way, only to have more CO2 suddenly explode from what I assume was the frozen-up hole. I see something white and round go flying into the grass. Crap! It must be the o-ring. I look down and see a little white circle in the grass and pick it up. It's so cold it burns my fingers. Then it evaporates! It was a ring of frozen CO2 and perhaps water. Anyway, I assume the O-ring is lost. I pack everything back into pockets and saddle bag and head for Lakeshore Drive hoping to catch the group, but I never see them. I must have just missed them. I'm all the way back to Canal before I see a few of them coming toward me for the cool-down quarter-lap of Lakeshore Drive. By now I'm freezing cold since I've spent almost as much time standing in the dark as I have riding hard enough to generate any heat. I decide to skip my usual stop at Starbucks and head straight home. Total mileage for the morning: 24.5, about ten miles short. Total number of miles of moderate intensity: 2. Not a good morning.
This morning it's a little warmer but for some reason there are only four of us who show up. Once again we do an abbreviated ride that nets only 33 miles, mostly at a pretty moderate pace. So going into Friday I'm down by at least 50 miles already and the forecast for Sunday is 100% chance of rain. Hopefully I'll find a long ride on Saturday and salvage whatever's left of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment