Fifteen Percent Chance

"Wasn't expecting it to start raining this early," I said as the three of us were approaching Williams Blvd. in the dark. "The guys who didn't show up must have better radar than we do," remarked Jeff as the raindrops got larger and more frequent. Indeed, the forecast had been calling for nothing more than a 15% chance of rain until at least 9 am, and the 5:30 am radar had seemed to support that. Yet, there was no denying that the three of us, Jeff, Darren and I, were about to get good and wet anyway.

We continued on, water spraying in our faces, straining to see through cloudy glasses, and soon I could feel the water level in my shoes beginning to rise. I knew it couldn't be the larger line of rain ahead of the approaching cold front, since that was still way to the west of the city, so these had to be some scattered showers popping up ahead of the front. It was still just as wet, but at least it wasn't too cold.

We turned back at The Dip, which has become standard protocol whenever the turnout is low and the weather sketchy. With the levee bike path now soaked with water, it was sometimes hard to tell if it was still raining since there was a steady stream of wheel spray from the rider ahead anyway. It didn't matter. We were already soaked, so it was no longer a question of how wet we'd get. There was just one thing that might mess up what was left of the ride.

It went flat pretty fast. We were only eight or so miles from home, and it wasn't really raining at the time. I stopped and spun the wheel, brushing my un-gloved hand over the tire to feel for whatever might still be embedded in the tread. "Ouch!" This time it wasn't just a little shard of rock or glass. It was a tiny piece of metal, and it took a while to pry it out of the tire even with the help of my pocket knife. I pulled out the CO2 inflator and filled the tire, only to have it freeze onto the skin of my hand. It was the one day when I'd forgotten to put on my gloves, and now I had what amounted to freezer burn on my hand. Soon enough we were back up to speed, which in this case was 22-23 mph, and we even came upon a section of road near the city that was still dry. "Great," I thought, "I may dry out a little bit by the time I get home." 

No such luck. As I made my way down Oak Street the sky opened up again and I rode the last couple of miles through Carrollton in the rain. I was glad I'd made it out, since the rest of the day was definitely going to be wet, but as I stood there in the basement dripping water and wiping down the bike I couldn't help but think, "Fifteen percent chance of rain, my ass."

Omnibus Blog Post

Sundown over the swollen Mississippi at Baton Rouge

Like our Congress, which hasn't managed to pass our country's appropriations bills on time ever since they threw their only bargaining chip, the earmark, out the window, I've been pretty sluggish about updating my blog lately. And so it seemed only appropriate that I should wrap the entire past few weeks up into a nice long Omnibus web post. Fortunately for you, it won't take me 2,200 pages to do so like it did for the actual Omnibus Bill. Also fortunately for you, it won't be necessary for you to read 2,200 pages within 48 hours, which we all know is impossible since you would have to read non-stop at one page every 1.3 minutes for two days without sleeping in order to do so - a rate you probably haven't achieved since you were cramming for your English literature final exam in college. So anyway, looking back at the past few weeks, and realizing that between my advanced age and declining mental faculties I can barely remember who I rode with last Saturday, I figured I'd just start with last week and take it from there.

Last week wasn't too bad. The weather down here has been pretty good for riding, despite the early morning darkness, and although Tuesday's ride got cut a bit short due to there being only two of us, the other regular rides were pretty good. I logged 286 miles, which was, I suppose, satisfactory.

Nice turnout for Tulane Day at the Capitol

On Tuesday I had to drive up to Baton Rouge in the afternoon for our annual "Tulane Day" legislative event. This year, rather than standing around in the Capitol rotunda for hours, we decided to have an actual reception. Even better, we were able to hold it at the new Center for Coastal and Deltaic Solutions, which is basically a really fancy high-class, glass and steel fishing pier along the Mississippi just below the Baton Rouge I-10 bridge. The building is brand new and really nice. We had been pushing for weeks to get some good attendance for the event, and that effort was fairly successful, I think. We had a lot of Tulane alumni, along with the Tulane president and a few key legislators in attendance. The best part, though, was that because it was in the evening, and I wasn't involved in the various meetings that filled the rest of the day, I was able to ride in the morning. Unfortunately, that was also the morning we turned around early. The river had hit flood stage in New Orleans on Monday.

Flood Stage

So on Wednesday I headed out in the dark to do the WeMoRi. Out on Lakeshore Drive looking for the group of headlights, I saw just a single light with nothing behind it and figured it was just some solo rider unconnected with the ride. Well, moments later two riders go flashing past me at about 30 mph and I realize I missed the break. I look back and the pack is easily a minute back already. Oh well. So I jump into the group when it comes by and all is well, but there's no way we're catching the break, even after one of the riders, Rob, splits off early to head home. It ended up being a relatively easy WeMoRi for me. On Friday Jerry was leading the Tulane coffee ride, which meant we rode less and drank coffee more, so it was shorter than usual. By then, I had pretty much decided to drive up to Independence for Dustin's 80 mile birthday ride where I was expecting to get pretty well crushed.

Saturday up in Tangipahoa Parish

We had ten riders for the Independence ride, which turned out to be considerably less harsh than I'd been expecting it to be. Actually, we had only eight for about half of it. Logan crashed at an intersection going about 2 mph and kind of ripped up the palm of his hand. He and Jerry decided to split off a while later at a store to pick up some bandages and then ride backwards around the course to meet us. Otherwise, though, this was a nice ride - great weather, mostly double paceline, moderate pace except for occasional and random short accelerations.

Logan explaining how he crashed, I think.

Sunday morning I was feeling no worse for the wear and headed off for the usual Sunday Giro. That ride started out fairly fast, but after a while it seemed like only a few people were interested in pulling and things settled down quite a bit. A few riders just kind of rode away off the front on the way back without eliciting any sort of effort to chase. All-in-all, the past week was enjoyable but a little bit lacking in the intensity area, especially since it's already the end of March.

Last night I helped Charlotte change out cables, and install a new crankset and shifters. That took longer than I expected, partly due to my lack of familiarity with Shimano components, and partly because I cut one of the brake cable housings to short and ended up un-taping and re-taping he handlebar in order to replace it with a longer one. We were also lacking the special little tool to tighten the plastic thingy that basically holds the crankset in place, but I improvised and I think it will be fine. Anyway, I don't think I finally went to sleep until nearly midnight, which made getting up at 5:20 am this morning a bit of a challenge.

Rafal and Steve battling the headwind on the levee 

The wind this morning was impressive. I guess it was 10-15 mph from the southeast. I rode out to the levee fully expecting to be the only one to show up, but as it turned out there were four, one of which was visiting from the Chicago area and had ridden with us on Sunday. With a cross-tailwind at the start, I think we dropped one rider almost immediately even though we were going only about 22-23 mph. Then one of the remaining riders turned around at the pipes, so we were down to just me and Rafal. He's way taller than I, so I knew he would be suffering on the way back. Anyway, we did ease up a bit, eventually picking up Steve and David out by Destrehan. The return trip was mostly head and crosswind, and there were times when 18 mph was a struggle. After a while I dropped back and was surprised to find Rafal missing. He'd really blown up. David dropped off around that time as well. I knew that Steve would be turning back at the Pipes, so I continued trading pulls with him to that point and then turned back to find Rafal who was a couple of minutes back trying to recover. We rode back the rest of the way pretty easy. I told him to come with me down the ramp onto Oak Street and we'd stop for coffee. Well, he followed me down onto River Road but there was a car between us. I looked back and saw him, so I continued down Oak Street at an easy pace, waiting for him to catch up. When I finally looked back again he was nowhere to be found. I still don't know where he went! Perhaps he lost sight of me and ended up on River Road, or maybe he flatted?? Guess I'll find out eventually.

You Never Can Tell

There are lots of group rides around. I typically do some or all of a group ride four or five times a week. One thing about group rides I've learned is that you never can tell who's going to show up. Lots of things influence the turnout, especially the chance of rain and the certainty of strong wind. But every now and then the stars align in just such a way that nobody can come up with a credible excuse for staying in bed. And so it was for yesterday's Giro. It was supposed to be Rouge-Roubaix race weekend, so some riders were in decent early season shape. The wind was light. The morning temperature, which had been rather cold all week, was up to the mid-50s. It was the last day before we set clocks ahead and would be back to riding in the dark. Rain was predicted to start an hour after the Giro ended. A couple of riders were in town, one from Texas, another from Australia. The Tulane riders were planning to ride. So by the time we rolled out from Starbucks I guess there were 35 or 40 riders, and it was pretty clear we were in for a fast one.

Indeed, as soon as we came down the bridge onto Hayne Blvd. the speed went straight up to about 30 mph and mostly stayed in the 25 - 32 mph range all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. My Garmin said our average speed for the way out was something like 26.5 mph. Unfortunately, just as I put some power to the pedals on Hayne one of the old aluminum spoke nipples on my rear wheel broke. It wasn't quite bad enough to start hitting the chainstay, so I just kept going, being careful to avoid the bumps, and sprints. The latter was particularly frustrating because I would definitely have liked to have done some of them.

The whole way out on Chef Highway I was looking at 28-31 mph, but with such a big group it was relatively easy to stay in the pack. When there would be a little lull and the speed would drop down to 27, it felt like I was coasting. The return trip was definitely slower, but finally got going toward the end of Chef and was looking to stay that way until Brian flatted on the service road. About ten of us stopped and the rest continued, so I was thinking we'd just have an easy ride back. Well when we went around the curve there was Woody and a few more riders fixing another flat. Up the road, the rest of the group was waiting at the gas station at Bullard, so we ended up with practically everyone coming in together. Definitely the best Giro Ride this year. Even better, I made it home with my rear wheel still in one piece. So after I got back I rummaged around and found a brass spoke nipple that was threaded right, ran over to the bike shop to pick up a new rim strip, and had everything back in action half an hour later. I think that's the fifth spoke nipple I've replaced on that wheel - so far. Basically I'm rebuilding the wheel one spoke nipple at a time.

Wind and Water and Winter Again

A windy morning on the Lakefront

I guess that easy ride I did on Monday morning shouldn't have been so easy because Tuesday morning was rained out entirely, and while I can pretend that old guys like me need more recovery and skipping days must be good, I know better. The value of recovery days depends heavily on one thing - something from which to recover. Tuesday's rain, of course, ushered in a cold front and by Wednesday morning the temperature was down to the mid-50s, which is probably more or less normal for this time of year, but which was substantially lower than we've had for the past couple of weeks. So that morning I dug out the thermal knickers and long-sleeve jersey and headed off in the darkness for the lakefront battling a gusty and unrelenting north wind. Out on the unprotected Lakeshore Drive the wind was a bit worse with waves occasionally crashing over the seawall. I rode eastward over the bridge and across the London Avenue Canal looking for headlights. All I saw were four, and they were coming at me pretty damned fast, so I made a quick u-turn, accelerated up to speed, and latched onto the quartet as it approached the Bayou St. John bridge. Someone surged for the bridge KOM just as Emily, who was at the back, opened up a gap to let me in. I barely caught the draft, but I think she dropped off at that point. Up ahead was Rob, inexplicably on his track bike on such a windy day. Despite the wind and his fixed gear, he was killing us. Brian and Woody were there too, and for the next mile or two all I could do was let them rotate in front of me as I tried to catch my breath. When we turned onto Wisner and picked up a tailwind the speed surged up to 26 or 27 as Rob and Brian pounded the pedals. Woody was clearly suffering, as was I. We came down the overpass at 35 mph, turned onto City Park Avenue, and then the pace eased. Rob pulled off the front and headed home as the rest of us turned back into the headwind onto Marconi. I think we were down to 19 mph for a while. The rest of the WeMoRi was nowhere to be seen. In fact, we didn't see the remnant of the wind-shattered group until we were already past the Bayou St. John bridge and on our way back. Anyway, that was a pretty good workout, and I was glad I had a tailwind on the way home.

So much water

Thursday morning it was even colder and I pulled on the long tights for the first time in probably three weeks. It was somewhere in the 49-50 degree range, but with the wind it felt colder, especially once I got up to the levee. As often happens when it's cold and windy, only Richard and Scott showed up. We rode out to the big dip and turned around there, picking up David from Ormond for a while before he had to turn back. The river has been rising steadily, and will continue to do so for at least the next week. The water is just barely reaching the base of the levee now, but even so the Corps opened up some of the bays at the Spillway this morning to keep things under control.

Straggling

My little group of stragglers in the road race, probably starting the second lap

It was another long road trip last weekend. This time up to Fayetteville for the University of Arkansas collegiate (and some non-collegiate) races. My sore throat seemed to be on the mend and I wasn't yet showing signs of pneumonia, so why not drive 10 hours to race in some nice cold, dry air after what was essentially five days off the bike? As fate would have it, we ended up with only one collegiate rider, Gavin, plus Dustin and me. Gavin was thus assured of redundant and/or contradictory coaching advice plus lots of crit photos. This year's Arkansas Classic used entirely different courses from prior years. The road race, which was the only one I'd be doing, was on a nice rolling 12-mile loop with one short but steep climb and one longer but not so steep climb. It was considerably more forgiving than the course used in prior years, although apparently not quite forgiving enough for me.

Probably 1 lap to go.

The road races didn't start until late morning, after the time trial, with Dustin and I doing the "Open A" aka Cat. 1/2/3 race first, followed by Gavin in the collegiate Cat. C race a few hours later. Although I was feeling a little apprehensive about my pulmonary status, I can't say I was feeling all that bad as we rolled out for the neutral 3 or 4 miles to start the first of four laps of the race loop. By the time we started the temperature was close to 60, the sky was clear, and the wind was blowing at probably 10 mph with little but a few scattered leafless little trees to block the it as it blew across the cow pastures. It was scenic, for sure, but I knew the crosswind section was going to take its toll on the field of around 30 riders. With the very first section of the loop being essentially a direct crosswind, I made sure I was up near the front as soon as we turned onto it. That worked out pretty well for a while, but then Dustin attacked maybe five miles into it and right away there was a split with six riders off the front. Over the next few miles a few more took off on the tailwind section and I think most of them made the bridge. I think there was some team strategy, aka blocking, going on in what was left of the field, so there wasn't any sort of concerted effort to chase. Even so, the gap was growing pretty slowly at first. Then we came around a sandy right-hand corner and were immediately confronted by the big climb of the day, for which I was totally unprepared. It was maybe half a kilometer but also maybe 10%, and naturally I came around the corner still in my big ring near the back of the field. Someone up front attacked the hill. I didn't, and got really bogged down in too big of a gear coming over the top. A few of us stragglers came together and kind of sort of started to chase, but the effort was inconsistent and we never made contact. In retrospect, I probably should have just put my head down and made the bridge by myself. Anyway, we had a nice little group of five or six. One or two were just sitting on the back. I was taking fairly good long pulls, and this big guy was doing the same, and soon the one woman in our group started taking some pulls too, but although the group ahead remained in sight for over a lap, it was clear that we lacked the necessary combined horsepower, or willpower, or both, to actually close the deal. Even so, I felt fine climbing the "big" climb on the succeeding laps, so I guess I just got caught off-guard on that first lap and wasn't willing to dig deeply enough. Anyway, but then I was just focused on getting a good workout and unfortunately my pulls were causing some collateral damage behind me. The big guy was struggling on the climbs even though I thought I was going up them nice and smoothly. At one point I came off the front and dropped back to find only Ali, the woman from Arkansas, left. I said, 'What happened to that big diesel engine we had?" She replied something like, "Well you kept pushing the pace too much. You training for Kona or something?"  Oops.  Anyway, I think we were down three when we caught a rider who'd been shelled from the original break, and then dropped from whatever was left of the disintegrating field. He stayed with us for a while but eventually dropped off. By the end there were just three of us and we spend the last half of the last lap doing more chatting than racing. Turned out all three of us were 40+.

Meanwhile, up at the front, Dustin had spent half a lap solo and then gone back to the break. He ended up in 3rd place. After finishing I just kept on riding and did a nice cool-down lap. I mean, it was such a nice day I wasn't going to waste it, especially after driving 10 hours to get there! I stopped at the start/finish and waited for the Cat. C race to come through for their 4-lap race. Naturally Gavin was already off the front less than two miles into the loop. Later he attacked again and ended up in a 2-rider break that made it all the way to the finish. He finished 2nd, but was very pleased with his result, remarking later that it had been the hardest ride he'd ever done. Anyway, when he came through the start/finish for his second lap he motioned that he needed water, so I filled up one of my bottles and Dustin and I started riding backwards around to course to get to the feed zone that was practically on the opposite side. He got there before us, so I had to wait until the next lap to make the hand-up. Meanwhile, Dustin was so wiped out from his earlier effort that he was starting to get cold and got a ride back to the start/finish while I rode back a bit later. We waited for Gavin's finish then rode back into town as the sun was setting. By then the temperature had really started to drop and I was freezing.

Sunday morning the weather was much different. There were a few scattered showers around and it was cloudy, but at least it wasn't too cold. Gavin's race was one of the earlier ones and once again it was his early attack that created the winning break. There were originally two of them, but the gap was hovering around 9 seconds so a couple more bridged up before they put their heads down and really got to work. Eventually that 4-rider break established a safe lead, though. The finish was probably only 100 meters from the last corner, and Gavin came into it 3rd wheel. Rider in front of him almost overshot the turn, though, and Gavin hesitated and changed his line a bit, losing enough momentum for the rider behind him to slip past, so he ended up 4th. Even so, he had accumulated enough prime points that together with his 4th place time trial, he was 2nd in the Cat. C Omnium competition. It started raining right after his race, so as soon as they did the podium and he collected his medal we jumped into the van and hit the road. That got us home at the entirely satisfactory hour of 9:30 pm, which was way better than the usual 12:30 am! Links to photos and, eventually results, are on the cycling.tulane.edu results page.