Cluster Flats and Time Trials

NOBC riders warming up for the Time Trial

Last weekend was the annual LAMBRA Time Trial Championship that the club hosted over near LaPlace. That particular road, La-51, has been used for time trials for 40 years or so since it's easy to get to, dead flat, offers some protection from the wind, has a fairly nice road surface, and can be essentially closed to traffic without causing much of a problem to anyone. As usual, online registrations for the TT, which are required, started sluggishly with most people waiting until the last 24 hours to finally pull the trigger. Situation normal. I think we ended up with slightly over 100 riders, which was similar to last year.

Cluster Flats on the Giro Ride Saturday

Since I knew I'd be officiating rather than riding on Sunday, I was glad to see a good-sized group for the Giro Ride on Saturday. The weather around here has been pretty stable lately, which is to say we haven't had any significant rain for a couple of weeks. The temperature has, naturally, been rising as we tilt toward the sun, and we've already nudged up against the low 90s. Fortunately, the early morning temperatures have remained relatively comfortable...so far. As I sat around outside Starbucks Saturday morning, chatting with the local riders and waiting for the 7 am roll-out, Phil mentioned that he'd already had a flat that morning as he was riding over the river on the Huey P. Long bridge.

Screwed on Chef Menteur

I didn't think any more about it until he had another flat on Hayne Blvd. A number of people stopped with him, so the front part of the group that I was in decided to go ahead and continue. We'd all regroup at the turnaround anyway. I was happy with that because I needed the exercise and knew I wouldn't be getting any on Sunday. So we had a good fast ride out to Venetian Isles where everyone came back together for the trip back. I guess we were about halfway back on Chef when Phil flatted again. This time I stopped as most of the group continued. I figured he was probably going to need a tube and CO2 since he'd already flatted once. Well, it was more than that. The first tube we put in failed immediately. There was a pretty good cut in the tire that we booted with a piece of candy wrapper or something we found on the side of the road. We went over that tire with a magnifying glass and couldn't find anything in it, so we tried again and finally got rolling. Well, that didn't last long. Since we'd already taken so long fixing flats, and the guys who had stopped, besides me, were all planning on riding back across the river with Phil, we decided to just take Chef Menteur back into town rather than head out to Lakeshore Drive. Sure enough, a few miles later Phil's tire went flat again. I think we went through four or five tubes and countless CO2 cartridges, blowing the O-ring out of my inflator along the way, before we got him going again. Another couple of miles along the debris-strewn bike lane and I start hearing the whap-whap-whap of something stuck in someone's tire. This time it was a sheetrock screw that had impaled Mike's tire and carbon rim. We unscrewed that and pulled out our last remaining tubes and CO2 cartridges and started up again. Moments later, Phil's tire went flat again. He ended up having to call for extraction somewhere around Dillard University. Not a good day for tires.

Three seconds.....

Sunday morning I was out the door before dawn to meet up with our awesome crew of volunteers for the Time Trial. The weather was pretty nice, although the moderate north wind would be making it hard for the riders on their way out to the turnaround. With 102 or so riders to start, and a couple of 5-minute gaps between the 10 km, 20 km, and 40 km groups, it was almost 10:00 before we sent the final rider out onto the course. By then all of the riders doing the shorter distances had finished, so I immediately began working on the results. Everything went pretty smoothly except for three of the earlier riders that had finished close together and through some miscommunication at the finish line, we didn't know which rider went with which finish time. It took a while to track them down, but thanks to their personal computers and the process of elimination we got those figured out.

Although we didn't have any new records for the Men, Stephanie Smith broke her own LAMBRA and course record and set a new Women's 40 km record of 56:44, which was pretty impressive and not done under ideal conditions, given the wind. So the Time Trial was a pretty good success all-around. I headed home and spend a couple of hours posting results and completing the post-event report, etc. and probably should have gotten on the bike for a ride but, well, I didn't.

This week the weather for riding has been nice. On Wednesday I went out to the WeMoRi a little early and got ahead of the group. I rode all the way down Lakeshore Drive to the Seabrook loop, and then all the way back to Marconi before they finally came up from behind. I put in a few good efforts on Wednesday, and perhaps that's why I felt pretty flat on Thursday morning for the long levee ride. The first time I went to the front to take a pull my legs loaded up after about 25 pedal strokes and I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. This morning I went out for a really slow recover ride, so I hope that gives my old legs enough time to get back to normal before the weekend.

Thursday morning on the levee

Tonight I'm hosting a little end-of-season party for the Tulane riders. There's at the end of exams right now and I guess a few will be missing, but we're expecting eight or nine. I went out after work yesterday and got some stuff to make hamburgers and pasta salad, so hopefully I'll be able to get home a little early this afternoon to get that all together.