Extracted

The moon going down at the turnaround at Ormond

It's dark now when I head out for the morning rides, and with Daylight Saving Time dragging on all the way into November it's just going to get darker and darker every day. I don't much like riding in the dark on the levee bike path. Even at moderate speeds in the 23 mph range, runners and walkers sometimes appear suddenly, even with my retina-singing 900 lumen headlight aimed up the road. At the back of the paceline it's all just a matter of trust, something I have in relatively short supply. So I tend to hang back a bike length or two until the stars fade, which right now takes half an hour or so. This morning our small group headed out with a bright and nearly full moon overhead. Wes was there, having recently made the difficult business decision to shut down his cafe'/bike shop, Rouler, on Baronne Street. I know that for him the place was a lot more than a business, which I'm sure made it all seem a lot more like a personal loss. I had been there for lunch earlier in the week. I am certainly no businessman, but I have never understood how a small operation like that could survive downtown where there are literally a hundred other food and coffee options within a one-mile radius. He did give it quite a good try, though, and everything there was top-notch, but sometimes the quality to quantity ratio is just too high to be sustainable. I wouldn't be surprised to see an online operation rise from those ashes, though.

Pat, Wes and Rich - a conveniently timed flat

Anyway, Tuesday's ride was pretty smooth and steady, which is to say that I was having trouble getting my heart rate over 110 when I wasn't on the front. I admit to lifting the pace a little bit when I was, but my pulls were pretty short and my head was elsewhere most of the time anyway. On the one hand, I kept thinking about 6-Gap coming up on Sunday. That means a day behind the wheel and off the bike on Saturday. My plan, such as it was, had been to do my usual training rides on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then taper off the effort level on Thursday and Friday to make sure I didn't have to start the ride in Dahlonega with tired legs. On the other hand, I had a dentist appointment on Tuesday morning. The prior week I'd gone to the dentist for a long-overdue checkup where they discovered a missing filling in one tooth and something very suspicious under an old crown on another. I had a bad feeling about that. So this visit was to remove the old crown and see what the damage was. The best-case scenario was a little cavity and a new crown. Worst-case was having what was left of the tooth extracted and then more dentist trips to fix everything, not to mention at least a couple thousand dollars worth of work. Well, of course the worst-case scenario unfolded and an hour later I walked out with half of my face numb and one tooth lighter. I'd asked the dentist if I'd be OK for the weekend, and he said, "Sure. What are you planning?" I told him about the drive on Saturday and ride on Sunday. As a result he put in a couple extra stitches to make sure everything held together. So anyway, I went home, called the office to say I wouldn't be in, and took inventory of "soft" food that we had on hand since it was going to be soup and ice cream for a day or two.

This morning I thought I'd ride out to the lakefront easy, watch the WeMoRi from the back, or off the back, stop for coffee, and ride home. Not exactly the workout I'd planned, but I had been instructed not to do any "strenuous" exercise for a day or two. What the hell is "strenuous?" Anyway when I got up at 5:20 am the streets were wet and the radar looked pretty bad, so I decided in this case discretion was indeed the better part of valor and didn't ride. At this point the goal is just to let the jaw heal without incident so it isn't an issue this weekend. Assuming all is well today, I'll do the morning ride tomorrow at the lowest intensity possible and see how that goes. 

Alt-Giro

Having escaped unscathed from the tropical storms and errant hurricanes, things returned quickly to normal around here. Actually, other than a couple of days off for the schools and City Hall, they never really deviated much from normal in the first place. The past couple of weeks have been quite hot. Hotter, in fact, than August had been.

Last weekend I escaped to Colorado Springs for the USA Cycling Local Associations Symposium, by way of United Airlines super economy flights which don't allow for carry-ons other than "personal items" which in my case was a messenger bag containing my laptop and various undergarments. I'd been particularly looking forward to a preview of the new online event permitting, registration and reporting systems. The meeting started out with the usual overview by the USAC CEO, Derek Bouchard-Hall.

I was a little surprised to see that there was still a slight downward trend in road racing racer-days, although actual road licenses were up for the first time in five years or so. My sense here in LAMBRA is that things kind of bottomed out last year. Most of the races this year had stable or increased turnouts around here. Indeed, when they put up a table showing percent increases or decreases in licenses, LAMBRA ranked 3rd with a 14% increase over the previous year. Of course, starting with a low number always makes percent increases look better, but at this point any increase is a good thing. Of all the Local Associations, only three showed decreases, so that's a good thing. However, a lot of that can be attributed to the "automatic renewal" that a lot of people didn't realize they had opted into last year! The new systems looked pretty good, and it seems that the event permitting and online registration is almost ready for prime time, while the post-event reporting is lagging a bit behind. I don't think we'll see much of this rolling out until early 2019, though. New USAC memberships for LAMBRA were up 11%, which was the highest rate in the country. For comparison, Texas was down 9% (which translates into a pretty big number), and TN was down 20%. So anyway, I'd say I left the symposium Saturday afternoon feeling reasonably optimistic. Then I got to the airport. The front part of the COS airport was mostly plywood since it's in the middle of a renovation spurred on by a fire earlier in the year. Then I walked into the nearly deserted TSA checkpoint to find the lights off. I asked the agent what was going on and she said that a truck had backed into one of the big transformers out on the tarmac and the power was out for much of the building. Great. I wandered over the the one little bar/restaurant to sit down and have a beer. The power was out there too, and in fact the blown transformer was right outside the window being loaded onto a truck. They couldn't process credit cards and had to go find the manager with the cash register key just so they could make change. Oh well.

Eventually I walked down to my gate, only to find that the flight was delayed because of weather problems around Dallas. Also, the plane had an oil leak they were investigating. By the time we boarded, there was no way I would be making my connection in Dallas and since it would be late in the evening there wouldn't be any other options until morning. I was pretty much resolved to spending the night at DFW, but fortunately that flight was also delayed so I made it back to New Orleans around 10:30 or so.

Yesterday I met the Tulane club for a road ride up around Independence, LA - about an hour from New Orleans. We had nine riders, which made for a nice double paceline at a decidedly moderate pace. Even so, it was great to finally be riding somewhere that wasn't flat for a change. I'd put a new 11-29 cassette on earlier in the week to wear it in a bit before 6-Gap, which is next weekend. I am hoping I can remember not to shift into the 53 x 29 combination, because that just might rip the derailleur off of the bike due to the shorter chain I have on there. There will be a few Tulane riders going to 6-Gap who are definitely going to have trouble doing the full 110 miles, but fortunately there's a cut-off about half-way where you can opt out and do the 50 mile route instead. I'm not expecting to set any records at 6-Gap and in fact I expect that having the 39x29 option will simply allow me to climb even more slowly than before, if that's even possible.

Last weekend the Giro Ride went over the Seabrook bridge even though it was completely barricaded off for some emergency mechanical work. This weekend it was still closed, but not rideable, so we basically took Chef Highway the whole way from City Park. I guess it was better than nothing, but damn there are a lot of intersections and stop lights on that route. Next week I'll probably do normal rides on Tuesday and Wednesday, but will try to back off a bit on Thursday and Friday so I can at least start 6-Gap with fresh legs.

Forecasts

Nothing to see here. Move along, move along!

Well, while things in the tropics were certainly nice and quiet for the first half of hurricane season, it appears that mother nature is trying to make up for lost time right now. There are five systems currently being tracked. Luckily, none of them is headed straight for us here in New Orleans. Unluckily, the forecast for the next few days at least is looking more and more soggy. Looking out the window of my office here on the 6th floor all I see are dark skies, rain, and lightning.

The city just issued a flood alert. There's something new in the Gulf (Invest #95). There's a Cat. 4 headed for the Carolinas. There's another storm that will likely become a hurricane shortly headed for the Caribbean. I guess it was just good fortune that the front tire on my commuter was flat this morning and I resorted to taking the car, because it's not looking like this rain is going to stop any time soon.

At least last weekend went nicely enough. On Friday I tagged along with the Tulane coffee ride as usual. Dan Bennett was in town, so he and Wayne Sharp joined us. Naturally we spent the whole time telling stories about the old days. Dan also came out for the Giro on Saturday but turned back early when the pace started to go kind of ballistic. It seemed like a pretty fast Giro to me. On the way back a few of us stopped as most of the group blew through a red light at Michoud in front of a turning truck that was on his horn the whole time. Our reward for doing the right thing?  A three-mile chase that dropped all but three of us. If Taco hadn't come to the front and finished it off I don't think Gavin and I would have caught.

Dan and Wayne

On Sunday the Tulane team was doing some skill training over in Pontchatoula, followed by some bar-b-que at Dustin's house. That was mostly an easy ride - some basic paceline and cornering practice. It did get my heart rate going at one point when a big old dog-missile suddenly launched from a house along the road and blew straight through the middle of the paceline. It was a miracle that nobody went down, although I'm pretty sure we came as close to a major pile-up as possible without actually creating one. My collarbone was twitching for hours afterward!

As if the expected rainy weather wasn't going to play enough havoc with my training routine, I will be heading up to Colorado Springs on Thursday for the annual USA Cycling Local Associations Symposium. That will keep me off the bike for three days for sure. After that, there's the Six Gap Century that we'll be doing again the weekend of the 29th. Speaking of that, I went ahead and put that new 11-29 cassette on my training wheel the other day so I could kind of break it in a bit. My chain is just a tad short for the large-large combination, which is to say that it will shift to the 53-29, but it putting a lot of strain on the derailleur. The chain that's on the bike now is at about 2,100 miles right now. I'd normally wait until it was a bit over 2,500 before changing it, but by the end of the month it should be about there anyway, so perhaps I'll pick up a SRAM chain and swap it out before. Kind of hate to leave any chain miles on the table, but it will still be cheaper than ripping the derailleur off the bike somewhere at the bottom of a Georgia climb.

Next??

Looks like at least one of these could become a problem for us.

Looks like things will be getting interesting in a few days.

Rain Bike Morning

It was a Rain Bike day

Tropical Storm Gordon is racing in our general direction, but all indications are that it's headed for the Gulf Coast well over a hundred miles east of the city, so (1) we aren't expecting any significant impact, and (2) naturally the city is taking the opportunity to have a day off. The weather around here has actually been pretty nice thus far, and if things go as expected we could end up with a nice refreshing north wind tomorrow. Of course, we will be getting some rain like we did early this morning, but Gordon is a pretty lopsided storm and at the moment it looks like almost all of the heavy rain in on the eastern side of the center.

This morning I stepped out the door promptly at 5:45 am. The street was dry until I closed the door behind me. Then, right on cue, it started to rain. I turned around, unlocked the door, and went back inside to peruse the weather radar. It didn't look bad at all, and I figured the rain would stop within half an hour, so I pulled the Rain Bike down and pumped up the tires (it hadn't been on the road in months) and waited. Sure enough, the rain stopped. The roads were wet, of course. The Rain Bike has full fenders and heavy tires with Mr. Tuffys inside, so riding on the wet streets isn't a problem at all. Going fast, however, is definitely a problem since the bike probably weighs in at 25 pounds or so, but I wasn't planning on going fast. After three back-to-back Giro Rides, I was more than happy to do a short and easy ride on the levee this morning, and while the ride turned out to be both short and easy, it didn't turn out to be entirely dry. I got rained on twice during the brief 20-something mile ride, but with the temperature around 80F it didn't matter a bit.

Meanwhile, Tulane decided to officially close at 4 pm today, but is expecting normal operations tomorrow. I'm not sure what difference it makes to close at 4 pm instead of 5 pm when nobody is expecting much of anything around here, but anyway, that's what's happening. Looking at the radar right now, around 3 pm, it looks like all of the real rain is going to be in the Mobile - Pensacola area. Maybe as far west as Biloxi. I'm sure the local TV weather forecasters are disappointed. Since this is the first significant threat we've seen all season, they had been covering it as if it was an impending disaster. Hopefully I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning. We'll see.

Rebound

The Sunday Giro heads out - Fred, Matt and VJ

I've mentioned it to a few people over the course of this season, and although I was never really sure if my impression was based more on wishful thinking than on reality, I think perhaps I can safely say it was the latter. I think that Road and Track racing in the U.S., which had been on a downward trajectory ever since the Lance Bubble burst back around 2012, seems to have bottomed out last year and is now showing signs of a rebound.

Ashton Lambie sets new world pursuit record

Locally, road race participation and event promotion seemed to be holding steady or even growing a bit this year, with some increasing participation in the younger age ranges. Seeing this trend, I was finally starting to feel cautiously optimistic. During a conference call with USAC a few weeks ago, the Membership folks up there seemed somewhat optimistic for the first time in a long time, reporting increases in racing licenses across almost all disciplines. Still, I was reluctant to pop open the champagne. I still am. Nonetheless, all the signs are encouraging. There are currently at least two LAMBRA events being planned for 2019 that will, if things work out as hoped, be bigger than anything in recent years aside from the 2016 event in Jackson that despite great effort failed to pull in the numbers they'd hoped for. So it seems I am seeing, for the first time in seven or eight years, positive signals on both the local and national levels.

Ben King wins his 2nd Vuelta stage

What kind of pushed my guarded optimism over the edge recently was hearing the other day that American Ashton Lambie, who I had never heard of before, had rather unexpectedly set a new world record of 4:07:25 in the individual pursuit while down at the Pan Am Games in Mexico, beating the previous record set by Jack Bobridge in 2011 by a solid three seconds, which in the world of track racing, is huge. The team had just set a new U.S. record in the Team Pursuit of 3:53.86.

As if that wasn't enough, this morning Ben King convincingly won a second stage at  the Vuelta d' España.

So, maybe there's hope.

On the local scene, things have been kind of quiet as we are in a bit of a lull between the end of the road season and the beginning of track and cyclocross seasons. People are already doing some specialized training for 'cross and gravel racing. There's still the Pensacola stage race later this month, but after that I think road and crit races will become few and far between. For me it was another double-Giro weekend. Earlier in the week I had been planning on doing some kind of ride on the northshore, but by Friday the weather forecast was calling for a high probability of rain all weekend, so I decided to set my sights a bit closer to home. As it turned out, both Giro Rides went off without rain, unless you count a little shower on the way back home on Saturday. The weather down here has been kind of all over the map lately. At the moment there is a disturbance approaching Florida that has just gotten official "invest" designation, with all of the long-range models predicting it to move into the Gulf and strengthen. It's looking like tropical storm stuff at best, but at any rate it merits watching and will probably bring more rain around mid-week. It has been remarkably quiet in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico thus far this hurricane season, so I can't complain at this point. I mean, we're already into September. The NHC is giving it an 80% chance of development as of this morning, so things may be getting interesting - hopefully not too much so.