Grey Winter Skies

Some days it's better to turn around and sit down with a cup of coffee to contemplate the meaning of life.

Friday morning started out chilly and windy. I knew that my usual Friday morning Tulane Coffee Ride routine was in serious jeopardy because it was exam week. Also chilly, windy and dark. I went out anyway and almost immediately regretted it. I was a little under-dressed, not so much for the temperature, but definitely for the strong and gusty wind. I continued on anyway, of course, just in case someone might show up. Nobody who gets out of a warm bed and goes out on the bike on such a day deserves to ride alone. Well, except for me I guess. It was no surprise that there was nobody there at the Reily Center for the coffee ride, so I just continued on through campus and into Audubon Park, and from there onto the levee bike path where I felt the full force of the northwest wind. I was pretty miserable and considered turning around immediately, but somehow talked myself into riding slowly out to the Huey P. Long bridge before turning around and making a bee line for the Zotz for coffee. There, I could see the clouds building up as predicted ahead of the next minor cold front. My Strava stats for the day?  An average speed of 12.9 mph, and a max of 19.2.

Saturday morning was considerably colder, and there was still a strong wind out of the west. I went out to Starbucks to meet up with the Giro Ride group, wondering what the turnout would be like. There were other things going on, of course, and the deeply overcast sky and strong wind were not particularly conducive to a big group anyway. Arriving around 6:30 I met up with Trevor, a visiting rider from somewhere in England who was here for a conference and had rented a bike from Bicycle Michael's in order to get in a couple of rides afterward. I was wearing a thermal base layer under a long-sleeve jersey. He was in basically summer kit plus arm-warmers. He said it felt like spring compared to what it was like back home. My quick assessment told me that if the ride got fast he was likely to be in just a bit over his head, but if it was just moderate and steady he'd probably do fine. Eventually other riders started rolling in, and my the time we left there was a smallish group that wasn't too unusual for this time of year. I noted, however, that there was nonetheless sufficient horsepower in attendance to make for a fast ride, especially considering that we'd have a pretty strong tailwind on Hayne Blvd. and Chef Highway. Tailwinds are fun unless you find yourself at the back where the draft doesn't really do you as much good as you think. On the way out on Lakeshore Drive I rolled up alongside Trevor and told him to expect someone to put the hammer down once we came down the overpass onto Hayne, which was exactly what happened. It was the last I saw of Trevor, among others, as I was struggling just to stay somewhere near the front as the pace settled in at around 30 mph. It stayed pretty much that way all the way out to Venetian Isles. Fortunately, Pat stayed with Trevor and I think they got back in with the group for a while on the way back. As fast as the ride had been on the way out, you'd have expected it to be a hard slog into the wind on the way back. It wasn't really, as nobody seemed willing to do too much work into the headwind. By the time I got home I was getting cold because of the lower effort level combined with the sweat generated on the way out. It wasn't until I had some hot soup that I really warmed up.

Post-ride on Sunday at the Lee Road Ballpark

So on Sunday I decided to go across the lake to do a little 50+ mile ride that Mignon had told me was happening. The weather was still chilly - around 50 degrees - but now there was a light mist falling that made it feel ten degrees colder. We had a small group of seven or eight, which was expected. I was hoping it would be a fairly easy ride. Perhaps it was the weather, but I just didn't feel like doing much intensity at all. Fortunately, everyone else was pretty much on the same page. I did a little work for a few miles on Hwy 439 before Sie Jenkins Road but that was about it. When we re-grouped at Sie Jenkins and Hwy 60, Darren took out a Pop-Tart. We rolled kind of slowly waiting for him to catch up and when I looked back just before we turned onto S. Choctaw I could see him coming, maybe a minute or so back. No problem, I thought, since we weren't going very hard at all. Well, that was the last we saw of him until much later. We figured that, for some reason, he must have decided to go straight down to Hwy. 16 and Enon, so we continued on. Well, when we got to Enon, there was Darren walking his bike. He'd flatted and not been able to fix it, so he'd gotten a ride with a passing pick-up truck down to Enon. His timing was perfect. We got his flat fixed and rolled in the remaining six or seven miles to the Ballpark. Afterward, I was surprised that I could feel some soreness in my quads.

Consistent, at least. Easy to see the broken collarbone years.

Anyway, it was a pretty chill weekend of riding for me, which felt about right for this time of year. Strava says I'm at 11,885 miles for the year with a couple of weeks left, so that's about normal. In fact, it's amazing how consistent my annual mileage has been. Although I make no effort to hit any particular target each year, I guess my routine is so set in stone that it just kind of comes out the same every year.