The Winter Ride Series

Part of the group around the fire-tower hill on the way to Enon

About a million years ago, or maybe more like 48 years ago, a few NOBC riders picked me up at my house and drove me up to Donaldsonville, Louisiana. We were up there to check out a potential criterium course, and also to do a long ride along the river. I don't recall exactly when it was, but I do recall that it was a freezing cold winter day. My winter cycling wardrobe at the time consisted of cotton knee-socks, cotton cycling shorts, a short-sleeve wool jersey, and I assume some sort of highly permeable warm-up jacket. I probably had one small water bottle and no food. Mostly, I just remember it being a hard, freezing cold, windy ride and getting dropped along with Mike Schramel on the way back. As I recall, we stopped at some little store to pick up enough to get us back alive. As bad as the ride was, it served as a valuable learning experience, and although funds were limited, I embarked on a decades-long quest through which I gradually acquired enough winter gear to make most January days at least tolerable. That criterium course in Donaldsonville ended up being the course for the first Tour de Louisiane, aka Louisiana, and luckily it was published for posterity in a local New Orleans rag called the Vieux Carre' Courier.

The NOBC Winter Ride Series

Fast-forward to last Sunday morning, 2020. I check the hourly temperature forecast for Covington on weather.com and pull open a big deep drawer packed with cycling clothes. It's a bit of a tough call, with a starting temperature in the 40s but a finishing temperature closer to 60. With that 48-year-old cold trauma still haunting my winter clothing decisions, I decide to go for warmth at the start rather than comfort (or speed) at the end. I pull on the long tights, a short-sleeve thermal base layer, a thin long-sleeve base layer with Windstopper panels, and a long-sleeve jersey. I know I'll be hot by the end but I don't care. It won't be a race and I know we'll be stopping a few times along the way.

Out at the Lee Road Ballpark an hour later the sky is clear and the wind is light. There is a big Saints playoff game scheduled to start at noon, and there had been a big gravel race in Jackson the day before, so I'm not expecting a big group. Eight of us roll out at 8:30 for a nice 64-mile ride that I know by heart. There isn't enough horsepower, or willpower, in the group to make it too fast, which is perfect. This will be the first time I'll be riding on something that isn't flat as a pancake in months, and I am pretty sure that all those little hills will take their toll on my legs regardless of the speed.

It's about half-way through this particular course that you start to figure out who is going to be suffering the most. A couple of riders are already having some difficulty on the little uphills, but that's to be expected this time of year, so we wait for them to catch up at each intersection. For this ride, everyone is on the same page. The pace is fairly steady, with just an occasional, and short, surge here and there. By the time we're fifteen miles from the end I'm already wishing I'd left one of those base layers in the car. Situation normal. I'm back home around 1:30 with a solid 65 miles and empty stomach.

I think we should have a bigger group next Sunday, weather permitting. Of course there's another gravel race, this one up in Oxford, on Saturday. The forecast right now is for rain Friday and Saturday, although it's still early so things could change. Regardless, any significant chance of wet dirt roads is enough to keep me from making the trip, mainly because the widest tires I can fit onto my old Orbea are 26 mm, which would work OK for dry conditions. If it's muddy at all, the scant couple of millimeters of frame clearance would quickly clog up and bring me to a grinding halt. The only other alternative would be to use the old Pennine with cyclocross tires, I guess, but since I harbor no deeply existential reasons for doing long hard cold wet rides on unpaved roads on a 48 year-old bike, it's kind of a non-starter. I'll leave the option open if we get a spectacularly nice winter Saturday, I guess, but even then I'd have to register early enough to get in under the field limit, which will probably just cause a collision with my general lack of commitment about riding on bumpy roads when there are readily available paved ones all over the place.  But I digress....

Last night I attended the Bike Easy development group meeting. It seems that somehow I am on the Bike Easy Board. It should be interesting, I guess. Hopefully it won't conflict much with riding or racing.

Out at the turnaround at Ormond Tuesday morning

This morning I went out to the 6 am levee ride where we had most of the regulars on hand. I was surprised how strong the wind was, and indeed it was enough to cause all but three of us to turn around early. Fortunately, just before the turnaround we picked up that big guy on the Lindsky who I think lives out around there, so we had a nice group of four for most of the rest of the ride. The gusty crosswind, however, made it much harder than expected. At one point I was on the front and thinking I was going pretty good and riding strongly, only to look down and see that, in fact, my speed was an unimpressive 21.5 mph. Granted, my cadence was fast, and my heart rate was fast. It was just my speed that sucked.

You'd think I'd be used to that by now.