Fragile

The Sunday Giro heads out along Lakeshore Drive

"This is a fragile paceline," I thought. Up ahead, six or seven riders were trading pulls into a stiff east wind as we headed east on Chef Menteur during the Sunday Giro. Every now and then one of them would drop back down the paceline after taking a pull, and stay there, skipping pulls as other riders filled in. I was doing the same, inserting myself into the rotation when I could, but skipping more pulls than I was taking. I looked over at David and commented, "better save something for the way back." There had been a small group way off the front almost from the start, and to call what our group was doing a chase would be quite generous. We were plodding along at 22 mph, and judging from the effort required I figured we'd be pushing 30 most of the way back.

Post-Giro cool-down along the lake

Riding my second Giro of the weekend, I was still pretty tired from the prior day, and was trying to limit the damage as much as possible without squandering too much of the training opportunity. It's like walking a tightrope. As I'd predicted, the return trip down Chef Highway got fast. We were at 28-30 mph most of the way, and after one particular surge that took us up to 32 I pulled out of the paceline rather than open up too large of a gap. Fortunately, it eased up as I swung back into the draft way down the paceline near the back.

The worst roads we ride on during the Giro are Lake Forest Blvd. and Bullard Avenue. Lake Forest is old concrete, complete with big sharp cracks and sunken manhole covers. It's where Keith and I crashed last year. Unfortunately it was also a tailwind stretch today, so the pace was a bit faster than prudent. Likewise for Bullard. Somehow we all made it through the gauntlet without any pinch-flats or crashes today, so I guess we must be improving. I was pretty tired by the time I got back home, but in general I was feeling better than I thought I would after my first weekend that included any significant intensity since early March.

It was a big group for the Saturday Giro. Between these photos and Strava, contact tracing should be easy.

Saturday's Giro Ride had been pretty fast, at least until things started going wrong. We had started out with a big group of around 40 riders, and as usual it was fairly fast. As Giro Rides go, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is full-on race mode, I'd give it around a 7.5. A few riders came over from the northshore, including Niels, Todd, Rick, and 13-year-old Peyton who seemed to be handling things quite well.

How many hands does it take to mount a tubeless tire?

Anyway, things were going along just fine until we hit the aforementioned Lake Forest Blvd. when Howard slashed his tubeless rear tire. Despite what was clearly a copious amount of sealant, the gash was way too large to seal and we ended up stopped on the side of the road for about fifteen minutes as multiple riders assisted with the messy task of dismounting and remounting the slimy tire, now with an inner tube inside, and removing the special valve, and finding a long enough extender for the 80 mm deep rims. Finally back on the road, the pace settled down nicely, but then we came upon a blockade at the Seabrook bridge and had to detour down Jourdan Road. I hadn't ridden there in a number of years but when I saw us approaching the killer railroad tracks it all came back to me vividly and I called out to everyone that they were particularly dangerous ones that had caused a number of crashes in the past. Just as I said that, of course, someone ahead of me crashed. Luckily, he was OK and started back up, but not after a brief delay as Niels was apparently fooling around with his chain.

Not rideable

He quickly caught back up and we headed over the industrial canal bridge and down onto Chef Highway. I had this stretch of Chef since there are lots of lights and traffic and debris, but it made sense to take that route back rather than head straight back to Lakeshore Drive. Then Niels stopped again. I went back to see what was going on and found him with a completely unattached small chainring. Upon further inspection we realized that he's lost ALL of his chainring bolts. How he made it over the bridge I'll never know, but at that point all we could do was send a small group to go pick up his car while he waited. Anyway, it was an eventful Giro Ride. 

Tomorrow, however, will definitely be a rest day. Just as well, actually, since I have a dentist appointment in the morning. I hate dentist appointments.