Group Rides and Rain Days and Trust

There was a huge group for the special Thanksgiving Giro Ride

This morning's Sunday Giro Ride was, I assume, rained out. I'm looking out the window now, around 8:30 a.m., and the weather's looking better, which is to say it's not actually raining right now. There's a cold front on the way, and the 66° temperature and light southeast wind we have now will turn into 49° with a 14 mph northwest wind by tomorrow morning. We haven't had to fire up the heater at home yet, but it's looking like next week will be the actual start of winter weather around here. Anyway, if the streets dry up a bit I may try to slip out for a short ride later today as minor compensation for the missed group ride.

Up on top of the Casino overpass waiting for Jeff to fix a flat down at the bottom. Fred flatted shortly after we started up again, but he slipped quietly off the back and told us to go ahead.

Yesterday's Giro also carried the threat of rain, and much of the ride was on wet streets, with predictable results. The turnout was low, the pace was slower than normal, and there were flats. Wet streets have been the order of the day since Thursday, along with some early morning fog and mist, and people have been getting flats left and right. I went out alone on Friday morning for some easy miles on the bike path, but didn't make it back home without having to stop to fix a flat rear tire. It was a tiny, but super-sharp, shard of glass deeply embedded in the too-soft rubber of the Continental 5000 that I had to pry out with my little pocket knife. I think Continental's newer 5000 tire went just one step too far past the beloved 4000 in search of lightness and grip. I think the combination of softer rubber and thinner sidewalls combined to make what had been a great training and racing tire a bit too unreliable for routine training. I'd been using the 4000s for years, having found them to be, by far, the most puncture-resistant training tire I'd ever used. Although I've stuck with the less durable but somewhat lighter and faster and stickier Michelins for my race wheels, the 4000S was my go-to tire for training. Now, though, I see people searching around for a replacement for the 4000 after suffering sidewall cuts and punctures with the 5000s. I might be joining them. Just the other day I stitched a boot into my rear 5000 because of a cut that had compromised some of the casing threads and was threatening to enlarge enough to blow out. Sometimes what looks like progress isn't.

Wet streets have been the order of the day for lately

Last Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, there was a huge turnout for the special "holiday Giro." The ride itself wasn't super-fast, although of course it had its moments, so it was really a lot of fun. Afterward I went home to a 14-pound turkey and two pies, which may have been a little much for just the two of us.

Anyway, it looks like I'll be digging down to the bottom of the drawer next week to find the cold-weather riding gear that hasn't seen the light of day since last February. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. continues to surge. Here in New Orleans our positive test ratio has been somewhat artificially suppressed by the 2,500+ surveillance tests that Tulane had been doing daily. But the students went home last week and yesterday's 2-day test count from Tulane was down to only 133 with 5.3% of those being positive. Of course, the only people being tested the past few days have probably been the ones who are actually sick, so no surprise there, but by next week when the effect of Tulane's reduced testing hits the official LDH reports I fully expect to see a significant jump in the New Orleans percentage of positive tests since there will be far fewer healthy people being tested in the denominator. I'm guessing the rate will rise 1.5 to 2% easy. Hopefully still not as high as other areas of the state, but it will probably make the news.

All of this, of course, has me again thinking about the wisdom of doing group rides. For me, there is absolutely no doubt that the group rides are the only things that get me, however briefly, up to the levels of intensity that might keep me at some reasonable fitness level. It also may be the only thing keeping me sane. But as local positivity levels rise, and people start spending more time inside with others because of the weather and holiday gatherings, the risk will definitely go up. Fortunately I've not heard of any sort of outbreak or cluster associated with group rides. I guess there are some some ways to rationalize it all, of course. For one, few people who are feeling ill are going to venture out to the Giro Ride or WeMoRi, and even if they did, they would probably not last long. For another, with all of the turbulence and moving around in a fast group ride, the duration and dose associated with any exposure would be expected to be very, very low. Unless, of course, you ride right into the cloud of aerosol from some idiot who feels compelled to blow snot out of his or her nose in the middle of the group. Amazingly, that still happens, especially to the smaller riders like me who tend to be invisible when riders glance quickly behind themselves. 

Really, all I can do it trust the riders around me. Trust has always been a big component of group rides. You need to trust the riders up ahead not to do anything stupid, to call out the big road hazards, to ride a straight line, and now, not to blow snot in your face. I could always reduce my exposure by staying at the front, of course, but that's not really a viable, or particularly attractive, option for me most of the time. Besides, I do really think that the best way to get COVID isn't from riding in a group, but from sitting across a table from someone talking loudly at a restaurant or in a bar. I think I've been to an indoor restaurant maybe twice since March, and at outdoor tables only a handful of times. If we can get the new vaccines distributed quickly and widely, and if people are actually willing to take vaccines that didn't even exist six months ago and have been rushed into production at an unprecedented speed, and if they indeed don't cause any unanticipated side-effects, there may be some hope for normal racing to resume by, maybe, next August. It all still leaves race promoters unsure about what to plan for the 2021 season. I don't guess we'll have a clue until maybe March or so when we see how initial distribution of the RNA vaccines is going and where the other vaccines are in the cycle. I have to say, I think the RNA vaccines are really cool, and I'd be surprised if any serious side-effects show up, but still there's no denying that we're all going to be test subjects next year one way or the other. Even those who refuse to be vaccinated will be test subjects since there's no way to tell if a vaccine is working if there's no significant amount of people getting sick.

Almost Ten

Heading back into the sun on the Thursday levee ride.

It was a pretty routine week on the bike. Not so much off of it. After a nice easy recovery ride on Monday, I managed to oversleep enough on Tuesday to miss the 6 am levee ride by three or four minutes. Just as well, I guess, as I must have been a little tired. The ride turned around at The Dip, so I met them on the return, logging a few fewer miles than planned. The rest of the weekday rides, however, were as usual. On Monday I did spot a bald eagle, the first one I've seen in a while. They always seem to start showing up with the cooler weather.

At some point during the WeMoRi, Nisha joined the group after taking a short-cut with a couple others. I looked over at her and thought, "I need to tell her to use a bigger gear."  Well, later in the day she posted that she hadn't realized she'd been doing the group rides in her small chainring! Problem solved. Later that day I went over to Ochsner and got the influenza vaccine.

Post-Giro cool-down on Lakeshore Drive - Rich and Jaden

So rather than do a group ride over in Mississippi I decided to just to the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides. Candy's replacement laptop had come in during the week and I wanted to at least get her email set up. It was all a little confusing. The laptop came with a "mail" program that is essentially Outlook. It also came with Office pre-loaded. I set up the free mail program, but I'm not really sure what to do about Outlook. There's the 365 subscription version, and a stand-alone version, and maybe she can download the Tulane Exchange version since she has "legacy" status. Who knows? 

Spent a lot of time on Carl's safe
and steady wheel on Sunday.

The mornings lately have all been carbon copies with temperatures in the 58-60 degree range, some wind, clear blue sky. Not too shabby, really. The Giro Rides this weekend were surprisingly fun, at least for me. I have no idea why. Granted, I was keeping my nose mostly out of the wind as usual, but for some reason I really wasn't struggling when things got fast, or gaps needed to be closed. Funny how that works when you get older. You just never know when you'll have a good day and when you'll have a bad day - or weekend.

Classes at Tulane end on Tuesday, so we did somehow make it all the way through the fall semester without having to send all the students back home. They'll take exams online after Thanksgiving and then won't be back until January when we will do the whole Welcome Center thing again. The COVID-19 surge we had has subsided considerably with only 0.5% positive test over the past couple of days, which included 3,844 tests.  Thus far the City has reported a total of 401,209 tests, of which Tulane's comprise over 142,815, so Tulane has conducted over 35% of all of the tests in Orleans Parish. Impressive. 

So back in March and April when I was hobbling around on crutches and unable to sit on a bike for more than fifteen minutes I was thinking it would probably be the first year in a long time that I wouldn't log at least 10,000 miles. I figured I lost around 2,000 miles during recovery from the crash. Yet, as of today I'm showing 9,886 miles, so I will easily make 10,000 by the end of next week, and the question is whether I'll make it to 11,000. My first full year using Strava was 2013. Since then, my lowest annual mileage was 11,725 back in 2015 when I missed a number of early season weekends travelling to collegiate races. I'll be pretty happy if I'm anywhere close to 11k this year, considering.

Weekday Frustrations, Warm Weekend Rides

Really no excuse for this

There's been such a long list of things to get done that I haven't really known where to start. One thing I thought I'd be able to check off the list last week was setting up Candy's new laptop. It arrived as scheduled on Wednesday - in a torn-open, wet, box, compliments of UPS. I slid the computer out of the box and was pleased to see that it looked undamaged, at least externally, and was in a nice heavy plastic sleeve. Well, looks can be deceiving. I powered it up and was greeted by an unstable screen image that would disintegrate into random lines and colors and such with every touch. I assume there was something wrong with the cable going through the hinge to the screen. At any rate, I immediately shut it off and called Lenovo. After explaining the situation to two people I was told to wait for a phone call within 24 hours. 28 hours later I called back and finally got a nice woman with a heavy Indian accent who, after about half an hour on the phone, moved things one step farther. I was told I'd then receive an email within 24-48 hours about returning the defective laptop and getting a replacement. Still waiting for that email Sunday night. So, following that debacle, I figured I may as well bite the bullet and call AT&T to upgrade to fiber since the sent me a letter at the end of October that they were retiring my current network equipment in January and I have to upgrade (or leave) by then. I'd been planning on making the upgrade anyway, but also wanted to find out about AT&T TV as a replacement for our current Cox Cable, on the assumption that I could save a little bit that way. Well, that process resulted in an hour-long phone call with a nice woman who was presumably Chinese by her heavy accent. It would have take a lot less time if I hadn't needed to have her repeat practically everything at least once. So I ended up with the Internet 1000 plan ( 940Mbps) which should be a major improvement over what I've had for the past few years. I also signed up for the basic TV plan for Candy since I doubt she would ever adapt to jumping around from Netflix to Amazon to Hulu to Disney etc., etc. Anyway, the whole thing should be about what I'm paying now, and considerably less for the first year. The downside is that they scheduled installation for December 3 or something. 

Did I mention the car crash? Happened early in the week. I hear this loud crash outside the window, jump up to have a look, and see a Cadillac SUV sliding down S. Claiborne on its side. Guessing it was going more the 35 mph when it clipped another car. Amazingly, everyone seemed OK. I called 911 immediately but only had time to give them the location before a police car pulled up behind the wreck. Coincidence? They broke the sunroof and one of the neighbors pulled a skinny woman driver without shoes out. I suspect there's more to that whole story.

So last week was mostly warm and occasionally damp but nothing that resulted in any shortened rides. By the weekend the weather was looking really nice and when Lisa lined up a little group for a 65 mile northshore ride on Saturday, I jumped at the opportunity. We rolled out from the Lee Road ballpark right a 8 am with eight riders, and immediately Lisa went to the front and kind of hit the gas, setting the tone for the rest of the ride. In other words, it was a pretty fast ride. We rode up to State Line by way of Pine. I was feeling pretty good but my limited miles in the hills of late certainly took a toll toward the end of the ride. The average speed of around 22 mph doesn't seem so fast, but Strava called it a "massive relative effort" and my 174 max BPM heartrate told a slightly different story. Anyway, I really enjoyed the ride. 

There wasn't enough room for the "ulation" part.

Afterward I kind of rushed home because a couple of the neighbors were staging a little retirement party at the house for Candy Saturday evening. They had lured her out of the house to go to the neighborhood park with the next-door neighbors' toddler while the others came over and put up some decorations and heated up enough food for a small army. It was all quite nice and I ate and drank far too much.

Thursday on the levee

So this morning I went out to the Giro Ride planning on staying in the economy section at the back of the pack. I was still feeling some effects from Saturday's ride, and together with the previous night's festivities I figured a hard ride would be a bad idea. Unfortunately, today was apparently "bring your TT bike to the Giro" day, and looking around as we rolled out I knew it was going to be trouble for my plan. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the group split and I ended up with the second group of about a dozen riders, among which there were about three who knew what a paceline was, or which way the wind was blowing. Anyway, it did at least allow me to keep the effort level down a bit, which was good. On the way back, when someone at the front of the group basically attacked the turn onto Hayne Blvd., I just let that go and rode in with a few others. Not surprisingly, two of them had been on the Saturday ride.

Mini Tour of da Parish

Dwight snapped this great photo of the WeMoRi last Wednesday along Bayou St. John.

The weather forecast had not been providing a whole lot of confidence for Saturday's Tour da Parish ride down in St. Bernard Parish, and I was fully expecting to get rained on. Still, it was kind of Howard's event and I'd pre-registered, so I was committed. Then on Friday we got a notice that the 50-mile ride would be shortened to 25 because there was still a lot of hurricane damage down the road and we'd definitely be in the way. So I figured even if it rains, it'll be only 25 miles, and besides, I could use an easy day.

Tour da Parish lines up on Saturday morning

I drove out there Saturday morning and was glad to see it wasn't actually raining. The streets were pretty wet, but the turnout was good for what is typically an Alt-Giro ride, at least at the front. Being the pessimist that I am, I still wore an extra jersey as a base-layer, plus my sunscreen arm-warmers, just in case the sky opened up. I don't mind being wet, but being wet and cold is an entirely different matter. Lots of the usual Giro riders were on hand, albeit with some notable exceptions, and a number of them had ridden out to the ride in order to make up for the missing mileage.

The "altered" ride this year was basically a straight out-and-back with a random U-turn at around twelve and a half miles. A couple of miles from the start there's a section of road that is closed, and the group bypasses the closed section by riding through a couple of gates and across a short section of gravel. Naturally, as soon as the front few riders got through there they basically attacked. One or two riders dug deep and bridged up to them, but frankly I was more than happy to be in the second group. Somewhere down the road we passed some guy in a shiny blue crawfish costume who was gesturing frantically on the side of the road. Apparently that was the turn-around. Some of us rolled past it a bit before turning around, so our group got pretty split up. I eased up for a minute thinking it would come back together, but looking up ahead I could see the those riders weren't waiting. A few of us started chasing and I soon found myself on Jeff's wheel as he took a long hard pull, closing the gap significantly before blowing up. I put my head down and made a big effort, finally pulling into the draft of the group of six or seven. The rest of the way back was a somewhat messy paceline that eventually shed all but four of us. So it was a nice little ride, and I was surprised that I'd apparently gotten in a little bit of intensity here and there. Afterward, I got my $40-dollar beer and hamburger, hung around for a while, and was probably back home by 10:30 a.m.

Hope the parties were worth it.....

As I got ready for bed last night it was pouring down rain outside and I wondered if the Sunday Giro would be rained out. The temperature would be in the upper 60s, so at least there was hope. In the morning I looked outside at the damp street, and at the weather radar that wasn't making any promises, and figured I'd go ahead and ride out to Starbucks and see what happened. It was very windy, but we never got a drop of rain. On the way out, along that section where we're on the exit lane of the Interstate, with a pretty good tailwind, someone let a gap open and the group split. Naturally, I was in the wrong half, as usual. Once we got onto Chef highway we got organized into a circular paceline that was considerably less that smooth, but I guess adequate. That section was mostly headwind, so I knew it would get fast on the way back. It did. After turning onto Hayne Blvd., and with a pretty significant tailwind, the pace ramped up quickly. From Bullard to the base of the overpass the average speed was 30.5 mph, and we were up to 37.8 for a moment as we came down the other side. I was feeling pretty comfortable for most of the ride, probably thanks to the relatively easy day I had on Saturday.

So Tulane is having a bit of a COVID-19 surge right now, thanks no doubt to the combination of hurricane and Halloween "bad decisions" by some students. They went to 3 per week testing on Friday, so hopefully between that and the contact tracing it will be back under control soon. It would be a bad time to be in quarantine as a student since classes end on, I think, the 21st (exams will all be online this year).  

Long Giro, Halloween, Cold Air

 

I'm in kind of an odd position here trying to see if the camera that I put on timer is working.

Last Saturday, Lisa and Charles decided to invite a few people to do a Long Giro out to Fort Pike. The "Long Giro" has been kind of an off-season tradition for a very long time. It sometimes ends at Fort Pike, but sometimes continues to Slidell. The shorter Ft. Pike version that we did Saturday adds about 20 miles to the regular ride. 

We had a nice group of seven or eight, and the weather was pretty great. We rode out to Venetian Isles as usual with the Giro, but instead of turning around there, we continued on highway 90 over Chef Menteur where the road goes from four lanes to two. The pace was just a nice moderate paceline with a light wind with little traffic and the occasional washed-up sailboat on the roadside, thanks to the hurricane. We stopped for a little while at the marina on the north side of the Rigolets, and headed back with a bit of a tailwind. I arrived back home none the worse for wear, which was good because it was also Halloween.

For Halloween this year I'd devised a Candy Chute out of a 10' long section of PVC pipe, so I was interested to see how well it would work. I was also wondering how many kids would actually be out trick-or-treating this year, considering the COVID-19 thing. As it turned out, there were a lot of kids out with their parents. Not as many as usual, of course, but still a good turnout. Almost all were wearing their masks, and they seemed to enjoy the whole candy chute thing. Candy had prepared about a hundred small ziplock bags of candy, so it was easy to slide them down the chute into the plastic bin I'd set up at the bottom. We had Ken and Nancy over for the evening, and basically sat around on the front porch eating, drinking wine (and some champagne to celebrate Candy's retirement), and dropping candy down the chute. Gavin and Julia stopped by for a few minutes to say hello, and a couple of neighbors stopped in for a quick drink, but otherwise it was a lot more sedate than our usual open house thing.

On Sunday I did the regular Giro Ride, which wasn't a particularly hard one. Kind of typical for this time of year. A cool front came through and it was considerably cooler on Sunday morning. Likewise, it was cool on Monday as well. Along the levee, near the stables and the Jefferson Playground, a couple of big power poles with transformers on them had come down so the wires were (still are) hanging across the bike path. Easy enough to go around on the grass, of course.

This morning, Tuesday, it felt downright cold, at least to me. I guess it was maybe 52° or so. I had arm-warmers, knicks, and a vest, and even broke out the full-finger gloves, so I was OK, but those first few chilly rides each fall are always a little uncomfortable for me. On the plus side, since we switched back to standard time last Sunday, you don't need lights at all by 6 am or so. It's so nice to be able to see the road ahead!