Volume

At the upriver end of the levee bike path.

Volume. It's that technical coach's term for "riding a lot." This time of year, for me, riding a lot is one thing, while riding hard is quite another. While the recent spell of cold and windy weather has sent many of the local riders into their garages and basements where they have been happily riding around Watopia or wherever Zwift's current imaginary routes happen to be, I have been trying to at least get out on the road as much as possible without dropping my core temperature below operational norms. Together with the long MLK day ride on Monday and a long levee ride on Saturday I somehow managed to piece together a 320 mile week that was nonetheless practically devoid of significant blocks of intensity. In other words, it's winter.

Thursday and Friday mornings were so cold and windy that almost nobody rode in the mornings, myself included. Fortunately, since we are again working from home until the Omicron surge dies down, I was able to sneak out in the afternoons for a couple of short battles with the cold north wind. We're talking average speeds of like 15 mph despite arguably more actual effort than the usual longer and faster rides. 

By Saturday, with the forecast calling for sustained sub-freezing northshore temperatures in addition to a 10 mph north wind, we pivoted and moved the usual northshore winter training ride to the southshore, starting at 8 am and riding all the way out to the "new" end of the bike trail near Gramercy. I think it was about 34° when we started. It turned out to be a harder ride than you'd expect of 84 miles on a dead-flat bike path thanks to the unrelenting wind and a couple of other factors. We started with maybe five riders, but within the first few miles we picked up another group of five or six, at which point the pace started to ramp up. As always happens on the levee in a crosswind, the first four of five riders behind whoever was pulling were getting a bit of a draft and everyone else was entirely in the wind. The result was that riders started getting shelled off the back one by one. One of the riders who had met up with us was Maurizio Topini who used to live here but has been in east Texas for the past decade or so. At one point he tried to create a second eschelon but the other riders didn't realize it and it quickly fell apart. Anyway, I had to make some pretty hard efforts for a while, but by the time we were out around LaRose our group was down to just five, not coincidentally exactly the number that will fit on the bike path in a crosswind. The pressure stayed on, with Maurizio and Chris taking longer and longer pulls. 

Maurizio and me

I was doing OK but trying to limit my efforts in the wind since I knew it wouldn't be much better on the way back and I didn't want to blow up and have to limp in the last twenty miles by myself. As it turned out, we all made it out to the end in fairly good shape and then stopped at a gas station shortly after starting the return trip. It was still cold, but as far as problems went that day, the wind totally overshadowed the temperature. By the time we were halfway back a couple of the guys were really starting to feel the miles and effort, and things came apart a couple of times before we settled down into a slightly slower pace. Naturally my neck was killing me most of the way back. It seems to be considerably worse when it's cold like this. Anyway, it was a solid 88-mile day for me which left me wondering how I'd manage whatever there would be of the Giro on Sunday.

Sunday morning was practically as cold as Saturday, and although it was still good and windy, it wasn't quite as bad in that regard. I got out to Starbucks around 6:35 and picked up my sugar-loaded coffee and waited to see. There had been a suggestion that, if only a handful showed up, we do a different route to incorporate Almonaster. As it turned out, and to my surprise, we ended up with maybe a dozen rather chilled people, so we did the whole route. The pace was fairly controlled with a steady paceline on Chef for much of it. I know because I was staying behind that paceline for the most part. At one point I accidentally got into the paceline, so I figured I'd take a short pull so as not to disrupt things, but when Lisa hit the front immediately ahead of me and ramped the pace up by about three mph I had to pull off. Then on the way back things were going nicely until a small group in front sprinted for the Goodyear sign which opened a pretty good gap. The rest of us took a little time to get going, and were gradually closing the gap back up when we caught the red light, and then a fire truck came out of the fire station and we all moved over into the grass to let it pass on the shoulder. Of course by then there was no way we were going to catch the front half of the group. At that point everyone backed off and we rode fairly easy the rest of the way in. 

So I think I'm due for a couple of recovery days which may work out fine since Tuesday morning is looking like it will be rained out.

I'd have more photos except that it's so difficult to take them when you're wearing three layers of gloves!