Rumblestrip

Sunday on the northshore

Finally back to a full week of riding last week. Most of the weekday rides were fairly uneventful unless you count me almost hitting (actually I did brush it with my shoulder) one of the "safety posts" turning off of Lakeshore Drive onto Marconi after the WeMoRi. I was a few riders back and I guess they cut inside of the last post, which of course I couldn't see. 

Friendly Friday was very windy

Thursday's levee ride was pretty nice, although quite windy. As we were coming back, I guess around the bridge or playground, we say Julia heading the other way. Nothing unusual about that. However, as it turned out she crashed shortly after that. Dustin had her doing a sprint workout and when she started a sprint something bad happened with her drivetrain that landed her on the asphalt, apparently mostly on her head. When she got up her chain was broken and the rear wheel was off the bike. Perhaps the chain broke and jammed everything up. Anyway, I got home and was eating a quick breakfast when I checked my email and found a not from her dad asking if I could accompany her to the hospital. Dustin had picked her up and was dropping her off at her house, but she'd cracked her helmet and had some possible concussion symptoms, so a CAT scan was in order. By the time I picked her up she was looking pretty good, not repeating herself, and otherwise showing no concussion symptoms, so that was good. We went over to the UMC ER where it took maybe an hour and a half to get a scan, which didn't show anything abnormal. The only bad part of the whole thing was that the guest internet was apparently not working in the emergency room so I couldn't really do any work even though I'd brought my laptop for just that purpose. 

Saturday I went out into the wind for the Giro. We're finally getting back to where there is some significant light in the sky by 6:30, which is nice. Of course that's all going to go away and we'll be back in the dark again when we shift back to DST in March. There was a pretty stiff north wind blowing, which meant lots of crosswind. Fortunately there wasn't a whole lot of horsepower on hand, and I think some of what was there rolled off the front early, so the pace was fairly tame. That didn't mean it was easy, though. I spent the whole way out along Chef Highway in negotiation with the rumble strip. I am still being a little cautious about hard efforts since I was sick, and even today still have some lingering post-nasal drip issues.

Since nobody had been able to commit to the usual Saturday Northshore ride we decided to do one instead on Sunday. The temperature was in the mid-40s for the 8:30 am start and there was a significant east wind blowing. I was trying out a new stem - same 90mm length but a little bit of rise to this one. We had only five riders on hand despite the promise of a sunny sky and rising temperatures. Kyle was on a brand new bike, with a multitool in his pocket. Stanley P had come down from Baton Rouge. Steve and Randy filled out the other two slots. Nobody was interested in going very hard, so most of the ride was at a nice moderate pace. Kyle stopped a few times to make various bike adjustments. He had also not been on the bike much lately. He and Stanley were starting to struggle a bit toward the end. I think the only significant effort I made was from the Firetower climb to Tung Road. Kyle and Stanley had dropped off as the climb started, and we knew they wouldn't have any trouble getting back since by then we were only a few miles from the Lee Road ballpark where we'd started. It was a good ride for me. I had been a little worried about doing a really hard ride, so the way it worked out was perfect. The new stem seemed to work out well. It's probably just a centimeter or so higher, but I think I could tell the difference, which was a little surprising.

3-Day Report

Tuesday morning

I went out to the 6 am Tuesday levee ride without a plan. With just a tiny bit of lingering congestion, there was really no way to tell if I was up to the usual forty miles or not other than to jump back into it. It was still chilly, but a bit warmer, and there was hardly any wind, so those were good signs. I started the ride cautiously, taking shorter than normal pulls, which, considering how short my usual pulls are, were quite short. A few people were planning on turning back at Williams Blvd., so that became Plan B in case for some reason I wasn't feeling right. As it turned out, however, I was feeling pretty much normal. Granted, my legs were reminding me that I'd been off the bike a lot over the prior week, but all systems appeared to be functioning within normal parameters so when we came to Williams I went ahead and committed to the full ride. I think we were down to just four or five at that point, but fortunately none of them seemed interested in pushing the pace and we settled into a comfortable 22-23 mph rotation. I arrived back home feeling fine, and rushed off to work shortly thereafter.

Wednesday morning was even warmer. I think the temperature was around 61°F when I left for the WeMoRi. I'm still a little hesitant to risk being cold, so I was dressed more like it was 55°, which turned out to be just fine. There was a pretty big group when I latched onto it along Marconi. The pace didn't seem to be particularly fast today, so that worked in my favor since I am still trying to avoid any really huge efforts, just in case. Sitting toward the tail end of the group, though, I felt fine with the speeds. 

Right now it's looking like we will be able to get in the Thursday morning levee ride before the rain starts ahead of the next cold front. It should be around 70°F at 6:00 am, but with a 13 mph SSE wind. That means mostly crosswind conditions for most of the ride, which is never easy. After that it will probably be rain the rest of the day and into the night, and then falling temperatures and a 13 mph north wind by Friday morning. 

Reset

That's a positive.

The scratchy throat started on Tuesday. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would resolve itself quickly and that it wasn't what I suspected it was. Wrong on both counts. I'd skipped riding on Monday morning after the trip to Orlando, but did venture out for the Tuesday morning levee ride, during which I felt fine. Wednesday morning was yet another trip to the Vet on the northshore to follow up on the new dog's skin, so I didn't get to ride. By noon on Wednesday, though, the sore throat seemed to be getting worse rather than better, and an hour later I pulled the plug and went home to take one of the at-home SARS CoV-2 antigen tests. Somewhat surprisingly, that turned up negative. I wanted to believe that it wasn't COVID, but deep-down I knew better, and if I needed any more confirmation, that came Wednesday night as the throat got significantly worse and was accompanied by a headache and head cold symptoms. I barely got through the night with help from Sudafed and Advil. On Friday morning I did another Antigen test. That one was clearly positive, not that I really needed the additional confirmation by then. For all practical purposes, things remained the same for the next three days and nights. Although I usually felt a lot better during the day when I was moving around, it was pretty cold outside in the mornings and so riding was completely off the table. Better to live to fight another day, as they say.

Saturday morning Robert came by to pick up race supplies for Sunday's Virlillia Road Race in Mississippi, the second race I'd planned to do, but couldn't, this year. It looked like it would have been a great early season race to do, so I was sorry to be missing it. I guess I should be happy that I am definitely not planning on doing Rouge Roubaix, to which they have added additional gravel miles. It's not that the temptation isn't there, but for sure I know better than to subject myself to that kind of thing.

It wasn't until Saturday that I started to get the upper hand on the virus, and I finally got some normal sleep by Sunday night. This morning, Monday, the sore throat was almost gone, and the dog was tugging at my arm by 5:30, so I decided it was time to reboot the system with an easy ride on the levee (rather than the sometimes-mellow Mellow Monday group ride). The temperature was in the low 40s, so I dressed for the upper 30, knowing I would be taking it easy and not generating much heat. After missing nine of February's 14 days so far, there was not much to be gained by trying to do a hard ride quite yet. 

Meanwhile the new dog has been rampaging through the house destroying whatever he can get hold of - shoes, my arm, plastic bags, papers, etc. The other day we came home to discover that he had found one of those big metal cans of popcorn that people get around the holidays. We'd forgotten we even had it, but he managed to knock it over and eat whatever was in there. This morning we caught him holding a wine glass in his paws and licking the remnants from the inside. So now, all the shoes are in closets and anything remotely edible has to be kept out of reach, which means about ten inches from the edge of any table or countertop. Next week he starts his heartworm treatments so we will be really challenged to keep his activity level down. He'll probably need to stay in his kennel most of the time.

 Next up for me will be Auburn on the 26th. I don't know if I'll still be feeling the effects of COVID and the resulting break in training by then, but there's only one way to find out.

Family Weekend Off the Bike

As sad as it might be to lose a family member, the silver lining on that cloud is always the impromptu family reunion that results. In a rather amazing feat of coordination, Candy and I, together with both of my sisters and one brother in law managed to book the same flight and hotel for the weekend trip to Orlando. Even better, the flight didn't leave until after sunrise, which almost never seems to be the case for me. It would be my first flight since the November before COVID, so we equipped ourselves with the recommended K95 face masks and hoped for the best. First, though, was another trip across the lake to drop the new dog off to be neutered and so finish up with his shots and to be boarded until we could pick him up on Monday. 

I was a little disappointed not to be able to go to the race in Gainesville, but glad that Julia, Christopher, Dustin, Lisa, and Brett were all able to make the trip. It looked like a great early-season race. We have another race in Mississippi this coming weekend that I am hoping to attend even though it will no doubt be colder than I like, which, to be clear, means under 75°. Maybe the four days I just had off the bike will turn out to have been a good thing. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

We arrived in Orlando in the early evening and rushed over to the hotel, checked in, and rushed to a family dinner without even taking the luggage out of the rental car trunk. We were still about half an hour late, and Danielle, who was flying in from Olympia, was still at the airport when we arrived, but eventually the entire table for 20 or so was full. I'm still afraid to look at what our share of that dinner bill was, but whatever, it was well worth it.

The next morning Candy announced that she couldn't find her driver's license, the only ID she had. We searched and searched, but not luck.  More about that later.

Saturday morning we headed to the chapel, following the Google Maps instructions, and twenty minutes later arrived at a place with no chapel. Turns out there was a "north" and "south" to that address, and we were of course at the wrong one. So the memorial service at the Baptist chapel was nice even though we got there a couple of minutes late, and, thankfully, was fairly brief. One never knows with these things! Laura and Jay were regulars there and so had a lot of friends who attended.

We spent the rest of the day at the house catching up with everyone, including a couple of people from way back in my swimming days, and eating various things I almost never eat. At least five people approached me with, "You must be Jay's brother," a greeting to which I've been accustomed childhood. It was late evening by the time we finally said goodbye to everyone. A little while later we headed to dinner somewhere around downtown Orlando. The wait for our table was going to be about an hour, so we went next door to an oyster bar for drinks and a few oysters, followed by a nice dinner (some sort of clam pasta for me) with the sisters, daughter, etc. I don't know which of the unusual culinary items was to blame, but that night my gut was quite unhappy with me, a problem that lingered into the morning. 

Sunday morning we were dreading the ordeal we were expecting to have with TSA to get Candy onto an airplane without valid ID. I was in the shower when she stuck her head in the door to say she had found the long-lost driver's license ... in her shoe ... the one she'd been wearing all of the prior day. It must have gotten in there during the TSA inspection when we were leaving New Orleans when they had to re-run here bag and took her ID during the process. In the rush - TSA screening always seems like a rush - it somehow landed in her shoe, which she then put on thinking there was just a little wrinkle in her sock. Anyway, that was a big relief. Danielle took an Uber to the airport at 4 am for her long flight back to Washington. We had planned to be at the airport three hours early because of the ID situation, so although that was no longer necessary we were all up anyway so we were there fairly early. Fortunately my gut had calmed down a bit by the time our 10:30 am flight departed, although of course I hadn't had anything to eat or drink unless you count a couple of chewable Pepto tablets. The flight back was uneventful and we were back at home by about noon where the sky was clear and the air was fairly cold. I thought about riding but ultimately decided that under the circumstances to skip a couple more days to be on the safe side.

Back to the bike tomorrow!