Family and Fractures

Friendly Friday - finally some light in the sky

The last ten days or so have been a little complicated. We had my dad's memorial service on Saturday so of course I didn't ride that day, and various family members were in town for various times from Wednesday through yesterday. Other than skipping my ride on Saturday, though, the riding didn't suffer much at all. I can't say quite the same for eating habits since there was a good amount of catered food, wine, beer, more wine, champagne, crawfish, crawfish pies, and even paella.

The weekday rides were as the weekday rides usually are, which is consistent, although I did manage to screw up my timing last week on the WeMoRi. I was running a little late, rather than go all the way to Lakeshore Drive and maybe get there just after the group went by, I instead turned down Toussant to Marconi which guaranteed that I wouldn't miss them. Unfortunately, the group came flying around the one curve between Toussant and Lakeshore Drive just as I approached, so I didn't have any warning. I made a quick U-turn behind them but it was immediately obvious that I wasn't going to catch, so I went straight down Marconi and got into the group after it came around the corner from City Park Avenue. So I missed a little bit of intensity, but that happens sometimes.

On Friday I arrived at the Museum of Art for the Friendly Friday ride to find an unusually large group on hand, and I knew what that meant. Sure enough the fireworks started around Bayou St. John and didn't let up much for the rest of the ride. Just as well, because I knew I wouldn't be riding on Saturday anyway and would get a nice but unscheduled recovery day - something that I'm sure I should do more often. My headset was feeling just a bit loose, so that night I slacked off the stem bolt and when I went to tighten the compressor to preload the headset it basically broke off. The threaded aluminum section had corroded enough from sweat dripping down through the hole that it finally separated. Not wanting to steal the compressor from my cyclocross bike, I just ordered a new one and spent the next few days riding the Orbea.

On Sunday I was good to go for the Giro which had a fairly typical turnout. The weather was good with a mild headwind on the way out. As expected from spending pretty much all of Saturday afternoon and evening eating tasty and salty stuff while drinking wine and even a beer or two (red wine doesn't really go with boiled crawfish), I wasn't feeling particularly sharp so I positioned myself toward the back of the group and planned on staying there. It was fairly fast on the way out, but steady, and as usual the speed starting creeping up as we got within a couple of kilometers from the Venetian Isles sprint. 

Somewhere inside of the last kilometer a gap opened up somewhere ahead of me, as often happens, so I went around a couple of people and kept the pressure on but didn't make the effort to close the gap which by then was virtually un-closable anyway as the sprint was starting. Then, up ahead, I saw an unexpected cloud of dust off the the right and thought initially that someone must have pulled off across the shoulder and slid out in the grass over there. As I got closer, though, I could see that Brandon had crashed and was sitting on the shoulder about ten feet from his bike. As I heard it, Brandon had led out the sprint and when he started to slow the rest of the paceline started coming past him on the left, but one rider decided to go past on the right, squeezing between the rumble strip and Brandon. Well, of course they collided and Brandon apparently bounced back and forth like a pinball before going over the bars pretty hard. It looked like he landed squarely on the back of his head and left shoulder, then came down onto his hip. They were probably going somewhere north of 30 mph at the time, so he was pretty banged up and his helmet looked like someone had taken a sledge hammer to it. I asked him right away, "What day is it?" and he immediately replied, "Sunday," so I took that as a good sign. As he explained to me later, however, he was feeling quite confused and when I asked him the question he thought, "This is a test. I'd better get it right!" which he did. He was able to call his wife so we waited around for her to arrive. The whole time, though, he never tried to stand and definitely seemed out of it, so when his wife came and asked me which Urgent Care he should to go I told her I thought he needed to go to an ER because he probably had a concussion and would need a CAT scan, plus there was a 90% chance he'd broken his collarbone (which he had), and his hip didn't look too good either. 

It was almost nine hours later that his wife called me to say that they were still at the ER at University Medical Center where I guess his trauma wasn't traumatic enough to get much attention from the Trauma Center people. At that point I emailed Tulane orthopedist Buddy Savoie, who is quite familiar with my own collarbones, and asked if he knew anyone over there who could move things along. That had a significant impact and a little while later I got a call from one of the doctors there. So anyway, he did indeed have a concussion and a broken collarbone, and after a followup visit early this week with Dr. O'Brien at TISM he is scheduled for surgery next week. Things appear to be moving in the right direction now, at least.

Danielle was still in town - she flew out yesterday - and since Candy's birthday was the 15th and the neighbor's birthday was also the 15th (or something close to that) we had a nice dinner over at the neighbor's house that featured paella and of course wine and champagne. 

The rides thus far this week have been good but otherwise unremarkable except for the fact that we are clearly getting into summer. I got the Bianchi back in action for this morning's levee ride that was mostly just me and Martin trading pulls with some help from Steve who joined in at the Big Dip. I don't know why, but it felt harder than it should have, perhaps just because I wasn't getting quite as much recovery time in-between pulls. I felt sorry for Martin who is, I'd say, literally twice my size and certainly wasn't getting much of a draft behind me, or Steve for that matter.

The Tour de La arrangements are more or less done now that I got the permit from St. Bernard for the criterium course. Our cost is going to be pretty high for the weekend. The police detail for Saturday on Lakeshore Drive is going to run $3,000 plus another $500 in fees, and the criterium will be around $1,200 or so, so venue costs will be nudging $5,000. Other costs for officials and permits and cash prizes will bring total expenses up around $9,000 of which entry fees, assuming a reasonable turnout which these days is a tenuous assumption, will offset only about $4,000 and sponsorship at this point only about $1,000. 

Summer Sun, Summer Storm

It is such a relief to have enough light at 6 am to see more of where I'm going than the little spot of road in the headlight beam. Now that summer is essentially here the early morning wardrobe decisions are quick and simple, and the only delay in getting out the door is time spent cleaning yesterday's sweat out of the inside of the sunglasses.

Tuesday's levee ride had a nice group and even nicer weather, which kept the outbound leg a bit faster than usual. I think it was the last day that Michael Laiche was in town and riding with us before jetting back to Seattle. Wednesday's WeMoRi seemed likewise pretty fast - certainly fast enough to quickly quash any ideas I might of had about putting my nose into the wind at the front anyway. Thursday's levee ride was pretty normal, although I felt like I was suffering a little bit more than I should have been. Sometimes it's that way - no real obvious explanation. That led to Friendly Friday which started out friendlier than it ended. The last segment on Lakeshore Drive got pretty fast, as did the usual drag race down Marconi to the infamous Mount Wisner KOM. That particular Strava Segment has always seemed kind of screwy. If you look at the KOM detail it shows average speeds for a number of people, including me, of 35.6 mph, and although the segment does include a fair amount of flat road prior to the actual climb to the top of the overpass, 35.6 mph doesn't make much sense. For example, looking at my actual Strava data for the day on which I supposedly went 35.6 mph, which was back in 2014 before the overpass was demolished and re-built, my maximum speed for the entire ride was only 33 mph, which was clearly on the downhill side of the overpass, which is not part of the segment. Go figure. Another KOM for basically the same segment but established later shows Jordan with a speed of 42.8 mph for the same day in 2014 that the other one shows 35.6 mph. Looking at his actual Strava data for that day, his maximum speed was never over 32.2. 

But I digress.

Friendly Friday

So all of this is leading up to the Saturday Giro. The evening before it was looking like the Giro might be rained out entirely, but when I got up that morning the approaching storms were way off to the west and the hourly forecast was looking quite favorable until about 10:00 am. So of course I headed out to Starbucks from which we rolled out with a somewhat reduced group. Some people, I guess, just didn't want to risk getting wet. Others apparently decided to ride with the 6:45 SaMoRi group to maybe get a little jump on the weather. Also, it was Jazz Fest weekend.

Shelter from the storm

So despite our relatively small group, the pace going out was fast and steady. I wasn't worried at all about rain, and thought that, at the worst, I might get some light sprinkles on my way home. On the way back, Chris flatted on Chef just before the turn onto the interstate, so we all waited for that, which was really a pretty brief delay. Heading down Bullard a few miles later the sky to the northwest started looking considerably worse, and when we turned onto Hayne the sky in front of us was blacker than black. Somebody at the front put the hammer down just after the turn, which immediately opened a gap. Chris put his head down and made the bridge, but Jaden and I didn't. I looked over to Jaden and commented, "Do they think they are going to outrun that rain??" I mean, we were heading straight into it and already clearly doomed and could already feel the rain starting. Then, just as we got to the overpass, all hell broke loose. The temperature dropped, and the wind started gusting at easily 40 mph, and the rain and likely hail was coming down so hard I wondered if it would draw blood on my arms. I was down to maybe 6 mph going up the overpass, struggling to keep the bike both upright and moving forward. We were lucky that it was more headwind than crosswind, because if it had been a direct crosswind it wouldn't have been rideable. 

Convenient!

Anyway, as I coasted cautiously down the overpass on the shoulder I saw the whole front of the group (we were by the down to maybe seven riders) stopped at the bottom. They'd decided it was too dangerous to try to ride over the Seabrook bridge with its steel grate at the top and were going to hide out under the over pass until things settled down. As it turned out there was a big open abandoned trailer next to the overpass, so we all piled into it. Eventually the wind settled down a bit and although a few had already called for extraction I headed out again with Jaden, Kenneth, and VJ. Naturally I was well soaked by the time I got home but at least it was warm enough that I didn't get too chilled. I quickly put some lube on the chain, put my shoes out to dry, and jumped into a hot shower. That afternoon a new helmet (Lazer Vento) I'd ordered on sale arrived. It had been a very unusual impulse purchase for me since usually the only time I buy helmets is right after I have broken one by whacking it on the asphalt with my head inside. I was pleased to find that it fit fairly well. My head is always right in-between the small and medium sizing, so buying a new helmet without being able to try it on beforehand is kind of a roll of the dice. I'd spoken with Lisa earlier about hers, since that's their team helmet, and she said that the small wasn't too small, so I guess that gave me a little extra confidence. 

A quick store stop on the Talisheek ride

By Sunday the weather was great and I'd earlier decided to drive across the lake to join the regular northshore Talisheek ride, mainly just for the change of scenery. That ride is getting to be kind of the northshore Giro, since the route seems to have been selected specifically to keep it almost entirely flat. It was a nice test ride for the new helmet, which didn't present any problems at all during the ride. 

The ride itself had a particularly good turnout that day with probably twenty riders at one point or another. The pace was brisk but not super fast, and with such a long paceline I had just a few opportunities at the front. Much of the first and last parts of the ride were on the Tammany Trace, so those sections were just conversational speed anyway. I was a little edgy on the Trace because there was a fair amount of debris on the bike path from the prior day's storm, plus there are those yellow posts at the intersections that you can't see if you're behind someone. Not having ridden there in a long time, I was constantly trying to look around riders to see what was coming. It was a nice ride, though, with a bit of intensity here and there. I was glad I'd loaded the route onto my Garmin because I don't think I'd ever ridden some of the roads on the second half of the ride.

This morning's Mellow Monday ride turned decidedly un-mellow once we were on Lakeshore Drive. That sometimes happens. Looking at who was in the group during the warmup segment, which itself was faster than usual, I could see the handwriting on the wall and decided to stay protected as much as possible because I figured it would get fast on the way back along Lakeshore Drive and, later, Wisner. So I did, and so it did. 

Teamwork

Tuesday on the levee

It's finally the first day of May when there's a bit of light in the sky at 6 a.m. and I need to charge my headlight battery only once every few days rather than practically every day. We put on the LAMBRA Time Trial Championship yesterday for what I think was the twelfth consecutive year out on Highway 51 near LaPlace. This morning as I rolled the commuting bike out the door I sighed as I glanced around the basement that is littered with post-event stuff - water coolers, tents, podium, traffic cones, P/A system, stopwatches, clipboards, caution signs, tables, chairs, etc., etc. It will probably be a few days before I get that all sorted and put back into some semblance of order so it's ready for the 52nd annual Tour de La that is now only a month away. It will be only the third road event in LAMBRA this year, which is kind of weak. 

Anyway, the Time Trial went off remarkably well this year, not that we set any records for participation. I had gone out the weekend before to re-mark the turnarounds, and then spend much of Saturday setting up the start list and results workbook, and generally organizing what I would need to pack into the car in the dark on Sunday morning. Most of the LAMBRA equipment, and some of the NOBC equipment, was in the trailer up in Jackson, so I was missing the nice digital race clock and, as I discovered at the last minute, my collection of safety vests. One little surprise was that when Robert dropped off the USAC championship medals on Thursday I discovered that there were not enough gold ones to cover what we needed. They were just the leftover medals from 2022. I called USAC and they promised to send our 2023 allocation this week, so I will be mailing medals to a few riders after those arrive. On the plus side, participation was up a bit from last year, when it was quite low, but it was still a far cry from its peak years when we would regularly expect about 100 riders (there were 66 registered this year). In the weeks before the race I had been worried about having enough volunteers. Branden would be racing mountain bikes up in Ruston, and Mark would be out of town. Fortunately, after a few pleas for help on various platforms, enough people stepped up. On race day we had Mignon, Pat, Ty, Christian, David, Boyd, Randy, Kale, and Charles, so all of the key positions were easily covered and there was lots of backup for the timing over at the finish line. I was up that morning around 4:45 am, in time to make some coffee, eat a somewhat stale scone, and load stuff into the car. Josiah rode over from campus for 5:30 so I could give him a ride to the race. I'd lent him a pair of aerobars and Russell Bernard's old Campi Bora time trial wheels for his first-ever time trial. We arrived right at 6 am, unloaded the car, and set about putting up the tent, flags, caution signage, etc. The weather forecast was predicting a strong northwest wind so I wasn't expecting to see a lot of very fast times, even though some of the fastest riders in the area were on the start list.

The one good thing about having a smaller turnout was that the last rider was on the road by 9:15 and therefore back before 10:15, and with Mignon shuttling back and forth between the finish and the results tent we were able to get the results and awards for the earlier categories and age groups taken care of relatively quickly. Most years we have a little bit of confusion about one or two or three riders. Maybe the times don't look correct, or there were a few whose numbers couldn't be read, but this year there were no problems there and results went remarkable smoothly. 

It turned out that I was quite wrong in my prediction about the times being heavily influenced by the wind. In fact, Matt Govero turned in a new LAMBRA and course record of 49:32, besting his own LAMBRA record for the prior year by a healthy margin and putting his name in the record book as our first rider to go sub-50. He wasn't the only one with a fast time, either. In all, there were 21 riders who went sub-hour on this windy day - 34% of the 61 riders who raced. I was impressed. 

Afterward, our hard-working race crew headed down the road to Frenier Landing for a nice lunch before making the short drive back to town. I was happy to have Pat and Josiah to help unload the car(s), which probably saved my back quite a bit of strain.

So next I will start trying to promote the Tour de La, for which we currently have no actual sponsorship outside of the regular club funds. We will be doing everything here on the southshore this year, substituting a Lakefront circuit race for the usual long road race, and following it with a short 3 km time trial immediately afterward. Then we'll finish up with a criterium over in Chalmette around Torres Park. So basically everything is new this year, which has entailed quite a bit more work than usual. We'll be doing the stage race on points rather than time this year, so I'll have to set up an entirely new results workbook, and I'll need to write up a new race bible of some sort as well. I'd hoped to have the circuit race go up and over the levee at Franklin Avenue like we did a couple of years ago for the Lakeshore Scramble criterium and the weekday summer series, but for some reason the Levee district insisted that I needed a City permit in order to use that 900 feet or so of Franklin Avenue, which was kind of ridiculous. I ended up keeping the route on Lakeshore Drive and making a somewhat inconvenient U-turn just before the Elysian Fields traffic circle (to avoid the flexpost obstacle course the city installed last year). They'll still need to race over the levee each lap, just in a different location, so we'll see how that goes. I think the ultimate cost should be a little bit lower than usual since we won't need as many police as we do for the road race, but on the other hand we will need the ones we have for longer. 

Looks like I will have to miss the evening criterium in Hattiesburg on the 12th since we will be doing the memorial service for my father the following morning and family will be in town. There are no other actual races currently on the calendar in Louisiana or Mississippi, so I'm thinking about signing up for the Cheaha Challenge fondo on May 21. After the Tour de La I guess I'll have to think about doing some travelling if I want to actually race bikes!