Hot Summer Rides

Front part of the group heading out for the Tali ride

Well, it's late June now and while I expect it to be hot and humid, last week Mother Nature treated us to the added bonus of multiple "heat advisory" days with "feels-like" temperatures sometimes well over 110°F. Every morning now the outdoor thermometer is reading 80-83°F before dawn as I prepare for my morning ride. Fortunately, road riding makes that kind of thing a bit more manageable than, say, running, thanks to the self-generated breeze, ability to carry fluids, and the occasional store stop. Still, I've come home from every ride lately in clothes soaked through in sweat that weigh easily triple what they did when I departed. Rides to and from work have been exercises in managing effort to the bare minimum required to keep moving forward. Even so, with those last couple of miles devoid of shade I'm still pretty sweaty when I arrive which makes walking into the air-conditioned building feel like walking into a freezer while wearing a wet bathing suit. Meanwhile, hurricane season is getting off to an early start with one named storm already heading for the Caribbean and another possibly close behind. Nothing aiming for New Orleans just yet, fortunately.

The regular weekday rides transpired as the regular weekday rides do, although for some unknown reason I was feeling kind of dragged out every time I got on the bike. Perhaps fighting off some little illness, or perhaps just struggling to adapt to the summer heat and humidity. At any rate, I haven't felt particularly energetic at all, a feeling that has apparently not been shared by everyone. 

Wednesday's WeMoRi, at least the part of it that I do, seemed fast enough that I was never tempted to put my face into the wind or even attempt to contest any of the sprints. The average speed was around 26 mph with a few surges into the 30s, which isn't unusual at all. I was still feeling Wednesday by Thursday morning, and it took me a while to get the old engine started on the levee ride. We were about halfway back when Martin's rear tubeless tire erupted into a volcano of sealant and although there was one bike between his wheel and myself I still got a pretty good dose of sealant spray. His tire mostly sealed itself but was still leaking enough that it was almost flat by the time he turned off for home a few miles later. It was the second time in a few days that I'd been sprayed with tire sealant, which I guess might be an indication that I need to be spending more time at the front and less at the back.

Friday

The Friendly Friday ride was reasonably moderate, which is to say it just got fast in the usual places, but for me it still didn't seem to provide quite the amount of recovery that I apparently needed because I was kind of hurting from the get-go for the next morning's Giro Ride. 

The Seabrook bridge is still closed, so the Giro Route has been kind of in flux, which is to say it's pretty much up to whoever happens to be in front. This Saturday we were following Lisa, which took us down Press to Prentis to Congress, which put us conveniently right at the base of the Danziger bridge. From there it was the usual "bridge closed" route down Almonaster to Michoud to Chef. Once on Almonaster the pace stayed in the 28-32 mph range mostly, and when it surged again up to 34 mph a couple of miles before Venetian Isles people started dropping like flies off the back. I was one of those flies. The pace going out was apparently enough, combined with the rising temperature, to keep the speeds a lot lower on the return trip. We took an usual route back, staying on Chef to Elysian Fields, then over to Mirabeau back to Wisner. That involved a lot of traffic lights and stuff so the pace never got fast, and then once we got to Wisner, some went left and some went right. Anyway, I was still hot and tired by the time I got home.

Waiting at the store stop on the Tali ride.

Charles, having just returned from a quick work trip to Norway, announced that he and a couple other southshore riders were going to do the northshore Talisheek ride on Sunday, and at the last minute I decided to do that too. It starts in Mandeville at 7 am and is just 50-ish miles, so even with the 40-minute drive across the lake I'm still back home well before lunchtime. The route is pretty flat, which is kind of a shame since I could use some terrain variety, but it does get fast here and there so it's a good enough workout and considering what the bridge closure is doing to the Giro route right now it seemed like it would be worth the drive.

So with coffee in hand I headed across the lake Sunday morning around 6 am for a nice uneventful cruise-controlled drive across the causeway, arriving a little early along with Steve Martin. By the time we rolled out at 7:00 the group was probably up to 15 or so, and I guess we picked up a few more at Abita Springs. I never feel too comfortable riding on the Tammany Trace with a group, mainly because I can never see the yellow posts in the middle of the bike path before and after every intersection. Once past Abita Springs, though, we're back onto the road and the pace picks up a bit. Like the Giro, with so many riders you don't really need to spend much time in the wind if you don't want to, but unlike the Giro there is usually a longer paceline at the front, or often one that includes everyone, so it's easy to just stay in the paceline and take a short or long pull, depending on how you are feeling, when your turn comes up, which isn't all that often. So for the most part the pace is in the 23-25 mph range and well within zone 2 for me while sitting on wheels.

At one point, around halfway into the ride, the route takes us onto Hwy. 41 for a few miles. There's a wide shoulder there, so the group rides on the shoulder dodging the usual collection of roadside debris, or, as happened near the end of that segment, not dodging it. We were almost to where we turn off of 41 and I was comfortably sitting about third wheel waiting patiently for my next turn at the front, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a crash behind me. Jeff had hit a chunk of broken asphalt about the size of a baseball that I hadn't even noticed. Luckily he didn't break any bones and amazingly nobody else went down. He did almost destroy his right SRAM shifter, and his derailleur hanger was bent a bit, but otherwise it looked like just some road rash on his arm and leg. It did take him a while to figure out how to activate the shifter with a fingernail since most of the plastic lever had broken off.

After the little sprint just before the store stop on Hwy 434 things eased up a little as we headed down to the Tammany Trace for the last stretch back to Mandeville. They still go 20-25 along the trace which is interrupted by a number of cross streets replete with those yellow posts, so I was spending a lot of time trying to look around, or under, the riders ahead of me. I guess if I rode it more often I'd know where the intersections are and could relax a bit more. Anyway, it was a good 53-mile ride that was probably just slightly less hot and humid than the Giro would have been, albeit with a little less intensity, even if my heart rate did eek just past 170 for a nanosecond at the sprint even though I never really sprinted. 

On Monday I went out to the Mellow Monday ride that got kind of blown apart by Donald and Mark. Even though I, and most of the group, let them go it still clearly wasn't as much of a recovery ride as I needed. This morning's levee ride was moderately fast on the way out and from the start I wasn't feeling great. Part of that was no doubt from the dentist visit I'd had on Monday that left me with some residual pain from a healing incision. Eventually it was just Martin, Charles and me, and it seemed like we were riding into a slight headwind the entire time. After Martin pulled off for home Charles had a little puncture and so I got a little spray of sealant for the third time in about a week. On the plus side, it sealed, so we didn't have to stop, but by then I think we were both feeling a little cooked so we rode the rest of the way at conversational pace.