Again to Augusta

It's never simple. I'd taken the car to the collision repair shop over two weeks earlier to repair the damage done when some hit-and-run driver broke the passenger side mirror and scraped up the door panels in the process. What should have been a 3-day repair dragged on for the better part of two weeks thanks to the shop receiving the wrong part. When it was finally ready on a Friday I rode the bike down Tulane Avenue in 100° afternoon heat to retrieve it. The next day we discovered that neither of the keyless entry door handle buttons on that side of the car worked, so it went back to the shop where I thought they would find something that hadn't been plugged in. Two days later I was told, "We can't figure out what is wrong." So they were going to bring it to a mechanic to check out. It was almost a week later that they finally got it fixed after finding a broken wire and having to order a replacement. I'd been kind of sweating the whole thing out because I was scheduled to hit the road early Thursday morning to drive up to Augusta, Georgia for Masters Road Nationals. I got the car back Wednesday afternoon. That was close.

So early Thursday I threw the bike into the car along with my race bag and a few other things and headed out for the 9-hour drive. I'd been thinking that Candy and perhaps the dog too would come along, but Candy didn't want to have to deal with the dog and decided not to go. On the plus side, I had already reserved a nice room at the Homewood Suites with a kitchen and sofa and everything. Oh well. The drive went fine and although I could have tried to do a quick lap around the road course at Fort Gordon, I ultimately decided to go for an early dinner at Olive Garden instead. I'd selected the hotel mainly because of all of the nearby food and coffee options! Also I was hungry. I had already gotten my approved visitor pass into the base where the road race would be. It was the first day that I hadn't ridden since June 5th.

I was riding in the 70-74 age group, combined with all of the other dinosaurs who ranged up to 90 years old. Thankfully our race was the first of the day, starting at 7:30 am when the temperature was still in the upper 70s. By afternoon it would be around 100°. I had no idea what to expect of this race, but at least I was reasonably familiar with the course, having ridden it at masters nationals back in 1994, and then again when I was there helping out for Collegiate Nationals about a year earlier. Just to be on the safe side I had put the 11-28 cassette that I normally use only for Six Gap on so I wouldn't, hopefully, have to make a front chainring shift on the finishing hill where I'd come to grief back in '94. My main goal for this race was to not get dropped on the first climb and then hopefully stay with the front group. The finish of this course features a reasonably steep 1 km climb that tops out around 300 meters from the finish. In the field we had a couple of people I knew, one because he was basically famous in cycling circles, and the other because I'd raced with him numerous times, including there in '94. One was Kent Bostick, and ex-Olympian, ex-Pro, ex-national champion in multiple disciplines, etc., etc. The other was Tom Bain who has been beating me since at least the 90s in various races.

Road Race

I got to the road race about an hour before my start time just as the sun was coming up. Naturally I took a wrong turn somewhere on the base and went around in circles a couple of times before finding my way. In my defense, it was dark and I was counting on my memory from the prior year to guide me. Although ours was the first race of the day, I was surprised how may people were already there. I found a parking spot on the grass that happened to be right next to Lonnie Kennedy, who wasn't racing but was there with his team from St. Louis. What are the odds?  I had not seen Lonnie in years, so it was great to catch up with him and reminisce about the old Natchez Classic and other races that he would do with us. 

Eddie was in a break for a while. This was the feed zone near the top of the climb.

The course at Ft. Gordon has three significant climbs on the first half of the loop. Then it eases to nice rolling hills until the final climb around 2 km from the finish. From the start I was expecting a big surge or attack on the first climb, which comes very early, but surprisingly it didn't happen. Over the course of the next few miles I found it easy to stay near the front, occasionally even rolling off the front on the climbs. 

Tom and Kent off the front starting lap 2. Me chasing far right.

In general the pace was slower than I'd expected. Tom put in a couple of attacks on the first lap but with the pace being otherwise pretty easy they got pulled back quickly and then there would be another lull. Of course I think everyone was dreading the attack that we knew would come at the end of the first of our two laps. Sure enough, Tom and/or Kent attacked hard as that climb steepened, which was about where I started to blow up and had to back off a bit. As we came over the top the duo had a clear gap and I was thinking we'd be racing for 3rd. The rest of the field was pretty much scattered all over the place, but a little group of about six came together as we started the second lap. Looking up the road I could see that the break didn't seem to be gaining much ground on us, and after chasing for a mile or two our group caught. This is where someone should have kept the pace going, but instead everyone slowed down and nobody counter-attacked. 

Eddie reaching for a bottle in the feed zone

Over the next five or six miles a number of riders who had been dropped caught. I was feeling pretty good, but based on the prior lap I didn't have much confidence that I would make it all the way to the top of the final climb in a position to sprint. I didn't. Again, I got about 2/3 of the way up the climb before the "Check Engine" light came on. Once the road levelled out I was able to put in another little surge before the finish, coming across in 7th place, which I was pretty happy with. Eddie Corcoran was racing in the 60-64 race that followed mine, so I hung around with his wife and Sam in the feed zone to watch. They were doing four laps, and by then it was much, much warmer. It was a bigger field, which probably only meant it would be faster. Eddie was doing well, coming  up the hill in good position each lap. By the last lap it was hot enough that the wax on my chain was glistening in the sun, having melted into a thin liquid. As it turned out Eddie had cramps in both inner quads near the finish, so he ended up coming across solo in 23rd spot which was still impressive given the very competitive field.

My criterium wasn't until Sunday, so I basically had Saturday off. I ended up doing an easy 20 miles or so, starting from a nice little park along the canal. Saturday afternoon I was checking the results and discovered that Lisa Houser had not only shown up, but won her 35-39 road race. Naturally that meant I had to go to the evening's awards ceremony that was held at the Savannah River Brewing Company. Also, Debbie Milne had won her road race, so it would be nice to see that as well. Also, there would be beer.

The women champions from Saturday's road races. Lisa on the right. Debbie in the middle.

As it turned out, Lisa had jumped in the car that morning, driven the 9 hours straight to the road race, raced with one shoe closure held together with a rubber band, and won. She had planned on driving right back home, but when you win you have to attend the awards, and those weren't until 7 pm. At the awards I also saw Will Wherritt who had also raced earlier and was planning on racing the criterium the following day as well. Lisa couldn't stay for the criterium since she had to get back to New Orleans and be ready for work early Monday morning. Anyway, it was fun to see all of the day's winners getting their championship jerseys and medals and all.

Criterium

The 70-74 criterium start had been moved a week or so prior to 7:00 am! I think sunrise was around 6:45 am. Anyway, that meant a very early departure from the hotel. I got to the course and found a parking spot nearby a bit after 6 am, which gave me time for a nice 30-minute warmup. As they had for the  road race, they called up riders one by one, mostly I guess in random order since I'd been one of the first at the road race but was closer to the end at the criterium. I was expecting this race to be faster and more aggressive than the road race, and it was, although I'd guess that half of the field was just following wheels and hoping for a group sprint. At the start Tom attacked pretty hard, taking Kent with him. I'd been expecting something like that so I was on to them quickly. 

The first couple of laps were therefore pretty fast - 27-28 mph for this group - which I hoped would continue. It didn't and the pace settled down again.  As expected, there were a number of attacks during this 45 minute race, and I was kept busy near the front. I knew that with a field like this I couldn't really count on other people or teams to close gaps or anything, so being near, or occasionally at, the front would be critical in case there was a split. Somewhere toward the last half of the race a small break went off the front with Kent in it, but without Tom. The rest of the field was kind of looking at each other and I was thinking, "Are they really going to let that go?" I was over on the right side on the back side of the course and about to launch myself when I saw Tom go flying past on the left. I immediately took off and went pretty deep, not catching his draft until we had made the bridge. As in the road race, I was thinking that this would split the pack and therefore increase my odds, but also as in the road race they inexplicably eased up and although I guess we dropped a few  riders, it all came back together again. 

At that point I knew it was going to end up as a field sprint, so I just concentrated on staying near the front. With two laps to go riders I hadn't seen the whole race started crowding the front, which made things a little sketchy. I came around the last corner a couple of wheels farther back than I'd have liked but still maybe 6th or 7th I guess. Finish sprints are always a little blurry for me! Fifty meters from the line I made another surge to try and get past one more rider but he saw me coming and I ended up finishing 5th overall. Surprisingly, one of the riders ahead of me was in the 75-79 age group, so my official placing was 4th. 

Either way, I was very happy to have made it onto the podium, and it was kind of cool that I'd be on the podium again, in the same place, at masters nationals, with Tom almost twenty years later. So I hung around for the first awards ceremony around 10:30, collected one of the big medals, and hit the road for home. I was maybe twenty minutes out when I suddenly realized that I did not remember putting my tablet computer into my bag that morning. I pulled off at the next exit and searched my bags but it wasn't there. Then I tried to call the hotel and for some reason my call would not go through. I turned around and headed back, calling Candy en route to ask her to try calling. A few minutes later she called me back and said that they had the tablet in the manager's office. What a relief! So that cost me about an hour, but with the time change I still got home just after dark without having to resort to more than one cup of coffee.

In other races, Norman Zellers who occasionally comes over from Biloxi for the Giro had a good finish in the very competitive 45-49 road race. Mat Davis looked pretty cooked after his road race but finished 20th in the criterium. Will Wherritt finished an impressive 14th in the 35-39 criterium, which was probably one of the fastest and most competitive. All of the LAMBRA riders who were at M-Nats as far as I know:

Cars, Bikes, and the Weather

I mean, what else is there? Last week was just one day after the other of suffocating humidity with pre-dawn temperatures in the mid-80s and apparent temperatures over 110°F. The complete lack of rain just made things that much worse. Every morning when I'd turn on the Garmin to ride I'd get yet another heat advisory warning. I even resorted to putting a little electrolyte mix in my weekday water bottles. Still, that didn't stop me from getting in the usual rides, although I think the general intensity levels were perhaps a bit lacking. The weekend Giro Rides had really small groups. Lots of the regular Giro riders have been doing the 6:30 am SaMoRi on Saturdays instead, just to avoid those last 30 minutes in the sun, I guess. Indeed, both Giro Rides, while quite fast on the way out to Venetian Isles, were slower than usual on the return trips, no doubt due to the combined effects of the heat and the small group size.

Yesterday, on the morning levee ride, our little group almost got taken out by someone in a car coming across the levee from one of the grain elevator docks. Luckily he saw us (probably finally looked up from his phone) at the last second and hit the brakes halfway across the bike path.

The miserable weather continued all the way until yesterday evening when a little cool front finally came through, bringing with it a little bit of badly needed rain. At least two plants in front of the house have succumbed to the heat and dryness already.

This morning the 80° temperature felt positively refreshing thanks to the much-lowered humidity level. Of course one doesn't get cooler weather around here without paying for it, in this case by having a 12 mph north wind. As north winds often do, the group had already been shattered along Lakeshore Drive by the time I jumped into what was left of the front group on Marconi. As usual, I was nearly redlined all the way down Wisner, barely hanging onto the back. Then on City Park Avenue a gap opened ahead of Joe Paul and when he put his head down to chase I just hung on to his wheel for dear life. We came around the corner onto Marconi and then when he stood up to accelerate his right foot unclipped and my life briefly flashed before my eyes. Fortunately we both remained upright and eventually closed the little gap. He later told me that he had been having trouble clipping into that particular pedal, which is a Giant-branded Look by all appearances. He thought that he hadn't fully clipped in after he had had to put a foot down at a stop light a bit earlier.

On the plus side, I got the replacement cassette body for my Campi Scirocco training wheels, so I put everything back together and was happy to find that it solved the problem. I had ordered replacement hub bearings but everything seems fine at the moment so I'll  hold off on replacing those since that will require a trip to the shop in order to remove the old ones and press in the new ones (not that I haven't pressed in new bearings before using a socket, block of wood, and a hammer). The shifters are kind of on their last legs but I'll just live with that at least through nationals since fixing them will probably require rebuilding them and that's assuming I can actually get the parts for shifters that were superseded in 2014. Candy's Fitbit watch died a couple of weeks ago and after trying all of the suggested ways to fix it I finally called tech support, went through everything I'd tried, and got them to ship a replacement. We'll see how long this one lasts. Candy has a way of destroying electronic equipment that unparalleled. I've replaced the screen protector on her iPhone about four times and each time the old one has been practically shattered.

So the car. After going about ten days without a car I was happy to get a call from the collision center last Thursday that it was finally ready for pick-up. Of course that meant riding down Tulane Avenue again in the middle of the day in street clothes when it was close to 100° but I didn't want to be without a car for yet another day. Then on Saturday we discovered that neither of the keyless entry door handle buttons on the right side of the car, where the body panels had been repaired, would work. All the other doors worked fine, and those two doors would lock and unlock using the key fob, but the buttons on the handles were dead. So I brought it back in on Monday expecting it to be a quick fix on the assumption that somebody had just forgotten to plug some connector back in. I wasn't terribly surprised not to have received a call about it that day, but by late afternoon yesterday when I still hadn't heard anything I called. Turns out they can't figure out what the problem is and want to have their mechanic (i.e. no the body shop person) look at it. I suspect that there is some corrosion on the connector terminals, but I guess we'll see. I'll bet they want to replace both door handles and will try to come up with a way to make it my fault. 

Speaking of things that need to be fixed, my block of Pine Street that they tore up a couple of weeks ago has again been abandoned leaving us with a dirt road and clouds of dust. They poured the concrete for the curbs on August 1, then disappeared. It's now August 16. 

Wish I could say I was surprised.

Hotting UP

Monday morning haze thanks to the marsh fire out in the east

It's been nothing but hot and dry around here lately, and the outlook for the rest of this week isn't offering much else. Most of the rides can be described pretty much the same. Things start off briskly with the pre-dawn temperature in the 81-84° range. Then the number of people working the front begins to dwindle along with the water levels in the bottles. Eventually the speed drops and the number of people hanging on for dear life grows. I get home and walk into the 75° air-conditioning and quickly peel off the soaking wet jersey before I get chilled, hanging it on a rod in the hamper so it doesn't grow mold down with the rest of the laundry. The bike's top tube is spotted with sweat, and the glasses are practically opaque. August. Situation Normal.

The week started out with a nice enough Mellow Monday ride that didn't get too much out of hand as sometimes happens. Back at the Museum of Art in City Park I noticed that the little green plastic frog that had been underneath the statue of bacon (actually it's supposed to be brush strokes but I guess my imagination isn't artistic enough for that) had moved and was now atop a lily pad. It's been kind of like Elf on a Shelf - appearing in a different place every few days. Anyway, since Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all just more of the same hot rides I'll skip ahead to Saturday. 

With the unusually, even for New Orleans in August, hot mornings we've been having lately a lot of the regular Giro riders have been doing the SaMoRi that has shifted to a 6:30 am start. Of course the difference between starting a ride at 6:30 compared to 7:00 is entirely academic but nobody ever said cyclists weren't like sheep. So the Saturday Giro turnout was quite small. Then to make matters worse, a few of those who started announced they would be turning back with the SaMoRi group, effectively shortening their ride by ten miles or so. If any of those riders were on the fence about turning back early, their doubts were put to rest after Will and a couple others kept the Hayne Blvd. speed between 28 and 32 mph all the way out to Paris Road. Even with the light tailwind, it was pretty intense. So halfway out on Chef all but I think four of us turned back. In a way is was a relief because the pace slacked off a little bit, especially after the turnaround when that tailwind turned into a headwind. So we're cruising back, mostly just sitting in Will's ample draft when, after turning onto the Interstate Will's rear tire erupts into a volcano of sealant. I was two bikes back and still got pretty well sprayed. We took inventory on the shoulder and put in a tube, which got Will back to the Bayou St. John overpass where it went flat again. Another tube and a boot got him home.

Long Giro

So after the practically unavoidable dehydration event of Saturday you would have thought I'd have been smart enough to decline the invitation for a Long Giro out to Fort Pike on Sunday. Of course I wasn't. 

Knowing it was going to be a hot and possibly miserable 78 miles despite the store stop at the marina, I put a partially filled large water bottle in the freezer the night before. That morning I headed out with one big bottle of ice and water, a small bottle with electrolyte, a couple of gels, and a couple of bucks for a cold Coke. Once again we had a bit of a tailwind on the way out and when we got to Venetian Isles I was surprised how many people decided do the long ride. I think we had nine. Once we crossed Chef Menteur Pass the pace, which had already been pretty fast thanks largely to Brett and Will, picked up so that the average speed for that whole stretch was a bit over 28 mph. The whole time I'm sitting at the back wondering if they're saving anything for the ride back into the gradually increasing west wind. All I knew was that my own survival was going to depend on staying the hell off the front. I think everybody in the group ended up at the top of the Strava "Chef to Rigolets" segment. Indeed, the ride back was considerably slower. Despite the store stop rehydration and cool-down, I the speed on the way back was more in the 23-25 mph range as everyone was starting to get overheated and dehydrated. I finally limped back home from the lakefront at 15 mph and proceeded to down about half a gallon of cold fluids, after which I was still a couple of pounds low on the bathroom scale.

In addition to this being the time of year when rides get hot and brutal, it's also the time of year when equipment starts to fail, and my own equipment has been no exception. I'd been noticing some unusual drag and noise that, as is almost always does, sounded like it was coming from the bottom bracket area, which, as is almost always the case, wasn't. I moved the chain out of the way and the cranks spun as smoothly as ever. So then I swapped rear wheels, which confirmed that the problem was the rear hub that has over 30k miles on it and had recently weathered a few long rides in the rain. I found the cassette body to be kind of wobbly which pointed to the freewheel bearing, which I then found to be orange and rusty and generally a big old mess. I just threw up my hands, stuck an old wheel in there, and order an whole new cassette body which cost about what the entire wheel was actually worth. I badly need to change out all of the shifter cables, which I'll probably do some time this week. The shifters themselves are also about at the end of their lives but the Campi 11-speed system I have on there is like four generations old now and it's questionable whether it's worth replacing at this point.

Meanwhile, we've been without the car for, I think, ten days now thanks to some hit-and-run person who crushed the side-view mirror into the door. The car should have been ready last Friday but they were sent the wrong mirror, so now I'm hoping maybe late Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, since the street alongside the house is still completely torn up, which is to say it is just dirt, the car would be covered in dust anyway. The roadwork crew put in new curbs last week, built forms for some of the sidewalks but not all of them, and then ghosted us ... again. When will they return to finish the job?  Your guess is as good as mine. It's like they have a weekly Wheel of Fortune wheel that they spin and every now and then the pointer lands on your street, or Bankrupt. The electricity bill last month was almost $500, and every time I hear the a/c unit kick off, which isn't often, I wonder if it has broken.