The Longest Month

Obligatory Rex Photo

February is the longest month. Not technically, of course, but definitely mentally. Throw in Mardi Gras complications and posts from other people who are actually racing already, and it just makes it seem even worse. It's always like that. Cold temperatures, strong winds, and lagging motivation. The only thing that kind of saves me would probably be diagnosed by some as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Or perhaps just the knowledge that the older I get the costlier become those skipped days. Anyway, somehow I survived Mardi Gras week without too big a hit to the training log.

We were off from work on Monday, probably because everybody knows that nobody would show up the day before Mardi Gras anyway. That offered an opportunity for a long ride, but of course Mother Nature had other ideas. I woke up that morning, as I'd expected, to a weather radar that was entirely green and a light rain falling outside. It was also pretty cold. So I initially set my sights on early afternoon, by which time the rain was supposed to taper off. As it turned out, though, a lot of the rain that was showing up on radar was not actually rain, and by 10:00 or so it looked like the streets were drying up a little bit. What I did not find was the motivation to push myself very hard into a wind that was occasionally trying to wrest away control of my front wheel. I still managed to log 40 miles, albeit with speeds ranging from 12 to 31 mph depending on the sinuosity of the Mississippi River. 

Tuesday was Mardi Gras and it started out very cold. I decided it would be a great day to skip riding, except for my usual ride to and from the French Quarter. Candy and I rode over to Napoleon Avenue around 10:00 and watched all of the Rex parade, after which I made my way downtown via, mostly, Prytania. Riding along toward downtown just a couple of blocks from St. Charles, I could see the parade off to my left at the intersections. By the time I was past Jackson Avenue I'd already passed all of Rex and was looking at Zulu floats. Zulu always comes down Jackson to St. Charles and ends up ahead of Rex. Fortunately, Zulu turns left when it gets downtown instead or right like Rex, so as long as you're ahead of Rex you can usually cross Canal Street pretty easily. 

I locked the bike up on St. Louis street where I ran into Dustin & company. We headed over to Royal, or maybe Bourbon, but as I was taking photos I soon lost track of them entirely. I wandered around downtown for a couple of hours as usual before finally heading back home, by which time the temperature had risen enough to make the ride quite nice.

So Wednesday's WeMoRi was pretty much of a disaster for me. I rode out to the lakefront as usual, with the group catching me just after the turn onto Wisner. Jaden came past me and I jumped to catch his wheel since nobody else was there, and immediately thought to myself, "This is not exactly the ideal wheel to be on right now." My speed went from 19 mph to 26 as my heart rate went from 94 to 155 bpm, at which point I moved over and motioned for Brian, who was behind me to come through. It was a small group and at the back I found little draft as the pace remained fast. I was barely hanging onto the tail end of the group as we went over the overpass and things got strung out. I wasn't recovering at all, and so just after turning on to City Park Avenue I quietly drifted off the back. I was thinking I'd take some time to recover, turn onto Lakeshore drive, and make a u-turn ahead of the group on its way back from the traffic circle, but then I ran into Jeff who was sitting in the parking lot fixing a flat, so I stopped there before riding out to LSD where I missed most of whatever was left of the group before heading back home.

Thursday's levee ride was going along nicely, even though there were just three of us left by the time we were past The Dip. Then, within sight of the Luling bridge, I noticed my front tire going soft, so I told the others to continue while I stopped to fix it. I assumed I'd pinch-flatted on a sharp little hole I'd plowed into earlier, but later that night when I did a post-mortem on the tube I discovered a piece of metal wire sticking a millimeter or two past the inside of the tire. How it didn't puncture the new tube before I got home I'll never know.

Old bike, old kit. Expecting to get wet but stayed dry.

Friday we had a big turnout for Friendly Friday, and the pace remained pretty moderate, so that was nice. Saturday, though, was a completely different story. It had rained all night and into the morning, so the Giro was completely out of the question. There was an off-and-on light rain falling most of the morning, but nothing too serious, so around noon I decided I may as well go for a ride. Assuming the streets would still be wet, and/or that it would start to rain again, I dressed for colder temperatures than we had. There was a strong northeast wind blowing at around 14 mph when I finally hit the road around 12:50, but the levee path turned out to be essentially dry. Still, it was a long battle in the wind, stopping occasionally to take pictures of the eagles that are so easy to spot this time of year when there's not much foliage on the trees along the river.

Saw four eagles on Saturday

The weather was a little better on Sunday, but it was still quite cold and windy, which resulted in a pretty small turnout for the Giro. We did the entire route anyway, although certainly not as fast as usual, and then a whole group agreed to continue down the lake trail to add what is inexplicably called the "shuffle," which took us eventually over to the river levee. By then the sun was out so it was a nice ride that added enough miles to make up for the missing mileage, if not intensity, earlier in the week.

Only three on Monday

This morning's Mellow Monday ride had only three of us. It was still rather windy and cold, so I guess a lot of the usual people decided to skip it altogether. I was feeling a little tired, so it felt like a good enough workout even though I didn't spend much time in the wind. Fortunately it looks like temperatures will be rising a bit for the rest of the week!