Hot Summer Rides

Waiting for WeMo

It's looking like the heat and humidity are here to stay for a while now, and even though I usually climb onto the bike before sunrise, by the time I peel off the lycra it's thoroughly soaked. Giro Rides that I was doing a month ago without putting much of dent into a single water bottle, now have me emptying two and wishing for more. Water that it, not heat.

Wednesday's WeMoRi and Thursday's lakefront rides weren't too terrible since the tropical heat dome that defined the next few days hadn't yet quite consolidated itself on top of us. The WeMoRi was fast in places and not so fast in others, leaving me with a little left in the tank for a short sprint at the end. Thursday's ride actually felt pretty nice, although that might have been more because the pace remained smooth and moderate than because of the weather. 

Big Friday Group

By Friday I was ready for a nice easy Friendly Friday ride, but when I arrived to find a particularly large group on hand, I knew it was not to be. Even so, it never got quite out of hand, and with so many wheels in the group it wasn't too hard to titrate the effort level without getting dropped.

By Saturday, though, conditions had become much more humid. As I rode out to Starbucks I wondered how that would affect turnout. As has been the case for the past few weeks, there was going to be a lakefront training race in addition to the regular Giro. Norman was on hand from Mississippi because his son had a swimming meet that day and he was squeezing in a morning ride and then riding out to Metairie for the meet. I was still a little bit on the fence about whether to do the training race or the Giro, but the decision became much easier when I saw people along Lakeshore Drive setting up for the annual Greek Festival run. That meant that the police were going to shut down Lakeshore Drive at some point, so since there was a reasonable turnout for the Giro, I decided to go with that instead. It turned out to have been a good decision because the race only got in two laps, plus they had a small crash coming into the Elysian Fields traffic circle that brought down Devin and one or two others. The Giro itself was pretty typical, with the speed being largely maintained by Norman. One thing I have noticed about the recent Giro Rides, where the group size has been down in the 6-12 rider range rather than the 25-40 rider range we had before the bridge closure, is that the smaller group guarantees that you will be doing more work overall, even at the slightly slower speeds. Afterward, I rode out to the lakefront bike path with Norman so he wouldn't get too lost finding his way to St. Martin's.

Monday's Hopedale Group

On Sunday, I did yet another Giro, this time with a much smaller group. I think we had about six or seven, and although there was just a minimal tailwind here and there on the way out, by the time we were halfway back the wind speed had doubled and, of course, it was a headwind. I got back home feeling completely exhausted and moderately dehydrated. The next day should have been a recovery day, but...

Under the Hopedale store - it's raised about 20 feet to limit the flood damage

Monday was Memorial Day, so there was a planned ride out to Hopedale that morning, starting at 7 from Stallings rec. center on St. Claude, which is around six or seven miles from home. We had, I think, six riders for that one. It's not exactly my favorite route, since it is mostly on a thin strip of dry land between marshes and bayous with no shade and no wind protection. On the plus side, there's a long stretch on the newly paved 40 Arpent Canal bike path, and beyond that practically no traffic at all. The pace this time was mostly moderate smooth paceline, with a long stop at the store at the end of the road. I knew from the start that I needed recovery more than miles that day, but, you know, whatever. Needless to say, it felt like a long day in the saddle, especially once the temperature got up into the 90s. As I rode back home afterward I was rationing the last precious drops of liquid in my two water bottles, finally sucking them dry a mile or so from home. I drank half a quart of orange juice, and had something to eat while I watched the last few kilometers of the Giro d' Italia, before peeling off the soaking wet lycra, again, and jumping into the shower.

So this morning being Tuesday, I headed out for the regular 40-mile lakefront ride harboring some serious doubts about whether I really wanted to be there. My legs still felt a little stiff from the three-day weekend, and I knew what I needed was an easy recovery ride. Then Matt showed up. On his time trial bike. There were only four or five of us, and I ended  up glued to Matt's wheel all the way out Lakeshore Drive until I finally let him go. At that point the rest of us settled down to a long 19-20 mph slog into a significant headwind all the way out to the casino where some asshole on a mountain bike came riding, intentionally, straight at me on the wrong side of the bike path. We really should have stopped and murdered him when we saw him stopped on the side of the road on our way back. Anyway, Matt waited for us at the Casino, so once again I found myself clinging to his scant draft at 25-29 mph all the way back to Causeway, after which I sat up. By then it was just Charles and me for the commute back. On the plus side, Canal Blvd. is fully open again, so we didn't have to negotiate the traffic and all on Harrison between there and Marconi. I guess the school is closed now, though, so it might not have been as bad today as it has been.

Crashes and Complications

Wednesday's WeMoRi was relatively sane, a key indicator of which is always me actually sprinting at the end. I'd put a TPU inner tube in my front tire after flatting on Tuesday, mostly as an experiment, but also because that tire has a couple of slashes in it, one of which I fixed with a sewn-in boot. I figured the TPU tube might handle all of that a little better than the latex tube I'd just patched. We'll see. At any rate, I'm pretty sure that the 30 grams or so I saved hasn't made me any faster.

Downriver end of the levee closure

I went out Thursday morning to meet the 6 am group at NOMA. The weather seemed particularly nice, and the ride was, as it typical, mostly just steady paceline. Then on Friday we had a pretty good sized group on hand for Friendly Friday. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to ride on Saturday because I was scheduled to help with Tulane's Commencement ceremonies at the football stadium, starting at 3:30 and running until a bit after 8:30. With the Saturday morning forecast promising steady heavy rain, squeezing in a ride just wasn't going to be in the cards. Friday evening the weather was still pretty nice, though, so I took the opportunity to hop on the 'cross bike for a few miles on the levee. I also wanted to see how the work was going where they closed the bike path about a month ago. The storms that had come through the night before had knocked down the temporary fence they'd put up there, but there was absolutely no sign that any actual work had begun, at least at that end of the 2-mile segment. I've noticed that a fair number of riders have been making the detour around the work area via River Road. I haven't tried that yet, but I could see doing it on a weekend day when traffic is presumably a little lighter.

Saturday morning, as predicted, was a complete wash-out. I might have been able to squeeze in an hour or so on the bike before reporting for commencement duty, but it just didn't seem worth it. So at 3:30 I walked over to the stadium where they had a big spread of food laid out for the volunteers, not that I was particularly hungry at 3:30 pm on a day when I'd been mostly sitting around. I headed down to Gate B for 4:15, and was quickly re-assigned to Gate C, which turned out to be nice because there was a nice breeze blowing through the Reily Center breezeway there. I spent about two and a half hours there with a few other volunteers, handing out programs and telling people where the bathrooms were, or where to sit without being in the sun. We eventually ran out of programs shortly before the ceremonies began, at which point I went back to the volunteer room and had something to eat and drink before going back out to the Gate B guest services table. When the ceremonies were about to wrap up I went over to Gate A where all of the ADA people would be exiting through the Athletics building to help direct people. That got to be a bit of a chore because everyone was trying to leave at exactly the same time, so people were sneaking through the ADA exit. I finally walked back home around 8:45, happy that it was over and that there hadn't been any protests or demonstrations, unless you count the airplane that flew overhead for a while towing an Israeli flag.

Sunday morning warmup

So with relatively fresh legs I headed out Sunday morning with the idea of doing what I'd done before - starting out with the Giro group, but looping around on Lakeshore Drive to meet the training race group coming up from NOMA. The first lap of the race got quite fast, and most of the group was chasing a small break until the gap finally closed as we went around the traffic circle at Bayou St. John. Then, coming out of the traffic circle things bunched  up and somebody zigged when somebody else zagged that three riders went down near the middle of the group. Fortunately, I was a few riders behind that and was easily able to skirt the pile-up on the right before turning back to make sure everyone was OK. No broken bones or bikes this time, as far as I know. The front few riders had continued on, so the rest of the group rode relatively easy before turning around out past Franklin to regroup. The rest of the race was a little slower. I guess the crash kind of took the psychological wind out of the psychological sails. Afterward, as I was just following wheels expecting the group to ride out along the lake trail to Kenner, I was surprised that they looped around on Canal Blvd. and did another fairly conversational lap of Lakeshore Drive. Just as well - I still got in the usual 60 miles for the day, including a bit of badly needed intensity.

Mellow Monday - Regrouping on Canal

Mellow Monday had a big group which, as it often does, resulted in a somewhat less mellow pace. This morning, Tuesday, everyone headed home after the lap of Lakeshore Drive except Matt and me. I had a 9 am meeting, so I turned back a little early, at the last outfall canal before the Casino. Fortunately I soon met up with Howard and a few others for the ride back into the wind to Bucktown before commuting back home.

Meanwhile, we finally heard back from the Stoney Point church about using the property to stage the Tour de La road race on June 29, and the news was bad. Somehow that date wasn't available either. So now we are waiting to see if we get a response from the other little church on the route, the one on Sunlight road. It's not the best place for a finish, and we'd have to come up with a new TT route, but at least we wouldn't have to re-do maps, distances, start times, etc. If that doesn't work out in the next day or two, I may opt to switch everything to the Tulane course, assuming we can get the OK from yet another church, this time the Oak Grove baptist church on Lee Road. So many complications this year.

Unexpected Developments

The rides last Thursday and Friday were predictable and routine. Of course, I should have known that some sorts of unexpected developments would soon materialize, if for no other reason than to maintain the cosmic balance and re-center the pendulum. Friday's Friendly Friday ride had a nice turnout and collegial atmosphere, just as it should have. I had recently updated the Tour de LA website and set up the BikeReg registration site, and was just holding off on making announcements and such because we still had not received the official OK from the church where we have staged the road race for the past couple of decades. It always takes weeks to get in touch with the church, and then even more time to get a reply, so this wasn't all that unusual, even though things were running a bit behind this year. I knew it was unlikely there would be a problem, but just to be on the safe side I set online registration to open the following Monday. Well, that evening we found out that the church had another event scheduled for that Saturday and we would not be able to use the venue. This was a huge problem because there is only one other possible staging site on the loop, which is a smaller church with limited parking, that is on the narrowest and bumpiest road on the entire course. Also, the time trial that was to follow the road race would have to be re-routed, and needless to say, we had never contacted the other church and had no idea if it would even be available. There is another course that we have used before for the Tulane race that would work pretty well, but with the race scheduled in barely more than two weeks it would be a real fire drill to make that happen. So it looks like we will have to re-schedule for the last weekend in June, which of course means re-doing all of the other arrangements - the criterium course, website, registration site, USAC permit, calendar postings, etc., etc. At the moment we are waiting to see if the original church will even be available on the 29th. If not, then Plan B goes out the window and we move on to Plan C. So basically, SNAFU. In the meantime, the Tour of Hernando, way up on the northern edge of Mississippi, will host the LAMBRA criterium championship. That will all be the week prior to the, hopefully, rescheduled Tour de La.

Friday

So with all those complications in mind, I headed out Saturday morning to meet the Giro group at Starbucks, and then split off and meet the training race group for a little intensity, followed by some Z2 out to The Wall and back. It was a plan. Well, in yet another unexpected development, when we got to Franklin Avenue we found that they had Lakeshore Drive closed for some festival involving beer and fried chicken, which doesn't really narrow it down at all in New Orleans. That meant that the normal training race route would not be possible. So having no idea if the race would or would not happen, or what route it might use even if it did, I decided to stick with the Giro group. That turned out to be a good ride, although of course somewhat lacking the sharp bits of intensity I'd been seeking.

It had been my plan all along to do the Sunday Giro, so I expected that to be basically a repeat of Saturday, and that's exactly how it all started. As I was having my pre-ride coffee at Starbucks an unfamiliar rider showed up and introduced himself. Josh was from the northshore, and I could not figure out if I'd ever ridden with him before or not. He had a nice new Trek with him. Soon the other riders started filtering in, and we headed out with 12 or 14 riders, I guess. As Giro rides have been lately, the pace was relatively moderate compared to the normal pre-bridge-closure Giro rides, which led to a handful of riders taking long steady pulls at the front, no doubt in an effort to substitute duration for intensity.

On the way back a few people went for the Goodyear Sign sprint, but then a couple of them kept the pressure on as they headed for the turn onto I-510. I found myself in-between, so I put my head down and started closing the gap. Behind me, the rest of the group also realized what was going on and they started to re-group to catch up. There was about to be another unexpected development. 

I was just about to turn onto the on-ramp when I heard the unmistakable sound of carbon and aluminum sliding across asphalt somewhere behind. Matt and Chris, who had been ahead of me didn't hear it and kept going. I hit the brakes and turned back to see three riders on the ground - VJ, Josh, and Jason. Fortunately the cars behind them had all come to a stop, because Jason was sitting in the middle of the left lane and the rest were in the right. I think Josh unexpectedly hit a small heat buckle in the asphalt and lost it, with VJ and Jason right behind. We collected the bikes and bodies and moved to the shoulder to assess the damage, and indeed there was damage. Fortunately, no bones were broken (update - VJ later found he had broken a rib), but the same could not be said about the bikes. Jason escaped with some minor road rash and a twisted brake lever, but Josh's practically brand new bike looked like someone had taken a belt sander to the entire right fork blade, and broken the carbon handlebar to boot. He was pretty scraped up, but otherwise OK. My post-crash analysis leads me to believe that VJ probably body-surfed on top of him and his bike as they went down. Although VJ's injuries were amazingly minor for someone who had landed on the road at 28 mph, it was clear that his bike had taken the brunt of the crash. Both fork blades were broken up near the crown, and the crank spider and chainring were bent and smashed up against the downtube. The front wheel also had at least one broken spoke.

So we were going to need to transport two people and their bikes. Josh called someone in town to come out and pick him up. VJ got in touch with Matt, who was still riding back with Chris, so Matt was going to ride back to his house and then come back to pick him up. The rest of the group eventually continued on, it being Mothers' Day and all, which by the way reminded us of another crash in the same place, also on Mothers' Day a couple of years ago. Anyway, I decided to hang around until Josh and VJ were picked up before cruising back  home solo. We were pretty lucky that the injuries were fairly minor, I think.

Tuesday along the lake

Monday night and into Tuesday morning some big thunderstorms came through with lots of rain and wind, but as expected, most of it had moved off to the east well before my usual 5:45 am ride time. I headed out to NOMA on damp streets and through the occasional puddle wondering if anyone was going to show up for the Tuesday ride. Not unexpectedly, only Charles did, so we rode a lap of a fairly deserted Lakeshore Drive, at which time Charles had to head back home for carpool duty, and I continued on to the lake trail. Fortunately, the bike path was essentially dry thanks to the fact that it hadn't really rained in well over a week. If the levee had not been so dry, there would definitely have been a lot of water still running off across the bike path. As usual, I was not very motivated riding alone, but at least I got the miles in, arriving back home a good ten minutes later than usual thanks to the combination of my own slower pace and the fact that, being alone, I was stopping at all of the red lights on the commute back through town.

Quick Getaways

Friendly Friday

The past week has felt decidedly like summer. Granted, the pre-dawn temperatures haven't yet risen into the mid-80s, but they've been consistently in the mid to upper 70s. Naturally, that has been accompanied by essentially saturated relative humidity. While some riders consider such conditions to be somewhat oppressive, I have to admit that I really don't. For some reason I just seem to function a little better when I'm nice and warm, or hot, as the case may be. The other reason I like this time of year, though, isn't so obvious. The warm morning temperatures mean I don't have to fuss with all sorts of wardrobe decisions in the morning. I can grab whatever summer kit happens to be on top of the pile, throw it on, and therefore make a much quicker getaway. In colder weather I often find myself running late for the early morning rides. Right now, though, I find myself showing up unexpectedly early. Of course, you have to take "early" in its weekday morning ride context, which is to say, "more than 60 seconds before rollout time."

Last Wednesday's WeMoRi was one of those where a 2-man break was already well off the front when I met up with it. I have learned to jump onto those when that happens, rather than wait for the rest of the group, because sometimes the rest of the group is in tatters from crosswinds or something. Jumping onto the tail end of a 2-man break is not as easy as it might sound, since for me it usually means going from 18 mph to 27 mph in a time span of about two seconds, which of course results in four or five minutes of being on the verge of blowing up. Fortunately, this day Eddie and Rob were trading pulls smoothly, and by now they know not to expect me to be disturbing that rotation as I smoothly make my transitions from one wheel to the next as they drop back and slot in ahead of me. I could probably teach an advanced class on tailgunning. Anyway, as we approached the turn from City Park Avenue onto Marconi, Rob peeled off for home as he often does, leaving just Eddie and me. Looking back, I could see that the rest of the group was still a long ways off. Eddie probably considered dropping back for a minute, but if he did, he didn't slow down very much. The ultimate result was that I spent the rest of the ride on his wheel. It was practically like motorpacing, and I guess the rest of the group had already given up the chase. It was a totally sufficient workout for me, despite having never taken a pull.

Thursday's ride was pretty normal. Out on the Lake Trail we picked up Kerry, which was nice because there was a pretty good east wind in our faces on the way back and we needed all the help we could get. For the record, we changed the return route to take Fleur de Lis down to Harrison, which eliminates a fair amount of traffic complication. It would be even better if we could turn onto Canal from Harrison, but they are doing road work on that section and it's pretty much of a traffic nightmare, especially since we get there when people are dropping kids off at the nearby schools. Also, for the record, the cats are still hanging out at the rocks on the lakefront just past Bonnabel like they were back around 2015 when we were doing the same route for the same reason.

Time Trial riders awaiting results and awards.

Friday's Friendly Friday ride had a good turnout, the result of which was a faster than normal pace. By then I was already feeling preoccupied with the upcoming Time Trial that we were putting on that Sunday. Later that afternoon I drove out to the LaPlace TT course with Candy and the dog to freshen up the turnaround paint and make sure there weren't any major road surface surprises. My plan was to mark the 5, 10, and 20 km turnarounds and then continue over the Highway 51 bridge for lunch at Middendorf's. The old bridge, however, was closed for repairs. We ultimately decided to go back to Ruddock and then take I-55 to the restaurant, which worked out OK. I knew they had a whole outdoor seating area that could accommodate people with dogs, but when we got there we found that they had it closed. Fortunately, they also have a nice air-conditioned "porch" area where Charley was welcome. I had some nice catfish. Charley had a lot of hand-fed french fries, which is how we keep him occupied when we eat out like that. On Saturday I went out to Starbucks, leaving with the small Giro group at 7, and then turning back on Lakeshore Drive to meet up with the training race group for 4 laps of the traditional course. That was a pretty good workout even though a small group got off the front. Also, there was a surprise appearance of Kenny B who I assume is getting back in shape for another cycling trip to the continent.

Sunday, I was up at 5 am and on the road around 5:30 to head out to LaPlace to set up for the TT. This is probably around the 15th year we have done the time trial on that course, and in that time about half of the road has been nicely re-paved while the other half has deteriorated. It's not that there are potholes or big cracks or anything, it's just that it's lost its smoothness and so just feels slower than it was when the asphalt was new. I'd brought the big PA system as usual so we could have some music, but ran into a couple of problems. First, we discovered that the fuse had blown. I did a quick non-OSHA approved fix involving a bent paper clip and got it working again, though. Then I tried an adapter I had to go from the USB-C plug on my newer laptop to an audio patch cable to the PA system, which did not work. After I got home I discovered that although the laptop has only USB-C plugs, it also has a regular earphone jack that would have worked perfectly if I'd known it existed! This year was about the lowest turnout we've ever had, with just under 40 registered. I had posted the race numerous times to the LAMBRA and NOBC facebook pages, had emailed to the NOBC Google Group, and had even emailed to all of the 2023 USAC license holders in LAMBRA, and naturally the event had been on the LAMBRA and NOBC calendars for a couple of months. Go figure. Anyway, things went quite smoothly, and there was only one error in the initial results due to me mis-reading a hand-written digit from the finish sheet that gave someone a time about four minutes slower than reality, which of course he immediately noticed. Barrett L, who is now 81 or 82, was there on his old Mercian, and we had three young Juniors on hand as well. Fastest time of the day was a 51:43 by Ben Hall. There was a significant headwind on the way back, so that was an impressive time.  

After we broke everything down and stuffed it all into the Volvo, we decided to go over to the Waffle House since we'd finished up a little too early for the restaurant we usually use. I was pretty hungry by then, so it was fine. With Eddie's sponsorship we came out about $300 ahead for the event, so we didn't actually lose money despite the low turnout. Most of the cost is for the police ($600) and insurance.

This morning I rode the usual WeMoRi, or at least that part of it that I normally ride. Rob and JP came past with a gap, so I slipped in behind them, but the group, what was left of it, closed it down eventually. After the Backdraft sprint a few riders split off the front and for some reason nobody left in the group seemed interested in chasing. Eventually, I think it all came pretty much back together, though. When the early sprint sagged as a couple of riders opened a gap about 400 meters from the finish, Eddie came flying past on the left, which I had been fully expecting, but at the time I was on the wrong side of the paceline, so I just followed wheels. It was a good workout anyway.