Up the River in Natchez

Thursday's lakefront ride. The group is getting larger.

It was another 300 mile week for me, which wasn't quite as taxing as one might imagine. The weekday rides, aside from being mostly hot and humid, seemed a little faster than usual but not significantly harder, probably due to the extra people who always seem to come out of the woodwork this time of year. When there are more than just a handful of riders in the paceline, I sometimes go miles before finally coming to the front to take a pull. For me, sitting in a paceline behind four or five riders can easily drop my heart rate down to 120 bpm or even lower, even at 27 mph. If it's like that for too long I'll sometimes slide over into the wind a bit, especially if I'm on the back. Otherwise, I'm always aware of larger riders behind me and the fact that they may not be getting much of a draft, and are probably back there cursing me every time I put my hands on the drops.

Anyway, Friendly Friday's ride had a quite a big turnout, as had Thursday's ride, and of course that made it relatively fast. The whole time, however, I was thinking about the next day's Natchez ride that I'd signed up for. Depending on who shows up for Natchez, the front group can get pretty competitive, and so I was trying to be careful not to blow up my legs too much.

Unlike last year, when I had driven up to Natchez on Friday evening, this year I decided to just get up early and drive up on Saturday morning. By "early" I mean 4:00 am. I decided to take the slightly longer, but easier route, staying on I-55 all the way up to US 84, so I'd be on nice 4-lane the whole way. The shortcut via US 98, that I often take, involves a long stretch on a 2-lane highway that can be either nice and smooth or frustrating, depending on how many local farmers you get stuck behind. Anyway, I arrived in Natchez just a bit after 7 am as planned. The organizers were still busy setting up the tents and registration table and all, so it was a little while before I actually picked up my packet. This event doesn't keep track of times or anything, so there aren't any numbers to pin on or stickers to affix or anything. My sense was that turnout was fairly low this year, for reasons I cannot fathom.

Natchez Trace

The weather was as good as it gets for early June. When I'd left New Orleans at 4 am the temperature there was around 80°F. By the time I got to Natchez it was more like 69° with much, much lower humidity, and the sky was clear and blue. There was a light wind that seemed to be coming more or less from the north, but I knew we wouldn't feel much of it since the entire route is lined with trees and dense forest. As usual, I was having lots of flashbacks from all of the Natchez Classic Stage Races I'd done there, starting way back in the mid-80s. Interestingly, this ride attracts a number of riders who you might consider to be semi-retired bike racers who also have long histories of racing there. I had a chance to chat with Curtis a few times before and after the ride about what can be done to increase turnout and eventually incorporate a criterium. I could be wrong, but I think that providing times and publishing the "results" might make it feel more like a challenge and pull in more riders.

So we started out with a neutral section from the river to the Natchez Trace, and fairly quickly fell into a paceline, at least up near the front. The Trace can be kind of deceptive because the road is graded and therefore has long sections that are just 1-3% but look like they're almost flat. You find yourself wondering why it seems harder than it should now and then. Although the pace was what I would consider moderate - figure 22-23 mph on the flat - we were apparently shedding riders pretty quickly. By the time we turned off of the Trace onto 553, which was 12 or 13 miles into the ride, we were already down to seven, including other old-timers like Frank, Heath, and Trey. Last year the pace seemed a bit faster, especially after we made the turnaround. 

This year I think the pace was a little more steady, at least until the last ten miles. We were on the way back, maybe 48 miles into the 62 mile ride, when Frank started to apply a little pressure going up one of the longer uphill stretches. It wasn't enough to put anyone off the back or anything, but I was starting to sense some competition creeping into our nice collegial ride.

Well, my instincts were right, and not long after that one of the guys launched a full-out attack down the left side that required a significant effort to close down. By then the dye had been cast, and what followed was a series of short attacks and chases, during which I think we lost one rider. We were still a few miles from the end of the Trace when another one of those took a while to close. As soon as it was all back together, Frank's race instinct took over and he launched another solo attack at just the right time when everyone was hoping for a bit of recovery. That put him maybe 15 or 20 seconds up the road before a little paceline formed to chase. At that point I was starting to feel the miles on the little climbs so decided to just tailgun and watch the show from the back. I guess we were less than a mile from the end of the Trace when Frank must have eased up a bit and the gap came down quickly, with everyone re-grouping as we exited the Trace. From there it's more of a casual commute through town to get back to the river.

Afterward there was cold Coke (or other Coke products) along with a nice lunch and live music. I sat there for a while, consuming a couple of sandwiches and telling old racing stories of questionable veracity before finally grabbing a cold Coke for the road and wandering back to the parking lot. It was still much cooler than the weather in New Orleans, so hanging around had been quite pleasant. I took the short route home down Highway 61 through Baton Rouge, which was quite smooth and relaxing, until of course I got to the I-10 raceway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. As usual, traffic came to a standstill for a little while over the Spillway where of course there had been a crash. The speed limit there is, I think, 60 mph. The average actual speed, however, is more like 75, and of course people drive like f'ing idiots there because they know the state troopers aren't going to risk their own lives on that elevated stretch by trying to pull anyone over. They just wait for the inevitable 911 call, I guess. It's only a matter of time before they install some sort of automated ticketing system there.

So back at home I had to decide what to do about Sunday. I needed to go out and mark the course for the Tour de La that will be June 29-30, so I decided to do the regular northshore Talisheek ride starting at 7 am from Mandeville. That went nicely and didn't even feel very hot until the last twenty miles or so. In fact, I hadn't even gone through one water bottle when we stopped at the store 42 miles into the 55 mile ride, where I got a can of Coke. 

After that ride I threw the bike back in the car and headed north to the road course that is somewhere around Zona, LA. That was practically an hour's drive from Mandeville, but on the plus side, I arrived at the church right when the last of the congregation was leaving, so I was able to park in the shade of the tree. Then I set the Garmin temporarily to Metric so I could mark the 200 meter mark and the 1 km mark. That done. I marked the start of the Time Trial right at the north end of the parking lot, then paced off 100 paces and marked the finish for the out-and-back 3-mile course. Then I paced back 50 paces and marked my measurement point. From there I started my Garmin again and rode 1.5 miles  up the road to mark the turnaround, then continued around the course marking all of the five turns on the course. There was hardly any traffic as I rode the 17 mile loop that we had used a few years back for a couple of Tulane collegiate races. I got back to the car kind of hot and thirsty, which was no surprise. That put me just over 300 miles for the week.