Long Lake Loop, and another hurricane

Somewhere between Pontchatoula and LaPlace on Sunday

Oh crap, I'm late! I jumped out of bed early Sunday morning a full half hour later than I should have. Somehow in my half-asleep head I was thinking the start was at 7 am rather than 6 am. I had made a last-minute decision (possibly not my finest) to join a group in Mandeville for a circumnavigation of Lake Pontchartrain at 6:00 am. I was nearly 5:30 when I hit the road for the drive to the Mandeville trailhead with Google Maps predicting an arrival time of 5:57, so no coffee, tires not fully aired up, no electrolyte in the bottle, etc.

The prior days had all been pretty normal riding-wise, and I had even ridden the Saturday Giro the day before, and a rather fast Friendly Friday ride the day before that, so I was not exactly well prepared for a 150-mile day on the bike, and I knew it. Carly had been in town with a friend, and so I'd spent some time earlier in the week getting a couple of the team bikes in shape since they had both been somewhat cannibalized and needed chains, pedals, wheels, tape, front derailleur, etc.

On Friday we had a pretty big turnout, which has been the status quo lately for the 6 am Friendly Friday ride. Of course, a big turnout can mean only one thing, which is that the ride is going to get fast, which it did. On the other hand, a big group also means lots of hiding places for wheelsuckers like me, so it kind of balances out.

Saturday Giro turning onto Hayne

By Saturday I was still on the fence about doing the ride around the lake. It isn't a particularly scenic ride, and it's dead flat, and by dead flat I mean 147 miles with all of 562 feet of elevation. Since I was planning on doing Six Gap the following weekend, I did not want a ride that was going to turn into a race. I also wanted to see how I felt after the Giro before making a decision.

The Saturday Giro had a solid turnout, but a few of the usual instigators were missing, which I took to be a good sign. Of course the ride had its fast segments, but in general, on average, more or less, it wasn't super-fast, so I arrived back home none the worse for wear, and started to seriously consider doing the long loop around the lake. I got some intel from Charles on the route and expected participants and expected pace, and taking all of that into account figured it would be mainly Zone 2 pace. Granted, 7 hours of Zone 2, but Zone 2 nonetheless. So late on Saturday I sent an "I'm in" message to Charles and put the Garmin and tail light on the charger.

So Sunday morning I'm in fire drill mode to get to the start on time. I pumped a bit of air into the rear tire but not the front, grabbed my bag, Garmin, and light, and threw them into the rental Toyota (the Volvo was still in the shop for body work) and took off for the northshore. Most of the route is on the Causeway, and you just can't really speed there because there is a whole separate police force for that bridge, and they are always out monitoring the speed and writing tickets. As predicted, I arrived with five minutes to spare, pulled the bike out, stuffed some Hammergel and money in my pockets and, somewhat amazingly, was more or less ready to go when the 13-rider group rolled out. I was already missing my morning coffee, had nothing but water in my bottles, didn't have a headlight (it was still pitch dark), and generally felt a little ragged.

Fortunately, the pace was nice and moderate as we got to Highway 22 for the first leg to Pontchatoula, with everyone riding a double paceline at 21-22 mph with a nice little tailwind. Michael J and Steve and a couple others seemed to be doing much of the work on the front, with the rest taking shorter pulls as needed. The first store stop was in LaPlace, at about 50 miles. The morning had been so cool and the pace so moderate that I don't think many of us had gone through very much water. That would change, of course. I knew that once we got through LaPlace and started heading west we would have a headwind pretty much all the way to Fort Pike, and the temperature would be climbing toward the low 90s the whole time. After making the left turn at LaPlace we stayed on the river road through the Spillway before getting onto the levee bike path. Then, when we got to LaRose and had to drop back down onto River Road to go around the levee construction zone, I pinch-flatted my front wheel - the one I hadn't pumped up that morning. That was a quick inner tube change, but somehow I didn't get the tire fully inflated. It felt good enough, though, so we took off again. I would later get home and discover I'd ridden the rest of the ride with maybe 25 psi in that tire. Near New Orleans a few riders turned off, having planned on doing just the first part of the loop. Jenn, one of the Tulane riders, had said she was going to do the same, but ultimately decided to hang on for the full distance, which ultimately did not seem to be a problem for her at all.

My flat.

We dropped down into New Orleans at Oak Street and stopped at Canseco's for our second stop at 85 miles, then continued down Carrollton toward Fontainbleau. As we approached S. Claiborne I spotted Candy who had been watching our progress with Garmin LiveTrack and walked over to say hello. We then took Fontainebleau to Vendome to Norman Francis to Moss to Grand Route St. John to Gentilly Blvd. which put us on 90 all the way out to Fort Pike. Along the way we stopped again at the gas station at Industrial Parkway, which was around mile 102. By then it was getting pretty hot and people were getting pretty tired, so that was a good 15-minute stop. I'd been topping off my bottles with Gatorade since the first stop, and although I had a big Payday bar in my pocket in case of bonk, I never needed it, relying instead of the full flask of Hammergel I had, along with the occasional cold Coke.

The flat from hell

The long stretch on Highway 90 out to the Rigolets bridge was into a decent headwind, and by then the miles were starting to tell on the group. Every time the speed crept up above 21 or so, gaps would open up and we would ease up to regroup. Of course, when that starts to happen it's kind of like putting a band-aid on a snake bite, so the speed got a little erratic. Somewhere out there near Fort Pike we lost Mary Beth. Our last stop was at a gas station on Old Spanish Trail at I-10 where we stopped for quite a while. As we rolled out from there Steven punctured, which started a long flat tire repair episode that took us a good half hour to resolve. The puncture should have sealed itself (he rides tubeless) but didn't, so he first put in a plug. It was a good try, but it continued to leak despite trying all of the tricks of spinning the tire, holding a finger over the leak, etc. I think we went through two CO2 cartridges before deciding we were going to have to put a tube in it. Upon removing the tire we found that most of the sealant had dried up, which explained why it kept leaking. Around that time Mary Beth, who had been on her own since a bit before Fort Pike, caught up to us. Then, the tube didn't have a long enough stem, but luckily I had a valve-extender in my bag, so we finally got rolling again with 125 miles on the odometer, running into Kenny B (in his car) as we negotiated Slidell traffic. At this point I guess some of the northshore guys could smell the barn and started pushing the pace and accelerating out of turns that the rest of us didn't expect, and almost losing a few of us along the way. Eventually we got back onto the Tammany Trace where things settled down to something in the 22 mph range as we negotiated the yellow posts and unending stop signs. 

So we finally rolled back into the Mandeville Trailhead at around 147 miles with my Garmin battery almost dead (I think the LiveTrack and Varia tail light take a toll on battery life), at which point Joe Paul produced an ice chest full of much appreciated cold drinks. After cooling down a bit, I threw everything back into the car, arriving back home mid-afternoon. So it was a good ride for me in that I was able to avoid making any long hard efforts, as planned, and doing no damage that shouldn't require more than a couple of days of recovery.

So now we have Tropical Storm Helene that will soon be a Hurricane, definitely a major one, and quite possibly up into Category 4 territory, before it makes landfall on Thursday night somewhere in the Florida panhandle, if the models are right, which they often aren't. We are planning on driving  up to Dahlonega for Six Gap on Saturday, and hoping that the predicted timing holds and the storm is way up in Indiana by Saturday morning. Could be some rain for Six Gap, but hopefully not anything more. On Monday afternoon I got a call that the car was ready, so I went home early so I could pick it up and return the rental car and shell out about $1,200 between the deductible and the discounted rental. Next up is $3,500 in roof repairs.

Matt, Tuesday morning on the Lake Trail

This morning's Tuesday ride picked up a nice group along Marconi, all of which turned off at the end of Lakeshore Drive except Matt and me. I was still feeling Sunday's ride in my legs, but fortunately once it was just the two of us on the lake trail the pace wasn't super fast going out. We came back at just a conversational pace, which was great for me, actually. Hoping to make it out for the TUCA team ride this evening at 5:30.