Back to Auburn

None of our riders in this, but definitely my favorite photo from the criterium.

I had not really been looking forward to last weekend's Auburn Cycling Classic. Well, actually, I had been looking forward to it until I got sick on on the 12th, ten days before the date. Then, after two days off the bike, followed by a week of miserable weather and low-key recovery rides, I had been holding out a little hope that I might be at least slightly competitive for the road race. However, I was not. The cold that had settled in my chest was -- still is -- just sitting there at some low level of disability rendering me unwilling or unable to put down any significant level of intensity for any significant amount of time.  To make matters worse, the forecast for the weekend in Auburn was calling for sub-freezing temperatures in the mornings. Because of that, though, the organizers changed things up and moved the start times for the first races up to around 10 am, which made a huge difference temperature-wise, but of course it was still going to be cold, at least by my debilitated standards.

This year we had four riders going to the race, and all indications were that the total race turnout would be higher than it had been for the past few years. We couldn't leave New Orleans until late afternoon, which turned into early evening, but at least it is a fairly easy six-hour drive. I drove up with Mack in one minivan, and Dylan and Josiah drove up in the other. Jess drove up separately with Connor. I guess we arrived a the Best Western hotel a little before midnight, but since we didn't have to leave for the Road Race until around 9 am, it wasn't a problem.

Jess at the back of her group in the road race

The road race was on a course I hadn't ridden before. Looking at the route map on Strava, there was s significant 1-mile climb about half-way around the 13-mile loop. It was broken into two parts, with a brief downhill in-between, but still showed some gradients in the 7-10% range. I had put an 11-28 cassette on the bike, which I figured could get me up the short kickers without having to go to the small ring. However, considering the condition of my lungs, and my personal aversion to coming down with pneumonia, I was pretty sure I'd have to let the pack go as soon as it got steep. In order to move the initial start time back by a couple of hours, they had grouped a lot of categories together that would otherwise have been separate. For me, than meant a fairly large 35+ group with people who young enough to be my grandchildren. But as seems to happen every year at this race, the masters riders entries were heavily skewed in the older direction, with the largest contingent being 50+. In other categories, the Women were all lumped together, so everything from Cat. 1 to Collegiate Cat. C in the same field. Jess was riding Cat. C, as it was her first ever collegiate race. Likewise Mack. Dylan and Josiah were both riding the Cat. D race, along with USAC Cat. 5 riders.

Peter and me a few miles before catching the little group ahead of us. Yeah, I was overdressed.

I guess the temperature was in the mid-40s and sunny by the time the masters race started. Some riders were wearing essentially summer kit, but of course, in my condition, I was afraid of getting cold, so I had on long bibs, long-sleeve base layer, long-sleeve jersey, and full-finger gloves. At least I was never cold! My road race started out quite fast, and as it did, I gradually slid farther and farther back in the field, all the while trying to minimize the lung damage. When we made the right turn at around 7 miles to begin the 1-mile uphill section, I was already at the back. I knew I shouldn't try to push it there, and planned to just let the group go and ride at whatever pace would minimize heavy breathing. The climb, which really turned out to be two climbs, wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected, and in retrospect I probably could have made the effort to stay with the group without doing too much damage. But I didn't. Up ahead, I could see a few riders dropping off from the group along the way, and soon after coming over the steepest section I came up on my friend Peter Stephens. We got together and started trading pulls. Up ahead we could see another group of three coming together, and after a moderate-level effort, we caught them five or six miles later. So we had a nice 5-man paceline the rest of the ride, which was perfect for me. I actually enjoyed the next three times up the climb. When we got close to the finish I was a little surprised that everyone in the group, except me, decided to sprint it out. I mean, we were sprinting for something like 17th place in the 50+ group and probably 30th overall. Jess was 4th in her road race. Dylan and Josiah both ended up off the back from the main group, but not too bad. Mack, I think finished, although they listed her as DNF, so maybe she just did one of the two laps. I'm sure it was a good learning experience for everyone. 

The time trial was at 4:30 pm, and it was starting to get pretty cold by then. Jess won her Cat. C time trial, and Dylan and Josian were 6th and 7th in theirs, so that was fine. That evening we all got together for pizza at Little Italy near campus, which was great. Again, we didn't have an early wake-up for the next morning, which was also great.

Sunday's criterium were on the NCAT Test Track, a big 1.7 mile oval. We had raced there a few years ago, and I remembered that there had been a couple of big crashes, so everyone got a little warning to be careful about riders taking weird lines through the curves. I was still feeling the damage from Saturday's road race, and since the masters race would be after all of the collegiate ones, I wasn't planning on riding at all. Mack decided not to ride the criterium. 

Like an oversized velodrome

Because of the combined categories, one of the races must have had a 50-rider field, which was kind of great. Jess' women's race went pretty well, and although she finished I guess ten down overall, it turned out to be first place in the Cat. C, so another podium for her. In the Cat. D / Cat. 5 race, Dylan was doing a great job with positioning. Josiah was hanging out nearer the back, which eventually caused him to get gapped off a few laps before the finish. With I think two laps to go, the pack came by and Dylan wasn't there. Then some stragglers who said there had been a crash. It was just about exactly where there had been a crash a few years back when we sent one of our riders to the hospital. The next time around Josiah stopped when he saw that Dylan had crashed, and they both eventually cruised in. I was glad to find that Dylan wasn't the rider who had broken his arm, but he definitely had quite a bit or road rash. Someone a couple of bikes up had swerved to avoid a reflector or something on the inside of the turn, which took out the next rider's wheel, so Dylan rode right into that and went over the bars. Anyway, I was glad there was not a trip to the hospital. After getting him patched up, we headed back home. As expected, we ran into some heavy rain around sundown as we neared Mobile, making the last three hours of driving rather stressful. Even so, I was probably back at home by 8 pm.

From Good to Bad

Mother Nature always seems to have a way of balancing things out so the averages remain average despite the magnitudes of the highs and lows. And so it has been the past few weeks since the snow Armageddon. Before we knew what hit us, we'd gone from sub-freezing winter to balmy springtime. Of course those of us experienced in the local weather patterns, or lack of same, knew that the event was little more than just another "fools springtime." It is, after all, February. 

On the plus side, we had a quite a nice stretch of unseasonably warm mornings. Granted, they were often interspersed with rain, or fog, or both, but really, February beggars cannot be choosers, and it was all oh so much better than three weeks of bitter cold and double-digit north winds.

It was quite nice to be able to, at least temporarily, ditch the thermal undergarments and venture out to the local group rides in summer kit. There were a couple of weekends when I am pretty sure everybody with a bicycle logged Strava miles. Also, with the Superbowl in town, and my office being on Poydras Street which was tented and barricaded a week in advance of the event, I was working from home the entire week of February 3-7, and then again on the 10th. That's a double-edged sword, of course, because it means that every day the wife walks in and asks, "What do you want to do about lunch?' which really means, "Let's go to a restaurant and spend some money." 

I had started the month of February off well, with a fairly easy Giro Ride, augmented by some additional miles on the levee, leaving me with a nice 92 mile day. Thanks to the stretch of relatively nice riding weather, I was feeling good about having put in a couple of 280-mile weeks back-to-back after having spent so many days off the bike because of the snow and ice that had preceeded those weeks. I was thinking that the days lost to the snow and ice hadn't put much of a dent in my training.

Last Saturday we had a small group of Tulane riders on hand for a little northshore ride. The weather would be great temperature-wise, but there were dense fog advisories all over the place the evening before. Sure enough, when we got to the Causeway that morning it was "right lane only and 35 mph" all the way across the lake. I've seen it worse, but I was glad that it was controlled. Up in Abita Springs the fog wasn't an issue, and six of us headed out a little late for a planned 58-mile ride. I knew that it would be a challenge for two of our group, and when they dropped off the back about ten miles into the ride, I knew it would be an easy day for me. After another mile or two I looked back and couldn't even see them, so I told the others to go ahead and swung back around to see what happened. I found them stopped on the side of the road where one of them was nursing a side stitch. We got going again, but for the rest of the ride I was trying to keep the speed low and the climbs easy. We stopped a number of times, and the average speed was only 15 mph, but they both made it. 

The next day was a very foggy Giro Ride. It was a smallish group, so the pace was fairly slow. The week's mileage was OK, but for me there had been little in the way of intensity. I figured I could make up for that the following week.  I was sadly mistaken about that.

The next Monday we had a nice Mellow Monday ride, and then on Tuesday the usual ride out to the Casino and back. I was feeling a little something in my throat. By that night I had a full-on sore throat and knew I was about to come down with a cold. I started popping zinc tablets and hoping for the best. I didn't sleep at all that night and so did not even consider riding on Wednesday. As the cold moved down from my head to my chest, I also had to skip riding Thursday and Friday. By Saturday I was feeling a little better, but still had a lot of chest congestion. The weather was still fairly warm, so I decided to go ahead and ride out to Starbucks to meet the Giro group, but with a plan to turn back at the end of Lakeshore Drive before things got out of the warmup stage. Progress from there has been painfully slow. I went out to the Sunday Giro, but it was very windy and there was only a small group on hand. As soon as we got the Hayne, there was the usual acceleration, and I was quickly gapped. I put in a brief effort until I started coughing and decided that I'd best try to live and fight another day. Charles, who had also been under the weather, was also gapped off, so we rode together to the end of Hayne and turned back. I was clearly not yet ready for any hard efforts.

So now it's another Monday, and a big cold front came through last night. It was barely above 40° this morning, but the real problem was the 20 mph north wind. Josiah and a new Tulane rider were planning on doing the Mellow Monday ride. Still feeling some lung congestion, I decided to layer up underneath my old winter riding jacket, which is pretty much of a parachute, but is also very warm and roomy. I wasn't planning on riding hard. I was almost to City Park, riding straight into the wind the whole way, when I finally looked at the time and realized I was going to be a minute or two late. Turned into City Park and could see a tail light way in the distance. That was when Charles, who was also running late, came up alongside and we picked up  the pace a bit, thinking we would easily catch whoever was up there while they were still in warm-up mode. We went around the next turn and the light was gone. We looked at each other and figured it must have been someone else, and that we had been the only ones to show up, which was not hard to believe under the circumstances. Lakeshore Drive was brutal. It was a NE wind, and we were struggling to maintain 14 or 15 mph all the way to the Armory. Then, just as we started on the way back, we found Josiah and the new rider coming the other way. They turned around and joined us for the remainder of the ride. It's looking like freezing cold mornings for the next few days. I'm scheduled to go up to Auburn for a collegiate race Saturday and Sunday, and I'm not too happy about the forecast for that with lows in the 30s and highs in the 50s. Saturday is supposed to be cloudy and Sunday morning could have some rain, but it's still pretty early to put too much stock in the forecast, so ... fingers crossed.

I did at least get the Tour de La event permit done, and should be able to finish up the one for the Time Trial tonight.