Northbeast Classic Weekend

WeMoRi finished; sun still not above the horizon

The annual arrival of Daylight Saving Time is celebrated by some and despised by others. I fall solidly in the latter category. For those of us who need to get our riding in before work, it means a whole lot more miles ridden in the dark, which inevitably leads to more unexpected interactions with New Orleans road surfaces and the copious amounts of debris thereupon. In other words, more punctures, and an increased risk of plowing into a pothole or chunk of broken concrete or whatever.

Wednesday morning I went out in the above mentioned darkness to meet the WeMoRi. The temperature was in the mid-50s and the wind was light, which made for a fast but fun ride. After the official finish at the invisible finish line at Marconi, we did our usual cool-down out-and-back on Canal Blvd. before turning back onto Lakeshore Drive. The sun had still not crept over the horizon, but at least the pollution and haze made for a colorful pre-dawn horizon.

Thursday's ride was warmer, but with a bit of a south wind. There was a nice little group at the 6 am start, but as usual, most turned back for home by the end of the Lakeshore Drive segment, leaving just a few of us for the ride out west along the lake. We kept the pressure on all the way out, then took a little break on the way back before gradually getting back up to speed. It was OK.

Friday was road trip day, this time up to the collegiate race weekend at Piedmont University. As usual, a couple of riders bailed for one reason or another, but we still had seven, including me, by the time we rolled out around 9:45 am, I think. I had been kind of dreading this race because the weather forecast had originally looked really bad, but by Friday things had improved considerably, and it was looking like the Saturday road races and time trial would be fine. The only question was whether the approaching line of storms would go through overnight and be gone by the time the Sunday morning criteriums started.

I was registered for the Masters race, of course. I had inadvertantly registered for 50+ because I hadn't realized they also had a 60+, but it didn't really matter. I didn't have any plans or goals other than some solid training. We had a big field of over 40 riders for this one, so I thought it would be easy to just sit in the pack. That turned out to have been a little optimistic. After about a mile the pace shot up dramatically. I think our first lap average speed was in the 28+ mph range. I was doing OK sitting in the big draft of such a large group, but I didn't feel sufficiently motivated to maintain even that level of effort for the full 50+ mile race. The course was mainly just low rolling hills, but with a few short but steep little climbs on the back side. Somewhere around the end of the third lap I decided to pull the plug and eliminate the stress involved in staying with the group. Being at the back of a 40+ rider group while flying down a hill at 40 mph when you can't even see the front of the group, much less the road ahead, is indeed a little stressful. I still kept the pressure on, so my effort level just dropped a little bit, although my average speed probably dropped from 26 mph to 22 mph. With an average heart rate of 146, which for me is much higher than, for example, a typical Giro Ride, I felt like it was a good and much-needed workout. The other riders in the group, aside from Jess who had a very good race, all came off the backs of their respective groups fairly early. For a couple of them, it was their first ever race, so that was no surprise, and for a couple others, they were racing in a combined Collegiate B/C category, having both just upgraded from Category D. The Cat. B riders definitely put the hurt on the Cat. C riders in that one.

The Time Trial started and finished at the Road Race start line, but it went out one way, turned around, came back past the start/finish, and continued to another turnaround before finally finishing at the start/finish. Jess was the first rider to go off. Well, unfortunately, someone had stolen the traffic cones that the promoter had placed at the second turnaround, so when the turnaround marshal went out there he or she couldn't find the turnaround. Jess had the route on her Garmin and realized she must have passed the turnaround just as she was flying down a hill at 30 mph. She eventually turned around, but at any rate the first fifteen or so riders, all women, all did different distances. They ended up just counting the times for the first out-and-back segment.

That evening we had a really nice dinner at an Italian restaurant in Cornnelia, near where Sunday's criterium would be held. As expected, the storms rolled through in the middle of the night, and by 6 am the rain had stopped. They had pushed back the start time of the first race from 8 to 9 am, which worked out quite well. By the time Jess' criterium started, the road was just a little damp and the sun was starting to peek out from behind the clouds. As often happens with criteriums, a lot of the lower category riders didn't show up, so Jess' race had just 7 or 8 riders, I think. Their group split a few laps in, with a 2-rider break, then Jess, then the rest. Eventually one other rider caught up to Jess, but she dropped her on the final lap. Our other riders in the Cat. D and Cat. B/C races all came off the back fairly quickly, but finished in good spirits and with all the skin they had started with, so it was a successful confidence booster. Dylan didn't race because he was clearly coming down with a cold by Sunday morning. As usual I didn't enter the masters criterium since that would have kept us there three additional hours. All-in-all it was fun weekend and although I would have liked to have gotten in some riding on Sunday, I think the sustained intensity from Saturday more than made up for it.

We had a long and uneventful drive back, arriving around 6:40 pm.