Variety

Sunday on the northshore

The Saturday Giro over a week ago was hampered by yet another closure of the Seabrook bridge, and although it was otherwise a prefectly acceptable ride, I decided to venture across the lake the following day for a little variety. There was a small group planning on riding the old "Mailman" route, and although I knew it wouldn't be a fast ride, at least a lot of it would be in the shade since it started from the Mandeville trailhead of the Tammany Trace. So that was a fairly easy 69 mile ride to finish off a 350 mile week. 

Last week was more or less routine, except for a ride over in Mississippi on Sunday. On Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual, but there was a 3-rider break that was way off the front. I looked back and couldn't even see a chase group, so I hopped onto the back hoping for the best. After a few miles I realized that the group, composed of Lisa, Rob, and Maurizio, would probably soon be just Maurizio. Indeed, as we approached the Wisner overpass, Lisa looked over and told me she would be turning off to go home. I figured that Rob would be leaving for home at the turn onto Marconi, and for some reason I just didn't feel up to the challenge of hanging onto Maurizio's scant draft after that, so I eased up, hoping that the group was somewhere behind me. It took forever for them to catch me, which wasn't surprising because there were only a few of them left, none of which obviously had any interest in chasing. Maybe I should have stuck with Maurizio.

Friendly Friday has its usual good-sized group, and as has been the case of late, it did get pretty fast for a while. As we rounded the Armory loop at the eastern end of Lakeshore Drive, Jess launched a big water bottle when she hit that bump right after the bridge traffic merges onto Lakeshore Drive. That was also where the speed ramped up. Luckily, the water bottle seemed to stay off to the left, so that was good. After the ride she went back to look for it, but it was gone. Later that day I went over to Ochsner for a routine checkup which was, well, routine. BP was 110/80 and labs looked pretty much like they have for the past couple of years, so status quo for now.

On Saturday was the usual Giro, this time with a pretty good-sized group that included Connor. I wasn't feeling too hot from the start. After coming down from the overpass onto Hayne, the riders on the front put the hammer down, as usual. As sometimes happens, I was immediately in the red as the speed was stuck at around 28 mph and my heart rate was stuck in the upper 150s. After a couple of miles I decided I needed a little recovery and dropped off the back. Charles did the same a minute later, so we both took the Bullard shortcut. That usually cuts off a minute or two. Considering how fast the group was going, and how relatively slowly we were going, I was a little worried that we might miss them when we got to Chef Highway, but when we got there we couldn't even see them. It was a couple more miles before they finally caught us and we easily merged back into the group.

Sunday was a planned ride from the ballpark in Mississippi at 6:30 am. On Friday evening I got a call from Dylan and Josiah saying that they had about five Tulane riders who wanted to go, so we made arrangements for me to pick a couple of them up on Broadway so we could all meet at HQ. Amazingly everyone was on time, and after mounting three bikes on the roof we headed for I-10, arriving just a few minutes after 6:00 am. Jess arrived a couple of minutes later, so from Tulane we had Dylan, Josiah, Jess, Liam, Daniel, and Jack. The latter three were new Tulane riders, but Liam and Daniel had solid road experience, so no worries there. Jack was on his own bike with clip-on aero bars, wearing running shoes with toe clips, and looked pretty unsteady from the start, so I knew he was going to be seriously challenged sticking with the 12-person group we had on hand. Indeed, he was off the back early, so we waited for him at a couple of intersections. I eventually told the others I'd drop back and keep track of him so they wouldn't have to worry about him, and so he wouldn't get lost and end up calling us from somewhere in Alabama. We were probably 20 minutes behind the group when we got to the store stop at 49 miles, but at least everyone waited a while longer so he could get something to drink before heading out again. Right after we left the store the front of the group basically attacked and a big gap opened, and so I was in full chase mode for a few miles before catching. Of course, I knew Jack wouldn't be able to handle that, so when we got to the next intersection I turned back to pick him up. He was doing OK up to about 16 mph on the flat, but would drop off immediately on every climb, so I spent a lot of time enjoying the scenery and looking over my shoulder to make sure he was still there. So although it was almost 70 miles, most of it was kind of on-the-bike recovery for me. No complaints, though. We were five or ten miles from the finish when Jess came past in her car! She had gone back to look for another water bottle that had ejected itself from her bike. I don't know if she found it. So that made for a 294 mile week for me, although with definitely less intensity than the prior week. That left me with enough energy for a few hours of yardwork in the afternoon that unexpectedly didn't seem to take too much of a toll on my lower back.

This morning's Mellow Monday ride had a nice turnout that included some of the Tulane riders who had done the Mississippi ride the prior day. Three of them were planning on making it a true recovery ride, which they did, but not everyone in the group was on the same page, so things split up on the way out to the armory, so there was a group of four or five well up the road. Once we picked up a little tailwind on the way back down Lakeshore Drive, a couple of us rolled away from what was left of the main group, but by then the gap to the front group was way too large to have any hope of closing. We turned around a few blocks early on Canal to rejoin the group, though. Not much rain in the forecast until around the weekend. The tropical disturbance that was heading into the Caribbean doesn't currently look like it will amount to much, and there doesn't seem to be anything else that's threatening to get organized out in the Atlantic, so that's good news as we approach the 20th anniversary of Katrina on the 29th.