Ride Your Age

Apryl's Birthday Ride, My Almost Birthday Ride #1

An old cycling tradition, one that, as most do, challenges reality, is to ride your age in miles, or kilometers, or centimeters on your birthday. Of course the idea of increasing the mileage as you age eventually becomes problematic for obvious reasons. Complicating the situation is whether or not you actually have the time to do that on the appointed day. As I was contemplating this conundrum a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the GCBC was planning a 73-mile President's Birthday Ride out of Waveland, conveniently scheduled for the Saturday before my birthday, and featuring just about the perfect mileage. So, throwing caution to the wind, I signed up. A week later, Dustin and some of the Tulane riders started planning on a 72 mile ride out of Abita Springs for the Sunday before my birthday. So Plan B, I guess.

Thursday morning on the lakefront

As is typical this time of year, last week's rides were impacted a bit by the weather. In this case, it wasn't the temperature, which was mostly unseasonably warm, it was the fog, which was seasonably thick. Although I had severe fog alerts on my phone for three consecutive mornings, the only really significant fog was on Thursday, and even that wasn't very bad, just requiring me to stash my fogged-up glasses in my pocket for the first hour. Then on Friday it rained early, so assuming that nobody would show up for Friendly Friday (which turned out to have been a bad assumption), I instead went out a little later to the levee and met up with the Tulane coffee ride. The forecast for the weekend was looking pretty great, so with two 70+ mile rides on my dance card, I welcomed the easier ride that day.

I headed out solo to Waveland Saturday morning at the conviently late hour of 6:30 to make the 8:00 am ride start at Buccaneer State Park. I arrived pretty early anyway, and was immediately greeted by a hourde of midges, aka "No Seeums."  I'm still itching from at least fifty little bites on my arms and legs despite having sprayed Off on them soon after arriving. Otherwise, though, the weather was practically perfect, and there was a surprisingly nice turnout out of the New Orleans area. I didn't know what to expect of this ride. The route covered a lot of the same roads we often ride out of Bay St. Louis. I was glad I'd loaded the route onto my computer because there were at least thirty turns along the way. With GCBC President Apryl leading the way, we headed down the beach to the bridge over the bay, where I thought things might get fast, but as it turned out almost all of the ride was done at a nice moderate pace that kept most of the main group together. As we got to within 15 miles or so of the end, the terrain flattened out and I started to sense some, shall I say impatience, at the front. The speed started creeping up, and soon the whole group was strung out going 30 mph with Connor on the front. Soon enough gaps started opening up and some riders started going backwards, and just as I was debating with myself whether I wanted to make the effort to close yet another gap, Branden came to the rescue and stitched it back together. Next thing I knew, it was just Connor, Joe Paul, Branden, and me, separated from the front group by a fairly small gap. Then Connor lit the afterburner, putting the remaining three of us into chase mode. We got the the Bay St. Louis bridge with Connor about a minute off the front, and Branden took one last pull before dropping back, leaving just Joe and me. By then we weren't really chasing any more, just trying to hold the pace and keep Connor's flashing tail light in sight. Back along the beach road I was surprised a couple of times when Joe pulled past me before I was ready to pull off from the front. As it turned out, he had been looking behind and realized that the group was in full chase mode and closing in on us! I  hadn't looked back, myself. We made it back to the finish with maybe fifteen or twenty seconds to spare. Anyway, it was a really fun ride, and I particularly enjoyed those last fifteen miles.  That evening I went over to the WeMoRi/Bayou Bicycles party for a couple of hours. It's always a little weird to see all of your regular riding friends wearing civilian clothes.

Sunday on the northshore

On Sunday I met up with a few of the Tulane riders for 6 am. It was the start of Thanksgiving break, so we had just Dylan and Sawyer for the drive over, but there were a number of riders, including Dustin, Jason, Steve M, Charles, Nick, and Evan already there when we arrived - mainly because I absolutely had to stop at Starbucks at Lakeside before heading across the Causeway. Again, the weather was great. As usual it was a bit colder on the northshore, so I had my arm-warmers on, but they weren't strictly necessary, especially after the first hour. Again, I had no idea how this ride would play out, and although my legs were feeling none the worse for wear after the prior day's 73 miles, I was hoping it wouldn't turn into a hammerfest too early. It didn't. In fact, the pace was generally quite confortable the whole time. The route included a little out-and-back on House Creek Road, and rather than risk blowing up my legs on the one or two little steep sections there that I knew would turn into a race, I turned around about a mile early so I could ride back up to Hwy 40 at a more civilized pace. A couple of people were waiting up there, having skipped that segment entirely. Anyway, it was a nice ride, and as we were coming back down the Tammany Trace toward the end at Abita Springs I noticed my computer was about to hit exactly 72 miles, so I miraculously hit the Stop button at precisely the right time to have Strava show exactly 72.00 miles. Afterward, Dylan headed out to make his flight home for the holiday, and Dustin, Sawyer, and I had lunch at the Brewpub. So although it was a couple of days early, I rode my age twice over the weekend. Meanwhile, my left ring finger is still swollen at the knuckle from that little fall about three weeks ago. I guess I must have done more damage than I'd thought. I finally broke down on Monday and cut my wedding ring so I could get it off, on the assumption that having what amounted to a tourniquet on the finger wasn't helping things. We'll see. 

Abita Brewpub

Early this morning, about an hour before the 5:20 am alarm went off, I could hear it raining outside. It was still very wet at 5:30, so I bailed on the Tuesday morning ride and waited until just after 6 am to take the 'cross bike out for a spin on the levee. I had grabbed the wrong Garmin this morning by mistake. It's the one that I had disconnected from my phone and on which I had disabled the heart rate and speed sensors because I'd lent it to someone a couple of weeks ago for one of the group rides so they'd have the route and map. I didn't know what would happen if there were two computers connecting to my phone and sensors on the same ride at the same time, but I figured it couldn't be good. I was halfway through the ride before I realized it. I did manage to reconnect my heart rate monitor while I was riding (the 'cross bike doesn't have speed or cadence sensors), but couldn't get it to pair with my phone. I tried again after I got home and it still wouldn't pair, which wasn't too surprising because that is always a problem with this setup.

Things at work are super quiet ahead of Thanksgiving, and I wouldn't be surprised if I am the only one on the entire floor right now. Unless something comes  up, which seems extremely unlikely, I'll probably head back home around mid-afternoon since we're planning to get together with a few people for a birthday dinner at Maple Street Cafe' this evening.