Faster

Saturday Giro heading over the Bayou St. John bridge

It is starting to look like Spring. The Oak trees are pumping out pollen like there's no tomorrow, air-conditioners are sucking up electricity like crazy, and riders are coming out of the woodwork, or more accurately smart trainers. This morning I dumped a huge load of winter cycling clothing in the wash with the hope that at least some of the heavier things won't see the light of day, or in my case the light of the moon, until Fall. Wishful thinking, I'm sure, but there's always hope.

Saturday morning saw a good-sized group for the Giro, which resulted in a pretty fast ride out to Venetian Isles where, just for the record, the Chef bridge is still closed for an undetermined amount of time. That makes three closed bridges along a federal highway (Hwy 90) between New Orleans and Bay St. Louis. Anyway, the Giro provided a good workout last Saturday, and it was a pleasure to be riding in summer kit. We're still a month or so away from "dripping with sweat" season, which means that I'm still not using more than one water bottle, and I get home without sweat covering the inside of my glasses.

On Sunday there was a Mississippi ride leaving at 8 am from the West Harrison Ballpark. I didn't really know who was going to show up for that one, but was pleasantly surprised to see about a dozen on hand for the planned 67-mile ride. Aside from some of the usual suspects, we had Lisa, Todd H, and Kenny B along, and if there were any doubts that it would be an easy ride, they evaporated 30 seconds after we rolled out of the parking lot already trying to close a 30-second gap to Lisa who was not looking back. Actually it wasn't anything like race pace, but I'd say it was at least one notch faster than our usual rides over there. There was a touch of fog for the first hour that felt a little chilly for me, wearing summer kit, but as expected that soon burned off to reveal a partly cloudy sky that was about as good as it gets for riding. Since we had started off at a faster than normal pace, I was expecting a few casualties toward the end of the ride. I was not disappointed in that regard. Lisa positioned herself on the front for quite a long time, with me clinging to her wheel at a steady 23-24 mph, mostly into a light headwind. I had already started to dramatically limit the duration my pulls, if only to keep from letting the pace drop too much when my turns came up. After the ride I was thinking it had been a really good workout for me, and later saw that Strava was apparently in agreement, tagging the ride as "tough relative effort," whatever that means. For me, at least, it meant I could feel my quads for the next 24 hours as I methodically went through the refrigerator all afternoon.

This morning I was determined to make my Mellow Monday ride as easy as I could. Naturally it got a little fast here and there as usual, but I was contributing to that as little as possible.

For the past few weeks, no doubt because of the warmer weather and spring cyclist optimism, I've been getting inquiries about the Time Trial and Tour de La since nothing has been officially announced yet. It's looking like May 31 will be our best bet for the Time Trial, so unless I hear of some unexpected complication, I will submit the USAC event permit for that, probably tonight, despite the fact that we haven't checked with the police or swamp tours folks yet - situation normal. As for the Tour, we're going to have to think about what we can do to get some decent participation, and at this point I think we are realistically looking at a late summer or fall date. 

Spent a little time cleaning up the little Junior racing bike we'd bought for Danielle about 35 years ago. All the bearing grease is dried up and the chain was a mess of frozen links. I cleaned the chain and lubed it so it's kind of functional, but didn't dive into the bottom bracket or headset bearings. The old 24" tubulars are of course unusable, but remarkably still hold air. It's probably more just interesting wall art at this point, and perhaps a bit of a collector's item.