Easy Riding

Thursday

One thing I probably don't need is a ton of easy riding, but I have to admit it's kind of hard to resist when you're in a group with copious drafting opportunities, as have been most of my rides lately. One exception was last Sunday when the regular Giro was rained out as a little cool front came through. By early afternoon, though, everything had dried out and it had warmed back up into the 60s, so despite the 20 mph north wind I ventured out alone for a levee ride out to Ormond and back. Otherwise, though, the weather has been damned nice lately with early mornings mostly in the upper 60s. It's looking like we'll be in a gradual warming trend for at least the next four or five days, with highs getting into the mid-80s, so welcome to summer, I guess.

Local strade bianche?

The river, and hence the bike path, winds around quite a bit, but it's mostly an east-west affair which translated that day into a lot of crosswind, often partially blocked by the houses and stuff on the northeast side, so it wasn't all that miserable. Along the way I noted that the two-mile closed off part of the levee bike path is still closed off with no indication of progress toward re-paving. All of that was supposed to be finished by "late 2025" but here we are. Of course that meant I had to drop down onto River Road to get around it. Heading upriver along there on River Road is pretty sketchy because there is absolutely zero shoulder to the road and the edge is basically a crumbling ledge of asphalt and gravel. Cars will often wait to pass if there's something coming the other way, but not always. It's a lot better on the way back. For some reason there are maybe 18 inches of shoulder on the levee side, which makes it all feel a little more comfortable. Of course if I'd had a few more riders with me we could have just taken the lane, which would have required everyone except the mass murderers to wait and pass safely. Anyway, it was a little bit of a workout here and there, thanks to the wind.

Most of the regular morning rides this week have pretty routine except that attendance has definitely increased as have the morning temperatures. Considering that Monday and Tuesday featured more of the same strong wind, that's saying something I guess. A 20 mph northeast wind made the return stretch along Lakeshore Drive pretty fast on Monday, which is to say we spent a lot of time at around 30 mph. So much for the Mellow part of Mellow Monday. Tuesday's ride was kind of similar, and we had a good-sized group that went all the way out to Williams Blvd. on the lake trail. Even at it's usual Zone 2 level, that ride probably averaged 24 mph all the way out, but only 20 on the way back.

WeMoRi morning I jumped out of bed unusually early when I realized I'd forgotten to put out the garbage. Since it wasn't quite early enough to go back to bed, I ended up riding out to the lakefront earlier than usual, and probably could have met up with the WeMo group right about at the start, but instead I decided to just head east ahead of them. It wasn't one of the fastest WeMoRi days, so they didn't catch me until I was turning off of Lakeshore Drive onto Marconi, where I usually meet them anyway. Ben and Will from Tulane were in the group, but Liam and Dylan weren't. I learned later over coffee that Liam had nailed a pothole somewhere around Elysian Fields and then discovered he'd forgotten to bring a pump, so he called an Uber to get home. Dylan was still in convalescent mode from a particularly nasty respiratory infection he'd picked up. Anyway, at least the wind had died down by then, and for me it was a pretty good ride since the pace was easy enough in some places to entice me onto the front. I mean, by all accounts I should be doing a lot more longer high-intensity efforts and a lot less Zone 2 wheelsucking, but that seems to be a heavier lift every year. I should also be doing some heavy lifting, but that's a whole 'nother story. 

So this morning's Thursday ride turned out to be a remarkably steady one, and again, of course, mostly Zone two. It was a nice ride, though, and if I end up doing the planned long Saturday ride from Independence with the big boys, I'll be glad I kept this one relatively easy. 

Checking Strava later in the day I saw that Ben, Will, and Liam had done a morning levee ride during which Liam had crashed on that pile of gravel near the upriver end of Jefferson Parish where you have to drop down to River Road. From Strava it kind of looks like they got a ride home.

Wear the gloves!

The other day I ordered some Creatine/D3/K2 gummies to try out for a month or so. I'm not normally one for supplements, but they were on sale at Costco, so worth a shot, I guess. Since I've been essentially poisoning some mitochondrial pathways with statins for the past few years, I suppose it can't hurt, and besides, all the cool kids are using it nowadays. I also made an impulse purchase of titanium bolts for my handlebar stem. With "dripping sweat on your handlebar" season fast approaching, I'm uncomfortable with the steel bolts that came with the Cervelo. I'd always opted for the Ti bolts on my Bianchi because the steel ones are guaranteed to start getting ugly after a few months of being soaked with sweat. I doubt the 1g of weight savings will make me faster, though. Actually, I kind of doubt that anything that would pass USADA scrutiny will make me faster at this point. The place where I order the bolts from apparently spent the whole next week at Sea Otter, so it took a week for them to ship out, not that there's any urgency anyway. I expect that tomorrow's Friendly Friday ride will be fairly spicy, considering the weather and all. There's another long ride on the dance card for Sunday. If I don't chicken out on the Saturday ride, I'll have to see how it goes before committing to that one.