Just Lucky

Tuesday's ride should have been kind of boring and relaxing. I'd decided last weekend that after three consecutive 300+ mile weeks I should take it easy for a few days before the Friday drive up to Dahlonega for Six Gap. Of course I went out and met the small 6 am group at NOMA anyway, and as usual it got a bit faster after we turned back toward the west on Lakeshore Drive. I hung around in the meager draft for most of it, but when it surged after the bridge I eased off the back. I continued solo out to the Lake Trail and quite soon saw the big Metairie group coming toward me. I contemplated turning around at that point and getting in with them, but then figured it would probably be better if I just continued at an easy pace so they might eventually catch me. That turned out to have been a very lucky decision. When I got all the way out to Williams Blvd. I turned back, rather surprised that I couldn't see the group coming toward me in the distance. A few solo riders went by who I though might have been with that group, so I wondered if maybe someone had flatted, or perhaps the group just broke up for some reason. I was almost to Clearview when I found out what the reason actually was.

Up ahead I could see a couple of riders over in the grass on the levee side, a few more in the grass on the lake side, and a few others at a stop on the bike path. It turned out that there had been a crash, and six riders had hit the deck. The group hadn't been going particularly fast, but there was definitely a significant crosswind coming off the lake that may have been a contributing factor. Apparently there had just been a touch of wheels somewhere in the paceline and multiple riders were taken out. I stopped there for quite a while. They had already called for help, and a few minutes later I saw some medics who had walked over the levee coming our way on foot. Jefferson Parish police were also driving our way on the bike path. Keith, Ty, and Sprague seemed to have taken the brunt of the crash. Keith looked pretty torn up and was favoring his right shoulder. Ty was lying down and had apparently landed on his head and back. Sprague seemed a little out of it and wasn't quite sure how he felt. Eventually ambulances and spouses and friends loaded people and bikes up, and I think all three went to the ER. From what I heard later, there were a couple of thoracic compression fractures, an infraglenoid / scapula fracture, and a concussion. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet, entirely through dumb luck, since I might very well have been in the group when it happened. Although at least three riders will likely be off the bike for a while, it doesn't sound like anyone required surgery, so to coin a phrase, "time heals all wounds." 

Later in the day Charles came by and we did our best to sort out the problem he's been having with dropped chains. One thing about electronic shifting is that there's no finesse involved in front chainring shifts. With mechanical, you can kind of ease the chain over from one chainring to the other if necessary, but with electronic it basically slams it over in one rather powerful motion. It's a hard enough motion that both SRAM and Shimano provide an additional kind of support below the derailleur to brace it against the downtube so the derailleur doesn't move during shifts. We did our best to align the alignment marks on the (Force) derailleur with the chainring, checked that the vertical gap was around the recommended 2 mm, reset the aforementioned wedge, etc. It was a rather frustrating iterative process. Some things needed Allen wrenches, others Torx. I mean, pick one. Please. I don't think we made it worse, anyway, so hopefully he doesn't drop the chain at an inopportune moment at Six Gap next weekend. Then we re-aligned the front brake caliper that had been very lightly rubbing on the rotor. One of the bolt heads is pretty mangled and needs to be replaced. Hopefully it's tight enough, but I can't really guarantee that.

Today I went out to meet the WeMoRi, but with a plan to minimize my time at significant intensity. I hit the lakefront about five minutes before I expected the group to show up on its way back from the armory, so I continued down Marconi, Toussaint, and Wisner at an easy pace, expecting to get swept up somewhere around the end of Wisner. I looked back but didn't see the group, so I continued around the park and onto Marconi, heading back to the lake, a bit surprised that I couldn't see the telltale cluster of swirling headlights behind me. I was about back to Toussaint by the time I could see them, and well onto Lakeshore Drive by the time they came by. It was a particularly small group, so it wasn't going super fast today. I slotted in to what I thought was the middle, which I guess it was, but it was probably also about four rider from the tail end since the group was so small. I put in a little effort as Maurizio surged over the levee with me on his wheel on the way back from Elysian Fields, and when he gave me the elbow I reluctantly took a super short pull, dropping back to find that there were only three of us left. Per my easy week plan, I then eased off the back as we approached the bridge, eventually getting caught by a couple of riders who had also eased off the pace. So I guess I'll call that "mission accomplished" because I don't think I put a significant dent in my recovery plan. Of course, I'm pretty skeptical that a few easy days will make much of a difference for me next weekend, but I'd like to at least not start Six Gap with sore legs.

Jap Little

Friendly Friday

It was another kind of high-mileage, low-impact week for me. On Thursday I sort of instigated a move from the 6 am NOMA ride to a 6:15 am (I'm flexible on that start time) levee ride - returning to the traditional Pipes to Ormond route now that the levee work has finally been completed and we can do that whole ride without risking four miles on River Road. I didn't know what to expect when I got there since I hadn't really made much of an effort to get the word out, but I think we ended up with about six with some turning back at Williams Blvd. as usual and the rest continuing on to Ormond. It was a nice even pace out and back, mostly around 22-23 mph until the last of them turned off around Harahan/River Ridge, and I arrived back home around 8:10 despite soft-pedaling the last eight or nine miles. I guess I was still feeling a bit of WeMoRi in my legs.

On Friday we finally got Charles' rear brake working again by installing a new caliper. The pistons on the old one just did not want to fully retract, and it was just easier to replace the caliper than rebuild the existing one under the circumstances, although I'd still like to take a shot at it if we can somehow extract the pistons without an air compressor. Some time Friday afternoon I got a text from Chris that he and VJ were planning on doing the 6:15 am SaMoRi instead of the 7 am Giro, and since they are two of the people I can usually count on, I figured I'd better do the same. A lot of the usual suspects were planning on riding the Southern Magnolia the next day, for which plans of trying to break 4 hours for the 100-mile route were afoot. Todd did show up for 7:00 and found nobody there for the Giro. He rode out solo and eventually found the early group, though. So I headed out a little early, already missing my Saturday morning coffee, meeting the group on Lakeshore Drive. Most of the Giro has essentially moved to this earlier ride, so it wasn't really much different. The wind-up after coming down from the overpass onto the street formerly known as Hayne Blvd. was a lot milder, and although the speeds were generally comparable, there were a number of lulls and ineffective solo surges. Since I was planning on doing an 85 mile ride on the northshore with the Tulane riders on Sunday, I was keeping my efforts as easy as I could, so it worked out nicely. Later in the day I pulled off my rear tire, a Conti 5000 with well over 6,000 miles on it. I had three pieces of duct tape on the inside where there were significant cuts in the tread, but it was actually holding up just fine, and I'm pretty sure I could have gotten another thousand miles out of it. Still, I knew that rolling down the north Georgia mountains on it would probably haunt me next weekend, so I'd gotten a new tire and a new TPU tube for the wheel. It just took a few minutes to make the swap. That's one less thing to worry about, leaving just my neck, back, legs, lungs, heart, and generally declining level of risk tolerance.

Nice group for the Sunday Long Ride on the northshore

Sunday was a very early wake-up since we were meeting up at HQ for 4:45 and planning on hitting the road for 5:00, which of course ended up being closer to 5:30. The ride was starting way up at Isabel, so that was a bit longer of a drive than Abita Springs. Since this ride was specifically designed for those planning on doing Six Gap or Three Gap next weekend, Ben had created a route that included three or four circuits of Jap Little and Sie Jenkins. Jap Little was repaved a year or so ago and since we were doing it from the Plainview direction it included a quick fast downhill with a fairly sharp left curve - the one where Jorge P crashed and broke a collarbone many years ago. This was to give the newer riders some sense for making a turn like that at a reasonably high speed. Then, coming back around on Sie Jenkins there's that little wall that hits 10-12%, however briefly, again providing some reason to at least experiment with the small chainring. Charles dropped his chain there. We may try to figure out why that keeps happening when he shifts chainrings because he's planning on doing Six Gap next weekend. He had similar problems when we were up in NC a few weeks ago. After doing some loops of Jap Little and Sie Jenkins, the B group split off and around six of us continued on the longer loop. Toward the end we added a little out-and-back on House Creek Road, again as some small sampling of the kinds of gradients we'll see in north Georgia. Everyone seemed to survive the 85 miles in pretty good shape since the pace in general was pretty easy. Although that was the plan, it probably helped that Ben and Liam had done a long Spillway ride with a couple of long intervals the day before, and then Ben had ridden about twenty miles on Sunday before we arrived. I ended the ride feeling fine despite it being my third 300+ mile week in a row.

So it looks like the front group at Southern Magnolia was fast, as expected, with Connor and Grayson finishing just ahead of what was left of it, but narrowly missing the sub-4 hour goal by just about four minutes. As far as I could tell from Strava Flyby, there was some kind of attack somewhere around ten to go that split the group with Chris M staying with Connor and Grayson until the last mile or so.

This week the Tulane Six Gappers are supposed to be in taper mode with today being a recovery day off the bike. The group is scheduled to depart on Friday morning for the drive up to GA, which will allow for a little warmup ride on Saturday. I don't think all of the driving and van arrangements have yet been finalized, but hopefully it will all work out before Friday. I can't drive students as part of this official club event, so hopefully they will have enough approved drivers. Plan B would be for me to drive bikes rather than people so more people could be put into fewer vans. 

Mellow Monday

This morning I went out to Mellow Monday with the intention of keeping it as mellow as possible, at least for me. Of course it got fast in the usual places, but I think I was successful in not doing more harm than good. I plan to ease up a bit on the intensity, if not the volume, this week. Friday will be a travel day. I'll just be sucking wheels more than usual, if that's even possible, this week.

More Miles

If there is such a thing as an average week for me, it would be measured in miles, typically 250 to 275. Last week worked out to 365, though, thanks to a Labor Day Giro Ride at the start and a long levee ride with the Tulane riders at the end. Overall intensity, however, wasn't any higher than normal. 

On Tuesday, I did the usual lakefront lap with the 6 am NOMA group, followed by an out and back on the lake trail. As I've been doing lately, I went out to Williams Blvd. on the trail with one or two others, and then turned back until I saw the Metairie group coming. Then I turned around again and rode with that group out to The Wall and back to Bucktown. I did essentially the same thing yesterday.  

Thursday morning was rainy, so I waited until it looked like I had an opening and hit the levee around 9:30 for a ride out to Ormond and back. The weather was a little sketchy, and I was able to stay dry for most of it, but I did get rained on a bit on my way back. Fortunately it wasn't a torrential downpour or anything, so that was good.

Friendly Friday was more fast than friendly, which was no surprise really, but as usual the fast bits were relatively short. A few of us continued uptown to the levee to meet the Tulane coffee ride, followed by, you guessed it, coffee at Junk Drawer. It was funny sock day. Turned out I actually found some funny socks in the sock drawer.

Charles brought his Bianchi over early in the week to replace the headset bearings, which were rapidly becoming unidentifiable lumps of rusty metal. Of course, since the bike has fully integrated cables, what would otherwise be a ten minute headset job is now going on four days. We had to cut the brake hoses in order to get them through the handlebar and headset bearing, and of course that made the front hose too short, so we had to get and run a new front brake hose, thread it through the headset, and integrated handlebar (which took quite a long time). Then there were the usual two attempts to bleed the brake well enough to get all of the air out of the line. That would have been quick except that Charles' older SRAM brake bleed kit didn't have the correct "bleeding edge" adapter for the caliper. That involved a trip to the shop and another day's delay. Turned out that was the easy part. Next was the rear brake. Fortunately we didn't need to run a new hose since there was just barely enough left to work with. We still had to get it through the bearing and headset, which was again a bit of a chore. Since the rear brake pads were worn down to the limit, we had some new ones to install. Problem was, we couldn't (still can't) get the pistons to retract all the way back into the caliper, making it impossible to install the new brake pads with enough to clear the rotor. He went ahead and just ordered a new caliper rather than try to rebuild the existing one, which is probably not much more than a year old. Hopefully once that comes in on Friday we'll be able to put it all back together and bleed the system. We might have gotten new pistons and seals, but who knows what other problems we'd encounter in that process, and disc brake calipers are surprisingly inexpensive, relatively speaking.

Saturday's Giro was the usual smallish group, but nonetheless a pretty solid workout. On Sunday there was a Tulane long ride out to the lakefront then over to the river levee, out to five miles past the Spillway, and back to HQ. That came out to around 88 miles for me. This was a prep ride for those planning on doing Six Gap a couple of weeks from now. It wasn't fast, but was the longest ever ride for some riders. I think we had around nine riders for this one, so that was nice, and of course we stopped a couple of times along the way. My neck was killing me by the time we finished. 

Back at HQ we had a pre-Six Gap meeting to go over plans for the ride and logistics for transportation and housing. Dylan put together a nice presentation with details on each of the major climbs, so at least everyone know what they're getting themselves into. We were actually there for quite a long time and I don't think I was back home until mid-afternoon.

So by the end of Sunday I'd logged a lot of miles and was kind of feeling all of them. There's another long ride planned for next Sunday, this one starting all the way up at Isabel and including a number of significant climbs in order to give some of the newer riders some experience with gearing and such. Should be interesting. I think there are around 16 Tulane riders signed up for Six Gap this year, similar to last year. We'll be going up on Friday, doing a little warmup ride on Saturday, and the coming back Sunday after the ride. As usual, some are doing Six Gap and some are doing Three Gap. 

Tomorrow I'll finally be back to the levee ride. I think we'll try starting these Thursday rides at 6:15 am for the ride out to Ormond and back. I might stick with the NOMA group on Tuesdays for the time being. We'll see. Kind of depends on what other people want to do, but for me it would be nice to avoid the commute back from the lakefront in school traffic.

Cumulus

Sunday Tulane Long Ride

I started last week with an aborted morning ride of less than a mile. It's happened before. The minute I walk out the door I feel a few little droplets of rain. I head out anyway, hoping it will pass. It doesn't. Instead the sky opens up and despite having been outdoors for less than five minutes I arrive back home soaked to the skin. Fortunately things improved and I headed out again a bit before 8 am, heading for the levee. That went nicely until I was about ten miles the end of a 40 mile ride. Yeah, I got rained on again. Getting rained on at the end of a ride would turn out to be a pattern for the week.

There's a rainbow in there somewhere - Monday on the levee

Tuesday morning it was only Mike (in town again from WA) and me for the lake trail stretch. We saw the Metairie group going the other way, so when we turned around at Williams Blvd. we rode easy for a couple of miles and then turned around with them for their regular route out to "the wall" and back. That adds just 5 miles or so, but it's nice to have a bit of a group.

On Wednesday I once again got out to the lakefront early and headed east waiting for the group to catch me. It turned out to be a pretty fast one, averaging just under 25 mph, and more to the point 145 BPM, which constitutes a significant effort for me. Coffee at The Bean Gallery again with the Tulane riders afterwards.

Thursday would have been a repeat of Tuesday except that I flatted somewhere along the lake, so I sent the rest ahead and changed it, meeting back up with them on the way back. It was the second mysterious flat I'd had that week. By "mysterious" I mean that I didn't find anything in the tire that might have caused the flat. Turns out that not finding something doesn't necessarily mean something isn't there. Anyway, in the process I managed to lose the thin little M20 x 12 x 0.2 washer that goes on the thru-axle. I knew I'd lose one of those one day. It is there just to protect the carbon dropout, which isn't really a dropout nowadays.

That tiny wire caused 3 flats

Then on Friday I went out to meet the 6 am group at City Park and arrived just in time to see everyone heading back home because the weather radar looked especially grim. Once again I didn't make it all the way back home before I got drenched. A few hours later the weather improved and I was able to put in 40 miles on the levee. Later that day I discovered my rear tire was flat again. By then I knew it had to be a piece of metal wire. After completely removing the tire I eventually found the 2 mm long culprit barely protruding into the inside of the tire, and completely undetectable from the outside. I had to go get Candy's tweezers to pull it out. That Continental GP 5000 tire currently has over 6,000 miles on it, and has numerous cuts in the tread, some of which are fortified with duct tape on the inside, so I bit the bullet and ordered a replacement. I just registered for Six Gap at the end of this month, and figured it might be a good idea to do that with some relatively fresh rubber.

Friday eagles out by Destrehan

On Saturday we had a very small group heading out at 7 am, and by the time we were halfway down Hayne Blvd (aka Lincoln Beach Blvd.) we knew we'd be turning around when we saw the SaMoRi group. Behind us the sky was quickly getting darker and darker. So it was a shorter ride than usual, and of course we got completely soaked once again on the way back. All the rain was along the lake, so back at home the streets were completely dry.

On Sunday there was a Tulane long ride out of Abita Springs. We had 9 at the start, and then two turned back at Isabel to do a shorter route, as planned. This was very much a steady Zone 2 kind of ride since it would be one rider's longest ever ride. The plan was to start the 74 mile ride at 7 am, but we didn't actually get rolling until 7:30. With the easy pace and a couple of store stops, it was about noon by the time we got back. Everyone was hungry so most stayed for lunch at the Brewpub, which by that time was packed. That meant a wait of around half an hour before we got a table, so basically it was a much longer day than planned, but that's just how it goes sometimes. For some reason my neck was killing me the whole ride.

Today is Labor Day, so we stacked a holiday Giro on top of the usual Mellow Monday ride. I met the 6 am group but turned back at the lake so I could have a cup of coffee at Starbucks before the Giro. Being a "holiday" Giro, the pace was brisk but not super fast or anything. It was a smaller group than I would have expected, but still big enough to provide some shelter when needed. We almost made it back to the lakefront before getting rained on, then by the time I was halfway home the streets were dry, then as I got to the house it started raining again. At least it wasn't quite enough rain to fill up my shoes this time. At Starbucks I mentioned to VJ how I couldn't find exactly the right shim washer for the Cervelo thru axle. It's supposed to be 0.2 mm thick with an OD of 21.5 mm and an ID of 12.5 mm. The best I could find had an ID of 12 mm and OD of 18, and of course shipping was twice as much as the washers. VJ said he might have something, and indeed he had some of the latter ones. The thru axle diameter is supposed to be 12 mm, so I wasn't sure if the washer would slide on, but it did so easily. Hopefully the slightly smaller outside diameter won't be a problem. It was also new chain day, so after fitting the new shim washer I went ahead and changed out the chain for another new KMC wax SL12. The old one was at about 3,200 miles and although I could probably have gotten another thousand miles out of it before it, I just feel better keeping my chains as new as I can to help preserve the cassette and chainrings.

I went ahead and registered for Six Gap again today. It's up to around $132 with the processing fee, and today was the last day before the price goes up another ten dollars. Sometimes I kind of can't believe I actually pay money to do this to myself. It definitely gets a little harder every year.

With the levee path finally fully paved now, I'd like to see if we can move our Tuesday/Thursday rides back there soon. Of course, change is hard so it may take another week or so. We'll see.