There's a rather brief time of year around here when the group ride intensity is inversely proportional to the ambient temperature. We call those two weeks "Fall." I've been slowly re-adjusting to early morning temperatures in the upper 50s and low 60s. To be clear, I consider those temperatures to be somewhat chilly and although the knees might remain bare, I'll generally go for some sort of base layer and possibly arm-warmers, even though I know that two hours later it might be twenty degrees warmer. I guess the prevailing thought is to go out the door dressed for the warmer temperature and just be cold for the first hour, but that never really works for me. I have to admit, though, that the additional clothes always make me feel slow. I don't really know if that's real or imaginary, but it's quite consistent.
So Mellow Monday a week ago had a good turnout, and with the temperature barely below 70° F I don't even remember if I opted for anything under my summer jersey. With the seemingly ever-present ENE wind, things got fast as soon as we made the loop at the Armory, keeping the average speed for the westbound stretch up around 28 mph. Fortunately it settled down after that. We had to practically stop for the light at Harrison, so it was basically a matched sprint from the light to the top of the overpass. Situation normal.
I somehow got out the door a little early on Tuesday, for which I was apparently about to be punished. Despite the recent time change it was still fairly dark as I made my way to NOMA along Bayou St. John. I hit something along there, like a little pothole perhaps, and wondered if I'd pinched the tube, but it seemed OK -- for about 30 seconds. Just as I got to Elysian Fields the rear tire went dead flat. I walked the bike across Wisner to change the tube under a streetlamp as Big Rich stopped briefly to see what the problem was. Anyway, of course I missed the start of the 6 am ride by two or three minutes, but eventually found them out on Lakeshore Drive somewhere past Esplanade.
We had a few people for the ride out to Williams Blvd., along with a pretty good east wind, so it was fast out and slow back. I was feeling pretty good and so I probably spent a little more time on the front than usual, which isn't saying much really.
Wednesday's WeMoRi was pretty typical. Charles was running late, so he found me on Lakeshore Drive just before we were sucked up by the group, which wasn't going super fast. I was hanging in well enough, but we did have a little excitement at the end. Fortunately I hadn't contested the leadup to the sprint at Marconi, because one of the guys pulled his foot out of hit pedal (it was new and the tension was probably at the lowest setting) when he stood up to sprint. His leg went flying out to the right, his bike careened to the left and then shot across to the right toward the curb. He was somehow still more or less upright until he ran out of road and hit the curb which thankfully landed him in the grass. Amazingly he didn't take anyone else down in the process, and once we pulled his chain out from between the crankarm and frame he was back on his way relatively unscathed.
After I got home I had to take the car over to Uptown Auto for a very expensive oil change, and so I threw the 'Cross bike in the car so I could ride home. The owner, Paul, happened to see me as I was coming out of the office and asked about the bike, so I asked him about his Triumph. Turns out he has both a TR 250 and a TR 6. I'd always seen one or the other around the shop, even back when it was next to Cooter Brown's before it moved to River Road at Industrial. I don't know why they were complaining to me about the price of synthetic motor oil since they clearly passed the full cost on to me! At least nowadays I get an oil change about once a year rather than once every 3,000 miles like in the old days.
Thursday was another morning levee ride. We had a pretty nice group, picking up a few as we went along, so it turned out to be a pretty good workout. One visiting rider from the US Virgin Islands joined us (he was also on today's Monday ride and I think was on the SaMoRi Giro too. Anyway, it was a nice steady workout, again with a bit of tailwind on the way out and headwind on the way back.
By Friday it was a touch cooler and the wind was starting to shift around to the north I think. This particular Friendly Friday stayed friendly a little longer than usual. Things stayed fairly smooth until, not surprisingly, we picked up the tailwind on Wisner prior to the sprint up the overpass. That stretch was mostly in the 28-30 mph range, but there were a lot of riders, so it wasn't really a problem.
On Saturday I went straight out to the 6:30 am SaMoRi which has essentially become the SaMoRi Giro now. By the time we were down to the end of Lakeshore Drive we had a pretty huge group or at least 40. I was wanting to do some work that day, so I was staying closer to the front than usual. There was a pretty good NE wind, so while I was staying near the front I was definitely staying off the front, at least until we made the turn south toward Chef. That stretch of course got fast - Strava says 26 - 31 mph. Anyway, I basically just did more work than usual. On the way back down Hayne it was staying up around 30 mph. A gap opened up as we got close to the overpass, so I put in a huge effort there and almost, but not quite, bridged up to it. It was a nice try anyway.
Later that morning we went over to watch the Tulane football game with was pretty bad, at least for Tulane. Joe Paul and company were doing a long ride to Ponchatoula and back that day (Joe Paul split off from them and rode to Baton Rouge to watch the LSU game).
Sunday a cold front had moved through just in time for the Tulane long ride out of Abita Springs. Although it wasn't too cold on the southshore, by the time we got to Abita Springs with three bikes on the roof and one in the back, around 7:45 am, it was probably around 49 degrees. Knowing it would warm up like 20 degrees during the ride, I just wore a base layer and arm warmers. I started out with knee-warmers too, but one of them kept falling down because I was wearing an old pair of Tulane bibshorts and the elastic on those had kind of given up, so those came off pretty early, which was fine because it was nice and sunny by then. There was a lot of German on this particular ride. We had Pirm and his wife Tessa, plus Tulane rider Malte who is also German.
The 75-mile ride itself was mostly very easy, at least until I decided to put in a little effort on the climb coming back on Isabel Swamp Road. Of course I expected everyone to regroup when we got to Highway 40, but apparently I'd flipped the switch for some of the guys and they went flying past me just before we got there. There was still a group of four or so that was well behind me, so although I was in no-man's-land I kept some pressure on the pedals down 40 to Bob Baxter and then all the way to down 1083 until I got to 21 where I stopped and waited for the rest of the group. By then the front group was way up the road.
We had a nice lunch at Abita Brewpub afterward, so by the time I got home it was probably around 3 pm. My legs had been feeling a little sore the whole day, probably because of that little sprint up the overpass on Saturday, but it wasn't all that bad really.
This morning's Mellow Monday had a fairly small group, but there were a couple of people who apparently wanted to go fast. After I took a pull at one point on the way back down Lakeshore Drive, whoever it was who came through surged and opened a gap, leaving a couple of us to our own devices. It wasn't until after I'd turned onto Marconi that I caught back up to the group, so I ended up doing a little more work than I'd planned to do on a chilly Monday.
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