Not Working in Pensacola

Friday afternoon I skipped out of work early, loaded up the car and started the drive East to Pensacola for the first, hopefully annual, Pensacola Classic stage race. I was travelling solo this time, battling the unsteady flow of Friday evening traffic. I already knew I'd be hitting Mobile, Alabama right at rush hour. Ordinarily, I prefer to get up at 4 am when I'd have the whole road to myself, but I was hoping to be able to drop off some of the LAMBRA equipment with Ricky when I picked up my packet at Bamboo Willie's down at Pensacola Beach. As it turned out, he wasn't there, so all that stuff would have to stay in the car overnight in the Motel 6 parking lot. At number pick-up the person handling registration handed me a blank release form. Hmmm. Having pre-registered on BikeReg already, I was expecting that they would have the nice pre-printed release form ready for me to sign. I took one glance at the form and handed it back, saying, "This is the wrong form." ---- Blank Stare ---- I explained that she'd given me the one-day form and not the regular form. She didn't know. Bad sign. The next morning I'd hear from a couple of the LAMBRA officials about the problems they'd run into when getting the entries set up for the race. There were many riders for whom they could find no release form, and many others where the rider had just signed the form -- no name, license number, etc. Typical problems for a first-year event.

Saturday morning we had a 50-mile road race on a nice 25-mile course up around Milton. The masters field was a good size, maybe thirty or thirty-five. I really don't know for sure since I still haven't seen any results (it's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in a local Starbucks getting ready to head to the criterium course). This was a fast and aggressive race. Every time I looked up there was another break off the front. For the first lap, the pace rarely dropped below 25, and we were well into the 30s on numerous occasions. There was a lot of horsepower in this group and by the end of the first lap I was starting to seriously doubt that anything was going to be able to stay off the front. Every time a group would get more than about fifteen seconds the pack would accelerate and pull it back. I tentatively decided to save my energy and roll the dice on a pack sprint. The second lap seemed a bit slower than the first, and despite numerous breakaway attempts everything was still together, I think, when we made the final turn a few miles from the uphill finish. I think a couple of guys got away somewhere between there and the finish and they may have made it to the line ahead of the group, but I'm really not sure about that. Anyway, there were still a lot of people left in the pack and most of them were thinking they had a shot at the pack sprint, me included, so things were fairly tense over the final couple of miles as everyone wanted to be near the front but nobody wanted to be on it. There was a fast downhill to a little wooden bridge right at about 400 meters, and then a moderate climb all the way to the finish line. I wasn't positioned too well coming down the downhill, but I was still close enough to the front to do well once the left lane opened up at the 400 meter mark, which we hit at probably around 40 mph. I took a few pedal strokes as the sprint started and reached for the shifter. Disaster! Somehow the chain must have gotten between two cogs and slipped -- and slipped -- and slipped. By the time it finally caught a number of people had gone past me and I was sprinting uphill in something like the 53x13. Shifting again didn't seem like a good idea, so I sprinted it out, passing a few people and lunging for the line along with a few others somewhere between 7th and 10th. I felt good sprinting, but was rather disappointed with the placing. It was my own damned fault, of course. On Friday I'd put on the 12-27 Miche casssette I'd ordered for Six-Gap in order to try it out. The cogs weren't aligned quite the same as on my Campi cassette, so I'd tweaked the derailleur a bit to accommodate. Then, when I put my racing wheel on I'd just turned the adjuster back to where I thought it had been. It seemed fine during most of the race, but obviously it wasn't. Oh, and there was another semi-mechanical issue for this race. I did the whole thing with 60 psi in my rear tire. I'd pumped it up before the start and I guess the valve must not have seated well. On the start line I reached back to check the pressure and I remember thinking, "that seems kind of soft." It was. Good thing I'm not a big guy and that I missed all of the potholes.

Saturday afternoon's 5km time trial along the beach was hot and presented it's own problems, mainly traffic. The early groups had a lot of trouble with slow-moving cars, but by the time I started, an hour and a half later, the police had started turning back a lot of the cars. There was a stiff wind blowing off of the Gulf, but it was a direct crosswind and didn't really seem to have much of an effect. I lined up a few minutes before my start hoping to put in a respectable effort with my feeble little clip-ons amidst a sea of decked-out TT bikes. The first time I looked down at the computer, it read 28 mph. I thought to myself, "that's probably not sustainable," and backed down just a bit to compensate for that little shot of adreneline that I always get at the start of a time trial. The next time I looked at the computer it said "0." What??? Crap. The speedometer had chosen a particularly bad time to go from working to NOT WORKING. I *cannot* time trial without a speedometer. (Some would say I cannot time trial *with* a speedometer, and they wouldn't be too far off.) Anyway, this development really took the wind out of my sails. I slowed down a little bit and even considered just sitting up sparing myself the pain. I didn't, of course. So as I was approaching the turnaround I sat up and pulled the computer head off of the mount and then replaced it. It worked, so at least I had a speedometer for the return trip. I'm not sure if that was good or bad, because some of the numbers I saw there were not encouraging. So the bottom line is that, in addition to being painful as usual, my time trial was also frustrating and disappointing. Oh well, that's bike racing. Dave and I had a nice dinner with Mitch at Flounders where I drowned my sorrows with a couple of pints of beer (and a quart of Gatorade that I drank on the way back to the hotel). A little dehydrated, perhaps?

I don't know what to expect from this morning's criterium. The course looks suspiciously like one we raced on at masters nationals some time back in the 80s. We'll see.

Unsettled

It's that time of year again. Days are getting just a little bit shorter and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, another racing season is sputtering to an end. I always feel kind of unsettled in September, as does the weather. One day it's hot and humid and feels every bit like summer, and then the next morning there's this cool dry air and those long morning shadows, and I want to ride easy and enjoy the breeze. So it was this week. Tuesday's training ride was fast and hard on the way out, and a little easier on the way back, as per usual, and Wednesday's was the traditional long, long 24 mph pulls in a steady paceline. Then there was today.

The humidity was back, but there was still just the slightest remnant of Tuesday's cool morning in the air. As often happens for the 6:15 am ride this time of year, the group seemed a little reluctant to lift their elbows up off of their handlebars and actually start the ride. By the time we hit the playground the group was getting pretty large. I'd guess we had close to twenty this morning, and even though Woody was taking it easy today we ended up in a long paceline at around 27 mph. I'd dropped back after taking a pull early in the ride and after a few miles noticed that nobody was coming back. I guess someone was short-circuiting the rotation somewhere ahead of me, but we were nonetheless going fast enough that I wasn't too inclined to try to move up. Eventually the guys who had been stuck up front started getting tired and trickling back down the paceline, which finally allowed the back half of the group to find the front and take over the pace-making duties. Thanks to a light tailwind the effort level never went too far into the red, except for a few brief times when there was a big surge at the front. After the turnaround, however, we could really start to feel the wind, which was now mostly in our faces, so the pace eased up a bit. The net result was a fairly decent workout and arrival back at the house a few minutes later than usual.

So earlier today I registered for the upcoming stage race in Pensacola. It's a good thing I finally took the time to read the flyer because as it turns out they are requiring pre-registration. That's pretty brave this time of year. That fact, by the way, is not mentioned on the main event website page and it's not mentioned on the race flyer that's linked to that page. It's only mentioned way at the bottom of the BikeReg site. Could be an issue for some people, I suspect. Anyway, the $70 entry fee plus gas, two hotel nights, etc. kind of stings right now. Even so, those guys deserve to have a good turnout since they've been so supportive of our races all year. The Cat. 5 race is being handled as an omnium and the road race is already about ten riders over the 50-rider limit, so I'm not sure how they plan on handling that.

It's looking like I'll be making the trip alone since I have to bring some of the LAMBRA race equipment with me (one of our officials is officiating and the promoter will be paying LAMBRA a small per-rider fee). I think this will be a fun race, but I have to admit to feeling a little demotivated right now. I think it's just the time of year. We'll be making the annual pilgrimage up to Georgia for Six Gap the following weekend, and after that, well, we'll see. Right now it's looking like we will have some track races at the Baton Rouge Velodrome in October, and there's some serious talk about a Cyclocross series as well. Hopefully all of that will happen. Somewhere along the way I will need to make arrangements for the annual USAC meeting, a business trip (probably two), the LAMBRA annual meeting, a trip to Iowa, and who know what else. I'm already tired.

Change of Routine

It might have been just another in my series of same-old weekends. Fortunately there were a couple of tweaks that allowed for a slight -- actually very slight -- change of routine. Saturday morning I got out the door nice and early as usual, arriving at the Harrison Ave. Starbucks (after again setting off the traffic light camera with my bike) around 6:30 am. I had my usual iced coffee with just one shot of milk, and headed out with the group just before 7. Unfortunately I'd neglected to eat anything. This was a bit of a mistake and you'd think I'd know better by now. The combination of an empty stomach, coffee, and milk had my gut churning for the next two hours. The Giro got going pretty fast on Hayne Blvd., and after we went around the turn onto Paris Road, I figured I'd better spend a little time on the front because I was going to have to turn back early. I was signed up for a 10 am CPR certification course at Tulane, so when we got to Chef Highway I said goodbye to the group and headed back home.

The CPR course took from 10 am until around 3 pm and it was reasonably interesting and informative. That evening Jordan was having a party for the Tulane Cycling Assn., so I figured I'd stop by for a little while. Well, I ended up staying there until nearly 10:00. The turnout was pretty good, as were the hamburgers. While I was there, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do on Sunday. There was one of the MS Tour training rides on the northshore, there was a different ride that the Midsouth guys were doing in order to paint the sprint lines for the winter rides, and then of course there was the Giro Ride. I ended up deciding to do the MS Tour ride. I guess I must have been in the mood for a change of routine.

Sunday morning I headed over to Puccino's to meet Joey and Mignon for 6:45. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this ride. I was kind of envisioning a sea of baggy jerseys, rear-view mirrors and recumbents. Of course there were some of those, but most of the various racing team jerseys seemed to seek each other out and we all started together. There wasn't any sort of organized start for this ride, so I guess our group was probably among the last to head out onto the circuitous 60-mile route. I was expecting a fairly easy ride and hoping I wouldn't end up wishing I'd taken one of my other options. I needn't have worried. Once we got past the warm-up stretch along the Tammany Trace, the pace suddenly started to rise and the group started to string out. I craned my neck to see who was up there. VJ was on the front, and close by were Matt, Todd and a couple more of the Giro Ride regulars. The speed stayed quite fast, although everyone stopped at a couple of the rest stops. I don't think I even got through one of my water bottles even though it was getting pretty hot by the time we got back to the car.

So I guess the bottom line for the weekend was that I missed a bit of the usual training intensity but in the process got in some good solo riding on Saturday and some surprisingly fast and fun "social" riding on Sunday. I guess now it's time to start thinking about next weekend's stage race in Pensacola.

Saints Alive

It was warm and humid and oh so very dark this morning. With one hand on the bike, I pushed open the basement screen door, rolled the Orbea forward just enough, letting it fall onto my torso as I used both hands to lock the door behind me. The creaky screen door slammed shut and I looked up at the eastern sky. Yesterday was a new moon, so the sky looked pretty dark and Jupiter, I presume, looked really big and bright. Quite a bit brighter, in fact, than my headlight which seems to be badly in need of fresh batteries. As I rode up the access path to the top of the levee, I looked up ahead to see who might be there. It looked completely vacant (Zack was hiding behind one of the stacks). I glanced down at my watch to see if perhaps I was earlier than usual. It was 6:12 am. The ride starts at 6:15. Within those three intervening minutes I guess seven people must have arrived. Amazing how people get their morning ride timing down to the last second. We hung around a few more minutes as the sky started to brighten up, and by the time we were a mile down the road we'd picked up even more riders. The levee police had the bike path blocked off under the Huey P. bridge this morning, so we all had to ride straight down one of the access roads, stop amid the sand and rocks at the bottom, wait for a break in the morning traffic, and ride the broken-up edge of River Road for a few hundred yards before we could get back up on the bike path. The group got all broken up during that process and it took a while for everyone to regroup.

Woody held out as long as he could, but a little while later he went to the front and just like that our speed went from 22 to 27, which was about as slow as it got all the way out to The Dip. The only image I have in my head of the first half of today's ride is a rear wheel, cassette, derailleur, and blurry asphalt. The paceline split and regrouped a couple of times, but I wasn't too concerned because I knew Woody would be turning around early and that the pace would then ease up a notch. Well, it was a rather small notch, actually, and the paceline got quite well diced and sliced by the time we reached the turnaround.

The ride back started out at an easy pace, but by then we'd picked up a few fresh legs and so the last half got quite fast again. I felt like I was on gap-closing duty most of the way back. Then, of course, we had to negotiate the path closure again. I was near the front at the time and coasted down the levee, shifting to the small ring as I went. I lucked out and merged into the slow-moving rush hour traffic fairly easily, but when I got to the spot where I had to make a right turn through sand and rocks straight up the levee slope I ran into trouble. Usually I am able to pick a good line and maintain a little momentum without washing out in the sand. This time, however, there was a truck coming down the slope and suddenly I ran out of options. I hadn't shifted to a low gear yet, and had to make the turn very gingerly to avoid falling. With zero momentum left, I tried for an emergency shift to a low gear but predictably the chain slipped and I had to put a foot down. Then I had to lift the rear wheel and turn the crank to get things in back straightened out again. Nothing like starting from a dead stop heading straight uphill. I'm not sure where everyone else went at that point. I saw VJ continue on River Road, since he normally stops at the playground anyway, and I guess a number of the others must have done the same. I rode slowly down toward Ochsner with Donald, looking frequently over my shoulder and wondering where everyone else was. I eventually turned around to pick up Zack, but then split off to ride home.

So things here at work are really dead today. There's this Saints game thing this evening and since it's the kickoff of the NFL season there is this huge pre-game thing going on. There's a huge stage in the Quarter for a pre-game Dave Matthews concert, a big parade that will run down Decatur Street, and I assume a huge tailgate party at the new "Champion Square" next to the Dome. The city government is completely closed today, the downtown campus will probably be essentially shut down by 2 pm, and even here on the uptown campus things are really quiet. Lots of people are off today or have suddenly come down with "Saints Fever." I have a couple of calls to make but I'm not expecting anyone to answer the phone and will probably resort to email. I did take a minute to track down a 12-27 Campi-compatible Miche cassette for the upcoming Six Gap Century. Hopefully that will make the last few miles of Hogpen Gap a little less painful. I went with the cheap Miche cassette because I really didn't want to give up that 12 tooth cog for the fun descents (most of the Campi cassettes dropped the 12 when the big cogs went to 26 and beyond.). We'll see how that works.....

Return of the Muggies

Our little flirtation with Fall was beginning to dissipate by Tuesday morning as I made my way out to meet the early group on the levee. My legs were starting to feel the effects of the long rides of the long Labor Day weekend, so I was hoping that the group might exercise a little restraint. The turnout for the ride was relatively small, which kept the speeds down a bit, but just like the day before, we were tempted by an outgoing tailwind. One might think that riding with a tailwind would be easy, but my experience has always been that it is just the opposite. For one thing, the relative energy savings of being in the draft are lowered. For another, it seems that riders are far more willing to push themselves into the red with a tailwind, enticed as they are by the fast speeds. They always seem to forget that there will be an equal and opposite wind on the way home. I arrived back at the house pretty well soaked in sweat, even though the pace, relatively speaking, wasn't really over the top. As I got ready for work I remembered that (a) I had no spare tube for the commuter since I'd confiscated it the day before for the Orbea, and (b) I was pretty sure I'd broken a spoke in the commuter's rear wheel during that ill-fated ride on the rim last week. I took a look at the wheel and quickly found the broken spoke and equally quickly decided to take the car to work rather than deal with it all. Besides, I was out of glue, so I couldn't even patch a tube to take with me. Around lunchtime I was out near the CBD, so I stopped at the Wal-Mart and found a nice big tube of Slime rubber cement that should let me patch a bunch of tubes.

That afternoon we had a Tulane Cycling ride scheduled for 6 pm, so when I got home I rushed over there to find seven or eight riders, a couple of which had just shown up to pay their dues. We headed through the park to the levee path where the group quickly split, so I stayed behind and ended up riding mostly with a very new rider on a rather aged but functional aluminum Schwinn. Actually, our 16 mph speed was quite welcome after the four long group rides I'd done since Saturday. The only problem was that it was getting quite dark by the time I got home, and although I was glad I had my red blinky light still attached to my seat bag, I was wishing I had also left my headlight on too.

That night, after dinner, I patched a couple of tubes and set about fixing that broken spoke on the commuter. Since I had a spoke of the correct length and threading handy, it was an easy fix, but when I put it on the truing stand I discovered it was way out of line, but not in the place where I'd replaced the spoke. I was perplexed for a minute, but then I checked more carefully and found yet another broken spoke. I shouldn't be too surprised to find broken spokes on this particular wheel. I'd gotten it for free from Adam probably seven or eight years ago (at least) when he pulled it out of the little shed behind his old shop on Calhoun Street. It's a salvaged rear wheel from one of those famous, or infamous, Viscount bikes from the mid-70s. I remember seeing them at Betat's when they came out and thinking what a great deal they were because they weighed about the same as the better-known brands at probably half the price. Unfortunately, the "innovative" aerospace aluminum forks, aka the "death forks," tended to snap off rather unexpectedly and the unthreaded bottom brackets proved to be a constant source of problems for the survivors.

Wednesday's ride turned out to be a little bit faster than usual for some reason. It was still pretty steady, but rarely dropped under 23 mph, even with the headwind on the way back. Also, the humidity was back in full force Otherwise, it was pretty uneventful -- just a quiet 25 miles or so in a steady little paceline. Afterward, Zack and I stopped at Starbucks for some iced coffee and conversation until I suddenly realized how late it had gotten and rushed off for home and, ultimately, work.

Up and Over

Holiday training rides are always interesting, in a schizophrenic kind of way. There had been a few emails on Sunday resulting in an apparent consensus, which means more than two people responded. The plan involved a 7 am start at the "stacks" on the levee bike path with a ride out to Destrehan and back. If all went well, we would also go up and over the Destrehan-Luling bridge across the Mississippi, which adds a nice 1 mile climb. I really didn't know what to expect as far as participation goes. I awoke earlier than I needed to, which turned out to be a good thing because I remembered that I was down to only one spare tube and about a hundred others with holes in them. Normally, I'd just sit down and patch a few, but as it turned out, my trusty can of glue had finally dried up to the point of uselessness. Considering the historical success rate of my tube-patching activities, I'm not generally comfortable without two spare tubes, so I went back upstairs and dug the spare tube I carry for my commuting bike out of my messenger bag, thereby doubling my chances of having a tube that held air. I guess I need to put glue on my rapidly growing list of things I need to get, along with a six-gap compatible cassette and new chain.

Anyway, there were six or seven people at the start, and that number grew quickly once we got rolling. Before long we were up to about fifteen, I guess. There was a light tailwind and although we'd started out at a nice civilized holiday-ride pace, after a while things started getting seriously out of hand. When we had to negotiate a few pedestrians and casual cyclists, two or three riders split off the front and suddenly we were in full-on chase mode. The group started to splinter, but eventually things slowed down and everything came back together.

When we got to the bridge a number of people decided to skip the excitement and wait while the rest of us headed up the long curving on-ramp. This particular bridge over the river happens to the end of a section of Interstate highway, so although there's a nice wide shoulder (littered with road debris as always), the traffic tends to be going pretty fast. Lawrence took off up the climb, drawing Mark and Steve, who eventually passed him before the top. We over the bridge, regrouped at the bottom, and rode right back over. The ride back was a little sketchy because they had the shoulder of the road barricaded off because of some work they were doing up there (replacing the support cables, I think). Of course, I'd never ride over this bridge if it weren't a quiet Sunday morning or holiday, so it wasn't too terrible.

The ride back remained nice and controlled for a pretty long time, but the growing headwind was making it harder and harder to maintain the 22-23 mph pace. A few people started pushing the pace, which started opening gaps, and then, despite the headwind, the speed started increasing even more. Naturally, things completely came apart and I found myself trying to buffer the surges without losing contact completely. Anyway, what I'd expected to be a nice smooth holiday ride turned out to be significantly harder than anticipated. It happens.

Ride, Lobster, Ride

Sitting here on a Sunday afternoon playing MP3s from the laptop on the antique Realistic System Seven and finally drinking that bottle of Abita "A Charitable Pilsner" SOS. I'm not really much of a fan of Pilsner, but hey, it's a good cause and an interesting website, so I'm doing my part. With my legs finally feeling more or less normal again, I had been considering a long ride in the country for Saturday, but I ended up just setting my sights on the good ol' Giro Ride instead.


So there I was at 6:05 am Saturday looking out the door and trying to decide whether to put the headlight on or not. I decided to leave it at home, but most definitely turned on the rear blinky light. A little cool front had come through, dropping the temperature down a few degrees from normal, although I still went for an iced coffee when I arrived at Starbucks. I mean, it was cooler, but really. Anyway, although the Giro Ride took a little while to really get going, and we were missing a few of the guys who normally animate the front of the group, it turned out to be a pretty good workout. Sixty miles later I rolled the bike back into the house thinking, "Man, I sure feel better after the Giro when it's not 95 degrees and I'm not totally dehydrated and I can actually still see through my sunglasses." Imagine that. Other than a little tree-trimming out in the back yard, I pretty much blew off the rest of the day, sitting on the couch where I watched two full episodes of Star Wars on TV. Yeah, I do that sometimes.


Last night the neighbors came over with an ice chest full of Maine lobsters plucked out of the Atlantic the day before. Apparently having a brother who is a lobsterman has its advantages. These were "Shedders," which means that you can generally crack them open with your hands. You won't find these at your favorite New Orleans seafood restaurant! Anyway, between the lobster feast and the accompanying adult alcoholic beverages I was ready for bed by 10 pm. I wasn't what you'd call a highly productive day, but then again, you need some of those now and then.


Sunday was another Giro Ride for me. The morning temperature was even cooler than it had been on Saturday, which is to say that it may have dipped down to 75F or so. It felt absolutely great. As usual, the Sunday Giro crowd was a bit smaller and the ride a bit easier, despite a significant WNW breeze. As we were riding out along Hayne Blvd. someone rolled up alongside me and asked if I was "going out to Ft. Pike." This meant that at least a couple of people were planning to extend the ride by an extra 20 miles. I told him "no," but was still kind of considering it. I had put a Powerbar in my pocket before leaving home, and it wasn't going to be miserably hot, so it the back of my mind I was holding it as an option. Then, on the service road, Keith (Desire Title) flatted. A few of us stopped to help as the rest of the group continued on. Robin grabbed the wheel and after trying two different tubes we finally got back on the road only to immediately discover that my own front tire was also going flat. That meant another stop, so by the time we got going again we were probably fifteen minutes behind the group. As we got our paceline rolling down Chef Highway I did a little math and figured we'd probably see the group somewhere just after the Highway 11 split. This might have presented a problem. With the West wind, the group would have a nice tailwind, so it was entirely possible that they'd be going 30 mph when we turned around to join them. Luckily they were still going pretty easy, so everyone was able to make the u-turn across four lanes of state highway and merge back into the group. I guess the cooler weather had everyone in the mood to just enjoy the ride today. A couple of minutes later, Eddie flatted and everyone stopped. Other than a couple of brief surges and sprints up the bridges, the pace never really got too fast after that.


With tomorrow being a holiday, I'm planning on meeting a few people (I hope) on the levee at 7 am for a long ride. If I can get any takers, we may ride across the river twice on the Luling/Destrehan bridge. I could use a couple of miles of something -- anything -- that's not flat.

Pulled

This time of year I always start to feel like I'm being pulled in ten different directions at once. As soon as the days start getting shorter, and the mornings just a bit cooler, people around here start to emerge from their heat-induced August hibernations. There are a few Fall races and rides still to do, some travel looming on the horizon, Tulane cycling club activities, and of course a little surge of activity at work. It's all good, of course, but I find myself doing some things I otherwise hate to do, like not reading some email until the next day and putting off some of the cycling-related work in order to keep up with the work-related work. Fortunately, there's coffee.

So Thursday morning I rode out to meet the morning ride. The gradually waning day length seems to be most noticeable this time of year, probably because sunrise gets pretty close to the start of the rides. On the plus side, the morning temperatures have been relatively pleasant lately, which is to say they've been below 80F. There's even a little cool front that is supposed to be coming through, which should make the weekend weather pretty nice. With the road racing season just beginning to wind down, the training ride speeds begin to fluctuate this time of year, and Thursday morning the pace remained conversational for a long time before finally starting to ramp up. By the end of the ride I was, for a change, not completely drenched with sweat, so I stopped off at Zotz on the way home for a cup of dark roast and a quick check email check. I had to ride downtown for an 11 am meeting, so I just worked from home until 10:30 rather than add the extra four or five miles going to and from my uptown office. Everything was going smoothly. I packed a nice fresh shirt, hopped on the bike, and, with some time to spare rode at a nice gentlemanly speed down Fontainbleau to Broad Street, expecting to have lots of time to change cool down and change shirts before taking the elevator up to the big board room on the 24th floor. Just after crossing Washington Avenue, however, I felt the rear rim hit the ground. Flat tire. I sought out a shady spot on the sidewalk, pulled a sharp sliver of rock out of the tire, and replaced the punctured tube with my spare. It took a little too long to pump up, but I figured I must not have gotten a good seal on the valve, so with maybe 40 psi in the tire I packed up and headed off again down Broad toward the overpass. I didn't even make it to the top of the overpass before the tire went flat again. I was out of options. I glanced at my watch and figured I could probably still make the meeting even though I'd have to ride the last two miles on the flat. It was close, but I made it there, changed into my fresh shirt, and walked into the meeting just about half a minute late with a cold Coke in my hand. Luckily The Wife had taken the car to work, so after the meeting I was able to get the keys and drive the bike and myself back home where I fixed the flat, smeared some olive salad on a slice of bread for lunch, and rode over to the uptown campus for a three hour "subsurface oil sampling" session with the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command and forty of fifty researchers. It was actually pretty interesting. It would have been more interesting if they'd told us who was going to get the next $10M in research funding that they are about to announce.

By 7:30 I was over at Zotz again working on a sponsorship proposal for the Bastille Day Criterium project. Some good progress was made on that, thanks mainly to other people "nudging" me to finally sit down and really get it started. Sometimes I need a little nudge, you know, especially when I'm feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. Anyway, I'm hoping to get in some miles this weekend. Six Gap is approaching and no combination of ultra-low gearing will compensate for insufficent miles when you're seventy miles into a 104 mile ride in the hills.

This morning's Friday ride (that's the photo way up there at the top) was nice and steady. We rolled along in a good paceline taking long pulls at 23-24 mph as we enjoyed the slightly cooler morning air. It was good. Amazingly, I can *still* feel the damage I did to my quads last week. Wow! That is not good.

Pain and Rain

I awoke at 4:30 am Sunday morning to the sound of rain. I'd set the alarm for 5:15 but couldn't go back to sleep. The Time Trial in LaPlace was scheduled to begin at 8 am. I had to be there around 6:30 am. This was not looking good. I moved my legs to get out of bed and winced in pain. The quads felt like blocks of wood. Any thoughts I may have been harboring about actually riding the TT were immediately dismissed as I hobbled about getting dressed. I was disappointed that I couldn't ride, but it would have been pointless to have even tried. I'd already staged all of the equipment I needed to bring down in the basement, but when I opened that door and looked at those steps, I paused. This was going to hurt. If' you've ever overcooked your quads you know that the most painful thing you can possibly do is to walk *down* a staircase, especially one without a banister. I clomped down one stair at a time, sideways.

By the time I was ready to load up the car the rain had eased up a little bit so I was able to make the seven or eight trips back and forth with the generator, clock, bins of clipboards, tables, coolers, etc., without getting too terribly wet. It was still too dark to get a good read on the sky, but by the time I was out around Kenner I had no doubt what it looked like. Once again the rain started falling -- sideways -- complete with a full thunder and lightning show. That's when I started getting text messages that mostly all said the same thing, "Is the race still on?"

At 6:45 I was standing in the rain with Eddie and Mark and Carey and we were debating what to do. Someone pulled up the weather radar and it actually looked like things might improve, so we decided to wait until 7 am before making any hasty decisions. Five minutes later the rain stopped and the clouds parted a bit and we were good to go. I guess we lost about ten riders to the weather, but otherwise the turnout was good, we actually started right on time, and everything went smoothly. In fact, there were some really fast times. The fastest of the day came from a Triathlete, disguised as a Cat. 5, who posted a 54:29 for the 40 km TT. Since the wind was gradually increasing throughout the hour and a half that we were starting riders, and the Cat. 1/2s went last, the closest any of them could come was 55:38. I wonder how much closer it would have been without the difference in wind. I mean, it was still a whole minute, and the wind wasn't all that terribly strong. Anyway, somehow we managed to pull off the time trial, which was the final event of the 2010 LCCS season, without rain. By the time I got back home and unloaded the car it was already raining again and I don't think it stopped for any appreciable length of time for the rest of the day.

Monday was wet and rainy, so I figured I'd spare my sore legs for another day. Tuesday it was raining again. It was just as well, I guess. I've been kind of down the last couple of days anyway. Some of that probably has to do with the unavoidable TV and web coverage of the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and then hearing that Laurent Fignon had died was a little sad as well. Fignon really represented the end of an era to me. His career reached its peak just as bike racing was about to undergo some big changes. TT bikes were becoming more specialized (and expensive), cables were getting hidden, shifting was getting indexed, pedals were getting clipless, and then Lemond won the Tour de France by 7 seconds by beating Fignon in the final Time Trial thanks to the then-experimental clip-on aero bars and Fignon's decision to ride without a TT helmet. I'll always remember the contrast between Lemond with his big yellow Giro TT helmet, huge Oakley glasses, and Scott clipons and Fignon, helmetless, bespectacled, and with his ponytail flapping in the wind. The 5-year anniversary of Katrina seems like a turning point as well. Kenny finally pulled together all of his photos from the days immediately after the hurricane when he was helping rescue people from the flood. You can see them here, but be forewarned, a few of the photos are pretty graphic and show people who did not survive.

I finally made it back onto the road this morning for a nice smooth Wednesday ride. The legs have recovered enough that I can now walk without my knees locked. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt much at all to ride. Yesterday I registered for Six Gap. I'll probably make the stage race in Pensacola in a couple of weeks, follow it up with Six Gap the following weekend, and start thinking about long easy rides in the country.

No Good Deed

After another particularly fast levee ride on Thursday I wasn't feeling too bad about missing the easy Friday morning ride this week. It was staff service day at Tulane, aka "Wave of Green," and I'd volunteered for a day of construction work with Habitat for Humanity. Along with a whole lot of other people, I got on the bus and ended up way down on Frenchman Street where they were building a number of homes. When they asked for people to work on the roof I raised my hand since I figured it was better to stay above all of the people who were probably going to be dropping hammers and nails all day. It was practically crowded up there - I guess there were about eight of us -- but at least the sky was cloudy so it wasn't too hot. Once I got up there I quickly realized that I'd better stay away from the edge because some sort of allergy or head congestion was making me dizzy every time I turned my head too quickly. Once we got the felt paper down and the first couple of rows of shingles done my head was clearing up and I was finally able to be a little more productive, although it was rather difficult pulling nails out of my pants pocket since the apparently had run out of nail bags. Damn, I really should have stopped by Freret Hardware and picked up one of the tool belts they had on sale. All that roofing I'd done back in high school and college came back to me very quickly and soon I was wishing all those other people would just get out of my way because I was definitely on a roll, running up and down the slope retrieving shingles and having a great time nailing them down.

When it started to rain a bit before 2:00 we finally climbed down, soaking wet, and boarded the buses back to Tulane. The good thing about having to quit early, however, was that meant I'd be able to make it to the Tulane Student Organizations Expo where we had a table for the cycling club. I was supposed to ride rollers behind the table, mainly to attract some attention since there were probably fifty different organizations there trying to recruit new members. I ended up doing two solid hours on the rollers trying not to stare too much at the girls.

Well, by 10 pm that night as I was finishing up the start list for Sunday's Time Trial Championship I knew I was in trouble. My quads were getting really, really stiff and sore. It was the same kind of soreness I get if I suddenly decide to go for a run after spending all year doing nothing but riding. We're talking actual tissue damage here. I went to bed around midnight hoping for the best, but forgetting to set my alarm clock.

Luckily I woke up around 6 am, which would have been fine except that I was supposed to meet a rider who was in town from Miami at 6:15. My legs hurt like hell, but I hobbled down to the basement and rushed out into the darkness anyway. There was already a light mist falling, and by the time we got to Starbucks it was getting light enough to see how bad the sky really looked. We were definitely going to get wet. Of course the turnout was very light because of the weather, and perhaps also because of the impending Time Trial, but we headed out anyway in a light drizzle. The plan was to ride out Leon C. Simon, cross over the two bridges, and then head back for a lap or two around City Park if possible. The real rain caught up to us on the way back, and between my sore legs and the increasing rain I figured this ride wasn't really doing me anything but harm so when we got back to Marconi I just headed home. It never stopped raining for the rest of the day, but finally stopped for the most part around 7 or 8 pm.

It's 10 pm now and I can barely walk down a flight of stairs without wincing in pain, so I think I'm going to have to skip the TT tomorrow. You know what they say, "No good deed goes unpunished!" That doesn't mean I don't have to show up, however, since I'm one of the referees. That means a 5 am wake-up so I can load up the car and get out there by 6 am to set up for the 6:45 start of registration. I doubt I'll be walking normally tomorrow, but what I'm really dreading is the possibility of rain. The forecast is calling for a 70% probability.

So tomorrow the 29th is the 5-year anniversary of Katrina and there are constant stories and reminders on TV. We had evacuated on the morning of the 28th, so the last thing I wrote before the hurricane was late at night on the 27th. It was a short post that I wrote up after watching the news and realizing that the Mayor was probably going to call for a mandatory evacuation the next morning, which he did. That post ended with the sentence, "I think this is going to be bad." It was. We were on the road all the next day and I wasn't able to post anything again until the 30th as the city was beginning to flood from the broken floodwalls. By the following day it was becoming clear that we wouldn't be going home for a long time and we didn't know if we'd even have a home to which to go.

Teasing Us

Tuesday morning came up fast. Faster than the sun, it seemed. A bit before 6 am I opened the basement door and looked up at the eastern sky. It seemed a whole lot darker than it had just a week earlier, so I rummaged around and found my little headlight, fumbled for a while trying to get it clamped to the handlebar (for reasons I wouldn't discover until this morning), and headed off, safely enclosed within a bubble of flashing light-emitting diodes, for the levee bike path. My legs felt stiff and tired and I was reminded of the quote, "Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug." I was already sinking in to a state of depression due to the aforementioned reminder of the approach of the dark mornings of winter when I noticed that Woody and Rob were out on their time trial bikes again. So needless to say the ride went from fast to faster and I went from the front to the back. I just wasn't up for a fight, I guess, so I was happy to sit in well behind the rotation, not that it was all that much easier to do so.

There was a new rider with us on Tuesday. Zack is a Tulane student from San Francisco who had just gotten to town, put his bike together probably the night before, and rushed off down the streets of Carrollton in the dark to find the morning ride. The first thing he found a New Orleans pothole where he crashed, but still got to the ride on time despite some road rash and twisted brake levers. Considering the horsepower at the front of the paceline that day he'd unwittingly jumped right into the deep end, so to speak. He hung on pretty well for most of the way out and then jumped back in for a little while when we came blasting past on the way back. That evening I got a facebook message from him saying that his frame was cracked, so he'll be stranded until a replacement arrives.

Anyway, I was kind of preoccupied that morning because I planned on taking the car in to the Volvo dealer a much-needed control arm repair and a slightly overdue timing belt replacement. Taking a Volvo in to the dealer is always a traumatic experience similar to handing one's wallet to a guy wearing a ski mask and holding a gun to your head. I took the free taxi ride back home and rode in to the office only to later learn that the car would actually be ready by the end of the day, assuming I thought it was worth $1,200 in cold hard cash. So around 4:30 I called the cab company back for my free ride back to the dealer, waited about forty minutes for them to arrive, and picked up the car after commiserating with one of the Tulane faculty members who was picking up her own Volvo and was about to shell out $500 because she'd lost her fancy-dancy electronic "key." Now we all know that one can easily purchase a perfectly nice laptop complete with wireless and software for $500, so there is just no getting around the fact that $500 for a key fob, however electronic it might be, is just a high-tech way of holding a car for ransom. But I digress. The bottom line is that both The Daughter's car and ours are reasonably road-worthy again for the bargain price of around $7,500. The fact that this wad of cash might have been sufficient for the purchase of, ohh let's say a new 14 lb. Van Dessel Rivet decked out with Campi Record or Cervelo R3SL with SRAM Red has, sadly, not escaped my notice.

Anyway, that's just water under the bridge now, and I'm a creature of habit, so rather than drench my sorrows in cheap Merlot and sleep late, I headed out Wednesday morning for the usual training ride. The weather this morning was really teasing us. It was actually not hot. I mean, it must have actually been in the 70s for a little while, before sunrise. It felt absolutely spectacular. What didn't feel spectacular, however, was my front brake. I'd noticed it on the Tuesday ride. The brake lever had a lot more resistance than normal and I kept running through my head all the things that might have caused it. I was thinking that perhaps something, such as copious amounts of sweat, had gummed up the works, or that one of the cable housing ends had collapsed. Whatever it was, it wasn't getting better, so I reluctantly planned to take it all apart some time soon to investigate.

The Wednesday ride was a nice traditional one -- 23-24 mph, nice smooth paceline, long pulls, no surprises. It was just what I needed. I even got to the end without being completely drenched in sweat for the first time in weeks. As I spun my way back home through the neighborhood my mind came back to that brake lever problem. Suddenly a little light bulb (the incandescent type, of course) appeared above my head. I reached my hand around the bottom of the headlight mount that I'd installed on Tuesday. Yep. Sure enough, I'd gotten the blasted front brake cable *inside* the clamp, practically squashing it against the handlebar. I released the clamp. Problem solved! If only it was always that easy. An hour later I rode to work by way of the Reily Center where I signed up for the Sept. 11 CPR course. Tulane's club sports folks require a couple of people to have CPR training, and at the bargain basement price of $10, and considering my friend Stan's recent massive heart attack, how could I refuse? I rode through campus, which this time of year is filled with bright young students, and then to the office by way of Audubon Park where I spotted that moss-covered bike.

Just Across the Border

The 5 pm start time of the Masters criterium of the Meridian-Cuba Challenge Omnium up in Meridian was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Dave and I didn't need to leave until the luxurious hour of 11 am. On the other hand, it was going to be pretty warm up there in the middle of Mississippi. I'd ridden the Meridian criterium course a few times before. It has a nice mix of features -- some nice tight corners, some rough road surfaces, a nice little climb, and a fast downhill turn leading into the long and wide finish straight. On the drive up I could tell that Dave was psyched for this one. I was feeling a little uncertain about my prospects, however. Looking around at the other masters riders in attendance, I figured it would be a good race. The Gulf Coast team, based in Biloxi, had six riders on the start list, and Alabama Masters had Jim Brock, Andy Maddux and Miroslav Novak on hand. Also in the mix were Mitch Evans from Baton Rouge and Lonnie Kennedy from Mesa Cycles up in St. Louis (he has family down here). I figured it would be an aggressive race. As we warmed up I told Dave that Lonnie was an experienced breakaway artist and pointed out some of the other riders who I thought would animate the race.

The race started spot on time and the attacks started soon thereafter. I felt like I was on the ropes almost from the start, but didn't dare drop too far back from the front. After a few solo attacks were pulled back I found myself in a somewhat promising one of four or five riders. It was still very early and I was not much help and after a lap or two we were brought back. Shortly after that Tony Scott from Peachtree and Tim Carbonneau from Gulf Coast took off. The timing was good and the response from the tired pack was weak. A few more laps and the break was out of sight and the pace eased up a little bit, but there were still some attacks. I had already burned a lot of matches but I really didn't want to be sprinting for fourth place so I was still doing my best to help pull those back. Just after I'd put in a big effort doing that, Lonnie attacked hard on the technical part of the circuit. Since he was racing in the 55+ category in this combined 40+/55+ race, there wasn't much of an effort to go after him, although I would have been nice if Dave or I had been able to tag along. We were probably four or five laps from the finish when the lead break lapped the field, but since they didn't try to blow through to the front I doubt most of the riders realized it. With a couple of laps to go I started working hard to maintain a spot near the front, and with one to go looked around to find Dave. I caught a glimpse of him behind me, so I figured I'd go earlier than usual for the sprint and hope he was still on my wheel by then. There didn't seem to be any sort of big team leadout on the last lap, so things got a little tight coming down the hill into the last turn and I was a few spots farther back than I wanted to be. Just before the turn a couple of guys came screaming through on the inside and I changed my line just a bit to catch a little bit of that draft. I was probably already in a 53x14, but as soon as we straightened out I was out of the saddle and looking for more gears. I was still way too far back, but the run-in to the finish is a long wide slightly uphill drag so two or three of the guys in front of me started to fade. I got lined up a few bike lengths behind the wheel that was moving forward the fastest and ended up coming in second in the pack sprint with Dave right behind me in third. Since two 40+ riders had been in the break, that meant we were 4th and 5th. I was a little angry with myself for missing the crucial break, but on the other hand I was glad to have finally put in a decent sprint after so many disappointing efforts this year.

After a nice dinner at the local Olive Garden with Vivian and Elise, it was back to the Super8 to start worrying about Sunday's road race. The road race that starts in Cuba, Alabama, is a pretty tough one with lots of hills and long sections of hot chip-seal that make your bike feel like it's suddenly ten pounds heavier and you're riding through wet sand. Almost from the start of the road race I knew I was in trouble. My legs were loading up way too quickly on every little climb and I was seriously wondering if I'd be able to keep from getting from dropped on the big climb about ten or eleven miles in. Just after we started we figured out that two of the riders who had finished ahead of us weren't riding the road race, so suddenly Dave an I were in 2nd and 3rd for the Omnium. On the other hand, Donald Davis was on hand, and although he wouldn't be eligible for the Omnium since he hadn't ridden the criterium, it was soon obvious that he was not planning on taking any prisoners in the road race. As I'd expected, there was a big surge up the "big" climb, but somehow I remained more or less in contact. Right after that, though, a break went off the front with Donald, Dave and a few others. The pack wasn't quite ready to concede defeat yet, so after a long chase it was pulled back by the time we were about halfway around the course (we were doing two laps of a long loop). By then I was camped out near the back of the group wondering why my legs were feeling so lousy. A little while later I saw Donald ride off the front again, and a little while after that I saw that another rider had bridged up to him. I wasn't sure who it was and although I did a little work to try and keep the gap from getting too big, I wasn't getting much help. I really should have figured it out. One of the riders who was working hard trying to mount a chase at the front was in the 55+ race, but Lonnie, who was leading the 55+ race, wasn't up there. Anyway, the break was soon a minute or so up the road. Around that time we started to figure out who exactly was up the road and I realized that none of the 40+ riders were chasing because the other rider in the break was Miroslav who was in the 55+ race. Since Donald wasn't in the Omnium, the Gulf Coast guys, who I guess were focused on protecting their teammate's lead in the omnium, weren't interested in chasing the break at all. That's about when Lonnie discovered that one of the riders up the road was in the 55+ race. He made an effort to get a chase going, but it was way too late and there weren't enough surviving 55+ riders left to do it. After that, the pace in the pack really slowed down. It was getting hotter and hotter and I could tell that some of the riders were starting to struggle. On the other hand, my legs were actually starting to feel a little better. I was still reluctant to put my nose into the wind, however. Ten miles from the finish it was starting to look like a pack finish for 2nd place, and although I did a bit of work to chase down some brief attacks, for the most part Dave and I were just watching and waiting as the pace occasionally dropped down into the mid-teens. I think that the Gulf Coast guys would have done better to have gotten together and really pushed the pace at this point, because they might well have dropped a number of riders, including me. Instead, the pace remained slow enough that I was actually feeling better than I had on the first lap.

After we made the final turn, three miles before the finish, things started to pick up as riders began thinking about the impending uphill sprint finish. About a mile before the finish the course goes over a little rise as it crossed the interstate, and at that point Mitch Evans launched a well-timed attack. Dave was right there and went with him. The rest of the pack looked around at each other to see who would start the chase. They got a good gap as the sprinters watched each other and I thought they would make it to the finish. Dave was figuring that he could make it ahead of the group, but even if he didn't, he knew I'd be surfing wheels back in the pack and would be ready to put in a good sprint. Our sprint really didn't start in earnest until just before the climb, maybe 400 meters before the finish. My suddenly recovered legs felt good and I went hard for it from the start, passing a few riders on the steepest part of the climb, one of whom was Mitch. As the road levelled out a bit at the 200M flag I dumped it into the 12 and crossed the line in 3rd place, a few seconds behind Dave who had held on for 2nd (remember that Donald had been in that 2-man break most of the day and had finished minutes earlier). So as it turned out, Dave won the omnium and I was 2nd, so thanks to some good luck and satisfying sprints we felt like we had a pretty decent weekend. Elise took some great photos of the masters race, one of which is above.

Woody

Thursday morning I went out as usual to the levee for the long Thursday ride. There was a pretty big group and I was expecting to get a little exercise during the 40-something mile ride. When I spotted Woody turning around to join us on his TT bike, all I could say was, "Oh, oh." Somehow, a few miles down the road, I found myself on Woody's wheel. In fact, Woody's rear wheel is pretty much all I remember about the entire ride. Of course, it's not surprising that I remember it so well since I probably spent ten miles with my nose about two feet from it. Once Woody got to the front, he settled in to a steady 28 mph pace and just kept going, and going, and going. When he finally pulled off I did about fifteen pedal strokes at the front and pulled off, looking for the wheel of someone with a little more of a draft. After the turnaround, guess what? Yeah, same thing. Woody went to the front and just rolled for miles and miles.

So the Tulane Cycling team kit prices are about ready to go and although the actual team members will get small discounts, and most will just place their orders in person at the first meeting currently scheduled for Sept. 1, everyone else can order from the BikeReg site. I think Murali will get the link up on the cycling.tulane.edu soon to be updated home page in a day or so. There will be a student activities expo on the quad on Friday the 27th where we'll have a table and hopefully someone riding rollers. Unfortunately, I will probably miss it because that's the Wave of Green day when I'll be doing the Habitat for Humanity thing somewhere in town.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to Meridian, MS for an afternoon criterium, followed by a road race the next morning in Cuba, AL at the Meridian-Cuba Challenge. This is one of those races that just keeps trucking along year after year. It may not be the fanciest race around, but it's challenging and consistent and the courses are good. It's a good 3-hour drive, but fortunately my race tomorrow doesn't start until 5 pm. I'll probably end up leaving before noon anyway so I can watch some of the earlier races, but at least it won't be another 4:30 am wake-up call. It looks like we have only a few teammates going this year, and for various logistical reasons I'll be going up alone and coming back accompanied by The Great White Box, the generator, and various other items of race equipment. The LAMBRA Time Trial Championship is the weekend after, so we'll need all of that stuff down here. It seems early, but the TT championship will mark the end of the local road racing season. Fortunately, there's a good stage race in Pensacola in mid-September that I'm hoping to make, and of course there's always the Six Gap Century Sept. 26. I really need to find a cassette with something bigger than a 25 this year!

The Rest of the Story

The rest of the story from Ruston: So Sunday's road race up in Ruston was on a short 5-mile loop that I remembered from some races a long time ago. What I remembered most was the final kilometer-long stair-step climb up to the finish line and the full minute I lost once when I blew up one year at the start of the sprint. The back side of the course featured a couple of significant climbs and one nice descent before the final turn leading up to the big climb. The route is so far out in the middle of nowhere that there's grass growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. The temperature forecast for the day was about the same as Saturday's, which called for highs in the low 100s. Fortunately, the Masters race was in the second wave, starting around 9 am, and the distance was short - about 30 miles. Of course, than meant six laps and six times up the hills in fairly rapid succession.

As the earlier Women's race was ending I pulled the bike down from the rooftop carrier, filled my bottles, and rolled down the road for a little warmup. When I looked down I was surprised to find my rear derailleur canted inward at a fairly dramatic angle, no doubt a result of the prior day's run-in with Dona's front wheel. It was bad enough that the derailleur was rubbing the spokes when it was on the 25, and I thought to myself how lucky I was that it hadn't snagged a spoke on the final climb the day before. I was so out of it at that point that I don't even remember what gear I was in. I assume I used the 25 but don't remember hearing anything hitting the spokes. I stopped and carefully bent it back into alignment, more or less, wondering how many times I'd get away with that before the aluminum derailleur hanger broke. I had a spare one in my bag, but since one of the tiny Allen bolts holding the old one onto the bike was mangled, replacing it would probably require power tools and another bolt. Anyway, I got it all working fine in plenty of time.

The Masters race was fairly animated with a number of breakaways by LaS'port and S3 riders that were, no doubt, designed to make Donald and me work. Since Donald was riding pretty defensively, I ended up chasing down a couple of them pretty much all by myself. My legs were feeling OK, but I knew I'd end up paying for the extra work I was doing. It might have been smarter, from an Omnium standpoint, to let one of the breaks go so that the 1st place points would get sucked up by someone who couldn't win the omnium, but I always have a hard time with that sort of thing. Halfway through the last lap someone attacked hard just after we'd been passed (once again - we passed each other a couple of times) by some of the Cat. 4 riders who were apparently having a much faster race than we. The pack didn't respond at all and for a little while I wondered if it had been a Cat. 4 rider. It wasn't. I decided I didn't want to race for second place, so I went to the front and pulled it back, finally making contact just before the start of the final climb, probably about a mile before the finish. Halfway up the hill Donald and Grant attacked up the left side and I was too slow to go with them, so I ended up finishing 3rd in the race and ultimately 3rd in the omnium. The last 200 meters were past the steepest part of the climb and it took forever to get to the finish line. Despite the heat and low Masters turnout, it was a fun race on some really challenging courses.

In the earlier Women's race Mignon and Ashley had finished 4th and 5th, which I think was a little disappointing, giving them 3rd and 4th in the overall omnium for the weekend. We hung around for a few laps of the Ca.t 1/2 race, but it was getting pretty hot and with a 5 hour drive ahead of us we left before the finish. On the way home I learned that Mike W had crashed pretty heavily during the Giro Ride - something about the traffic barricades down at the end of Hayne and the fact he was riding his track TT bike with, I assume, just a front brake.

This morning's levee ride got uncharacteristically fast for a Wednesday when Woody hit the front on his TT bike. A few miles earlier Scott had yelled to him that his saddle bag was starting to come loose, but apparently he hadn't heard it. I planned on reminding him about it, but once the pace picked up I forgot all about it. Someone pulled out of the paceline as the speed ramped up to 27 or 28 and I soon found myself on Woody's wheel searching for a draft. Suddenly I saw something fall and knew immediately what it was. His seat bag had fallen and wedged itself between the rear wheel and the frame, completely locking up his rear wheel. Woody went left. I went right and got by him as he skidded to a stop, burning completely through his rear tire and twisting or bending his front derailleur until the crankarm caught it. Somehow nobody went down. This all happened just as we were passing one of the ubiquitous police cars up there, so by the time I'd slowed down, turned around, and gotten back to him, Woody was already loading his bike into the officer's car to get a ride back to the parking lot. The pace got a lot slower after that!

drisKILL

Sweat was already dripping from my face as I pinned my number on for the noon start of the Mount Driskill race up here in Ruston, LA. I'd driven up with Mignon, leaving around 5:30 am and arriving shortly before 11. This was going to be a tough 50 miles. As if the jagged course profile wasn't enough, we would also be dealing with temperatures in the upper 90s. The masters field was small, about a dozen in size, so there wasn't going to be any place to hide. We weren't more than six or seven miles into the first 25 mile loop when I pushed the pace up a rather unimpressive little hill and discovered that two of us had opened a rather large gap. I rolled through and pretty soon we had maybe 30 seconds on the field, but the rider I was with was starting to have second thoughts and dropped off. I looked back and could see a few riders trying to bridge, so I kept rolling hoping that we could make something of it. Soon we had a nice group of Donald Davis, Grant Dona, one other rider, and me. We kept the pace pretty high and the next time I looked back I couldn't see the field. I was feeling pretty good at that point. We lost one rider but kept working together as we approached the end of the first lap. Donald took off early to go for the hot spot, but I stuck with Grant and we ground our way up the steep climb. I shifted up one cog and stood up to sprint, and when I did Grant did the same. I just didn't have the heart to come around him after he'd pulled most of the way up the hill. I guess I'm getting soft in my old age.

As we started the second lap I made the mistake of not taking anything from the neutral feed. I still had a large bottle of Heed and water, and about a quarter bottle of regular water, so I thought I'd be OK. Five miles later I was starting to get the feeling I'd made a mistake. It was getting really, really hot and I was starting to suffer on the hills a bit. I think we all were. By the time we were halfway around Donald was starting to skip some pulls. I had no idea how far back the rest of the race was, but I knew that our speed had dropped considerably. Grant seemed to be suffering the least. About five miles from the finish Donald pulled over and said, "sorry guys" and eased off the back. I think Grant picked up the pace just a bit at that point. I had already been rationing my water for at least five miles and knew I was approaching heat exhaustion territory. When we got to the bottom of the final climb up to the finish line, the Mt. Driskill "summit," I told Grant I was done and watched him ride up the hill as I shifted down into my lowest gear to trudge up that final kilometer. It took me a good half hour after the race to get my body temperature back to normal, and that was after downing three delicious slushee type things and a bottle of cold water. It was a tough day on the asphalt. Stephen Mire, the race organizer, did a great job with the race - everything went off on time, results were quick, there were lots of cold drinks and even watermelon. Tomorrow will be a different course, but I have a feeling it won't feel any easier. At least we'll start a little earlier.

TD-5

What was left of Tropical Depression #5 came barrelling right through New Orleans early this morning, bringing some truly impressive thunder, lightning and torrential rain. I guess it was before 5 am when the really heavy rain started, and by the time it finally let up there was a fair amount of street flooding in the usual places. Feeling kind of desperate for a ride, considering I'd missed both Monday and Wednesday, I decided to take the rain bike out for a quick 20 miles before work. I left around 7 am, but which time the rain had eased up considerably and there was just a light drizzle falling. I put on the rain jacket and headed down the street. A few blocks later I could see that Carrollton Ave. was flooded, so I turned at Short Street. The only problem was that the intersection there was about three feet deep, so for a little while I was up to my water bottle in water.

When I got to Montecello, just a block from the levee, traffic on River Road was practically at a standstill because of flooding on either side of the railroad tracks. Once again I dove into the deep water, riding the last block of Monticello in about two feet of water, which BTW is like riding on a trainer with the resistance set to high. Once I got up onto the levee, though, I was high and dry and had the entire thing to myself. I took a couple of photos and then got in eight or ten easy miles with my rain jacket flapping in the wind before turning around. By the time I got back the flooding was already subsiding as the pumps started to make some headway on the rain. Even so, I had one more stretch of deep water to circumnavigate (I rode on the sidewalk for a block or so) before getting back home where I immediately cleaned and lubed the chain. I'll have to re-grease the old classic Campi hubs and bottom bracket tonight since I'm quite sure that water got into them while they were submerged.

I just signed up for this weekend's Mt. Driskill Omnium in Ruston, about five hours away, which features two very hilly road races for which I'm feeling quite ill-prepared and possibly over-geared. I have to bring some of the LAMBRA equipment up there anyway. Mt. Driskill is the highest point in Louisiana, towering some 535 feet (yes, I said "feet") above sea level. I hope the altitude doesn't get me! Actually, the steepness of the climbs up there is definitely something to be worried about.

Rain Day

When it rains, it pours. As I'd planned, I skipped riding Monday morning on the dubious theory that my legs needed a day off the bike. Midway though my morning shower, however, I started to notice a lot of police and ambulance sirens. When I looked outside I could see there had been a fairly serious accident a block away, at Claiborne and Broadway - air bags deployed, smashed minivan, ambulance. Even so, there seemed to be a lot more police cars than usual. I threw on some clothes and walked outside where I could see numerous police officers walking around on the other side of Claiborne. Apparently the driver of the offending vehicle had taken off running after the accident (the victims were uninjured thanks to their airbags), and the police were searching for him in bushes, underneath houses, etc. I presume they found him, because a little while later one of the ambulances moved a coule of blocks away where there was a cluster of police officers. By then I was running late, so I scarfed down a couple of leftover Gulf shrimp and headed off to work. So that's how my week started.

The Tuesday morning levee ride had a pretty big group, but was relatively civilized this week, which is to say that the group mostly stayed together. It helped that John flatted on the way out and most everyone stopped to wait.

The Tulane cycling club's jersey design is finally ready and Rich has put up an order page on BikeReg (may still be some refinement to that before he officially announces it), so things are moving along on that front again. By early afternoon I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room with my dad for one of his routine visits. We were there a good hour for a ten-minute visit.

After that I drove up to Baton Rouge with The Wife to check out some reported damage to her mother's house that has been vacant for the last five years. We arrived to find that the entire road in front of the house is completely ripped up and in the process of being widened, so we had a little hike in the mud just to get there. What we found was that someone had gotten in there and broken every single pane of glass in the entire house, kicked in every door, ripped down every light fixture, kicked holes in the walls, and generally had a fun old time doing as much destruction as possible. So we filed a police report just on principle since there's only liability insurance on the property at this point, stopped for dinner at the local Outback, and got home around 9:30.

Naturally, since I'd already taken one day off the bike this week, this morning I stepped out the door all dressed for riding, only to be greeted by a loud clap of thunder and rain. We're already getting rain ahead of the tropical depression that's out in the Gulf. It's projected track has it heading straight this way, but all indications are that it won't be very serious -- just very wet. Maybe I'll ride out to the lakefront this evening, weather permitting.

Stan Truxillo, who had that massive heart attack last week, had bypass surgery yesterday and seems to be doing great. Two hours of surgery for four bypasses, and by 5 pm he was back on his feet. If all goes as planned he'll probably be out of the hospital in a few days.

The Truth

The Time Trial is often referred to as The Race of Truth. That may be close to the truth, but the real race of truth is the Team Time Trial. You see, in an individual TT, there's always ample opportunity for self-delusion, rationalization, and generally convincing oneself that one doesn't really suck as badly as the stopwatch might indicate. In a Team TT, on the other hand, there's no hiding from the reality of one's own suckage, even when you're the smallest guy in the paceline.


So Saturday morning I was in the car at 6 am on my way up to Baton Rouge for the annual Team Time Trial. We'd pulled together a 40+ team consisting of Jorge, Rob, Keith and me. I knew Jorge would be up for a fast pace. Keith had been riding strongly of late, and although I hadn't ridden much with Rob, I figured he'd be up to the task as well. I wasn't so sure about myself. The TTT registration process was kind of confusing, at least from the official's side of the table, but I got all of the teams and riders entered into the computer and then had twenty minutes or so to change and get in a little warmup. We got our countdown and headed out on our 51.6 km torture test. The start went smoothly, and with a little tailwind we were soon up to 28 mph despite the plan to avoid going out too fast. I was feeling OK until the road started to turn into the wind. Jorge was taking long fast pulls, Rob seemed to be having a little difficulty with the pace, and Keith and I were holding our own. Every time I'd come to the front my legs would really start to load up after about 40 revolutions. This was not a good sign since we were less than ten miles into the time trial. It was around that time that we unexpectedly lost Keith. By the time we were halfway through the second of three laps it was going like this: Jorge would pull for about a mile, usually at about 27-28 mph. He would finally pull off, at which point Rob would come through and immediately pull over. Then I'd come through and the pace would kind of grind down one or two mph until I'd pull off and Jorge would come through again. Then I'd have to really put my head down to catch onto the tail of our 3-man paceline as the pace went up again. The last lap was just plain painful. In retrospect, I guess I was probably a bit dehydrated, but I think the real problem may have been that I'd never taken enough recovery time the prior week. Anyway, we did a respectable time thanks to Jorge who pulled a good 80% of the distance. Took me a while to recover from that one! I packed the station wagon back up with the LAMBRA equipment and headed home to post the results on the website.

Sunday morning I was back on the bike at 6 am, riding out to meet the Giro Ride. There was a little breeze already, but I knew the real issue would be the heat. With a few of the regular riders still up in Louisville for Masters Nationals, the group was a little smaller than usual, and I was surprised to see Jered and Ashley who had arrived back in town at something like 4 am after a very long drive from Denver. As soon as we hit Hayne Blvd., a small group rode off the front of the still-disorganized group. After some shuffling around, we finally got a good rotation going at the front and basically chased Rob K. and his breakaway companions until they eased up around Chef Highway. That didn't last long, though and another group took off on Hayne, so we were once again chasing, finally closing in on them a mile or two before the turnaround. The effort took a pretty big toll on the pack, though, and at least half of them turned around early to meet the front group on the way back. I think everyone was getting pretty toasty by then because the whole group was rolling down Chef Highway at about twelve mph for a long time. I eventually rode up to a small group that was down the road and soon found myself doing a 2-man time trial with Steven N. as I waited for the rest of the group to awaken and come storming by. We got reabsorbed toward the end of Hayne, but after the sprint the group came apart again so a small group of us rolled off the front for the last time. We kept the pressure on until the end of the service road, but after that things eased up. We were toast -- at least I was. A couple of miles from home I sucked the last drops of water from my big insulated bottle and promised myself a real recovery day on Monday.

The Weekend Already?

It was the shortest of weeks and it was longest of weeks. Every day I'd tell myself, "I'll post an blog update tonight," and every day I'd fall asleep before I did. So here it is Friday night. It's pouring down rain outside thanks to one of those little unpredictable summer thunderstorms, and I still need to get my act together for tomorrow's team time trial over near Baton Rouge. Since I have to bring a bunch of essentials for the race (generator, clock, etc., etc.) I'll need to leave around 6 am.

So this was a long and hot week. Tuesday's long levee ride was kind of strange. The ride out to the turnaround was mostly pretty civilized until we got way out past the dip. At some point I think Donald got irritated at Howard's surges, and by the time things really got rolling on the way back I had the distinct feeling that they were battling each other up at the front. Brady was there too, so the bottom line was that the ride back was way faster than the ride out. That evening I went out to the Arena for a little practice criterium. I wasn't really into it, but nonetheless got in a pretty good workout. I was impressed with Steven Noya who launched a couple of really strong and well-timed attacks. That afternoon I'd learned that Stan Truxillo, who was a very active racer and NOBC president for a few years before moving to Texas in the mid-80s, had collapsed on a bike ride with a "massive" heart attack. Someone administered CPR and luckily the hospital in Austin was equipped to put him into therapeutic hypothermia right away. I was still fearing the worst, but when they warmed him back up early Thursday and he came out of the induced coma he seemed to be in great shape. He's now scheduled for bypass surgery on Tuesday.

By Wednesday morning I was still not feeling fully recovered from the weekend, much less the previous day, and although the morning ride was smooth and steady, I probably should have done an even easier recovery ride alone. I was certainly wishing I had on Thursday morning when the levee ride got pretty fast. Then, on the way back, I found myself off the front with VJ and Rob, both of whom were on their TT bikes. It was like doing ten miles of motorpacing. I think I went to the front twice and very briefly at that. This morning's ride was a pretty typical Friday ride, which was a good thing. Hopefully my legs will still be functional tomorrow.

In the meantime, a number of LAMBRA riders have been up in Louisville at Masters Nationals. It hasn't been going too well for some of them, apparently. I haven't gotten any reports from them yet, but I've been surprised at how far down some of the area's strongest masters have been finishing in the Road Races. On the plus side, Debbie Milne won her Road Race for the second year in a row, apparently finishing something like five minutes ahead of 2nd place. The criteriums start tomorrow.

Electrolyte Season

It's 9 pm on Monday night. The thermometer out on the porch reads 92F and the air is thick and humid. I guess they were right about that specific heat of water thing. The last few days have been a bit uncomfortable around here. Welcome to summer in New Orleans!

There weren't any conveniently located race this weekend, which is to say there was nothing within a three-hour drive. Mid-summer us usually kind of slow down south, but once we get into September there's often a little flurry of activity again, kind of like a second little mini-season. So anyway, that all meant translated into two Giro Rides for me.

With no chance of relief from the subtropical sun for the Saturday Giro, it was time to dig into the electrolyte drink mix jar. Most of the time I go with plain water, but we were now in the middle of electrolyte season. I pulled the regular water bottle out of the seat tube cage and put it aside. Instead, I grabbed one of the big bottles, dumped in a heaping scoop of Hammer electrolyte mix, and filled it to the brim with water. I would have done the same with the other bottle, but the frame triangle is so tight on the Orbea that it's kind of hard to get the big bottles in and out. So for the downtube location I went with a regular bottle with regular water.

By the time I got to Starbucks to meet the group I was already dripping sweat. I got my usual iced coffee and tried to cool down as more riders filtered in and the sun started to come up. There was already a breeze blowing as the big group finally headed out for the usual warmup spin out to Chef Highway. It got pretty fast pretty quickly. A small group rolled off the front and a minute later the pack started to chase. I was feeling pretty good, but I knew some of that was just because we had a tailwind. I always wonder if the guys at the front understand that if there's a tailwind on the way out it means there will be a headwind on the way back.

On this particular day, a number of the riders doing the damage were on TT bikes, so frankly, I didn't feel like I needed to be spending much time out in the wind myself. The lead group eased up at the end of Hayne, so things mostly came back together, but by then we'd already lost a lot of people. We wouldn't see them again until the turnaround, because once we got to Chef highway the pace went back up for the duration. Actually, it was a good workout. As expected, things slowed down a couple of notches on the way back. Yeah, I drank every drop. A bunch of us stopped at Matt's house just off Robert E. Lee to rehydrate before riding home.

Later in the day we walked down to the monthly crafts fair at Palmer Park. I was so hot that I didn't want to stop walking, so I kind of zipped through looking at the usual stuff on offer and headed home for the comfort of the a/c.

Sunday morning was kind of a repeat of Saturday, except with fewer riders and a slightly slower pace. Fast on the way out, slower on the way back. Everyone seemed pretty wilted by the time we got back, myself included. Typical mid-summer Giro Ride!

When I wasn't riding, I think I spent most of my time last weekend hiding in the air-conditioning.

Back and Forth

So I have a few nice photos from Saturday's Giro to put up and really intended to use them for a weekend blog post yesterday, but instead I opted for a little computer moratorium. I've been going back and forth among three computers and two flash drives lately and I think it all tripped the circuit-breaker in my head some time on Sunday morning. The photos are on the computer at home, and the writeup is still bouncing around in my head, and it's all taken a bit of a back seat to work and cars and trying to stay out of the sun. Maybe the Mellow Monday ride this evening will smooth things out and I'll get back to normal tonight.....