Back At It

On the way back along Chef Menteur Highway

After a good four hours of sleep I rolled out of bed and onto the bike.  The air outside was thick and humid, and it was dark enough to need both headlight and taillight.  I was a little early, so I took my time as I rode out to meet the Giro Ride. The biggest thing on my mind at the time was whether to have hot coffee or iced coffee.  It was a decision that turned out to be moot when I found the Starbucks to be closed.  It seemed that they had electricity, so perhaps they were having trouble getting enough staff back to work or something.  There were a couple of things we knew for sure about the Giro.  Lakeshore Drive was definitely unusable after having been submerged by the lake during the hurricane.  I also knew that once we got out past the levee on Highway 90, where the road had also been flooded, we'd probably have to deal with mud, debris and possibly standing water.

The turnout was surprisingly good, and the pace down Hayne Blvd. was pretty fast, perhaps just a little bit slower than normal.  It felt good to be back at it, but events of the past week had clearly taken their toll.  Basically, I felt like I had been off the bike for a month. As we had crossed the industrial canal bridge I'd looked down to see that the huge floodgates, finished only a month or so ago, were still closed.  Out on Chef Highway the floodgates east of the city were open, so we were able to ride over the levee there, but on the other side we found the right lane partially submerged and full of debris, forcing us into the left lane along with the trucks.  It didn't take us long to decide it was too dangerous to continue, so we turned around, ultimately cutting about ten miles off of the Giro route.

Here in the city things are slowly returning to normal.  The power company made a lot of progress on Sunday, but there are still a lot of areas without power.  On the way home we watched a caravan of a dozen power trucks as it turned onto Wisner heading into town. I'm glad that tomorrow is a holiday because we can all use the extra day to get things back in order before returning to business as usual on Tuesday.

Power!

The power finally came back on around 11:30, which would be about an hour and a half ago, and the temperature inside the house is getting down to a level at which I might actually get a few hours of sleep. It's been a few rather uncomfortable nights, but really, it could have been a lot worse.

I'm heading to Starbucks in the morning to see what we can do about a Giro Ride, considering that various floodgates may or may not still be closed and some parts of Chef Highway may or may not still be underwater. It seems like I haven't been able to put together enough consistent quality training since that crash way back at the beginning of July to really get back in shape.  Some years are just like that.

Outages

NOLA Power Outages Thursday morning

Well, we survived Hurricane Isaac without much damage, which is more than I can say for most of the trees around here.  It's Thursday morning and the power has been out since around 2 am yesterday.  At the height of the storm I could feel the house moving in the stronger wind gusts, which is rather disconcerting to day the least.  The map shows the current power situation around 30 hours later (the red lines are the ones without power).  There's no telling how long it will be before we're back on the grid, but I think most of the damage was due to trees taking down power lines, so I guess it could be anywhere from twelve hours to a few days. There are two trees down within sight of my house, one of which took down the power lines, and the other looks like it just took the telephone/cable lines.  Although we had an overnight curfew (it was quite peaceful), traffic is picking up on S. Claiborne now despite the lack of traffic signals.  We have had a few breaks from the rain, but for the most part it has been raining for two days now.  There's some standing water in the low spots of the basement -- seepage from the completely saturated ground outside, and without ventilation it's getting kind of musty down there. At least the cloud cover has kept the temperatures down and it's been rather pleasant sitting out on the front porch enjoying the breeze. The police department has been patrolling regularly and a few looting arrests have been made, so things are much better in that regard than they were seven years ago, and the new floodgates and pumping stations worked without a hitch, so despite a huge amount of rainfall, things were generally under control and there was never any hint of street flooding near my house.

This house, built in the 1920's was designed for New Orleans in the pre-air-conditioning era, and fortunately most of those features have been preserved.  The porch, window screens, casement windows, etc. have really made things tolerable. The neighbors came over for dinner by candlelight last night and even though there was no a/c, the breeze coming through the open windows made it quite pleasant.

I'm guessing I won't be getting out on the bike again today unless it really clears up.  Even if it does, there's a ton of clean-up that needs to be done, and unfortunately I have a brother in law who has been in intensive care in Baton Rouge since yesterday, so we may be driving up there some time soon.  Since I-10 is closed around LaPlace and the Causeway is still closed, it could be a long trip.  We may be able to wait until things are open again, however.  We're supposed to be back at work tomorrow and classes at Tulane are set to resume on Tuesday.  It's about time to give the generator a little break since I'm still not sure where I will be able to find gas......

Sneaking One In

Starting back down the river from Ormond

Last night when Mignon sent an email out to the group asking if anyone was thinking about trying to sneak in a final pre-hurricane ride in the morning, I thought the chances were slim.  As it turned out, however, Tropical Storm Isaac (it remains to be seen whether it was even achieve hurricane status) hadn't really gotten its act together overnight and I awoke to dry streets.  It was, of course, pretty windy, but once the sun started to come up you could see that the sky didn't look all that threatening.  Up on the levee we had Tim, Woody, Mignon, and (!) Richard Hughes, in addition to myself as we rolled out at 6:15.  Most of the ride out to Ormond had a quartering crosswind, and the sections where it was more tailwind than crosswind got pretty fast.  The farther out we got, the more I started thinking about how hard the 20+ mile ride back was going to be.  Indeed, the ride back was hard.  A few times I almost lost it when Tim pulled off and the wind hit me full-force. I was already off of the levee and on my way down Oak Street when it started raining, so I guess our timing was pretty good. After riding I went out and filled up the neighbor's two 5-gallon gas cans, stopped in at Freret Hardware to say hello to Vivian and pick up some lamp oil just in case we end up without power for a long time.  I'm really not thinking this one is going to be too bad here in the city, although the lake is already starting to flood the area between the seawall and the levee.  I did spend some time down in the basement moving some things up off of the ground as a precaution, but here at the house I know that we won't get any water in our basement until it's at least six feet deep in Lakeview.

The Cruel Truth - Take Warning

It's not called "The Race of Truth" for nothing, and the cruel truth was that I wasn't even remotely prepared for it.  Anticipating disaster, I'd stopped by Vivan's house on Saturday and picked up her time trial wheels, hoping they might at least minimize the impact of what I was already expecting to be a lackluster time trial performance.  Donald Davis was arriving at the house Saturday afternoon, so I had already gotten the results spreadsheet and officiating supplies ready, and had even picked up a new pop-up shelter for the club to replace the one that had been flattened by the storm at the Tour de Louisiane back in June.  Everything was ready, except of course me.

Sunday morning I was on the road to LaPlace just before 6 am with the car loaded up with stuff for the event -- generator, shelter, chair, race clock, traffic cones, table, flags, banners, clipboards, computer, printer, etc.  I was already tired.  Maybe it was that half bottle of wine I'd had over dinnner? Peake Racing was on hand with lots of volunteers, so once we handed out all of the race numbers and got the first few riders started, I squeezed into my skinsuit and rolled around for a few minutes before my start time.  I wouldn't call it an actual warmup, but my plan was to start out easy and work my way into it.  There was what felt like a light ENE wind blowing, so I was expecting a mild crosswind with a bit of a tailwind on the way back.  I started out smoothly, rolling up to 26 or 27 mph rather quickly with what felt like a little tailwind.  A couple of miles later the road turned just slightly to the right and my speed started dropping quickly.  I felt like I had no power at all, and I guess I was only five miles into the 40 km Time Trial when I saw 22 mph on the computer and thought, "This is ridiculous!"  If all I could muster was a pathetic 22 mph under those conditions, I was seriously questioning why I was out there.  I forced myself back up to 24 or so, but knew my ride was basically over as whatever motivation I might have had went right out the window.  Some days you just don't have anything to offer, and this was one of those. Mitch, who had started a minute behind me, went sailing by before the turnaround.  A few miles later as I rounded the pylon at 20 km Jorge powered past me as well.  I held his pace for a couple of miles, but eventually backed off again, dropping down to 22 mph.  Grant passed me about halfway back.  I'd have to say that was about the worst time trial I've done in twenty years.  I dried off and sat down at the computer to start entering finish times, and about halfway through realized that they didn't look right at all.  The starter had not written down the actual start times, but instead had written down the time of day, so I didn't have the easy cross-checks that I normally do.  It took me quite a while to figure out that I had forgotten about the 5-minute gap between the 20km riders and the 40km riders, and had to then correct all of the start times.  Anyway, we eventually got everything done, with a couple of mistakes in the Cat. 1/2s because I got a couple of incorrect times that were relayed via cellphone from the finish line.  Amazingly, Frank Moak came on top with a 54:33.  How does he do that?  On a good day I would have been thrilled with a 58:00 myself, and this was definitely not a good day (I coasted in at 1:03:35).

By mid-afternoon on Sunday the news media and city in general was going in to full-on hurricane panic mode as the storm track for Tropical Storm Isaac had shifted more to the west and was now heading directly for the city.  At some point in the early afternoon I was sitting at the computer working on the results when I heard a loud noise.  I got up to see if something had fallen in the kitchen, and checked down in the basement to see if maybe the big pop-up tent or something had fallen over, but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.  Later than night when I was removing the clip-ons from my bike I picked up the wheel bag containing the front wheel I'd borrowed from Vivian and noticed that the front tire was flat.  When I opened the bag I found everything coated in a white powder.  The sidewall had completely blown out.  I guess the tire was a little old.  At least it hadn't happened during my time trial.  Well, actually, maybe that would have been a good thing, under the circumstances, as I distinctly remember wishing I'd get a flat so I could quit.  Anyway, I got the results posted to the website, uploaded them to the USAC database, and then met with the Tulane Cycling officers to get a start on the club's plans for the year, budget, etc.  By 10 pm I got about halfway through updating the LCCS points rankings before I started falling asleep at the keyboard and decided to call it a night.  Unfortunately I was then "urged" to go out into the night in search of gasoline thanks to the increasingly alarming newscasters.  The closest gas station had a line about two blocks long, the next two were not selling gas, either because they had sold out or were waiting for the price to go up.  I ended up filling up the car way out by Elmwood.  Anyway, this morning the forecast, IMHO, looks more encouraging and I'm not really expecting to have to evacuate the city for this one.

As I climbed the path  up to the levee this morning I glanced over my right shoulder at the red sky and thought, "...sailors take warning."  A Tropical Storm was heading our way.  It was relatively cool and breezy, and of course there was nobody to ride with, but I figured I'd better put in a few miles since the weather would probably become an issue on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Out near the turnaround I ran into a rider who recently moved to town and with whom we'd had breakfast after Saturday's Giro Ride (and whose name of course I can't recall right now), so at least I had some company for the return trip.

Blasts from the Past

Late last night I got an email from Tim Fitzgerald, and attached to it was a black and white photo from the 1984 Race Across Louisiana.  I have to admit it was a little hard to admit how long ago that was.  Anyway, I figured I'd put it up on the NOBC History page at some point and went to sleep.

It was relatively cool this morning as I rode out to meet the 6:15 am ride on the levee.  It was another reminder that summer was coming to an end and hurricane season was reaching its peak.  As the mornings get darker, riders start showing up later and later, so I wasn't surprised to find just a couple of riders there when I arrived, nor was I surprised when a quite a few others suddenly materialized within just a couple of minutes. It was a pretty normal Wednesday ride with everyone taking long steady pulls, all within a narrow range of a couple mph of 20.  The one non-normal thing was the presence of Adam Watts (of Bicycle World fame) who I probably hadn't seen on the ride in six months. As remarkable as his presence was, the fact that he had promoted one of the Race Across Louisiana races around the time the photo I'd received seven hours before had been taken was even more remarkable.  Anyway, I'd been planning on riding out to the lakefront after work for the training race, but by the time I got home it was nearly 6 pm already, so I opened a bottle of Malbec instead ..... using a Campagnolo corkscrew, of course.

Tuesday

Decorated Water Meter Cover on Oak Street

It's that time of year when it seems each morning is noticeably darker than the previous one.  I don't like that.  It signals the beginning of Fall, and those of us who get up before 6am are the first to feel its effects.  I took a few minutes to put the lights on the bike and headed out just as the dawn was filtering over the horizon.  Down on Freret Street, as I rode through a little cloud of marijuana smoke and approached the 4-way stop that I ride through every morning, a few school children waited for their bus.  Ahhh, the telltale signs of public school back in session. I should mention, for the benefit of those from elsewhere, that here in New Orleans, that public schools here are probably not what they are where you live.  My aunt, who was a school teacher, used to have a great story to explain the fact that one segment of the population here has a rather unique accent that sounds a lot like Brooklynese.  Way back in the early part of the century New Orleans already had a well-established parochial school system. The public school system was populated largely by recent immigrants.  It was also a disaster, so they city brought in a new director who happened to be from Brooklyn.  He then proceeded to bring in a lot of teachers from Brooklyn.  Since most of the children in the schools were from immigrant families, they learned English primarily from their school teachers.  Anyway, it's a nice story.

So there was a pretty big group up on the levee this morning, and to make matters worse there were a lot of other people up on the levee enjoying the relatively cool morning, or perhaps starting to train for the annual MS Tour ride.  As a result, it was a lot of stop-and-go for the first few miles today.  Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful ride and I ended up spending a lot of time sitting on the back of the paceline kind of zoned out. It wasn't until the last few miles that I snapped out of it and got back to work.  I stopped in at Zotz for a quick cup of coffee on the way home and noticed that someone had decorated all of the water meter covers.  The design on these old covers has become something of a New Orleans icon despite the fact that they were all cast in Wabash.  At any rate, you can actually by jewelry modeled after our water meter covers.

The Far Corner: Rocky Mount Weekend

Hanging on in the Cat. 1/2/3 Criterium

It wasn't a great plan, but at least it was a plan.  A grant proposal that I expected to come down to the wire on Friday had already eliminated any reasonable option I might have had of driving up to Shreveport early.  Instead, I was resigned to a 1:30 am departure for the long drive up to the far northwest corner of the "L" state. On the plus side, since I was the only crazy enough to do something like this, I had lots of room in the Volvo.  The forecast for the weekend in New Orleans was dismal, so I figured that perhaps there would be a bit less rain a few hundred miles north.  I arrived at Rocky Mount right on schedule, leaving just about an hour to register before the 8:05 am start and get my act together.  I was pretty sleepy, but I figured I'd knock out the road race and have plenty of time to catch up on sleep because there was no afternoon time trial this year. I signed up for the 55+ race since the 40+ and 55+ would all be racing together and I figured my chances of winning my entry fee back would be better in the 55+. At the start we had a good-sized field of 30 with riders from Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Florida.  One of the nice things about this particular race location is that it brings together riders who don't always get to race with each other.  It's a longer drive from New Orleans than from Dallas. 

As expected, I wasn't feeling too sharp for the start, and when they announced a KOM prize for the first time up the "big" hill, about 3 miles into the official race (about five, counting the neutral section). Naturally there was a sprint for that, but fortunately nobody tried to capitalize on it and everything came back together right away.  Two riders rolled off the front around that time and the pack gave them quite a bit of rope before there was any sort of response, and I was really wondering if they were gone for good.  Donald and a couple others finally put the hammer down and reeled them back in.  There were a number of rather sharp attacks on the second of the three laps, but by then the rest of the group was apparently not willing to take too many chances and nothing stuck for long, so we came into the third lap all together.  One bit of excitement was when we were coming up to the right-hand turn #3 and half of the field was way over the center line approaching the somewhat downhill turn.  Suddenly a truck coming from the left turned right into the group, and luckily there was still just enough time for riders to get out of the way as the surprised driver turned onto the shoulder. 

I knew that at least a couple of riders were definitely going to attack the big climb on that final lap, so I made sure to stay toward the front of the group.  The big guy who I think had been in the early break took another shot at it, but it didn't last long and the pace slowed down again.  The whole race was like that.  There would be a really fast attack that wouldn't last very long, and then it would slow down when it came back together.  By the third lap I was actually feeling better on the climbs and as we started up the big hill I was keeping my options open in expectation of a hard attack.  We were about halfway up when I heard a crash behind me.  Practically simultaneously there was a attack at the front.  I never had a chance to look back, and only mumbled, "Damn," as I lugged my overgeared self over the last half of the climb and around the right-hander at the top.  The lead riders kept the pressure on and the next couple of miles of rollers were really fast and hard.  As it turned out, the crash had split the field and the surge afterward had made it impossible for many riders to get back on, so as we made the right turn with maybe seven or eight miles to go the group was down to I guess eight or nine riders.  There were a couple of short attacks, but most riders in the group were resigned to a sprint finish up the really big hill to Rocky Mount, so the pace started to really lag, dropping down into the teens now and then.  I looked back and could see a small group of three chasing.  At the speed we were going, I figured they would catch, and we were about a mile or so from the finish when they did.  The finish is a departure from the race circuit and is basically a one-kilometer climb that tops out 250 meters before the finish.  As we started up the climb I was behind Donald Davis and could tell he was anxious to go. He was momentarily trapped behind the front row which hadn't strung out yet, and as soon as there was an opening he attacked.  It was too early for me and I had to let a few more wheels go before making a big effort.  Coming over the top I found myself kind of in-between a lead group and the rest of the group, and rolled across the line in 6th, I think.  That was good for 1st in the 55+ race, so I was happy to have covered my entry fee!

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sleeping and catching up on the LAMBRA LCCS scoring, finally getting that all up to date.

Sunday morning was a criterium at a community college.  It was a nice but very open course with one section with some nice technical turns, but then a long half-kilometer that was basically a big semicircle. The masters race was fairly fast, but no at all steady because of repeated attacks.  A couple of miles into the 45-minute race Donald went to the front and just hammered for most of a lap.  That was enough to split half the riders right off the back.  As expected, the finish stretch around a long right-hand curve got really fast and since I wasn't sufficiently motivated I ended up I guess 8th or 9th or something, but still 1st among the 55+ riders, so I was happy to have covered the hotel bill too!  I wasn't really very happy about that. My sprint felt really weak. 

After watching one or two of the other races, and since I had to stay until the end in order to bring some of the LAMBRA equipment back with me for the upcoming time trial, I was lured into entering the Cat. 1/2/3 race by the discounted second-race $10 entry fee.  My plan for this one was simple.  Try not to get dropped and see if you get lucky at the end.  With none of the Herring riders in attendance, the LaS'port team had everyone out-numbered and out-gunned, so their plan was obviously to launch attack after attack, which they did nicely.  Luckily for me the other riders from S3 and various other teams were being pretty attentive. I had teammate Robert Monahan in this race, so since it was my second of the day I figured I could take a few chances and helped chase down a break or two.  As often happens, I was actually feeling better for this race than I had for the Masters race. I can't explain that, but it isn't unusual at all.  I may not have a lot of snap left in my legs, but in general I don't usually feel like the first race takes all that much out me otherwise.  Anyway, as you might expect I was spending a lot of time near the tail end of the field as the LaS'port traded attacks up front.  The problem with hanging out at the back of this race was that these guys were going through the technical section way too slowly.  I don't know what the problem was, but every lap I'd be on the brakes coming in to the first of the two tight turns, and then having to sprint out of the last one as the accordion came back together. At one point I saw Robert drifting back to where I was and told him he needed to get back up front asap.  So despite LaS'port's best efforts, I think everything came back together by the end.  I had moved up into a good position at the start of the last lap, and was surprised to still be about fifth wheel after the technical section, but then with only about 300 meters to go the riders on the front inexplicably eased up and we started getting streamed.  My sprint again felt weak and I ended up 9th, easing up just before the line as Robert came past to take the last spot that was in the money.  It was a great weekend, made even better by the fact that back home they had nothing but rain, some of it quite severe.  Around 2 pm I hopped back onto I-49, set the cruise control, and settled back for the long drive back, having timed it just right to miss the last of the rain as I came in to town.

Track, Time Trials and Taxes

6:33 am, Saturday:  "What about this weather? Is race going to be rained out?" I checked the radar and was rather surprised to see a line of thunderstorms between me and the Team Time Trial Championship course up in Vacherie.  The start wasn't until 9 am, so there was still hope.  Donald Davis, who would be riding with three Midsouth Masters riders, had spent the night at the house on his way in from Pensacola.  We headed out at 7 am to make what would normally be an easy one-hour drive, but by the time we were crossing the spillway we were in the middle of a pretty severe storm. Soon I was down to 50 mph and straining to see where I was going.  Up on the roof both of my track bikes were getting a thorough cleaning.  The Team Time Trial was just the first part of my weekend plans.

I was scheduled to ride the 29 mile TTT with teammates Keith Andrews, Mark McMurry and Chuck Bell. We had a second team lined up as well, but soon after we arrived a couple of members of that one had to cancel.  Also, soon after we arrived, the rain started again.  We ended up pushing the start back by a full hour, but by then it was down to a light drizzle.  The course was on a freshly asphalted road that felt pretty fast.  It looked like we'd be starting out with a significant headwind, but in fact it was barely noticeable.  We started out nice and easy, keeping it at 25-26 mph most of the way to the turnaround.  It was really smooth, which should have been a clue that we weren't going quite fast enough.  I found myself taking pulls of 50-60 pedal strokes before my legs would start to load up and I'd drop back. Since I was by far the smallest on the team, however, I felt fully recovered by the time my next pull came up.  We tiptoed around the turnaround on the still-wet street and settled into a pace of around 27 mph for most of the return trip.  A mile or so before the finish Mark took a really long pull, ramping it up to about 30 mph, at which point Keith dropped off the back.  Then, when Mark pulled off Chuck maintained the pace.  Unfortunately Mark didn't realize that Keith was gone and a big gap opened.  I yelled to Chuck to ease up and backed off myself.  We were still going pretty fast, and were probably only 300 meters from the finish, so I doubt it cost us much.  Unfortunately, just as we got to the finish line a big semi stopped in the right lane ahead of us.  I was on the front at the time and started to go around on the right but spotted someone with a dog standing there and thought better of it, switching over and going around in the left lane that was fortunately clear.  We ended up with an OK time of 1:05:09 which turned out to be only 3rd in the masters and 8th overall.  On the plus side, I wasn't particularly tired or sore afterward!  It was one of the smoothest team time trials I've ever done.

So after the TTT, I jumped in the car and continued up the river to Baton Rouge where I was scheduled to officiate the LSU collegiate track meet that afternoon and the next morning.  They had an OK turnout for a track race, but of course it all took longer than planned (doesn't it always?) and by 10 pm everyone was more than ready to call it a day.  My Blue track bike got a lot of use, as did the vintage front wheel from my Viner.  Despite the fact that a number of riders were riding the track for the very first time, the races all went pretty smoothly and there were no crashes, much to my relief. Things wrapped up on Sunday around 1 pm so I was back home in New Orleans by mid-afternoon with lots of time to get ready for my next adventure, getting my property tax assessment reduced to something more reasonable.

So Monday morning after gathering up the necessary dated photos, insurance papers, comparables, etc., I headed over to City Hall where I expected to wait in line for a couple of hours in order to meet with an assessor about the 300% increase in my assessment.  What I found was beyond belief.  There were a couple hundred people lining the entire block-long length of the ground floor hallway.  I took my place and the end of the line, writing my name on a paper tablet next to the number 460.  Six hours later I was still in line in the hallway.  Someone came down from the 4th floor office and started handing out tickets to people who wanted to come back first thing in the morning rather than take a chance on being able to see an assessor that day.  I took a ticket.  it was after 4 pm and I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since 8 am, so I figured that any negotiating skills I might have had already been severely compromised.  So this morning I was back at City Hall bright and early and was ushered practically immediately up to the 4th floor ahead of the two hundred or so people already waiting in line in the hallway.  My optimism started to sag a couple of hours later when I was still waiting in the 4th floor hallway outside the assessor's office.  Finally we were called into the office where we were given new tickets and told to wait once again.  I guess another hour went by before my number came up and I got to sit down with a Service Representative who was basically doing triage for the actual appraisers.  She looked up my house on the computer and it was immediately obvious that they had estimated the house's living space by about 100%.  Fortunately I had brought an old appraisal with the correct number.  So I got a new ticket and moved to a new line where I waited another hour or so to finally see an actual appraiser who immediately corrected the square footage number, pulled up similar properties in the neighborhood, and said "Looks like most houses are at around $280k.  How's that for you?"  After agreeing to this highly scientific assessment, which reduced my appraised value by over $185,000, I was finally out of there,wondering if I should have held out for an even lower number.  Now I'm basically a couple of days behind with work, and in particular a $3.4M grant proposal that is due on Friday.  It may be a couple more days before those race results get uploaded to USAC and I get the LCCS points updated!

Wednesdays on the Levee

It's interesting the way that group rides evolve.  The morning levee rides, for example, have become reasonably predictable with each day of the week having developed its own little routine.  Wednesdays, coming of course the day after what is typically a fairly hard Tuesday ride, have become the days for long pulls in a smooth, small paceline.  Today was pretty much the definition of the current Wednesday ride.  I don't think the group ever numbered more than six or seven, and except for a few brief surges the pace didn't venture much outside of a narrow range from 21 to 24 mph.  On these days I'll typically take pulls of maybe 100 pedal strokes, as compared to 40 or 50 on a faster ride.  Some riders take slightly longer pulls at slightly slower speeds, others take shorter pulls at slightly higher speeds, but the differences are small -- on the order of one or two mph at best -- so it's always pretty easy to stay in contact.  Sometimes where the rider in front surges more than that, I'll just let a little gap open and then slowly close it up rather than make the more sudden acceleration that would have been needed to stay on the wheel in front.  This, of course, is not a particularly wise tactic if you are in either an actual race or a fast training ride.  Anyway, it was a typical ride today and on the way home I stopped in at Zotz for an iced coffee.

After getting home I spent about an hour searching all over the place for an old property appraisal and taking photos of the house to back up my upcoming trip down to the city assessor's office next week.  I've also tracked down the recent listings and sale prices of a couple of houses in the next block, all of which have a lot more living space and other amenities than mine but sold for way, way less than the amount the city would like to base my property tax bill on.  In the process of rummaging through files and storage boxes I ran across an old photo of me in what must have been one of the very first bike races I ever did.  It's from 1972 and I'm riding my recently upgraded Atala that had cost $110 new.  I'd just swapped out the steel cottered cranks for a new Nervar Star alloy cotterless crankset and upgraded the steel wheels to fiamme red-label tubulars. I'm wearing the NOBC club jersey, but also cut-off shorts and tennis shoes, and of course the old classic leather helmet, and you've got to love the hairy legs.  In the background is the Southern Yacht Club (destroyed by Katrina and later rebuilt) and the old Coast Guard lighthouse (also destroyed by Katrina but now in the process of being rebuilt and restored).  That might even be my girlfriend's convertible Oldsmobile Cutlass parked along the lakefront.  Fortunately, I haven't changed at all since then......

Out to the End

End of old section, start of new.

I heard the garbage truck outside the bedroom window Saturday morning as I awoke.  It seemed darker than usual for 5:45 am, but I didn't think much about it as I got dressed for the Saturday Giro.  Down in the basement I fill water bottles under the single bare light bulb, and before putting on my riding shoes I opened the door to bring in the empty garbage can.  As I stepped out into the thick humid dawn I felt something hit my face.  A raindrop?? A light rain was just beginning to fall.  I went back upstairs to have a look at the weather radar. 

End of the path near Norco.

It didn't look good. 

I sat there or a few minutes watching the animated radar and wondering if I should pump up the tires on the rain bike.  Then I heard the first clap of thunder. I shut everything down and climbed back into bed, still wearing my team kit and put in a couple more hours of sleep while the rainstorm drifted through.  I heard there were a few riders at the Starbucks who sat around drinking coffee until finally throwing in the towel and going home.

So by 10:30 am or so the rain was over and it was looking a lot better.  I've been feeling rather mileage deprived lately, having missed riding on Thursday entirely, so I thought I'd head out to the levee and ride all the way out to the end.  The bike path had been extended upriver recently, and in fact was not yet officially open, and I thought I'd go check out the new asphalt.  It was already getting pretty warm by the time I left.  Considering the heat and the fact I'd be riding solo, and the likelihood of a little headwind for the return trip, I stayed in a low gear and tried to keep my speed between 18 and 20 mph.  The bike path was still rather deserted as I headed up the river, but most of the water had evaporated. I could hear my seatpost creaking inside the aluminum seat tube and knew that water and grit had finally worked their way down in there. Somewhere way out around the Luling bridge I saw Rolan riding toward me.  "I'm going all the way to the end," I yelled as he slowed and made a U-turn to join me.  A couple of miles later we came to a barricade across the bike path.  On the other side was fresh blacktop, still missing its center line stripe. 

Naturally we went around it.  Over the next few miles we had to detour down onto River Road a couple of times to get around pipes near Norco, but back up on the levee the asphalt continued.  A little while later, though, we came to the end of the paved road, maybe a mile before the Spillway, and turned back.  Rolan turned off about halfway back as the heat got hotter and humidity got heavier.  I sucked the last drops of water out of one bottle and started in on the other, riding all the way to Audubon Park and adding a couple of laps around the road there or good measure.  I was a little surprised how tired I was by the time I got home, but at least I'd gotten in 56 miles on the bike.  I was already wishing I'd gotten in the car and made the 6 hour drive to race in Oxford, but complications on Friday, including a dying car battery and ridiculous property tax assessment had pushed that a few spots down on my priority list.

So Sunday morning looked a lot better as I rode out to the Giro Ride.  Unfortunately I'd miss my pre-Giro coffee because I'd fallen back asleep after shutting off the alarm clock.  I'd be there in plenty of time to make the ride, but my usual twenty minutes of caffeine loading were definitely out.  There were a few key riders missing, of course, thanks to the races in Oxford, and there were a couple more TT bikes than usual (the Team TT is next weekend), but turnout was still good.  As soon as the pace started to pick up I noticed that my legs felt a little sore.  Really?  From what?  This sort of thing never happened when I was 25, but now it's a fairly frequent occurrence. 

Anyway, the Giro was fairly fast today and even though I wasn't riding aggressively enough to be on the right side of the splits for the sprints, I got a good workout, again went through every drop of water I'd brought, and got home feeling quite empty.  I ended up logging about 250 miles for the week, which it about normal for this time of year.  I've always said that I don't start to feel like I'm in shape until I have a few consecutive 250-mile weeks under my belt.  I heard there was some Olympic bicycle racing going on this week over in England, but you wouldn't know it from NBC's prime-time coverage.  I did, however, see hours of women in bikinis and horses leaping over things and even British celebrities and royalty cheering for the track races that they didn't show.

Don't Stop Pedaling, Keep Turning Left

I may not have won many medals, but I certainly put in a lot of chamois time this weekend! It was Thursday before my legs finally felt recovered from the previous weekend's trip to the velodrome, so after an easy morning ride on Friday, Saturday's Giro Ride came up pretty quickly.  If I'd been more serious about the afternoon's LAMBRA Track Championships, I would have skipped the Giro, but I felt that I needed the miles, especially since I wouldn't be riding the road bike on Sunday at all.  The Giro turned out to be fast, but I kept my nose out of the wind for the most part and arrived back at home with a couple of hours to spare before driving up to Baton Rouge to open up registration at 1 pm.  I brought both the newer Blue track bike and the trusty old Viner with me.  I'd swapped cranksets during the week because I wanted the 49 tooth chainring instead of the 48 on the Blue and the two chanksets had different bolt circle diameters.

I was the first to arrive at the velodrome, but by the time I'd hauled some most of the equipment down to the infield, other riders and volunteers started arriving.  Naturally, there was a big rainstorm heading our way, and of course it started raining a bit, but it didn't last long. Mike Lew was there with a couple of bikes for Mignon and Heather, neither of whom had ever been on the track.  They had both been tricked into coming on the premise that they could just ride around the track a few times to see what it was like.  Of course they both ended up registering for the race anyway. I led Heather around the apron for a couple of laps, told her "Don't stop pedaling and keep turning left," and then led her up onto the banking for a couple of laps right before the racing started.  She hadn't raced anything in a couple of years, but took to the track remarkable easily.  She ended up winning the omnium.  Mignon seemed a bit more tentative and was planning on riding only one of the three main sessions over the weekend, so she was mainly just putting in some track time to get used to it.

Track is always a humbling experience for me.  The repeated short maximum efforts with practically no warm-up always hurt.  Nonetheless, it's still a lot of fun and a nice change from the road. The 10-session schedule of events or Saturday was completely incomprehensible to me, so I was never quite sure what I'd be riding next.  The 4k pursuits were set up in the "official" way with qualifiers and finals, and so somehow I ended up riding at least three of them.  As usual, my time trial efforts were all pretty lame.  There were also the match sprints and I think I lost count of how many of those I ended up doing.  Despite all of the races, the results were predictable and I was 4th or 5th out of the 5 or 6 Cat. 1/2/3 riders.  I guess my placings might have been better if I'd ridden in the Masters race, but since I'd done the prior two track races in the 1/2/3s, I figured I'd at least be consistent.  Most of the mass-start races were done with combined Cat. 1/2/3 and Cat. 4/5 fields, and sometimes also the Masters, racing together, so that made things kind of fun for the mass-start races like the Scratch Race, Win-and-Out, Miss-and-Out, and Points Race.  As it turned out, I think I felt best for the Points Race (despite scoring points in only one sprint) and Miss-and-Out. In the Miss-and-Out I backed off when it was down to four or five riders to make sure Mark didn't get boxed in down in the sprinter's lane, so I was eliminated probably one sprint earlier than I would have been otherwise.  Right at 9:00 pm, about halfway through the Masters/Women Miss-and-Out, all the lights at the track suddenly went out plunging the whole race into darkness.  It was lucky that nobody crashed.  Someone at the park didn't get the word that there was a race going on and hit the "off" switch at the usual time.  During a couple of the races I noticed an odd noise coming from my bike, and shortly before the Kilometer, late in the night, I realized that my bottom bracket cup had started backing its way out and cartridge bottom bracket was wobbling enough that the crankarm spider was starting to hit the chainstay.  Luckily I had the Viner there, and Mignon, who had been using it, had gone home, so I hastily swapped the 14t cog for a 13t, which was probably not too wise in the first place, and rode the pursuit or kilo (I don't even remember which) without aerobars, which in my case didn't make much of a difference.

Track races always seem to take longer than expected, and this one was no exception.  Between the pursuit qualifiers and the sprint qualifiers, things were dragging on quite a bit.  It was probably around 10:30 or so by the time we decided to postpone the points race until the next morning and call it a day.  A few of us stopped at Waffle House, which was one of the few places still open, and I headed back to New Orleans with Graeme.  It was well after 1 am by the time I got home and unloaded the car, and then I had to fix the bottom bracket. Total chamois time:  11 hours.

I guess I ended up getting about three hours of sleep before I was on the Road back to Baton Rouge for the Sunday morning sessions which went until around 2 pm.  Afterwards we handed out something like 60 championship medals along with the very first LAMBRA district championship jerseys for the omnium winners.  Mark McMurry ended up 3rd in the championship omnium by just four points, but won the month-long series. Next time the team events need to be excluded from the individual omnium scoring.  Perhaps we can do a team trophy for the team events. Overall, it was a good weekend and probably the best track meet we've had in a few years, thanks largely to Dustin Flint who somehow kept track of the complicated sprint and pursuit qualifying brackets.  Even so, there were a number of riders who I know have track bikes and didn't show up.  Too bad.

Midsummer Rides

No prizes, but a podium!

The midsummer heat and humidity has been in full force lately, and so I'm going to blame that for the fact that I haven't felt good on the bike all week. I had skipped riding on Monday since I was clearly, obviously, dramatically in need of some recovery time, and I guess it helped somewhat.  Still, I've been feeling generally sluggish all week.  I missed Kenny's bandit time trial, which seems to get bigger and bigger every week, on Tuesday evening because we were going out to Mosca's with my father.  It had been quite a few years since I'd ventured into the wilds of the westbank for dinner at Mosca's.  The place was renovated a bit after Katrina, but they were successful in retaining the 1960's roadside restaurant atmosphere and I don't think the menu has changed since at least the Nixon administration.  We had a big family table and just ordered the huge shared plates of Oysters Mosca, Italian Crab Salad, Chicken à La Grande, and Shrimp Mosca.  It was good, messy, as always a bit overpriced.  James Carville and company had the table next to us. It's always amazing who you see at that place because if you didn't know better you'd drive right past it, which is probably what they're hoping the IRS does since they accept only cold, hard cash there.

Wednesday morning on the levee Scott said he'd just had his bike worked on and now the chain was skipping on one of the cogs.  I asked him the obvious questions about new chains on old cassettes, but that didn't seem to be the likely cause, so I took a closer look.  It was pretty obvious that they'd somehow mixed up the spacers in his Campi 10-speed cassette.  That's often what happens shortly after a mechanic says "oops" and the cassette parts scatter across the floor.  Anyway, he brought it back that morning and they straightened it out.  You kind of need the charts to do it right because the spacers aren't all the same width and the setup is different for practically every version (record, chorus, etc.).  I'd been planning on riding out to the lakefront in the evening for the training race, but by the time I got home and walked the dogs it was already nearly 6 pm and the streets were still a little damp from an earlier shower, which provided enough of an excuse.  I'd ridden back from work down Pine Street and by the time I was halfway there I started noticing an unusual amount of traffic. A few blocks later I was riding past a solid line of cars inching their way down the street.  As it turned out, the POTUS was at a little fundraiser thing a few blocks over on Audubon Blvd. and so a bunch of streets were temporarily closed down, forcing people to meander through the neighborhood searching for a way out.  Anyway, I wonder if that $25,000 per person snack time included some discussion about the Tulane football stadium, since it was being held at one of those houses. 

I can't say I was feeling any better this morning for the long Thursday levee ride.  After taking a pull and drifting back to the end of the line, the pace started to ramp up.  Tim, who had just set a new course record for the Tuesday night time trial (10.6 mi. @ 23:16 = 27.3 mph avg.), was up there, along with a few others who were planning on turning around early, and that kept the speeds up in the 25-28 mph range pretty much all the way out to Ormond.  I didn't see much of the front until we were past St. Rose, by which time the size of the group had dwindled a bit.  It wasn't terribly fast, but down around the tail end of the paceline it was erratic enough to make it difficult.  After the turnaround it took a little while for everyone to get back together. We finally got rolling at 25 mph or so near St. Rose, rode through The Dip, and then a little while later VJ, who had been on the front on his TT bike, started having some kind of shifting problem and finally sat up. As I rolled past him I asked what happened, but he had his earphones in and probably didn't hear me.  Steve and I soft-pedaled along for the next couple of miles thinking he'd flatted or something, but soon we couldn't even see anyone behind us and figured it had been something mechanical.  A little while later the paceline came streaming past and I asked Richard what had happened.  It turned out that VJ's cassette lockring had backed itself out, eventually hitting the inside of the dropout and stripping the first few threads on the cassette body.  He ended up having to pull off one cog in order to get enough good threads to screw the lockring back on, so he was able to continue.  Toward the end of the ride the group split and I don't know if he had to stop again to re-tighten the lockring, since I assume it was only hand-tight to begin with.  Anyway, I was just a puddle of sweat by the time I got home thanks to the heat and humidity.

There seems to be quite a bit of interest in the track races coming up this weekend, so I'm looking forward to that and hoping I will be able to race a bit and not have to officiate too much.  At least the weather seems to have settled back into a more normal midsummer routine of random afternoon showers rather than all-day wash-outs.

Road and Track and Back

The weekend was a repeat of last weekend, only a bit more painful. Saturday morning Jon Tenney and a friend of his stopped by the house at 6 am to ride out to the Giro Ride with me.  The weather around here for the past week has been a series of random thunderstorms interspersed with humidity, so we just go out and ride and hope for the best. The turnout was a little on the low side, which wasn't too surprising considering the radar images. Fortunately, we were in-between the rain, so we headed out, picking up more and more riders as we went. We'd just started down Hayne Blvd., when Matt flatted.  I guess half of the group kept riding, the rest of turned back to help. On a group training ride, "helping" means standing around the rider with the flat tire and criticizing his tire-changing technique.  Matt had deep rims but his spare tube didn't have a long enough valve stem.  Luckily someone else had one that would work, so eventually we got back the road. Of course, we'd lost quite a big of time by then.  Even so, I was surprised to see the front of the group coming back as soon as I did.  We turned around and merged back in.  I was not feeling too sharp at all, but fortunately the fast sections were fairly short that day.  I got back home, took a shower, and promptly fell asleep.  A couple of hours later I was awakened by text messages and phone calls from a few people asking if the afternoon track races were still on.  They were.

So by 1:30 I was on the road to Baton Rouge with Graeme and a couple of track bikes for the second race of the LAMBRA Track Cup Omnium.  Checking the radar, I could see a huge rainstorm moving south toward Baton Rouge, but behind it there was no rain showing up.  I figured it would rain for sure, but would probably be over by about the time the racing was to start, which was 4 pm.  Graeme mentioned that he needed to replace his cleats because they were starting to get pretty worn down.  I cautioned him to do it soon because they usually break when you're out of the saddle sprinting.

As expected, it started raining lightly a few minutes after we arrived at the velodrome.  The severity of the rain, however, had diminished considerably, and the track was good to go by 4:30 or so.  Unfortunately the rain had scared most riders away and we had only seven on hand.  Of course, that didn't stop us from racing.  Graeme started warming up on the track and a few minutes later, right in the home stretch, we heard a crash and looked over to see him sliding across the pursuit finish line.  His cleat had broken!  Luckily there's a bike shop practically around the corner from the track, so he was back in action half an hour late.  We just grouped everyone together for the mass-start events.  I started out feeling really lousy.  Fortunately, all of the time trial events were first, and the difference between my time trials when I'm feeling great and when I'm feeling terrible is negligible.  The scratch race, points race, and even the win-and-out were a lot more fun, however.  I guess it was around 8:30 by the time we were done and heading back to New Orleans.  It was a fun day, but I could already tell I'd some some substantial damage to my legs.

Sunday morning there was a northshore training ride on tap, so I was up at 5:30 wondering how I was going to handle 65 miles in the hills when my quads were already feeling like blocks of wood.  Actually, I knew how I was going to handle it -- no well.  Luckily there was a big group waiting for us when we arrived at the Lee Road school.  Considering who was there, I knew it wouldn't be an easy ride.  It wasn't, at least for me.  We started out pretty fast and I wondered if the guys at the front realized we'd be riding back into a headwind.  I was feeling just a little bit better than awful.  For the whole ride I felt overheated and achy, and my legs were complaining on every climb.  Fortunately we were stopping at the intersections to regroup, so somehow I survived, but I can't say it was the most fun I've ever had on a bike.  Basically, all of the efforts on the track, combined with the fact I've been taking it kind of easy for past couple of weeks due to the ribs, which still hurt, had trashed my legs. That's often how I feel after a few hours at the track, so it was situation normal.  I think Monday is going to have to be a recovery day.

Keeping Up

So I've been trying to keep up the mileage, if not so much the intensity, over the past week and a half.  It's been going fairly well, actually.  The road rash is pretty much all healed up, and I know that the rib thing will just be lingering for another couple of weeks regardless of what I do or don't do.  Last weekend was full with two Giro Rides and a few track races in-between.  Saturday afternoon's weather was threatening, which scared away a few people, but as it turned out we didn't have a drop of rain at the velodrome in Baton Rouge.  The original plan had been to do two full omniums to make up for the rained-out one the prior weekend, but after the first one took over four hours, everyone agreed to just skipping the second one.  I split my time between officiating and riding, skipping most of the really hard stuff and just doing the scratch race, miss-and-out, and a kind of odd 2-rider team pursuit.  The start of the latter really hurt.  Pulling hard on the bars is one thing that really hurts the ribs, even now.  Anyway, it was fun and I think I was wise to skip the Kilo and Pursuit, under the circumstances. In fact, considering all of the rain we have been having around here, it was amazing that it didn't really interfere with the weekend riding.

I skipped riding on Monday.  Something in the back of my head keeps telling me to give the ribs an occasional chance to heal.  Monday night Jon, who is in town for a few days, came by so we could re-engineer the broken headset on a bike a friend of his from Denmark (I think) had borrowed.  So they were out on the levee for the Tuesday ride, which I thought turned out to be a little harder than I'd expected.  This morning I was worried about a grant proposal that's due on Friday and skipped riding so I could work on it a little bit before going to the office.  I really ended up mostly staring at it and wondering how on earth we were going to pull the thing together in time.  By 5:30 I was more than ready to ride out to the lakefront to see if I was ready to jump back into the training races.  Naturally, the first thing that happened was that I flatted.  Eventually we got started, but every time the pace stayed up above 31 mph or so for any length of time I was having trouble. Granted, I probably had only 50 psi in my rear tire, but regardless, it was a little disappointing.  On the plus side, I made it home before the rain started.

Patience

FINISHED THE GIRO RIDE BEFORE THE BAD WEATHER ROLLED IN ON SUNDAY

So I've been kind of laying low while waiting for things to heal up, which is not to say I haven't been riding.  Even so, it does require a certain measure of patience.  The road rash, other than the big hole over one of my knuckles, has mostly healed up uneventfully thanks to a box of Tegaderm.  By far the biggest issue has been the broken rib.  Now, nearly two weeks out, it has improved enough that I have been able to sleep reasonably well the last few nights, although sneezing is still to be avoided at all costs. 

On the group rides there has been this little voice in the back of my head reminding me that riding with both a broken rib and broken helmet deserves a little extra measure of caution.  So basically I spend a week or so trying not to crash and not to breathe too hard.  Now that the rib is hurting a little less and I have a nice new helmet, I think I should be more or less back to normal by the weekend, although I'm sure the rib will continue to cause minor problems for a couple more weeks. Anyway things are improving.  Locally, we've had a lot of rain this week that hasn't affected my morning rides, except that it's been extremely humid, but has affected some the evening training races.  It killed off both the Tuesday time trial and the Wednesday training race on the Lakefront, in addition to last Saturday's track races up in Baton Rouge where we sat around under tents for about four hours hoping it would stop long enough to get in some racing, but no such luck.  Hopefully we will fare better next Saturday.  Otherwise, it's been really busy at work and there has been a lot of LAMBRA work (I still need to finish scoring the last race for LCCS points).  We've gotten a number of the August race permits processed, so things are going OK on that front.

Down and Out

Man, it's like we're in the middle of a Crashidemic around here lately.  Riders, including me, have been dropping like flies. Last weekend was the annual "la Vuelta d' Acadiana" over in Lafayette. This is usually a pretty good race, and although the Masters field was looking a little thin I had been looking forward to it.  It's an omnium format race, which isn't generally my favorite, but I was willing to tolerate the time trial and attendant points deficit it would likely cost me in order to do the criterium and road race. 

So when the alarm went off at 5 am Saturday I threw the bike and wheels into the car and hit I-10 for the two and a half hour drive to the time trial course.  Overall, turnout looked pretty good and after signing the (wrong) release form (they had printed out 1-day release forms for all of the pre-registered riders by mistake) I squeezed into my skinsuit and rode around in circles for a while until my start time came up.  The 4 mile TT course started out into a headwind, which wasn't really what I needed motivation-wise.  Within the first half-mile, looking down at the speedometer to see numbers in the 24 mph range, I knew I was wasting my time.  So I held it at about an 80% effort all the way to the turnaround and didn't really go full-bore until maybe the final kilometer.  The predictable result was a dismal placing quite far down on the list.  Fortunately, the criterium was next.

The afternoon criterium were held on a course I'd ridden a number of times in the past, although the last time was probably ten years ago.  There were a couple of notable things about it.  One was the U-turn a little bit past the start/finish, and the other was the final turn that featured a section of road that would put your rear wheel into the air if you hit it right.  Otherwise the course was pretty fast.  I lined up with about twenty Masters around 4 pm.  The race started out fairly conservatively, I thought, but soon a small break went off the front.  I watched it for a little while as the gap started to grow ever so slowly.  A few riders moved to the front and a disorganized chase started to take shape, but I was already getting worried.  With such a small field there wasn't a whole lot of horsepower available to chase down the break.  Finally I set out alone to bridge up to it, making contact just before the U-turn. The pack had responded when I'd gone, so half a lap later the break sat up and the pack caught. 

There had been a time bonus sprint that the break had all to itself, so after that I guess some of them may have been content to ease up.  Anyway, things stayed together for the rest of the race.  I was staying pretty active near or at the front since I was enjoying the more technical nature of most of the circuit.  With two laps to go it started getting pretty tight as riders started getting anxious about their positions. Just before the last turn a rider attacked hard and opened a good gap.  I saw Mark M. come past on the left and grabbed his wheel just before the turn.  From there to the finish it was basically a drag race that ended with Mark 4th and me 5th.  I was reasonably satisfied with it.  Not happy, of course, but considering how lousy I'd felt that morning, it was at least reassuring.  We hung around for a couple more hours to watch the Cat. 4 and Cat. 1/2/3 races before heading to dinner at a sushi place.

Sunday morning was a fairly flat 50-mile road race just northeast of Lafayette.  I was feeling pretty good for this one.  It is kind of liberating to know that my teammate Mark is an accomplished sprinter because it means I can go ahead and take some chances or do some work early that I might otherwise avoid.  If I burn too many matches, I know that as long as Mark gets to the 200 meter mark in the front group he'll place well in the sprint.  Our race was three laps of a 15 mile loop plus a little segment from the start to the loop and then back from the loop to the start. Well, by the time we got onto the loop, maybe two miles after the start, there was already a 2-man break off the front.  The pack didn't seem too concerned about it, but I could see that the gap was growing really quickly.  To make matters worse, one of the riders was from the Acadiana team which had another four riders in the group.  Soon, they were all over the front going after anything and soft-pedaling to slow the group.  The break's gap must have gone out to about two minutes because for the most part we couldn't see it. 

Finally, about halfway around the first lap, I decided it was time to do some work and started working my way around the Acadian obstacles at the front to take some faster pulls. Initially I got some help from one of the Florida riders, and over the course of the next five miles or so some other riders started to lend a hand at overcoming the blockade.  As we started the last section of the first lap the pace finally got consistently high enough that I was comfortable we'd eventually catch the break.  Just before the end of the first lap was the feedzone, followed immediately by a right-hand turn.  I was at the front coming into that section, so I moved over a little to the right and held the 25-26 mph pace to make sure that the feed zone didn't turn into an excuse for the group to slow down for a couple of miles.  I mean, who the heck needs a feed 17 miles into a 50 mile road race?  Back in the day, it was actually illegal to feed for the first 50 miles of a road race.  Anyway, I rode smoothly through at the front, passing over four neon green turn arrows painted on the roadway.  Up ahead was a red arrow confirming the turn.  As I leaned into the turn I could hear a rider coming up on the right, but of course he would be turning too, so I made sure to leave room on the inside.  Suddenly he rammed into me, lifting my front wheel right off the ground.  He had not realized there was a turn there.  This little lack of situational awareness was about to end my race.  The last thing I remember before hitting the asphalt was being at an impossible angle relative to the ground and thinking, "Damnit, I'm going down."  I hit hard on my right side, whacked my head on the pavement, slid a little, rolled, and finally came to a stop.  I looked up to see the offending rider turning around and sprinting back onto the group.  He had somehow not fallen.  I was pissed.  Bob Monahan, who had been in the feedzone, came running over to see if I was OK, and we fumbled for a while with the chain which was wrapped into a couple of figure-eights. Someone told me my helmet was cracked.  I knew my race was over.  The road rash wasn't too bad, but the fall had probably broken a rib or at least caused a significant contusion, and since I'd hit my head I figured it would be best to stand in the shade for a little while until the adrenalin wore off and I could make a better assessment. 

Robert Maupin showed up after having crashed out of the Cat. 4 race, so after hanging around for a little while I convinced him to do one more easy lap with me.  We rode with a couple of stragglers from the Women's race for a while, during which time the two-man break off the front of the Cat. 4 race (Ben Bradley and Tim Dorion) came flying past.  Another small break from the Cat. 4s came by, and then, minutes later, the pack.  Mark and I sped up and hung off the back of the Cat. 4s for a while.  A little later we came upon one of our teammates who had flatted and rode with him for a little bit before heading back to the cars.  Later we found out that another teammate, Mario, had crashed and broken his collarbone in the Cat. 5 race.  Adrian had crashed in the Cat. 5 criterium the day before.  I can't really explain all of the crashes.  Perhaps the combination of heat and questionable riding skills?  I didn't see anything in particular about the courses that would have caused problems.  Anyway, the masters pack did indeed catch the break on the second lap and ultimately came into the finish together.  Mark finished 3rd, moving up to 6th on GC despite a time trial that was just as bad as mine had been.

It was a long drive home with road rash from shoulder to ankle.  It's Tuesday and it still hurts to take a deep breath, so I guess there's a good chance I damaged a rib in my upper back or under my arm.  Nothing to be done about that except to stock up on Advil, I guess.  After I got home I learned that Rick Aubry had crashed on the Saturday Giro.

Four in a Row

I squeezed my head into the time trial helmet and rolled onto Lakeshore Drive to look for the other three-quarters of my team time trial team.  Kenny was holding another time trial training race and in a weak moment I'd allowed myself to be added to one of the club's teams.  The evening temperature was somewhere in the 97-100 degree (F) range, but at least the wind had died down.  It was looking like we'd have a light tailwind on the way out for the 10-mile effort.  I was taking quite a bit of comfort that among our team, composed of Keith A, Mark M. and Steve H, I was by far the smallest.  There is nothing quite like being the smallest guy on a TTT team.  It's like being the smallest guy in a breakaway, except the the other riders aren't trying to drop you.  Anyway, we found ourselves in line just ahead of the Herring Gas team. I wondered if we'd make it to the bridge at two miles before they took a minute out of us and passed (we held out all the way to the Elysian Fields traffic circle).  I was to take the lead at the start.  I'd already suggested that we keep the perceived effort at around 70-80% for the first mile, knowing that it would probably be more like 90% if I was lucky.

Our start was pretty smooth, which was a good sign, and although everyone seemed a little wobbly trying to ride paceline on aero-bars, nobody was surging and the speed was as smooth and steady as one could expect.  With the tailwind we were rolling along at a nice conservative speed of 27-28 mph.  At Elysian Fields the Herring guys blew past us as expected.  They were going at least 31-32 mph. Having them in sight ahead of us nudged our own speed up for a few miles, but after making the loop at the half-way point we started picking up the headwind.  Our speed dropped to around 25.5 mph despite an increase in effort level.  We had already lost Steve.  Passing Franklin Avenue we saw a fire truck parked on the other side of the road and I knew someone had crashed, but all I could make out was a Bicycle World jersey.  It turned out that Stephen Noya had lost it as the Tulane team was flying through some bad pavement at 30 mph and broken his collarbone.  Anyway, by the time we went through the Elysian Fields traffic circle we were beginning to fade.  Mark, who had been suffering the disadvantage of being behind me up until then, was clearly suffering, and although we were holding our speed on average, the pace was beginning to fluctuate more and more between pulls.  Mark switched to Keith's wheel to get a little more draft.  Going up the Bayou St. John bridge we dropped down to 20 mph.  Somehow we held it together, though, and finished it off with a really hard final kilometer or so, yielding an average speed of 26.4 or so and placing us 5th among the day's teams.  It was a pretty good ride.  As we stood around afterward (there were drinks and stuff since it was also a benefit for Scott H.) an ambulance carrying Stephen came rushing past.  Everyone cheered.

So Wednesday morning the legs didn't feel too worse for the wear and I went out for a fairly easy Wednesday morning ride, keeping in mind that the Wednesday Night Worlds were that evening.  After work I rushed home, walked the dogs, and finally made it out the door late enough that I knew I'd miss most of the first lap.  It was miserably hot and humid, and the cars along Carrollton Avenue seemed to have me in their sights too.  People were driving like idiots.  One pickup truck passed so close that I could feel the wind from his television-sized side-view mirror as it rushed past my ear. I was hot and tired and just couldn't muster up the energy to pull off the time-trial I'd need in order to get to Lakeshore Drive in time for the start.  So I got there maybe ten minutes late, and rode along Lakeshore Drive looking for the group.  Unfortunately, when I did finally find it, they were flying toward me on the other side of the median near Elysian Fields and there was no way I could make the U-turn fast enough.  I turned around eventually slotted into the paceline after they had come around the fountain traffic circle.  The group was unusually small -- perhaps a result of the prior day's TTT effort combined with the heat.  Anyway, I got in a few good training laps and limped back home as I sucked the last drops of water from my bottle.

This morning I was running late, again, and missed the start of the long Thursday ride.  It was just as well, though.  I'm planning on racing the Vuelta this weekend and I figured my legs could use a break, so I rolled along the levee at a comfortable pace that crept up to around 20 or 21 mph until I forced myself to ease off a touch.  Out by the Little Dip I saw a small group that had turned around early heading back and decided to join it, so the ride back was a nice easy paceline ride.  Even so, I was dripping sweat by the time I got back home.  Welcome to summer in New Orleans.

1 Herring Gas.......... Moak/Regan/Boudreaux/Lambert.......... :21:34.. 29.49
2 Peake BMW1......... Corcoran/Corcoran/Rinard /Thompson...:22:51.. 27.83
3 MidSouth Masters- Davis/Dupree/Kapowski/Chaison.......... :23:37.. 26.93
4 Peake BMW2......... VJ/Howard/Todd/Judd.........................:23:42.. 26.84
5 NOBC/Desire Title- Andrews/Legai/McMurray/Happel..........:24:04.. 26.43
6 Hard Inc.,............ Chauvin/Porter/Landry/Vanlangendonck..:24:41.. 25.77
7 Melberg's Muscle... Kalmus/Rodrigues/Erchull.....................:24:42.. 25.75
8 NOBC2/DesireTitle-Delaney/Kowitz/Fresnada/Jarmillo..........:24:58.. 25.47
9 WeMoRi!-............. Rose/Waguespack/Miller/Amedee...........:25:20.. 25.11
10 Rabito Speed*.....Hurst/Morvant/Rabito – 1stMIXED..........:26:04.. 24.40
11 Crazy Train........ McArdle/Fontaine/Street/Olivares..........:27:04.. 23.50
12 VenomMultiSRac..Talbot/Theriot/Belker/Benoit.................:27:19.. 23.28
13 WeMoRi!2............Grandina/Rabito/Scariano/Guste...........:27:33.. 23.09
14 Foley's Fire.......... Foley/Danella/Merlot/Kaufman..............:27:35.. 23.06
15 Voodoo Peleton....Vanderbrook/DeSoto/Voros/McLin.........:27:38.. 23.02
16 WeMoRi!/NOBC*.. Guerin/Zeringue/Dolan/Duett – FEMALE.:27:42.. 22.96
17 DoWhatchaWanna..Marshall/Robbins/Robbins/DiMaggio......:28:48.. 22.08
18 XXX???................Frye/Driscoll/Dalrymple.........................:28:54.. 22.01
19 WeMoRi! Mx........ Philibert/Cothern/Franz/Vancleave– MIXD.:29:18..21.71
20 CollarBoneKids.... Noya/Hall/Mire/Barnes....Crash..DNF.......:00:00.. 0.00