Good Clothes and Winter Rides

The recent long weekend turned out to be great for riding, especially considering it is mid-January and much of the country is under about fifteen feet of snow.  We had earlier in the week planned a no-drop club ride on the northshore for Sunday, so when I headed over to Starbucks early Saturday morning for the Giro Ride I was not planning on taking it too easy. I had left home just a bit under-dressed since I was expecting to be burning a few calories over the subsequent few hours.  The ride itself was a fairly typical Giro.  There was a nice big group, the pace was brisk enough for a good workout for those who wanted one, a small contingent went out to Slidell, and I arrived back home feeling like I had been on a three-hour bike ride.

There was a time not that long ago when my winter cycling wardrobe was pretty severely limited.  I had one pair of long tights, one long-sleeved winter jersey, a wind vest, and a pile of summer stuff.  One can certainly still get by without a big collection of winter riding gear, but I have to say that the new stuff really does make life a lot better.  For Christmas I received a few "technical" fabric base layer shirts.  Adding those into the mix that includes my trusty Giordana winter jacket, long-sleeve thermal jersey, thermal bib tights, knickers, etc., I can pretty easily accommodate weather to at least the low 30s, which generally speaking is about as bad as it gets around here.  The new stuff is so, so much better than the old stuff from years gone by.  I do not miss the wool jerseys, cotton shorts, leather chamois, broken shoelaces, cotton-mesh and leather gloves, and especially the unyielding leather saddles.  It's all suitable nostalgic, of course, but please don't make me actually ride with it in anything but a inner-city antique bike ride!  Of course, all that winter stuff is expensive, and it's taken me quite a few years to accumulate it all, but since our winter really lasts only about three months, I get a lot of years out of most of it.  By the time I get to the end of January I'm already reluctant to replace any of it that needs replacement since I'm generally comparing the cost of a clothing item I'll use for only another three or four weeks with those new tires I need or that saddle that is worn through or all those increasingly expensive entry fees.  Anyway, suffice it to say that Over the past five or six days I've been riding in temperatures ranging from around 30 to around 65 and in general have quite comfortable.

So anyway, on Sunday Carly and Miles met Danielle and me to drive across the lake for the NOBC ride.  Although it was chilly at the start (kickers, double jerseys and arm-warmers) the sky was clear and it was supposed to warm up from the 40s to the 60s during our planned 65 mile ride.  We started with a large group of twenty that included a few riders, like Ben and Stephen, who were planning on splitting off after the first ten miles.  I was also expecting the rest of the group to split permanently at some point during the ride. Carly is most comfortable at around 16 mph right now and Miles was riding in sneakers with a borrowed helmet.  I was planning on riding herd at the back once they started to tire.

Passing the Firetower and heading down to Enon

As planned, everyone stayed together over the firetower hill and down past Enon, but by the time we were on Hwy 1072 gaps were starting to open on the hills.  The pace wasn't fast, but I knew a few of the riders in the group didn't have nearly the miles in their legs for a 3.5 hour 20 mph ride in the hills.  It was fine, though, because it turned out as I expected and even before the halfway point I was a minute off the back helping keep Miles and Carly within range.  At Hwy. 10 I debated taking a shortcut with them, but instead decided it would be better for them to finish the full distance, even if that meant doing a lot of it at 10 mph, which it did.  Way up on the north section of the route, where there are a few significant climbs, I found myself in-between Carly and Miles.  Carly was rolling along at maybe 12-15 mph ahead of me, but behind me Miles, who had been riding fairly strongly for the most part, was suddenly riding in slow motion.  I knew what that meant.  At first I eased up hoping he would catch me and I could pull us both up to Carly, but I was down to about 10 mph before he started making up ground. I eased up even more and when he pulled alongside I asked if he'd had anything to eat.  As I'd suspected, he hadn't and was now surely and profoundly bonked.  I pulled a powerbar out of my pocket, took one bite for myself and handed him the rest.  Then, when we to the Sie Jenkins Road to regroup Mignon gave him a piece of a Snickers bar.  That rejuvenated him quite nicely for the next ten or fifteen miles or so.  Things finally came apart again around the firetower hill and so the last seven or eight miles were pretty slow.

Crossing the Spillway heading upriver to LaPlace

The next morning was MLK day and I was off from work.  David had posted a note that he was going to ride up the river levee past the spillway to pick up the six or seven miles of paved bike path upriver from LaPlace.  That would work out to a ride of about 70 miles, and although my legs were actually a little stiff I decided to meet him at the quite civilized hour of 9:30 am by which time the weather was really nice.  I wore knee and arm-warmers with the plan of removing the knee-warmers for the return trip.  We ended up with a bit over 70 miles, including a mile or two of gravel/rock between the upriver end of the spillway and the start of the bike path up there.  It wasn't a hard ride - we averaged under 17 mph - but the weather was great.  By the time we were halfway back my neck and upper back were hurting pretty significantly, which has become the status quo over the past couple of months, especially after three 60+ mile rides in a row.

We're trying to get Danielle's Cannondale more or less race ready and the first thing we wanted to do was to find handlebars with a shorter reach and drop.  That was not an easy task since she's riding 36 cm bars.  We settled on some Bontrager Race VR-S bars that have about the shortest reach and drop I've ever seen, and also picked up a 8cm Zipp Service Course SL stem from eBay.  Next was a second set of wheels, also from eBay - a pair of unused 650c Bontrager Race Lite wheels that were pretty inexpensive.  It would be nice to swap out the triple chainring for a double, but that may be a somewhat thorny problem considering it's 9-speed, 165 crankarm length, would require a new bottom bracket, and possibly a new shifter or shifters.  It would have to be practically free at this point to make it feasible.

To the Moon

The moon slipping down toward the horizon as the sun rises behind us.

I went out Thursday morning to, hopefully, meet the 6:15 am group for the long levee ride.  We are all still experimenting with morning ride options, so I really had no idea who might be there.  As it turned out there were a few riders waiting at Dakin Street, so with tail lights flashing we waited for a break in the fairly light morning traffic and just took the lane.  At around 22 mph we were passed by only a couple of impatient, possibly suicidal, drivers.  I was surprised that Brian, who was at the front, didn't stop right after Ochsner to ride up the grass and instead continued another half mile or so to the first road leading up the levee.  That meant we had to stop at the traffic signal at Causeway and get a little tangled up with the traffic there.

Anyway, the ride itself was very smooth.  We picked up a few more riders when we got up to the bike path, so it was mostly just smooth 22 mph paceline out toward the setting moon and back.  On the way back we stayed on the bike path, dropping down on the grass just before the Ochsner pipes.  A car let us in and we just rode that last mile single-file without much of a hassle.  It's not really something I'd like to do alone, but with a little group it wasn't too bad, especially since traffic isn't moving all that fast there.  Of course there was that one asshole who just *had* to pass us even if it meant risking a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.  Naturally, we caught back up to the dumbass by the time we got to Oak Street where traffic always slows to a crawl anyway.

This morning I met Ben and Ben over at Tulane's Reily Center for a 6 am recover ride out to the lakefront with a stop at the Fair Grinds Coffeehouse.  We rode out on Carrollton which was fairly quiet except for the  usual game of chicken at the Palmetto on-ramp to I-10.  On the way back we opted for Jeff. Davis which is still all torn up.  When are they going to put the new asphalt on that street?  It's been months.

Alone Again

The Wednesday morning levee ride didn't happen today, unless me riding alone counted. After getting rained out on Monday, I planned on making the 6:15 am Tuesday ride, although given the still-unresolved levee bike ride crisis I wasn't too sure what would happen.  Unfortunately I got out there a few minutes late.  This sometimes happens for my first morning ride after a weekend road trip.  In this case I spent some time unsuccessfully searching for my missing headlight underneath the car seat, only to have Danielle show up and tell me it was upstairs in her room because she had removed it before we put the bikes on the roof of the car last Friday.  She decided to go do intervals out by Audubon Park, so I would be riding alone.  By then I had about five minutes to get to the levee, which I knew was impossible.  Well, as it turns out the traffic going upriver on River Road is pretty light at that hour and I was able to ride on River Road past the construction zone during which time only three cars passed me.  When I got up onto the levee I could see the cluster of blinking red lights that was the morning ride.  It was about a minute and a half up the road, so I knew that no amount of time-trialing was going to allow me to close that gap once they started rolling.  Even so, I could still see them half an hour later, but past Kenner the gap grew to the point that they were gone.  I turned around at the Destrehan bridge as they were coming back and rode back with the group listening to Howard harassing Brian, apparently for not staying on his wheel each time he would hit the front of the paceline and surge 1-3 mph faster than the consensus speed.  Before getting back to the new end of the bike path near Ochsner we regrouped and basically took the lane on River Road on the way back. It seemed to work pretty well since traffic wasn't moving very fast anyway.

Well, things were different this morning.  I got out to River Road at 6:40 and there was not a bike to be seen.  There were, however, lots of cars travelling upriver at around 35 mph.  There was no way I was riding alone on that shoulderless truck-laden road under those circumstances, so I waited until I could cross over to the river side to ride on the strip of grass between the temporary construction zone fence and the road.  That would have been fine except for the fact that much of it was soaked with water.  It was rideable, barely, and I could see lots of bike tire ruts in the mud the whole way, but it was not fun.  Fortunately it is only about a mile long so after six or seven minutes of impromptu cyclocrossing I was back up on the bike path. The path was deserted other than the strong north wind and myself.  I guess it was good that it was windy because otherwise I might have just soft-pedaled the whole ride.  As it was, I was struggling to maintain 17-18 mph most of the way out, sometimes unsuccessfully.  The ride back offered up a little more in the tailwind department, but of course I had to contend with that last mile in the muddy, soggy grass.  By the time I got home the bike was a bit of a mess, enough so that I took the hose to it in order to remove the dried grass and mud despite the fact that I probably never exceeded 10 mph.  So the lesson learned today was that riding on the grass alongside River Road is not good when it's wet, which is probably most of the time.  It's almost enough to get me up even earlier to meet the WeMoRi.  Almost.

Winter Camp

We pulled up to David's house at 5 pm on Friday and a few minutes later we were on our way up to Natchez State Park for the LSU/Tulane cycling winter training camp.  A few minutes after that David started remembering the things he had forgotten to bring, which included such items as the crockpot he was planning to use for dinner on Saturday and, more troubling, his riding shoes.  Fortunately, Kenny was planning on driving up early Saturday morning with a couple of other riders and stopped by David's place to pick up the stuff.  D and I had already made a grocery store run for the planned six or seven riders we were expecting.  Unfortunately, riders were dropping out like crazy at the last minute and we ended up with exactly two actual team riders, plus Kenny and myself.  Basically we ended up paying for one cabin that we didn't really need.  On the plus side, however, the weather forecast that had looked really bad earlier in the week had been revised and we were expecting a little cool front to come through Friday night followed by two days of very nice riding weather.  We were not disappointed in that regard.

Despite a rather rainy drive up to Natchez, we arrived early enough to get together with the LSU riders in the next-door cabin for a while, lube the chains on the bikes that had been on the roof of the car, and get to sleep at a reasonable hour.  The plan was to start breakfast at 7 am and hit the road at 8:30.

Saturday morning it was still a little cloudy and the roads still wet, but the rain was gone and the temperature was in the shorts-or-knickers range.  We scrambled up a big batch of eggs and everyone was ready to ride by 8:30.  Unfortunately Kenny had listened to his Garmin which had directed him down the unpaved Tate Road (this happens to everyone coming to Natchez State Park from the east), and we were also waiting for Curtis Moroney, who lives in Natchez, to join us, so I guess we were half an hour late getting started.

The planned ride up the Natchez Trace and then back around the Church Loop was designed to be more about practicing paceline than intensity and in that regard it worked out well.  The Trace is all silky smooth asphalt with minimal traffic (I think it was half an hour before we saw a car), and all of the hills are graded, so there's nothing particularly steep.  This makes it fairly easy to maintain a nice double paceline, which we did for most of the ride.  Toward the end, Danielle's legs were about cooked thanks to a serious lack of mileage over the prior few weeks, so she was really struggling on the climbs as her quads started to lock up.  I dropped back to keep her rolling and minimize the gap, which worked out pretty well. After we got back to the cabins for showers and food, Kenny, David and Danielle took off on a beverage run to Natchez, which is about twelve miles away, while I hung around to watch the LSU team play foot-down in the grass beneath the dam.  Meanwhile the Saints were having their own struggles with Seattle.  That night we all got together for a big pasta and salad dinner at the LSU cabin, followed by an interminable game of To the Moon that was so exciting I fell asleep and eventually wandered off to bed.

Sunday morning the temperature was cooler - I guess in the low 40s at sunrise.  The sky was clear blue, however, and by the time we where half an hour down the road we all knew we'd overdressed.  The plan, which had been changed the night before, was to take the long way around to Natchez, coming into town by way of Cemetery Road which runs along the high east ridge overlooking the Mississippi, make a trip through the old historic cemetery, and stop for coffee at the Natchez Coffee Company on Franklin Street.  Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn along the way, backtracked and missed the correct turn again, then finally found our way to the correct road(s).  I had ridden most of the route the year before, but had not taken the Cemetery Road route.  As it turned out, Cemetery Road was unpaved for the first couple of miles.  Luckily it was nice hard-packed dirt most of the way, so it wasn't a problem at all.  After a half hour stop at the coffee shop, we returned via the Trace, making for a ride of just under 50 miles.   The group stayed together at a moderate to easy pace nearly all the way back, but after turning off of the trace a few riders split off the front.  As we entered the park I decided to bridge up to them, which was about the time they decided to race all the way back to the dam. I caught one of them who had been dropped about half-way there and we bombed the downhills, bud didn't catch the other two until they eased up near the cabins.

So it was a really nice weekend of riding, even if the mileage and intensity was dialed down a bit from a more typical January weekend.  I was kind of looking forward to a recovery pace ride this morning but another front came through around dawn and it rained until around 1 pm, which was about when my pants started to dry out from my commute to work.  Tomorrow should be sunny and colder. Since they have closed off the construction area on the levee and are apparently threatening people who jump the fence with arrest, I will probably go out tomorrow and see if it's feasible to ride the mile past the construction area on the grass, or perhaps if there's a group, on River Road.  Riding alone on River Road in the dark, however, is not, in my opinion, an option that is compatible with survival. I am hoping that riding the grass is a reasonable possibility because my other options are to play in traffic on Carrollton Avenue or drive out to Jefferson Playground, which would cost me quite a bit of precious early morning riding time (and sleep).  We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Alternatives

Well it finally happened on Tuesday.  No, I don't mean that my pipes broke because the temperature dropped into the 20s.  What finally happened was that the levee construction crew started tearing up the bike path at the Orleans/Jefferson parish line, which is basically where we have been starting our morning rides for the past ten years or so.  Since the construction zone extends about a mile upriver from there, and since there are no other safe roads that bypass that area, I find myself looking for alternatives.  One possibility, which I will try tomorrow, is to ride on the very narrow strip of grass that they left between the construction fence and River Road.  Since it's less than a mile, that may be a viable alternative.  This morning, however, I figured I'd ride out to the lakefront like I used to do before the bike path existed.  I was expecting a nice relaxing ride at 6:30 am heading north before rush hour traffic got started.

Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but it was considerably worse than I'd expected.  There was a lot more traffic going a lot faster down Carrollton than I would have liked, and of course I caught every red light. I cut through City Park to Marconi, which was pretty nice, and then hit Lakeshore Drive heading east.  Some of Lakeshore Drive is closed to traffic so that part was nice, but as I got closer to Elysian Fields the cars reappeared and most of them were in a big hurry to get to work.  Then, at Franklin, there were bulldozers working in the street putting the dirt back where it belongs after the last cold front came through, so I had to turn around there.  Likewise, the west end of Lakeshore Drive is full of construction activity where they are putting in sheet piling and, finally, eliminating the mud and grass between the seawall and the street. With all of that, plus numerous stops for red lights and speeding traffic, it was not what you would call a good training ride environment.  The ride home was more of the same, although it was actually nicer along the most busy stretches of Carrollton because by then things were backed up and nobody was going much faster than a bicycle.  At any rate, I lost so much time dealing with traffic signals and cars and intersections that it was hardly worth it.  Once they finish paving Jefferson Davis, that may present a better alternative for getting to and from the lakefront in the mornings.

So anyway, this morning's ride made that 1-mile stretch on River Road look a lot more attractive.  When Ben told me that he was able to ride the grass between the fence and the roadway yesterday I decided I'd give it a try tomorrow.  Under the circumstances, it might be well worth it in order to spend a solid hour riding uninterrupted on the bike path rather than dodging cars on Carrollton Avenue.  We'll see.

Weather or Whether Not

It's been a week of crazy weather all-around, and down here in New Orleans we'd been spared the worst of it.  Last weekend was pretty nice, especially for the first weekend of January.  I went out to the Saturday Giro, which was a typical winter Giro, which is to say that a number of riders were planning on riding all the way out to Slidell so they weren't killing it on the way out.  That kept the pace relatively manageable which meant that I got home with legs that were only slightly sore.  Slightly sore was better than very sore because I'd decided to do the Northshore ride the next day.  After the Giro I rushed over to Mark's house for an NOBC meeting where we talked over some plans for the new year.  This was mostly about club rides, parties, training camp (which for us is kind of a party), etc.  One thing we did decide to do was to make a club effort to put together a Women's team composed of five or six or so riders who were willing to commit to a schedule of "A" races and in return get some club-provided perks.  If a good group comes together this could easily become a separately sponsored team within the club.  There was some talk of moving in that direction with other teams as well. 

After the meeting I stopped at Bud Logan's house and picked up the surviving copy of the video he made of the 1987 (I think) Race Across Louisiana.  I next need to get it converted to DVD, but that may be a little complicated because it was made in an unusual VHS format that incorporated an extra sound track for the music.  I'm checking on someone he has worked with over in Oregon, so we'll see.  If that doesn't work out I can always get it copied locally, although they may not be able to find the second audio track (which I think is mixed into the video track).

So Sunday I headed over to Puccino's to see if anyone was there who needed a ride, but nobody was around.  I did see Mignon's car so I figured there must be at least two people on the way.  I gave her a call just to be sure she wasn't across the street at Cafe' du Monde and expecting to get a ride, but she was already on the road with Sherri. That turned out to be funny because when I was about three-quarters of the way across the lake she called me back because, as she discovered after they got to Mandeville, Sherri thought they were riding with the slower Abita Springs group while Mignon was planning on riding with the Lee Road Jr. High group.  So I picked her up at a gas station because Sherri wasn't comfortable riding with the faster group, which in the end turned out to be not so fast.  The ride itself was great.  The big cold front was still many hours away so it warmed up to the upper 50s or maybe even 60 and I got in about 67 miles on roads that were not dead flat for the first time in a couple of months.  My neck was still sore by the end, but no worse than what is now usual.

By Monday morning the temperature was down to 31 or so and for a little while I debated with myself whether to ride or not.  The wind was in the 15-25 mph range out of the north so it was going to be hard to make it a recovery ride, but considering that this morning was supposed to be in the 20s, which it is, I decided to bundle up and ride anyway.  I think my average speed was in the 14 mph range, but I spent an hour and a half on the bike and other than cold feet had a pretty nice recovery ride.  This morning, however, I decided it would be a good day to skip riding.  It'll be a little better tomorrow.

Just the Wind and Me

Thursday morning was another wet one and I just couldn't summon up the right stuff to get out there, even on the rain bike.  The morning temperature was still fairly moderate, in the mid-50s I think, but the forecast was calling for a steep drop in the afternoon as a cold front came through. Apparently a few people did make it out to the levee for a ride, but I wasn't one of them. I slept late and rushed to work in the car.  A little later I found out that I had been supposed to feed the two little dogs that have taken up residence under my blanket while my daughter is back in Olympia until school starts again next week.  So I went back home at lunchtime to feed them and while I was there the UPS truck came by with my new bifocal Oakleys.

Bifocal Oakley Half-jackets from SportRx

This morning the sky was clear but the temperature was in the mid-30s and the wind was blowing out of the north at 14-23 mph.  That promised a somewhat uncomfortable ride but I went out anyway since I'd missed riding on Thursday entirely.  It also gave me a chance to try out the new glasses.  My first impression when I got on the bike and looked up the road was "Woah!"  The lenses are surprisingly thick and I think that bit of distortion when looking through them at an angle took a little getting used to.  Otherwise they seemed pretty good although as I'd expected the top frame is almost in my line of sight when my head is down. On the other hand, they sure are a lot more convenient than the contacts and will probably be particularly nice for driving.  My guess is that I'll still use the contacts for some rides and races.  Anyway, I bundled up pretty well this morning, so the cold wasn't really an issue.  The wind, however, was.  On the way back I hit a couple of sections that were straight into the wind that slowed me down into the 12-14 mph rage.  Most of the ride was crosswind, so the ride was kind of a struggle.  It was also lonely.  Other than a couple of people walking near the start I didn't see a single other person walking or riding the entire time. Can't imagine why.

A Start

At the Spillway

Had it not been the first day of the year I probably would have stayed in bed.  We had planned a 7 am ride out to the Spillway and back, but the weather was looking pretty sketchy the night before. 

When I awoke around 6 am could hear the car tires on the wet street outside, but it didn't seem to be actually raining.  The radar was showing a wide line of showers stretching northeast from the Gulf of Mexico, but it looked like it might, maybe, perhaps, stay just slightly north of the city.  Regardless, it was a sure bet the road would be wet, and with the temperature around 50F, I decided to dress on the warm side.  The night before I'd put the fenders and road pedals back onto the old Pennine, thus putting it back into Rain Bike mode, even though I left the cyclocross wheels and tires on it.  Before walking out the door I stuffed my rain jacket into my pocket, thereby significantly reducing the chances of rain.  At 6:30 Mignon had texted me to see if I was still going to ride, so I figured I'd have at least one other person with whom to ride, but I wasn't really expecting to see anyone else.  Indeed, when I arrived at the Jefferson Playground there was only Mignon, so we rolled off up the river as I contemplated how early we'd turn back and whether we'd get rained on before we did.  We quickly met up with a small group of the Semi-tough riders, so we had a nice group for almost all of the ride.  Amazingly we never got any actual rain, although there were varying amounts of wheelspray the whole time.  It wasn't a problem as long as I was at the front thanks to my full fenders, but eventually I was seduced by the draft and got pretty well sprayed. It actually turned out to be a very nice ride and a nice steady pace, even though the effects of the rain bike's weight and cyclocross tires did start to get to me after a couple of hours.  And of course my neck and upper back started hurting when we were about halfway back. 

Later we took the bus and streetcar (they're still repairing a big section of streetcar tracks along St. Charles Ave.) downtown to check out the Sugar Bowl crowd and have a big muffeletta at Frank's for lunch. Central Grocery was closed, and although I'm partial to their version of the muff, the ones at Frank's are OK too.  I ate about 3/4 of one, which is a lot.  It's over six hours later and I'm still thirsty.

The forecast for tomorrow morning is pretty ambiguous, starting with a 50% chance of rain at 6 am, dropping to 30% at 9.  At that point a cold front starts pushing through, the temperature starts dropping, and the wind starts picking up from 9 to 18 mph.  Since I don't have work tomorrow, the question will be whether to ride in the dark and wet, or wind.  Guess I'll just play it by ear and see what feels right at 5:45 am.

One Day More

Well, last Saturday was a complete wash-out. The weather was just miserable all day.  I ended up finally getting a good start on a little project I'd been putting off for the past, oh, six years.  The basement.  After Katrina it was briefly all nice an cleaned out. If there's one thing good about a flood it's that chance to start over with a clean slate.  It didn't last, however.  Before I knew it, the basement had become a repository for cast-off items from about three different households.  My little corner that I keep for bikes and maintenance and tools and other workshop stuff kept getting smaller and smaller. 

So Saturday I started throwing out stuff. Stuff like old 28-hole GEL 280 tubular rims and venerable Fiamme red labels. Of course there were also other things like the numerous cans of old paint that are still drying out behind the garage.  It took me the better part of two days to straighten out and rearrange that one quarter of the basement, but now all the bikes have their places and there's enough open space to actually walk around and work on a bike.  I'm just hoping I don't come down with a Hantavirus infection after stirring everything up so much.

Sunday morning I got on the bike in the dark and started out toward the lakefront to meet the Giro Ride.  It was damp and a bit foggy and felt at least ten degrees colder than it actually was.  Four blocks from home I said, out loud, I don't feel like riding today. It was only by force of will, or perhaps guilt, or maybe compulsive tendencies, that I kept going.  The turnout was fairly low once again, but after an Americano I felt a little better.  The ride was pretty tame by Giro standards, no doubt influenced by the dreary damp morning.  By the time we were on the way back, however, the sun started to come out and right away everything got better, and warmer.  So what had started out as a pretty miserable ride ended up as a nice brisk day under a bright December sky.  Go figure.  Up in Minnesota Brian Toone was slogging out a few miles with chemical heat packs in his socks on a ride with an average temperature of something like minus 17.  Brian, you gotta draw the line somewhere, man!  Anyway, I spent much of the afternoon on the basement project, but didn't really finish it up until Monday. 

This morning I went out a little late.  I hadn't slept very well and awoke with a headache, probably an allergic inflammation from inhaling all that crap in the basement.  I went out to the levee expecting to be riding alone but ran into a rider from Washington who was in town and looking for the morning levee ride.  A bit later we met up with Donald, so we had a nice 16 mph type of ride.  Unfortunately, the headache just kept getting worse and my neck kept getting more and more stiff, so by the time we were halfway home I was pretty uncomfortable.

There's only one day more in 2013, and when I checked my year-to-date mileage I realized I needed only 25 miles or so to hit the 12,000 mile mark for the year.  Mileage isn't necessarily a good indicator of training value, of course, especially in my case since most of my training miles are done with some sort of group, but even so, 12k is a respectable annual total.  I doubt I've been under 11,000 miles in at least ten years.

So today I saw that David LeDuc got a two-year suspension for testing positive at masters nationals for EPO, and testosterone, and amphetamines.  He's about a year older than I am and I've been seeing his name in masters nationals results since the early 80s.  I don't know what to say.  Doping to try and break into the Pro ranks is one thing, but doping to race in the 60-64 age group is something altogether different.  If he'd tested positive for just testosterone, or Viagra, I could probably see how that might happen, but EPO?

Riding Alone

After the complete wash-out that was Sunday, a cold front finally shuffled through some time after midnight leaving behind damp streets, cold temperatures and wind - lots of wind.  I was off work so I didn't worry too much about getting to the levee exactly on time, especially since I wasn't expecting anyone to be there anyway.  One extra bonus we sometimes get following a good rain is a bike path littered with sticky dead earthworms.  I'm not exactly sure what causes this mass suicide, but it can make for a really messy bike ride.  As expected, I was riding alone on Monday, and although it was cold and windy, I wasn't going very hard which made the riding reasonably tolerable.  As often happens when I'm riding alone, I spotted the bald eagle sitting atop one of the big power line poles on the batture, and although the light wasn't very good I stopped to get a few photos anyway. Preparations for the partial bike path closure seem to be moving along, and on Monday I could see where the fencing was set to close off the path at the upriver end of Ochsner hospital.  I guess that the first section to be closed off completely will be from the Orleans parish line to that point, which is maybe half a mile or so.  Along the batture there were two of the big crew quarter barges that the Corps of Engineers uses, along with a huge tugboat and lots of parked cars.  It looked like they were staging an invasion.

Fortunately the bike path was still open Tuesday morning when I went out a little later than usual.  Since I'm off work there wasn't any good reason to ride in the dark, especially since the temperature was in the upper 30s and the wind probably around 12-14 mph from the north.  I dressed warmly since I was planning on riding for a couple of hours at as easy a pace as the wind would allow. At least the sky was finally clear.  I was out around LaRose, I guess, when I saw Steve and Kurt coming toward me.  They turned around and we rode out to Ormond where Steve headed home.  Kurt rode with me back downriver to River Ridge before turning back himself.  I got home with just enough time to shower, change, and ride over to TISM for a physical therapy appointment and about an hour of back and shoulder strengthening work that will probably leave me a bit sore.  I guess the next twenty-four hours will be pretty busy.  Rumor has it that they may try and move my dad from the hospital to a nursing facility, although which one still seems to be up in the air.

So perhaps I'll find some time in the next few days to complete the new SafeSport continuing education module that I'm supposed to have for my official's license.  The reaction among many officials on the listserv to that new requirement, plus the new background check requirement and cost, has generally been, to put it succinctly, "this is bullshit."  It is becoming very clear that a lot of our officials, especially those who typically officiate just one or two races a year, for free, aren't going to renew.  I think this is going to be a problem.....

Doppler Shift Week

It always happens.  The closer you get to a holiday, the tighter and tighter things start to stack up.  It's like some kind of pre-holiday Doppler effect. The quick bullet list goes something like this:

• Thursday night a week ago Dad breaks his hip, is in the hospital, then a nursing facility, then back to the hospital where he spends all night in the ER because there are no beds;
• Listened to a USAC continuing education workshop on 2014 rule changes on my cellphone while sitting in the ER waiting room;
• My neck still hurts when I ride;
• Bank account has been overdrawn, again, by she who will not be named because she probably bought you a Christmas present too;
• Levee bike path is about to close;
• Weather fluctuating from 38 to 80 degrees;
• Ordering prescription Oakleys to use up leftover FSA funds before the end of the year;
• Neighborhood bank armored car delivery holdup and murder;
• And then last night a drunk hits the curb on S. Claiborne behind the house at high speed and the car goes diagonally across the wide neutral ground, miraculously missing trees, across Broadway, across the oncoming three lanes of S. Claiborne without hitting any cars, and crashes into a fence behind a house.  Totally drunk out of his mind guy gets out of the car and starts walking home down Claiborne toward east Carrollton.  All the neighbors run outside, We call 911 and follow him for a few blocks hoping the police will show up.  Police show up about two hours later.  Should have implied that shots had been fired.
• And yes, I still have to take that 90 minute USOC/USAC required SafeSport continuing education things on how not to be a child molester.

Today I left the office around 11:30 to ride over to Touro hospital so check on my father who finally got a (very nice) room.  When I got back to the office a couple of hours later the door was locked and all the lights were off.  Monday is the last official day of work around here before the holidays, but for all practical purposes things shut down today.

Last weekend most of the Giro Ride ended up doing Keith's TVR ride down Metairie Road and looping around on the levee back to Audubon Park.  TVR stands for The Vagina Ride, which I think it intended to ensure that the pace remains at a level suitable for the fairer sex, despite the fact that a number of that sex's members could readily rip his and my legs off at will.  Anyway, it was a nice ride although this time we didn't find any handguns.

Louisiana Cycling Club 1891

Anyway, I have been squeezing in a barely reasonable amount of riding in the mornings.  Last weekend the Giro rides were once again pretty thin because of the weather, and the mornings remained quite cold until Thursday.  This morning I had to check the thermometer three times before I believed it.  I think it was something like 65 degrees.  Shorts and a jersey on Dec. 20.  Bet that doesn't happen in Minnesota.  Unfortunately, it looks like the morning levee ride routine that has been my bread and butter for ten years is about to be upset.  When we came down the exit ramp after Thursday's ride there were a couple of workmen putting up fencing there.  This morning I was not surprised to find the on-ramp fenced off completely.  I stopped to take a quick photo for Facebook, but up on the levee I could see a few riders waiting for me.  All of the auto/truck access roads were open, and indeed the entire bike path was open.  I fear that by Monday, however, the actual work zone will be entirely fenced off and it will be a couple of years before we have the full bike path back in action. It has been suggested that we just ride on River Road past the construction area, which would probably be a mile or two, before getting back up onto the bike path.  Riding on River Road is not for the faint of heart, however.  It's narrow and there is absolutely no shoulder, just a ragged asphalt edge.  It probably wouldn't be too bad in a group at 6:15 am, but by the time we come back around 7:45 it will be terrible.  Often, traffic is backed up from Oak Street to Ochsner, and since the road is so narrow I'm not even sure we could ride past the line of stopped cars.  I am seriously considering going back to riding Carrollton Avenue out to do a lap on Lakeshore Drive and perhaps also a loop around City Park.  Carrollton is well lit and wide, and the only real traffic issues would be on a 2-mile stretch on the way back.  The other problem, though, is that we'd lose quite a few minutes because of traffic signals and that sort of thing.  Should be interesting, anyway.

So I ordered a pair of Oakley Half-Jacket sunglasses with bifocal lenses from Sport RX for $315.  My old Oakley M-frames are hanging in there and are fine with my contact lenses, but since I had the opportunity to get these I figured I'd go for it. They can't really do the same prescription lenses for the M-frame, so it was a bit of a compromise.  Otherwise, I feel pretty out of shape right now, and the fact that the house is absolutely crammed full of chocolate and candy is not helping one bit.  Although I've been putting in some miles - fewer than I'd like but better than nothing - I haven't done anything that would really constitute training in over a month now.  The twice-weekly physical therapy visits have been fine, but I haven't noticed any dramatic improvement.  Instead it's been a very slow process measured in weeks rather than days.  By the end of the rides my neck and back muscles are still fairly stiff and painful but at this point my attitude is "screw it, I'm riding."

I recently found a photo in the Louisiana Historical Society archives from 1891 of the Louisiana Cycling Club's house just off St. Charles Ave. on Octavia Street. It is still standing across from Daneel Park as a nicely kept home.  I stopped there today and gave the owner a copy of the photo.  Then, on the way home from the hospital one day this weekend I went to see if the old New Orleans Bicycle Club house was still standing and was surprised to find it was finally being repaired after having half the roof ripped off in hurricane Katrina.

Winter Again

Last weekend's Giro Rides were kind of difficult.  The weather was generally cloudy, damp, cold and windy, and the resulting sub-par turnout didn't make things any easier.  For me, the first 45 minutes or so were OK, but I struggled through the rest of the rides as the muscles in my neck and upper back got tighter and tighter.  It was really pretty frustrating, since my legs felt generally fine.  The rides themselves weren't particularly fast.  Saturday morning, while we were sitting at Starbucks before the ride, a number of the guys were planning on riding to Slidell.  By the time we actually got out to Venetian Isles, however, only a handful actually went.  Coming back home in the thick wet cold mist I could only imagine what kind of a death march their return trip would be.

So by Sunday evening I had already decided to sleep late on Monday, and I wasn't really making any firm plans for Tuesday either.  When I was awakened around 3:30 am this morning by the sound of rain I just took it as a sign and wrote off my Tuesday ride.  The roads would have been wet anyway and the 40 degree temperature and double-digit wind speed would have made for another miserable ride.  I am thinking lately that I must have herniated a disk in my back.  Tomorrow morning I have an appointment for physical therapy, so we'll see how that goes.  At any rate, I'm glad it's December and not March.

Next weekend is the final race of the cyclocross series and since it's the LAMBRA championship I'll be going, but I just can't seem to convince myself that it would be anything but foolish to race.  Another crash wouldn't be a good thing right now, and the fact that I have been riding pretty conservatively for over a month now certainly doesn't give me any confidence in my fitness level anyway.  I just put the initial 2014 race calendar up on the LAMBRA website, so at least that's done.  I also sent the RaceClean agreement to our treasurer so she can attach the $1,700 check and send it in to USAC.  Later, I'll have to send a list of all of our LCCS races, and then it will be up to USADA to pick one at which to do drug testing.  We'll include the RaceClean logo on all of the event announcements and websites in order to get the most visibility possible.  I still have to sit down and plow through the SafeSport webinar and exams which I'm not really looking forward to.  It should be an interesting road season next year with two track series' on the calendar plus a criterium in New Orleans.  We still need to make some final decisions about a couple of the championships and we have a couple of people working on what will probably be a complete reorganization of the bylaws and LAMBRA structure.  The old structure was based on the assumption that there were a relatively small number of clubs, all interested mainly in road racing, and all with fairly large memberships and interest in promoting races. It was reasonable then to have a Board composed of one representative from each club.  Things have changed, however, and now we have a number of smaller team-clubs, quite a few clubs that put on mainly fun rides, and the relatively new emergence of relatively independent race directors.  I think it's time to move to an elected Board.  While having a two-state-wide popular election would have been difficult ten years ago, now it should be quite simple, so anyway we'll see where that all goes.  At the very least I expect it will shake a few people out of the bushes and get them more involved.

What's Comin'

It has been a difficult weather week for riding, even down here in the southern delta where it's been unseasonably warm and rain-free.  Why would that be a problem, you ask?  Well the problem has to do with south winds and the Mississippi River, the former being warm and humid and the latter being ice water from the frozen north.  Every morning this week I've ridden out to the levee to find it partially or fully blanketed in fog.  The lower the wind, the thicker the fog.  This morning was the first time all week that I didn't have to keep my headlight on, and that was only because the wind had picked up. It's also the reason I don't have much in the way of photos.  Anyway, that's apparently about to change.  The cold front that has been causing super-low temperatures all the way back to the Rockies is approaching the city like that "rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem" from The Second Coming.  It would be one thing if a big cold front would just blow through, drop the temperatures and move on off to the east, but this one is barely moving now and in all probability will back up out of the Gulf after coming through and cause all sorts of unpredictable nasty wet weather.  Or not.  They don't really seem to know for sure. 

So yesterday I finally went over to the Tulane Sports Medicine Institute to get this neck/back thing checked out since it's been nearly four weeks since I fell on my head and it is still hurting after half an hour or so on the bike.  They took a whole series of x-rays, and the good news is that there wasn't anything there that looked like a major spinal problem.  Granted, we didn't fire up the NMR for this  -- oh, I mean the MRI (the general public is still afraid of the word nuclear, despite a general ignorance of both physics and pronunciation).  The plan for now is prednisone for a couple of weeks and maybe a little physical therapy next week in hopes that the muscles and related soft tissue that I have angered by not lying on the couch enough will calm down.  We'll see.  I'm giving it a 50/50 chance and hoping for the best.

This morning it was over 70F when I went out to the levee to meet Scott and David.  Just as we were about to take off a little group of Semi-tough riders came past so we caught up with them and rode together to the pipes where they turned around and we continued on to the parish line.  We did spot the Bald Eagle perched in his usual spot near Colonial Country Club on the way out, and again on the way back in another tree.  Thanks to the wind, the fog wasn't bad at all this morning, with the only significant accumulation being around the Ochsner bend where the long stretch of north-south river gets the south wind good an cold before it runs into the levee there.  I don't really know what the weather or riding possibilities are going to be like this weekend, except that we'll probably be back to winter temperatures.

The Threat of Christmas Hangs in the Air

Where did I read that?  Somehow that phrase always comes to mind this time of year when the riding gets harder, routines become compromised, the weather goes from unpredictable to random, and my bank account starts bleeding profusely.  After a couple of nice rides Saturday and early Sunday morning, I had to descend into LAMBRA administration for the 11:00 annual business meeting. Right off the bat I realized that the catering had been incorrectly scheduled for Monday, so I quickly ordered some pizza before launching into a little intro for the dozen or so club representatives, plus our USAC Regional Representative Stuart Lamp, who were able to attend.  It was actually a pretty good meeting as such things go.  I should be able to get an initial 2014 race calendar up in a day or two.  There will be a few loose ends as usual, but I was happy to see most of the sponsoring clubs ready to step up to the plate again next year.  I still need to send out a summary.  One thing that I hadn't really anticipated was the decision to eliminate LCCS points for Cat. 4 women, but in light of the fact that none of them has had any real reason to upgrade for years, it's worth a try.  I'll talk with our upgrade coordinator so he understands the situation and is prepared to be sufficiently flexible.  It really makes no sense that although the women start our as Cat. 4s instead of Cat. 5s like the men, they still have to meet the same 4 to 3 upgrade requirements as the men.  We also tasked a couple of the guys to start working on a reorganization plan for LAMBRA.  Things have changed since the days when there were a fairly small number of fairly large clubs.  The organization is currently set up as an association of clubs, but it's getting to be time to change that because of the appearance of small elite club/teams and race director organizations.  I can see us moving toward a Board of Directors elected by popular vote rather than the club representative system we have now.  We also need to get more people actively involved in LAMBRA administration so that the same people don't get stuck doing everything forever. I think an elected Board and various committees should do that.  I just hope they don't all feel obligated to make a while bunch of rules and just keep the focus on helping ensure that we have good events with accurate results. Should be interesting, but at any rate I'm glad to see people taking an interest in this.

So last night I logged on to my USAC account to renew my racing and official's licenses for 2014.  There's also a Race Director's license in play that I think I get for free.  Anyway, it was rather painful.  The racing license was $70 and the official's license was $75 plus another $35 for the new required criminal background check.  That's like the equivalent of two new tires and a chain, and I still  haven't renewed my club membership. It'll end up being over $200.  I remember when it was more like $25.  Then, just to twist the knife, there is a new continuing education requirement for the official's license.  I had to email the Regional Director to find out where the secret place on the website was to take care of that.  Then, I figured this should be fairly easy so I logged onto the SafeSport training site this morning thinking I could at least knock that one out in half an hour.  No way.  They estimate 90 minutes.  I didn't even look at the rulebook update training site that I also have to take care of.  This is all going to make it really hard for some of our volunteer officials who typically officiate only when necessary to renew their licenses.  I'm worried about that.  Basically I have to now prove I'm not a criminal and have been duly trained in the finer points of sexual harassment, bullying, hazing, sexual misconduct, and "grooming behaviors" -- whatever that is -- in order to officiate bike races. The rulebook CEU requirement should be a walk in the park after that.  On top of all that, The Daughter has to have her second root canal in two months next week, not to mention the looming threat of Christmas.  Whew.

Anyway, I did get out on the bike Monday and today, both days riding mostly or entirely alone. Monday was still chilly, but at least I had the whole bike path to myself and spotted the eagle again near the country club. This morning it had just finished raining when I got up and the streets were soaking wet.  I stared at the radar for a while, looked out the window a few times, and made an executive decision to wait until 6:30 in hopes that the streets would at least be a little drier.  The Daughter decided to skip her ride altogether.  At least the temperature was a comfortable 64 or 65 degrees. The streets were still every bit as wet at 6:30 as they had been at 6:00, but at least it wasn't raining so I headed out to the levee and put in some 26 miles at a reasonable pace.  The neck is still an issue, however, and I finally broke down and scheduled an appointment at TISM with Greg Stewart who I'm sure has seen more than his share of people who have landed on their heads. I'll might get the "Why did you wait so long?" lecture, but at least the sports medicine folks understand the mentality that makes a football player with a concussion want to get back in the game. 

Winter Gear

We've had some chilly mornings around here lately.  It always seems to take me an extra ten minutes to get out the door on days like those.  It's so easy in the summer.  Shorts, jersey, socks.  When the temperature is in the 30s or even low 40s, the process becomes more complicated.  Long tights, knee-warmers and shorts, knickers, or shorts with cold knees?  Long-sleeve jersey or jacket?  Wind vest?  DeFeet gloves or regular gloves?  Toe-covers, full shoe covers, or both?  And don't forget the chapstick.  So on Friday I got out to the levee at literally the last minute to find only Scott.  Everything was covered in a thick layer of frost, but at least the wind that had beaten us up on Thursday had died down.  I rode with him out to the parish line where he decided to continue on while I turned back.  My neck is still bothering me after 45 minutes or so, so I was happy to be able to sit up every now and then.  A number of the local riders were doing a long ride, nearly 160 miles, around Lake Pontchartrain.  If I hadn't been suffering from the nagging neck and back issues I probably would have joined them, but on this particular morning I was glad I hadn't.  Aside from the cold, I could already feel the wind picking up as I made my way back home.  On the plus side, the bike path was practically deserted.

So this morning I rode out to the Giro Ride with Danielle with the idea of doing the whole ride for the first time in about three weeks.  It was cold enough when I left home, ten minutes late, that I was wearing full tights and my winter jacket - basically full winter gear.  I knew it would get warmer once the sun came up but I just wasn't willing to suffer those first couple of hours. Arriving at Starbucks I was a little surprised to find Ben, Jaden and Woody.  They had all done that 160 mile ride the day before, spending nearly ten hours on the road.  At least I was pretty sure none of them would be kicking butt today.  The ride itself was pretty easy, as Giro Rides go, and I was glad that my neck muscles didn't start complaining too loudly until we were halfway back.

Tomorrow we have the annual LAMBRA meeting.  I hope there's a decent turnout.  It's really hard to get people to travel to this meeting, apparently even if it's just across town.  At the very least we need to get the 2014 calendar in good enough shape to post it, even if some dates are tentative.  Although we don't start until 11:00, I will probably skip the Giro and instead meet a few riders from the Tulane club around 8:00. Maybe I'll get in a few miles before that, but I'm thinking 25 miles will be about it tomorrow.

Wind and Pain and another Year

Friday afternoon I left work a little early in order to make it over to Bayou Bicycles.  I don't think I'd been there in three or four years, but Danielle had made an appointment for a bike fit with Robert Driskill who does the Specialized Body Geometry fittings.  She has been having persistent problems with upper back and shoulder pain on longer rides and figured an independent appraisal of her position might help and I had already tried the obvious stuff like raising the bars a bit and making sure the saddle was level.  I arrived a little late, but that was fine because Robert was still trying to find a stationary trainer he could use that would accommodate her 650C wheel bike.  The system uses a few cameras that feed video to a computer where you can get a good look at the rider in action from multiple angles and then make measurements of key angles to help identify any peculiarities in position or pedaling. 

After that it becomes more art than science as changes can be made in various settings or components such as cleat position, stem length, saddle height, fore-aft setting, etc., etc.  Of course, you expect to be sold some of the Specialized equipment like saddles, shoes, insoles, etc.  Danielle wanted to get a new saddle anyway, since she was still riding the original squishy one that had come with the bike, and she also got some of the Specialized insoles which I have been using for years.  He also lowered her saddle and we will be looking into shortening her reach a bit, possibly with some different handlebars, although the fact that she rides extremely narrow bars makes it hard to just pull them off the shelf.  Anyway, it seems like the saddle change had a pretty big impact, allowing her to actually put some weight on it instead of essentially supporting most of her weight on her hands and feet. We rushed from the bike shop over to David's house for a little Tulane Cycling party.

Saturday morning was cold and very windy and from the outset I knew I wouldn't be doing the whole Giro.  I'm still getting some significant pain between the shoulder blades after half an hour to 45 minutes and at this time of the year it's just not worth the suffering for a few extra miles.  I rode out to the Giro with Danielle and figured we'd turn around at the end of Hayne Blvd.  As it turned out, the group was in easy mode that day since some were planning on doing a long Giro out to Slidell, so the speed down Hayne never got very high.  Danielle was able to stay with the group all the way to Lake Forest Blvd. where we turned right as the group turned left.  Luckily, Brett and Paige did the same thing, so we had some company, and a motor, on the way back.

Sunday morning there was a Tulane ride planned for 8:00, so first I rode out to meet the Giro at 7:00, mainly for the coffee.  Although the entire West Texas A&M equestrian team was there as it had been the day before, the turnout for the Giro was really slim.  It was cold and really, really windy, and the half-dozen riders who arrived early were sitting inside instead of outside.  I doubt there were more than twelve by the time we rolled out a bit after 7:00.  I just rode to the lakefront and then to Wisner with the group, heading back with a nice tailwind in order to stop by the house and meet Danielle before riding over to campus.  We ended up with seven for the Tulane ride. 

Kenny took us out the levee bike path and then through Kenner to the Lakefront bike path, and ultimately back to campus via Carrollton since Jeff. Davis Parkway is currently all torn up for road construction.  It was still really windy and I doubt the temperature rose more than one or two degrees, but the pace was easy so it wasn't too much of a factor.  Although my neck and back issues are improving, the rate is glacial at best.  After half an hour of so some of the muscles between my shoulder blades start getting really tight and painful.  I doubt I'll  be comfortable with a hard ride until that subsides a little more, so although I would have really liked to have done the northshore ride on Sunday, I think I made the right decision.

Sunday afternoon I spent a little time on Oak Street for the annual Po-Boy festival where I had some sort of catfish po-boy and a cup of Abita Jockamo, followed a bit later by dinner and a birthday cake.

So today was my 60th birthday.  At this point it's becoming more and more preferable to try and ignore the relentless march of time than to dwell on it, but on this particular birthday I had the funeral of a close family friend to attend.  I thought back to the other time there had been a funeral on my birthday.  That was JFK's funeral back in 1963.  Anyway, the funeral was in Slidell and by the time we were heading back the weather was getting worse and worse and it was too late to make it worthwhile to go back to the office.  I had not ridden in the morning because it was ridiculously windy and misty, and since then the conditions had been going steadily downhill.  Tomorrow morning at 6 am is looking like 54 degrees dropping to 52 by 8 am with a 100% chance of rain and a 13 mph northwest wind.  This is not encouraging.  If I'd gotten in a ride this morning it would have brought my annual total up over 11,000 miles.  It's looking like that milestone will have to wait until Wednesday.

That Hurt

Having survived the shorter morning ride on Wednesday without analgesics, I decided it was time to put them aside for a while and see how things went.  Thursday morning's temperature was up around 60F with a moderate breeze and overcast skies.  I planned to do the long (42 mi.) morning ride, even though I was pretty sure the muscles in my upper back would not be too  happy about it.

There was a nice group of a dozen or so up on the levee today and the pace heading out was reasonably smooth.  Of course "reasonable" is a relative term. To be a little more specific, it was mostly in the vicinity of 24 mph except for a little excursion onto the grass when one of the big tractors came over the little bridge just as we were approaching it.  Strava says we still had a 24.6 mph average for most of the outbound leg. When we got to the Luling bridge I sat up to stretch a bit.  Although my neck and back seemed to be doing OK, and in fact felt a little better when I was going hard than when I was going easy, I could already feel the muscles tightening up, making it painful to turn my head.  I knew the ride back was going to be painful, and not because of the pace.

We were maybe halfway back when, for some reason, there were a number of surges with big slow-down between them.  I don't know what was going on, but soon I found myself, more or less accidentally, in a 4 or 5-rider group.  The pace settled down a bit thanks to the wind, and there was a nice rotation going at 22-23 mph for a long time.  By then my upper back was really starting to hurt, however.  When we got close to the country club I sat up and let them go, dropping down to 16 mph for a while.  It didn't really help ease the pain much, however.  Eventually the rest of the group caught and I tucked in behind.  At one point I turned to look back and got a pretty sharp stab of pain under my right shoulder blade (which I've felt a few other times over the past week).  That hurt. 

My Bike Sounds Funny

I pulled on my long tights and long-sleeve jersey this morning to protect me from the brutal sub-60 degree temperature out on the levee.  A clear sky meant the blinky light batteries would have a rest today, and even the wind, which had been strong and gusty the past couple of days, had settled down a bit.  A block from home The Daughter said something to the effect of, "My bike sounds funny."  As she pulled up alongside I could hear the unmistakable sound of a flat tire.  Not the best way to start the ride.  She's still riding the same tires that came with the bike seven years ago, although she's also probably put more miles on them in the last two months as she had in the last two years.  A pair of new ones that are a little more flexible are definitely in the cards. I had to get out the pocket knife to pry a stubborn tiny shard of something out of the tire, and after replacing the tube we finally got rolling again.  We were already late for the morning group, but I figured we'd turn around when we saw them coming back.  Out around the Country Club I noticed a Bald Eagle perched, as usual, on the highest dead branch around.  Since we were already late anyway, I stopped to take a photo even though he was a really long way away.  Mignon was coming the other way and stopped to chat for a while before we continued up the river. 

So with all the delays, we didn't even make it to Williams Blvd. before we saw the group coming toward us.  It was fine, though, because I hadn't taken any Advil or Aleve since Tuesday morning and the sore muscles in my upper back were already tight and painful. It was also good to have a little shelter for that long stretch that was more or less into the wind.

So the injury continues to heal very, very slowly.  The neck muscles are still sore enough that it hurts a bit to turn my head all the way to one side or the other, but even so, it's considerably better than it was a week ago. The muscles between my shoulder blades still tighten up and burn after fifteen or twenty minutes on the bike, and the only real relief is to drop my head, which would be fine except that I can't see where I'm going that way.  Sitting up also helps, although not as much as I thought it would.  I might take a shot at a long ride or two this weekend, but not without some pharmaceutical assistance. 

Eight Flats and a Handgun

It was another wet and foggy morning. The air was warmer and thicker than it had been yesterday, and as I rode out to the Starbucks on wet streets I wondered if anyone would show up.  I myself was planning on doing something like I'd done the day before, perhaps riding out to the end of Hayne before turning back.  I knew the muscles in my upper back would be screaming by then anyway. 

I guess there were a dozen riders this morning.  Keith had announced the return of the TVR rides, and given the small group, wet streets and fog, I figured I may as well do that ride since it heads back toward the levee and the pace stays generally under 20 mph.  The mist was so thick when we left that it was essentially raining, but that eased up and we had only the damp street to deal with.

We rode out on Metairie Road down to Central Avenue where we turned toward the river, crossing the multiple railroad tracks underneath the Earhart expressway.  Just as we got there I noticed something on the side of the road and said, "Was that a holster?"  One of the guys had seen it too and it was indeed a holster containing a 9mm handgun.  He picked it up, removed the clip and we rode on, eventually handing it off to a levee district police officer (they had him sign some paperwork for that). 

Anyway, it wasn't long after we'd gotten onto the bike path that the flats started.  I think he ultimately had three or four, and along the way we had another three or four.  I think the total was eight.  On the plus side, the frequent stops gave me time to stretch out the injured muscles in my back.  Somehow I myself escaped flatting.

The muscles in my back are still a long way from fine, and unfortunately they hurt most when I'm riding, so I think it's going to be another week or two before they are back to normal, assuming there isn't some other more serious injury there.

Team Kit Season

It is not uncommon for a team kit order to drag on into December or even January, with actual delivery not being accomplished until some time in April.  And so it was truly amazing that both the NOBC and Tulane Cycling team kit orders were completed in the early fall, and even more amazing that both orders arrived within a day of each other.  One thing that has really simplified the whole process has been the ability of the manufacturers to set up team stores on their websites, thus relieving the clubs from assembling orders, collecting payments, sending deposits, sorting out who gets what, etc., etc.  Nowadays we just get a great big box, inside of which are a whole bunch of individually wrapped orders, each with the rider's name on it.  The Tulane box arrived at my office on Wednesday afternoon.  By Thursday afternoon David and Carly had stopped by, made up bags with team water bottles and kit orders for everyone, and hauled them away for distribution.  By 7:30 am this morning I'd already seen two of the team members wearing their new kits up on the levee.  For myself I had ordered only a new Tulane jersey, a long-sleeve NOBC jersey and a pair of NOBC kickers.  The Daughter, however, had ordered a whole lot of Tulane gear since she doesn't have the stockpile of old stuff that I have.  Well, actually she has a lot of my stockpile right now.  Maybe I'll get some of it back now!

I did indeed venture out to the levee again this morning. It was overcast and damp, and the streets were a little wet with more rain in the forecast.  I wasn't surprised that I was the only one at the meeting spot by the Stacks.  It was just as well, since my neck and upper back are still in pretty bad shape from that beating they took in Jackson last Saturday.  By the time I was twenty minutes in to my ride those muscles were screaming again, and so when I got to Williams Blvd. I stopped to stand for a while.  It didn't really help much.  On the way back I met up with Woody, which at least took my mind off of the pain for a while.  I'm now thinking that it is probably going to be a couple of weeks before this tissue damage is healed and I can ride comfortably for more than half an hour at a time.  Sucks, really.  Tomorrow I'll ride out to the Giro in the morning, but I'm fully expecting to be turning back somewhere along Hayne Blvd.  There are family commitments starting by 10:00 am anyway, so I wouldn't have been able to do the whole ride regardless.  On the plus side, I have reserved a meeting room at Tulane for the annual LAMBRA business meeting.  On the minus side, I now need to send out the notice about that to everyone, make up an agenda, create a brief presentation, make arrangements for lunch since it will be during Thanksgiving break, drop off a check for the room rental fee, get the planning calendar set up, etc.

More Pain

After Sunday's little excursion down the river, and in light of the fact I still couldn't turn my head without wincing in pain, I decided to take a couple of days off the bike.  This had a two-fold purpose, one of which was to allow for some healing to occur and the other was to keep from being T-boned by a car I didn't see because I didn't turn my head to look.  It's now Wednesday and those neck muscles have been slow to heal.  Along with the excruciatingly slow healing process has come a much more definitive ability to pinpoint the location of maximum damage, which seems to be in the general vicinity of my left rhomboids between shoulder blade and spine.  Totally inaccessible, of course.  Turning my head to the right clearly tugs at something down there in a very unpleasant way.  Although the neck doesn't hurt at all unless I look over my shoulder, those back muscles hurt pretty much all the time unless I'm lying flat on my back.

This morning the temperature had plunged down to 39F or so and there was a strong gusty wind blowing out of the north, all of which helped make the decision to stay home and brew some coffee feel quite guiltless; perhaps bordering on wise.  As I sit here at my desk that particular section of my upper back just aches and aches despite the 12-hour Aleve I took this morning.  I will probably go out for some sort of ride tomorrow morning regardless, if for no other reason than prudent psychological maintenance.

To add to the pain, I had a Vet appointment for our two dogs yesterday afternoon.  The older one, an American Eskimo that is like 110 years old in dog years, left with a cortisone shot, two different varieties of flea control, pain medication and a recommendation to have all of his remaining rotten teeth removed.  The other needed shots and a checkup.  Both needed more heartworm and flea control drugs.  I think we were there about an hour and a half, with the price of escape coming in at a very painful $720.  Today The Daughter is having a cap put on a broken tooth.  That should be another grand or so. 

And people wonder why I don't have carbon-fiber race wheels?

This weekend we are hosting a baby shower at the house, and also will finally be laying to rest my mother's ashes now that the missing title to the gravesite has been found.  I'm rather glad there isn't a race nearby this weekend.

One nice thing is that the new Tulane cycling team kits arrived this morning at my office, and I presume that the new order of NOBC kits that was scheduled to ship out last Friday must not be far behind. The NOBC order includes a long-sleeve jersey and knickers, I think.  Just in time for the cooler weather.