Mississippi Grand Prix - As Luck Would Have It

It was finally a weekend I could race.  Well almost.  I jumped in the car late Friday afternoon for the two-hour drive up to Brookhaven, Mississippi for the annual Mississippi Grand Prix stage race. I was scheduled to help with officiating of the Cat. 1/2/3 evening criterium, after which I'd be relatively free to race. I wasn't entertaining much hope for a great placing, but it was already May and I desperately needed to jump into the deep end if I was ever to get in shape this year.

The Friday evening officiating duties went smoothly and despite the bad finish line camera images.  The 60hz flicker rate of the halogen lights and the camera's 1,000 hz frame rate result in the camera storing a number of slices while the lights are, essentially, off. The result is an image with vertical black stripes that make it hard to read the bib numbers. Anyway, by the time I'd sat down to eat dinner at Broma's, Ricky had already sent me the Crit results to post.

Saturday morning was surprisingly cool, but with our master's race start time set for 9:30 am, I knew it wouldn't be a problem, even for me. There was a decent-sized field of 20-something, as we set out for the first of three laps.  The course had a couple of significant hills and lots of little rollers, so I thought that would take it's toll by the end of the almost 60 miles we had to complete. The one really decisive hill was about halfway around the course, and I knew my fitness level wasn't quite up to it yet this year.

We hadn't gone very far when one of the riders rolled off the front without any response from the field.  I motored up to him, initially just to cover it so there wouldn't be a big chase later.  After trading pulls with him for a while it was clear that the pack was letting us go, and although I had no illusions about our being able to stay out there, I started thinking that if we could just make it up and over the big hill we could spare ourselves having to respond to the inevitable attack that I knew Jerry would launch there. We still had maybe thirty seconds when we came to the bottom of the hill, at which point the other rider apparently dropped his chain and I found myself alone.  No worries, I thought, I'll just ride easy tempo over the top and be ready to jump onto whatever was left of the pack on the other side.  Well, as luck would have it, Jerry attacked hard at the bottom of the hill and I was shocked when a string of five or six riders came blasting past me halfway up the climb. They came by me like I was going backwards, and although I tried to respond, I was just too gassed by the top to close what remained of the gap. Moments later other riders started coming by, so I got in with them and we ended up with a nice little six or seven rider chase group that included three of my own teammates.

For most of the rest of that lap we were holding the gap pretty well, but as we started the second lap the cooperation lagged and the gap suddenly shot up to a minute and a half and I knew the chase was over. A mile or two later I felt my rear wheel going soft. I dropped to the back and when we got to a smooth section of road I bounced a couple of times and felt the rim hit the ground. I raised my right hand to get the attention of the follow car, shifted to the small chainring and small cog, and rolled to a stop. With only one person in the follow car, and my own 1-speed wheel buried in the back of the pickup truck, and the quick-release not set up correctly, it was a few minutes before I was rolling again. I still had the better part of 40 miles to ride, and since there was no chance whatsoever of catching even the chase group, I knew my GC chances were shot. I settled into an easy pace and rolled around the course, thankful that it wasn't too hot, and enjoyed the scenery. I assumed I was the last rider on the road, but after I finished I was surprised that there had been a nice little group just a couple of minutes behind me the whole time.

So the afternoon time trial was on a new course that turned out to be about 70% downhill. I really should have pre-ridden it, but since my GC chances were hopelessly down the drain (I think I was well over ten minutes down), and since even on a good day I wouldn't have made it into the 5-deep stage prizelist, I wasn't very motivated. I looked down at the computer about half a mile after the start and saw a speed in the low 30s, which was a little surprising since I was not putting much pressure on the pedals. I think I had a max of almost 36 mph without really trying. About a mile from the finish I finally came to a steep climb that had me out of the saddle and looking at 14 mph for a little while. I ended up with a time about a minute and a half slower than the winner, which was about mid-pack and no surprise at all. At least there was the criterium on Sunday.

Watching the Cat. 1/2/3 Criterium

The Master's criterium was a nice 60-minute one on the same course I've ridden for years. With little to lose, I decided to ride near the front, get some good training, and try to make it into the top five. I tried to do a decent warm-up, and was glad I had. From the start Jerry took the lead and thanks to a quick clip-in I was right on his wheel. The first three laps were very fast, and indeed a number of riders were dropped for good as I clung tenaciously to the wheel ahead of me. When I finally looked down I was dismayed to find I'd forgotten to start my Garmin. The pace eventually eased, and I could tell that Jerry and his teammate Tim were going to wait for the points hot spot before making another big effort. As I'd suspected, they went hard for that hot spot, taking 1st and 2nd place. Scott was 3rd with me on his wheel, but the two riders had opened a bit of a gap in the sprint. That's when I made the mistake of staying on Scott's wheel as he backed off.  Granted, I was pretty much at my limit, but it would not have been impossible for me to have bridged up to the lead duo. As they went around the next corner I saw one of them look back at the gap and then they looked at each other and I knew they were going to go for it. That was about the last we saw of them. With them already leading the GC, the other riders in the group were not showing any real interest in chasing. We ended up having a few real lulls in the pace over the rest of the race.

Finally, with two laps to go there was a hard attack up and over the hill that nearly shattered the whole group and I had to dig pretty deep just to close it. Unfortunately, nobody followed through once it was caught with a lap and a half to go, so it was gruppo compacto again for the last lap. I don't really know when or how Scott opened  up such a big gap on us, but he crossed the line with a second or two to spare and then Michael F. slingshotted past me, leaving me in 5th place. I was actually reasonably pleased with that under the circumstances. I felt like I'd ridden a decent race and considering that I'd been dropped like a rock in the last two races I'd done, at least there was some hope.

Weekends Past and Present

Division II Team Conference Champions

The past couple of weekends have been pretty busy, and although those are really the times when it would be best to keep up with the blog, they are also the most difficult times to do so. The weekend before last was the Green Wave Classic collegiate race, which also served as the Conference Championships for the South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference (SCCCC for short). Planning for the event had been pretty good, but of course there were still a lot of loose ends to tie up the week before. Those relatively minor things, like corner monitors and putting up course signage and finding follow car drivers, quickly started to pale in comparison to the elephant in the room, namely the consistently dire weather forecast. It wasn't a question of whether or not it would rain.  It was a question of whether or not the races would need to be cancelled because of hazardous road conditions. I didn't sleep much on Friday night worrying about that.

So Sunday morning it was wet but not actually raining when we drove out to Enon to get the course set up. We had free PJ's coffee out there, which helped, and the Tulane club was out in force helping get registration and everything going, so everything went fairly smoothly.

As we began to stage the various groups for the start of the road races, right on cue, it started to rain. Luckily, most of the heavy rain missed us, so although most of the road races were conducted in a light to moderate rain on wet roads, it never got really windy of particularly hazardous, and as the last races were finishing up there was even some sunshine.

Results went smoothly despite all of the complications caused by the "permanent" numbers they keep trying to use to identify the riders. I had already set up my results spreadsheets to use license numbers rather than bib numbers to link riders to their season-long points totals (45% of the riders had different numbers than they'd started the season with).

The evening TT again featured some light rain, but nothing to worry about. All-in-all the day's racing went exceptionally smoothly thanks to a lot of hard work over a couple of months getting everything organized and recruiting volunteers.

By Sunday morning the bad weather had passed and we had clear skies and warm temperatures for the day's criteriums at Lakeshore High School. We had gotten permission to use the school grounds for the races and had laid out a nice challenging course. We'd picked up the keys to the main gate as well, so when we arrived early that morning to find the gate already open I started to worry. The first thing I did was drive around the course in the rented cargo van to drop off traffic cones at the corners and intersections.

You can imagine my shock and dismay when I found that something was going on at the softball field at the back of campus.  The only access to that location was right through the criterium course. I sent Kenny to find out what was going on and he reported that there was a softball tournament that morning.  Great. Fortunately it didn't seem to be a particularly big tournament, and once everyone had arrived there was not too much traffic to deal with, so we stationed traffic monitors at both ends of the road leading to and from the field and they did a tremendous job of shuttling cars across without interfering with the races.

As far as the actual racing went, the Tulane riders were doing great and by the end of the road races I was pretty sure they had the Division II conference team championship in the bag. The racing was pretty good all morning, spiced up by one spectacular crash in one of the early races that landed the rider square in a water-filled ditch, and then later when Ben Spain went down on a corner during a solo attack and landed on his face, breaking a couple of teeth. So in the end, Tulane did great, winning the DII championship, scoring the second  highest team points regardless of division, winning the individual omnium for Cat. A men and Cat. B men, along with a slew of other top-five omnium placings. I was very proud of them, and especially my daughter who served a team president and race director.

So the next week I basically started back to a reasonably regular training schedule. I had to officiate the Harbor Master Criterium last weekend, which was a fun event with spectacularly nice weather.

I brought my bike and ended up entering the Cat. 1/2 race where I knew I'd get slaughtered, but it was the race for which I was least needed at the finish line and it was way past time for me to get back into racing mode. I went in with a plan for this one.  The plan was to get dropped early, wait to be lapped, jump into whichever group lapped me, hang on for a few laps, and repeat.  I think I was lapped four times by the lead group (lap times were maybe 1:30 or so) but at least I got in some riding and missed the big crash on the final corner that took out a few people and a couple of bikes.

This was the same course we'd used last year.  It's pretty technical and tight in a couple of places, and I never have quite gotten it figured out.  The 123 race started out with a couple of relatively smooth laps, but then the attacks started and I quickly found myself at the back with Mark and Kenny. It was, of course, the worst possible place to be on a course like this, but I did not want my own lack of fitness to screw up someone else's race, so I was intentionally leaving room for people to come around me when even the smallest gap would open. The not unexpected result was that I got popped off the back after a few fast laps. Luckily the officials didn't seen a need to pull me, so I basically used the race to do four or five 3-5 minute intervals with full recovery in-between.

At the end of the race Stephen Mire went down, presumably hit a pedal and/or rolled a tire, taking a few riders with him. There had been a similar crash on the last lap of the Cat. 4 race that took two of the Tulane riders out.

This week I've been back to a regular training routine, finally, although it's been marred by numerous unrelated flats. In a few hours I'll be on the road to Brookhaven to help officiate the Mississippi Grand Prix Cat. 1/2/3 criterium this evening and then to race the Masters race the rest of the weekend.  I fully expect to get my lunch eaten since I do not feel like I am anywhere close to race shape, but I guess I've got to start somewhere.

April

There is just so much going on in April. Years ago we used to hold the Tour de La in April, but we eventually pushed it farther back into June because there were just too many competing events and activities in April. Well, that and the fact that two of our club presidents around that time were CPAs and CPAs don't even come up for air until June. For me, it's been really busy.

First, there was the road trip with the Tulane team to Collage Station at the end of March. I had brought the bike with plans to get in some miles during the road race, but they had only one or two follow cars. The course included a couple of miles of gravel, so I knew there would be lots of flats. I volunteered to drive one of our minivans behind the Women's B race. I ended up picking up two people on each lap, neither from the race I was supposed to be following. The gravel road was literally lined with riders walking or trying to fix flats or just waiting for a ride back to the finish line. I had to rush to catch back up to the women each time and for the last lap I didn't stop for anybody from other races so I could stay with them.

This weekend was the MSU Velo de Viento in Wichita Falls. I'd intended to go to the MSU race but had to instead drive up to Jonesboro, AR for a work-related conference Wednesday through Friday. That turned out to be an easy 7-hour drive, but of course cost me two days off the bike. I'd already taken Monday as a rest day since the prior week was over 300 miles. I was thinking I'd be able to make up for it over the weekend, though. Well, the weather had other plans. I went out to meet the Giro Ride at Starbucks Saturday morning in the rental car I'd taken to Arkansas. The plan was to do the Giro then drop off the car and ride back home from the car rental place. So I head out a little after 6 am, get almost to Starbucks, and realize I've forgotten my shoes. I rush back home to pick them up and head out again, but now it's starting to rain. I probably wouldn't have even ridden if it hadn't been for the car rental thing. There were only a few people at Starbucks, of course, but we headed out anyway with the plan to do a short Giro. The whole way out along Lakeshore Drive and Hayne I'm getting sprayed with water and feeling generally miserable, so I turned around at the end of Hayne, rode back to Starbucks, returned the car, and rode home.  A couple of hours later the sky was almost clear and the roads were drying so I threw the bike in the car, picked up some road marking paint, and drove across the lake to Enon to mark the road course for next weekend's Tulane "Green Wave Classic" collegiate race. I rode the course once with a can of green paint to mark all of the corners, which used up that can. Then I switched to a can of orange paint and rode most of it again to mark the potholes on Dummyline Road. I ran out of paint before I got to the end of the 2-mile stretch of bad road. Then I got the last can of green paint and put a mark on the finish line, rolled off 200 meters and marked that, and rode back 1 kilometer and marked that. Then I loaded up again and drove over to the time trial course at Lakeshore High where I started my Garmin and car odometer and found the 3-mile finish spot.  The old mark from last year was still there, barely, but it's really hard to find from a car, so I hammered in a stake and painted the top green so the finish line officials will be able to find it next Sunday (if it's still there). By then it was starting to cloud up again, but I was glad to have gotten in 65 miles for the day.  We still have a lot of loose ends to tie up for the Tulane race, and I'm a little worried about having to sort out the final conference points in order to make those awards.

This morning it was raining so I didn't even get out of bed. I probably could have gone out for a ride around 3 pm but would probably have gotten wet anyway. The forecast for the rest of the week isn't looking all that good. Meanwhile, over in Wichita Falls, the Tulane riders had a fairly good race despite the usual 25 mph winds. At least they avoided the rain. Danielle had upgraded to Cat. A the week before to try and score more team points, and so had pretty much jumped into the deep end since they were racing with the Cat. B men who, by this time of the season, were pretty aggressive.

Relentless in New Orleans

It was suddenly springtime, bordering on summer, last Saturday. With Rouge-Roubaix behind us, and a race-free weekend ahead of us, combined with warm temperatures and the impending spring road season, I knew we were in for trouble. Hanging out at Starbucks as the sun came up I watched as a steady stream of riders filtered in from all directions. By the time we were on Lakeshore Drive, there were about fifty riders, including essentially all of the fastest local ones, some of whom were on their time trial bikes. Aside from the Giro Ride that morning, there were at least two other groups doing the same route, so it would be safe to say there were a hundred road and TT bikes out on the Giro course that morning.

I was feeling OK, but still a little heavy and sluggish from nearly a month of low-mileage weeks. Even so, I wasn't really expecting what happened. As soon as we hit Hayne Blvd. the pace ramped quickly up in to the 26-30 mph range, but with such a large group and no significant crosswind issues, it was not too hard to stay in the draft as I gradually got warmed up, a process that seems to take longer and longer every year. Looking back, I note that the average speed on the Hayne Blvd. section was a brisk 26.4 mph. We made the right turn onto Paris Road and the pace didn't really ease at all, so we came over the I-10 overpass and rolled down the other side at around 30 mph.

Although I knew better, I was way back toward the tail end of the long strung-out group at that point.  It looked like we would have a clear shot crossing over the two lanes of I-610, and indeed about 90% of the group did so, but then a pickup truck appeared coming around the curve and a few of us near the back had to slow way, way down until the driver finally waved us through.  Well, the front of the group was still going 30 mph at that point and so all I could do was stand up and sprint and hope to make it back into the draft before blowing up. Yeah, well that didn't happen. As my heart rate edged into the 95% bracket, Stephanie Smith came by and I jumped onto her wheel.  I thought, "Perfect! A triathlete to help bridge a long gap."  I damned sure wasn't going to be able to do it myself.  We chased at full power all the way down the exit ramp and then most of the way along the service road before finally making contact just before Chef Highway.  My average speed for that section was 27.1, and I was completely gassed as came to the Chef Highway intersection. Well of course the front of the group jumped across in front of a car and the rest, including me, had to wait, so immediately we were chasing at 27-29 mph again. I finally just sat up as the relentless pace was offering no chance for me to recover and get my breathing back under control.

Once again, Stephanie came up to me, so we started a nice controlled 2-person time trial at around 23 mph as the group started to disappear in the distance. A minute later we came up to Graham on the side of the road fixing his sticky rear brake, so he joined us for the rest of the way out to Venetian Isles fighting a moderate headwind.

Finally back in the pack after the turnaround, the relentless pace continued, and we were soon strung out in a long thin line once again. The average speed for most of that section to the Goodyear Sign sprint was 30.1 mph. After another 30 mph stretch along the service road, things finally settled down a bit on Bullard, where I later found out Steve had crashed when he hit one of the may cracks in the concrete. Once on Hayne the relentless pace continued, however, and after sprinting up the overpasses and finally coming back down onto Lakeshore Drive I was pretty well toasted. It was also only about 8:55 am. Usually, if the Giro gets back onto Lakeshore Drive by 9:10 it's a fast Giro. I rode around Lakeshore Drive for a little bit waiting for Danielle who had been doing intervals, but couldn't find her so I rode back to Starbucks and hung out with the NOBC group at NOLA Beans until she showed up.

So Sunday morning it was raining when I woke up at 5:45, so I went back to sleep. I'd had more than my fair share of wine the night before since my brother and family were in town for his 60th birthday. I eventually went out in the afternoon when the streets were dry. By then a stiff wind was blowing and it was hot. My legs felt really heavy from Saturday's thrashing, and now I had to fight a west wind all the way out to Kenner on the Lake Trail. I was going mostly 16 mph but the effort felt more like I should be going 24. I got back home three hours later tired, dehydrated and achy.  I guess it's time to start training again.

Springtime

It's 84° F right now in New Orleans. Most of the rain that had been predicted earlier in the week never materialized, and other than a day or two the next week is also looking pretty good. The weather gods even smiled on the annual Rouge-Roubaix race up in St. Francisville last Sunday, offering a nice dry day with warm temperatures after a week of rainy weather.

Like last year, I was helping officiate rather than riding.  I can't honestly say I was disappointed at not being able to ride it. If you aren't in pretty good shape for a hard 4.5 hours on the bike, the last thirty miles of Rouge-Roubaix can be torture. This year the gravel roads were apparently nicely packed down and very fast, which allowed a lot of people to avoid the walk of shame up Blockhouse hill. The Pro/1/2 race was won with a time of 4:10, which is to say those guys at the pointy end of the field rarely saw speeds below 26 mph. I made a Google Fusion map of the home towns of the participants since the race seems to be getting more and more people from farther and farther away. In the Pro/1/2 race there were only two riders in the top 25 from La/Ms. I guess that's good. One highlight this year was Ed Novak's impressive solo win in the Masters race. For once, Ed didn't have some sort of mechanical disaster, plus he had a couple of teammates with him in the final break who effectively thwarted the attempt to chase him down after the last gravel road.

On the other side of the coin, however, were a couple of notable crashes.  Kenny Bellau went down upon hitting a pothole following the first gravel segment when he looked over at just the wrong time. He hit hard on his head and shoulder, and the current diagnosis is a torn labrum.  He is still nursing that arm the same way you do when your collarbone is broken and it still seems to be very painful with little range of motion. Another rider in the Masters race, Howard Sklar, went down even harder, apparently around the end of one of the gravel segments, breaking some bones in his face, his sternum, a collarbone, and some ribs. He was still in the hospital awaiting surgery on Wednesday. Other that that, however, the race went fairly well from an officiating perspective, although since I was at the finish line all day I wouldn't know much about the on-the-road situation. There were only a couple of mistakes in the initial results that were quickly and easily corrected.

Even without riding, however, it was a long weekend for me.  I drove up around 1 pm on Saturday with Tim, one of the other officials, and we worked registration until 6:30 or so, I guess. We were out the door around 5:30 the next morning for another frantic round of registration and data entry. The first group rolled out promptly at 8 am and the last at 9 am. I went straight over to the finish line, about a mile away, and we spent a while setting that up. I had the new RapidCam camera, so we actually had two legit finish cameras on the line plus one regular camera, even though there are rarely any really close finishes in this race. Once the first riders finish, it's pretty much a steady stream for the next three hours, and toward the end you have riders from all of the races coming in all mixed together. It is difficult to sort them all out. We set up a mobile hotspot and emailed pdf files of the inital results to the after-party where the award presentations are made, which worked out OK, I think.

Heading back with the group on Thursday morning.

So after skipping riding on Monday because I had been up until midnight posting results catching up with email, I made it out Tuesday morning for the group ride. It was a fast one, probably because of the warmer weather.  On Wednesday I met Chris Cleeland from St. Louis who had ridden the Rouge and was still in town. We rode out to meet the WeMoRi and stopped for coffee afterward with Brian. Chris was the one who had been behind Kenny when he crashed, and although he had landed much more gently, he stayed around to make sure Kenny was OK before continuing on. Anyway, it was a pretty fast little lap around City Park. Thursday we had a big group for the morning ride, but it never got quite as fast as it had been on Tuesday, which was fine with me because I was feeling a little tired.

At least during the week I did manage to get the Tulane loaner bike we'd gotten from Brian all put together and functional so one of the medical students can use it for an upcoming race. The left Shimano shifter is all messed up and missing a little spring and I couldn't get it fixed, so Bicycle World gave me an older model left shifter they had lying around, the kind with the exposed cable. I think it will work fine, however. Then Mignon decided to give Tulane her old Specialized Tarmac. It had a broken right shift cable, the remnants of which were all jammed up inside the shifter so you couldn't shift it around into the position where removing it was possible. I ended up drilling a hole in the top of the shift lever in order to get the the cable end, so once we get some wheels, that bike should be good to go too.  That will give us three functional race-ready loaner bikes.

Arkansas

It had been a very long time since I'd ridden in Arkansas - like maybe 35 years. I'd driven up there on a hot mid-summer Friday with a friend in my Triumph GT-6 with my arm hanging out the window and hot air blowing through the numerous gaps in the firewall. It was a stage race in Little Rock and it was a lot of fun, but that was then and this was now. This time I left in a rented minivan with 4 bikes, 4 people, 12 wheels, 4 bags and the various other stuff for two days of collegiate racing.

The flyer offered a chance for alumni to race, so I brought the Bianchi and the race wheels, mainly just to delay the inevitability of being dropped. We left in the morning, headed for Fayetteville, about ten hours away. The forecast looked a little scary. There had been a lot of snow and ice a couple of days before, and the forecast wasn't offering anything more than 32 degrees and clear skies for Saturday morning's time trial, which I had already decided to skip.

Well, as often happens at collegiate races the time trial started at least an hour late. It was a dual-conference race, and the first of the year for the Midwest, so despite the cold temperatures the turnout was higher than expected - around 180 - and since most of them had to get their "permanent" bib numbers, things took a lot longer than expected.  The morning TT was a 10 km uphill, and Kenny and I hung around the start line until all of the Tulane riders had started. The last rider was a little Junior on 24" wheels, wearing a jogging suit and running shoes. Kenny and I followed him most of the way up the hill offering encouragement and instruction on shifting. It turned out to be a lot more comfortable temperature-wise than I would have expected.

The afternoon road races were on a 20-mile loop preceded by a 7 mile out and back section. The course was mostly just rolling hills except for one section that featured a particularly steep 1.5 mile climb. So having talked myself into the Category B race, I started the 50-something mile Road Race along with the Cat. B Men and the Cat. A Women. After a brief neutral section, the Cat. A women, along with a couple of the men, rolled off the front.  I figured they must know something I didn't about the "big hill" but my objective was to get a good workout, not to win the race. It would be practically the first bit of hard riding I'd done in almost three weeks, so I didn't have anything to lose. After a while I decided to take off and see if I could bridge up to the lead group, which at that point had about a 30-40 second lead but didn't seem to be going very hard. After a couple of miles of moderate effort I made contact and took a couple of minutes to recover.

Soon enough the rest of the field came up from behind and a little while later, about 20 miles in to the race, we hit the hill. I immediately dropped it all the way into the 39x25, which was clearly insufficient, and when I started gasping for breath I backed off as the pack spun, apparently without much effort, up the hill. I came over the top figuring I'd be doing a long solo ride, but when I caught another dropped rider I decided to ride with him for a while. After a brief period of 2-man TT riding, a couple of riders came flying past on my left and I jumped to latch on to them. It turned out to be a couple of the women who I'd passed on the climb earlier and now they were flying, trying to bridge back up to the field. The guy I'd been with dropped off right away but the three of us started working together really well and after three miles or so we were back with the pack. Of course I got dropped on the hill again on the next lap, but after that I started feeling much better and had a really nice fast time trial of ten or twelve miles back to the finish. The team did pretty well with Ben missing out on the Cat. A win by a tire width after being in a 2-man break with a Cat. 1 semi pro rider from MSU.

Sunday's criteriums were on a nice course in an undeveloped little subdivision. The weather was significantly warmer, although it was overcast the whole day. I lined up with the Cat. B men for the 45 minute race with the idea of getting in a good workout. Well, they started out more slowly than I liked, so after a lap or two I launched a soft attack, rode a lap or so alone, and was then joined by a couple of others. We were caught a while later, and when the pace sagged again I attacked again, this time taking one rider with me. The two of us worked pretty well together, although I was struggling a bit on the headwind stretch. I think we got the gap out to about 40 seconds, but by then the pack had awakened. After a while a Nebraska rider bridged up to us, which would have been good except that he wouldn't work. That resulted in the other rider backing off too despite my reminders that we had only ten minutes left to go. So we got caught with I guess 5 laps remaining. On the last lap things started getting a little sketchy so I backed off since there was really no reason for me to be taking any chances.

After the race I was surprised to find out that along the way I'd won a prime consisting of a pair of tires.  Sweet! Danielle got 2nd in her race, but the big story was Ben, who ended up in a 2-man break with the same rider from the road race. Ben led the whole last lap as their pace slowed dramatically and I was thinking he was just going to get totally smoked when the other rider attacked, but instead Ben accelerated through the last turn and somehow made it all the way to the finish for the win.

The drive home was a long one thanks to non-stop rain for about six of the ten hours back to New Orleans. Fortunately it was mostly light rain so other than the stretch on state highways through Arkansas it wasn't too bad. We got back shortly before 2 am.

Winter Collegiate Races

Last weekend I made the long drive over to San Marcos, Texas for the Texas State Ultra collegiate races with the Tulane team. We had three mini-vans for this one, all packed to the gills with bikes, wheels, riders and pretty much every shred of cold-weather riding clothing available. My car left NOLA around 11:30 (the plan had been for 9 am but it took over an hour to actually pick up the minivans from Enterprise and then we had to squeeze 4 bikes, 4 people, and numerous wheels in there. It was like a game of Tetris. Since these were the "short" or standard-size minivans, only two bikes will fit with their rear wheels still on, and only by sticking the rear of the bike in-between the two rear seats. Both wheels had to be removed from the other two bikes, and then wheels get slotted in-between bikes. Anyway, the drive up there was pretty nice and we arrived in time to eat at the local Mexican place around the corner from the hotel. The other two minivans didn't leave NOLA until after 4 pm, so they didn't arrive until something like 2 am.

The morning temperature for the start of the road races was around 32F, so we stopped first at the local Starbucks and then headed across the Interstate to the back of a big shopping mall where registration was supposed to be. As I approached, however, I saw a long line of cars with bikes coming out of the parking lot, so I followed them until they turned into a dead-end street. Turned out the race didn't quite have permission to use the parking lot at the shopping  mall. There was a light rain falling as we found a place to park and learned that the start had been pushed back one hour. Registration was done with the official sitting in her car registering people through the car window. We hung out in our cars with the engines running for the next hour.

Early break in the Women B/C race

Kenny and I had planned on following the Cat. A race. To be more precise we planned on drafting off of the Cat. A race follow car. The Cat. A race started last, and as they lined up we realized that Ben's spare wheels had mistakenly been put into the Cat. B or C follow car. Kenny and I left on our bikes before the A race started, and started riding backwards around the course. Eventually we met the A race, but by the time we turned around and got going we were hopelessly off the back. We rode back around to the finish line and got to see the finish of the B Women (Danielle won) and then I got a ride so we could try and get Ben's wheels into the proper follow car. We drove backwards around the course and finally flagged down one follow car, pulled out the wheels, and then flagged down the A follow car, which was inexplicably three minutes behind the A pack because they thought they were supposed to follow the last rider.  We put the wheels in the car and told them to go follow the pack. I got in some more miles before going back to the finish to see the A race sprint (Ben got 3rd). The 2 pm time trial was supposed to be this awesome hill climb but they changed it because I guess they thought people would spin out their rear wheels, so it ended up being a little 2 mile slightly uphill TT that was pretty confusing. The start line consisted of one official, one stopwatch, and a start line. There was no start list so riders were starting more or less randomly whenever they showed up, since the change to the start location and time had everyone pretty confused. When Danielle got back she said she had thrown her sunglasses off to the side of the road because she couldn't see (it was still in the 30s and there was a cold mist falling), so once the start line cleared I borrowed a bike and rode along the course looking for them. I was shocked when a couple of A riders then came blasting past me ... on the right. Apparently they had just shown up at the start line and were started. Our rider had rushed to get to the start when he thought he was supposed to be starting quite a while earlier. Anyway, someone had turned in the sunglasses so we go them the at the Crit.

So on Sunday the conditions for the criterium were essentially the same.  Very cold and wet.  The B/C women started around 8 am on a very short technical course that was mostly in the parking lot of a high school. Danielle split the field early but the other two women in the break didn't want to work so it mostly came back together. Then she attacked the last lap and opened a huge gap. She had the race in the bag approaching the last turn when she came up on a lapped rider (wearing running shoes) and had to change her line at the last minute, and ended up crashing on a paint stripe, so I think she ended up around 5th as a result. The officials pretty much just sat in their car in the parking lot and scored the races through the windshield, so Kenny and I ended up handling the lap cards, bell, etc. Ben Spain won his race, which was great. The last race was the A race which was only 20 minutes (collegiate rules require 60). Ben B. attacked toward the end and opened a big gap, only to slide out on a wet off-camber turn. Luckily he could still get a free lap, so he was back in the race but with only a few laps left to go it really took the wind out of his sails.

The ride back home was rough. It was great that we were able to leave so early, which should have put us back in New Orleans by 9:30 or so, but then we rain into torrential rain all the way from Lafayette to almost LaPlace and so spent literally hours going 30-40 mph on the interstate. I had to unclench my hands from the steering wheel a few times. We didn't arrive back home until around 11:00, which by collegiate race standards was still rather early. Next weekend we're heading up to Arkansas where the forecast is calling for lows in the teens but at least no rain.

Cold and Wind and Rain

I feel a little bad complaining about the weather. It's way worse farther north. I mean, take a look at what Toone was riding in the other morning.  

No nicer in B'ham

Even so, the weather here in New Orleans has been pretty much sucking the life out of my motivation for the past couple of weeks. It's actually not all that unusual, however. February is always my most difficult month, and the two, going on three, week virus has not helped, either. Tomorrow I am heading west with the Tulane team for the first conference race of the season. We will have an 8 or 9-hour drive to San Marcos, TX. Conditions for the Saturday morning road race and Saturday afternoon hill climb/time trial don't look too appealing right now. The temperature will probably not get out of the 30s for most of the road races and at best the roads will be wet. At worst, it will be raining. All they can do is pile on the clothes and gut it out, but conditions like that also mean flat tires and slippery turns and gritty drivetrains. I'll be bringing a bike, and probably all of my winter riding gear, and if at all possible I'll get in a few laps of the road course, assuming they have sufficient follow cars and such. That's always a little hit-or-miss with collegiate races.

It has been 15 or 16 days since I got sick and I'm just now starting to feel almost normal. I've skipped a ton of riding over the past couple of weeks and it will probably take another couple of weeks just to get back where I was. This morning I was determined to get in some miles. It was around 40F when I stepped out the door at 5:43 am, which wasn't too bad. Unfortunately there was also a 16 mph wind blowing straight out of the north, which happens to be the direction I have to go to get to the lakefront. I rode to the usual meeting spot to find it, not surprisingly, deserted, so just continued on toward the lake without even stopping. I knew that a lot of riders would have looked at the combination of temperature and wind speed and made other plans. Riding out to the lake I was probably going 15-16 mph most of the way, fingers and brain both numb. Out on the lakefront I could feel the full force of the wind, which was significant but by no means unmanageable. Out at West End there were only two other riders, so we grouped up and rode a lap of Lakeshore Drive at a reasonable effort level before one turned off to head home and we turned the other way down Robert E. Lee to do a lap around City Park. Despite the nice tailwind on Wisner Blvd. I never bothered to shift out of the small ring. The lap around the park was good and after we parted company at Marconi and R.E. Lee I headed back home down Wisner. On Jeff Davis Parkway I somehow managed to hit every single red light, and so, combined with the much slower pace and the bit of perspiration buried under my winter jacket, that got me really chilled by the time I got home. I guess it will be another 3-ride week for me, and that's assuming I can actually put in some miles on Saturday.  

This is not the way to stay in shape. I'm just glad I have no plans to ride Rouge-Roubaix this year.

Natchez Pilgrimage

Last weekend was our annual pilgrimage to Natchez State Park for the NOBC training camp. This year we teamed up with the Tulane collegiate riders, which made for a very nice mix. I had been more apprehensive about this year's trip than usual because I'm just barely getting over the cold that put me out of commission for over a week, and also because Danielle was in the early stages of the same thing.

We rolled out of New Orleans a little late on Friday, but still arrived at the cabins a bit after dinner time, which in our case involved a Subway Sandwich shop inside a Wal-Mart north of Hammond, LA. I had been figuring on eating later, around McComb, but was over-ruled by a few bladders and stomachs. There were apparently a lot of deer running about up there in Mississippi, but although we saw a couple fresh road-killed ones we at least didn't have any close calls ourselves. The weather forecast for the weekend was extremely unstable, changing from hour to hour, so we didn't really know what to expect for Saturday except that it would probably be better earlier than later.

So Saturday morning our planned 7:30 start dragged on to almost 8:30, but fortunately the temperature was around 50 and it was looking like most of the rain would hold off until early afternoon. We headed north on the Natchez Trace, planning on riding to Port Gibson, and then returning with a little loop past Church Hill to add a little variety.  The Trace itself is smooth, graded, and practically devoid of traffic this time of year, which makes it a great place for rides like this where we know the group will split up. I was feeling reasonably good, considering the setbacks of the prior couple of weeks, although I was already starting to feel a little soreness in my quads by the time we made the turn-around. Danielle was gutting it out pretty well, although I know she must have been feeling like crap. I was just glad that it wasn't particularly cold and that the rain was holding off. It actually ended up being a pretty good 70+ miles, which included two or three stops for regrouping. As we rode the last couple of miles back to the cabins it started to rain a little bit and I thought to myself how lousy it would be to have ridden all that way only to get soaked in the last two miles. It turned out to be just a brief little shower, so I didn't really get very wet.

That evening we had a big group dinner in the cabin while we watched the old Race Across Louisiana movie, and then got a little serious with some coaching/training presentations and discussions. I allowed myself a couple of glasses of wine, knowing I'd probably pay for them the next day.

So as predicted it rained that night and we awoke to a cold 40-degree mist and wet streets. A couple of riders headed home, but I was glad that all of the Tulane riders were up for a ride despite the conditions. The plan was just to ride the 17 or so miles to Natchez, ride down and up the 20% grade bluffs, stop for coffee, and return to the cabins.  I think I ended up with a little over 40 miles, which made for a 170 mile week despite missing two days, so I can't complain too much about that. Anyway, the streets were wet and it was pretty chilly and damp, so I wore long tights, shoe-covers, winter jacket, etc.  Can't say I regretted it for one minute, either.  Danielle wisely decided to meet us in Natchez with the car rather than do a cold wet ride with what was rapidly becoming a chest cold.

The ride to Natchez was nice and steady with a slight tailwind, so everyone stayed together easily and the pace was pretty controlled. The ride back was a little harder. The Tulane riders wanted to work on paceline/team TT, so most of it was moderate paceline. As usual, there was a little bit of sketchiness in the paceline, but nothing too bad. It must not have been too hard because a few of the guys ended up basically racing the last couple of miles to the cabins after we stopped at Emerald Mound.  All-in-all it was a good weekend, despite the weather. By the time we got back to New Orleans that afternoon it was almost 80F since the front had not yet come through there, Naturally, that happened overnight. The rain woke me up in the early morning hours and I immediately decided to take Monday off.  I'm still having some chest congestion and all, so it's really not worth taking any chances right now.

Cold Ride

I woke up this morning feeling a little bit better. The throat is still a bit sore, and there's still a post-nasal drip, but at least I didn't feel quite as lousy as I have for the past week. Most people who have had this cold lately have told me it took them two to three weeks to get over it. Anyway, the local forecast had been calling for temperatures in the mid-30s, but when I looked over at the thermometer it read something like 42, so I decided that I needed to at least get on the bike and out the door to get a better read on my current situation. Knowing I'd be riding kind of slowly, I piled on the clothes and stepped outside just before dawn to feel the cold north wind on my face. It felt a lot colder than the thermometer had implied. I had a dull headache that made every little bump in the road rather painful, so I rode easy out to the lakefront and back through City Park. I never saw anyone else, so I don't know if the usual Thursday group materialized or not. I had gone out about half an hour later, so it's possible I just missed them since I was only on Lakeshore Drive for a little while. It felt like I was just getting colder and colder the whole time I was riding, so I guess I'm not really over this cold quite yet. I've been cold every evening at home, walking around the house wearing a fleece vest zipped all the way up to my chin. To make matters worse, it looks like I gave the cold to my daughter because she came down with a sore throat last night. I had really been trying to avoid that. I guess this is going to end up being essentially two full weeks devoid of significant training.  I can't remember for sure the last time that's happened, but it was probably back when I broke my collarbone. I looked back in the log and the last time I had a cold like this was early March of 2013, and it progressed a lot like this one, only faster. I probably missed only four days that time. We have the NOBC/Tulane training camp up in Natchez this weekend and although it's looking like the temperature will be warmer than usual, there's a lot of rain in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday. I guess we'll just have to play it by ear on that. Riding around in a cold rain would probably not be a good idea for me right now.

Still Sick

At Endymion Saturday night

It was eight days ago, on the Tuesday morning ride, that I noticed the runny nose. Granted, my nose runs pretty steadily any time the temperature is below 70F, but this seemed somehow a little different. I had arrived at the usual meeting spot that morning right on time, only to find nobody there. Perhaps it was the stiff northwest wind. I rode out to the lakefront alone, meeting up with a few of the other regulars, and we plodded our way east on Lakeshore Drive in a big eschelon that nobody seemed to want to lead. After the loop at Seabrook, however, Matt rode to the front and started ramping up the pace. I was glued to his wheel in the brutal quartering headwind, focused on staying in his draft and wondering how long he could keep it up. Well, five miles later, at the other end of Lakeshore Drive he finally eased up. I looked back and there was nobody in sight. It was a given that nobody was going to ride out to Kenner on the lake bike trail, so we did an easy lap around City Park and I headed home more than a few miles short for the day. By that night the sore throat had started, and when I awoke in the middle of the night barely able to swallow I knew I'd finally caught the cold that had been going around the office for the past couple of weeks. I woke up later that same night to find my shirt soaked with sweat, so I knew I was sick. I felt bad enough that morning that I stayed home from work. It would turn out that Tuesday's ride would be my last bit of training until, well, until I get back on the bike, which hasn't really happened yet unless you count the Friday coffee ride, or a brief and ill-advised excursion I took on Monday morning.

One of the Thoth parade groups

So after Wednesday morning I decided it would be unwise to do any significant efforts on the bike considering the cold dry air and my desperate hope that I might avoid having it all turn into a big old chest cold and possibly bronchitis or pneumonia. Mardi Gras weekend was coming up fast, and since we are off from work both Monday and Tuesday, I had been hoping to enjoy the long weekend. It didn't really turn out that way. Every night I'd go to sleep hoping I'd wake up the next morning and feel fine, and every morning I'd wake up with a screaming sore throat and probably mild fever. Still, it didn't seem to be affecting my lungs. I'd been sucking on zinc lozenges for days hoping to at least mitigate the effects of the virus, and I'd been staying off the bike and skipping all of the parades in hopes of being better in time for Mardi Gras.

In front of Apolline after the parade

I did make it to the Endymion parade, but that's mainly because we drive downtown to the Tulane Tidewater building, park in the garage, hang out in the office until the parade is literally in front of us, and go back and forth whenever we want. I can't say I was feeling too great, but I did still spend a lot of time down on the street. It's a pretty nice parade and the crowd is reasonably thin by the time it gets downtown. The next day, Sunday, some of us were planning on meeting at Apolline restaurant on Magazine Street (Apolline is the club's main sponsor) to watch the Thoth parade around noon.  I really like watching the parade on Magazine Street. That area has a real old time neighborhood feel to it, and the parade itself is always a little more "local" than the others. Fortunately the temperature was much warmer, so I rode down there with Danielle and had a really nice time. The next morning, although I was not feeling any better, I went out on the bike for a short easy ride since the temperature was still reasonable and it was supposed to rain and then get a lot colder later on. I decided to ride around Audubon Park and then ride out along the levee bike path that was just, finally, re-opened from the park to the stables near Jefferson Playground. That's only a 4-mile stretch, I guess, but on this morning it was nice to not have to deal with traffic.

More Thoth

Well, by Monday evening things were going downhill and I knew I wouldn't be making any trips to the French Quarter on Mardi Gras. The cold had finally gotten to my lungs and I was running a bit of a fever. I started taking some Amoxicillin that The Wife had left over and got that prescription refilled. Then I started taking Mucinex-D, the one with pseudoephedrine, along with Advil. It helped a bit, but basically Mardi Gras day was fairly miserable. Things are a little better this morning, so there's hope, but considering the weather I may be skipping another day or two on the bike. We have our training camp scheduled for this weekend in Natchez, so I am at least hoping I'll be over the worst of it by then.

Levee bike path re-opened

Last night we struggled through setting up the event permit and online registration for the Tulane collegiate race. Man, the USAC system makes that process rather tedious. It was compounded by a glitch that we had found the day before that wasn't handling collegiate licenses correctly for online registration. I think we got it all done, but I'll have to wait until online registration opens on March 1 to know if that all worked out.

So last week I rode a total of 68 miles, by far the lowest weekly total in well over a year. That came after a solid textbook-quality 5-week block of 13-14 hour weeks. Oh well. Back to square one.  Again.

Weather Delay

Mother Nature has been messing with winter training around here lately. It's always hard to get out on the bike this time of year, but here in New Orleans we don't really get a whole lot of days when it just isn't possible.  Nonetheless, it just takes that one extra straw to break the camel's back. Temperature in the upper 30s?  No problem.  Temperature in the upper 30s and a 20 mph wind?  Problem.  Temperature in the low 40s? No problem. Temperature in the low 40 and wet roads? Problem. Sometimes it's not even the cold and wind and rain themselves, it's the probabilities - the increased probability of having multiple flats on dirty wet roads with numb fingers, the increased probability of slipping on a slick corner and crashing, the high probability of having to spend half an hour after riding cleaning the bike and chain. And then there's also just the time of year and, for many, decreased urgency of training hard.  Take last Saturday.

Morning weekday ride heading west

I went out to the Giro Ride, knowing I'd be rushed in order to get to the Officials' Clinic I was holding at 10 am that morning, but I'd already missed a ride that week and didn't want to miss another. The temperature was in the mid-40s, but there was a 13 mph wind blowing straight out of the north. Turnout was good for the ride, the sun was shining, and I fully expected it to get pretty hard. It had its moments, but in general it seemed like nobody wanted to push it unless there was a tailwind. By the time we got back to Lakeshore Drive I had to skip most of the usual cool-down and hustle back home the shortest way possible and then rush over to run the clinic. So today is Wednesday and that was the last good ride I did.

Sunday morning was wet and drizzly, so I didn't even consider riding and instead set my sights on a visit to the Tulane training center for some roller time. That turned out to be like 30 minutes of easy but sweaty spinning, a short ride down to the parish line on the levee bike path, and a fair amount of time fooling with the WattBike software. Pretty much a write-off as far as training goes, especially since I didn't really need a recovery day. By afternoon the weather was a lot nicer but I couldn't make myself get back on the bike by then. A cold front had come through in the afternoon.

Monday morning I awoke to a reasonable temperature of around 45F, and an entirely unreasonable wind of 24 mph out of the northwest. I was already starting to feel desperate, however, so I put on my warm Giordana jacket and headed out to the lakefront anyway. It turned in to a 22 mile ride with an average speed of 14.8 mph that felt a lot  harder than it should have.  Lakeshore Drive was, at least, interesting. The waves were crashing over the seawall in those areas where they were hitting it dead-on, flooding parts of the right lane. All that new concrete between the seawall and the road, however, was working great, so I was just dealing with some water and various bits of wood and such. A couple of years ago the road would have been covered with rocks and mud under the same conditions and the Levee District police would have closed the road for a few days until it could be cleared away. Anyway, riding in the 24 mph crosswind was interesting, if nothing else, and I did stop a couple of times to try and get a photo or two, but in general this was more of a sightseeing ride than a training ride. So I set my sights on Tuesday.

Well, the wind was still blowing at about 12 mph by Tuesday morning and the temperature was down to about 39F. I wasn't too surprised to find only two people waiting for the 5:45 am start at the end of Nashville Avenue. We struggled all the way out to the lakefront, but the Metairie/Kenner group never showed up. Most likely the bike path along the lake was still wet from levee runoff, so combined with the cold and the wind, well, the final straw. So we turned around and headed east on Lakeshore Drive, finally picking up Woody and a couple more riders.  It didn't take long for Woody to announce that he was not riding out to Kenner today. We did a lap of Lakeshore Drive, which got fast enough to split the group for a while, and then basically bailed out. The idea was to ride a lap around City Park, but by the time we got to Esplanade we were getting pretty cold from the easy pace and so we just called it a day and rode back home. 28 miles instead of the usual 42.

This morning - steady rain all night, predicted to continue most of the day. I slept an extra hour or so, then rode to work in a cold steady drizzle wearing jeans and hiking boots. Maybe tomorrow will be better, but this week is definitely going to look pretty lame on Strava!