Weird Weather Pattern

Thursday morning was pretty nice along the river

This irritating weather pattern continues. It seems we're stuck in some kind of "Groundhog Day" infinite weather loop where the weather gets nice around mid-week, then a cold front comes through on Saturday and it rains buckets, and then it gets unseasonably cold by Sunday morning. I mean, really, it's freaking April 16 and I rode this morning in knickers and long-sleeve jersey with base layer and a wind vest on top and I was still pretty chilly for the first 45 minutes or so.

On Thursday we had a good turnout for the 6 am morning levee ride. There's still a lot of water covering the batture, but it's considerably lower than it was a few weeks ago. The forecast for Saturday wasn't looking too good, though. They were showing a 100% chance of rain for Saturday.

That time again. I try not to go
more than 3k miles on a chain.

By Friday the city was issuing weather alerts about the approaching cold front that was expected to include heavy winds, lots of rain, and tornadoes. They cancelled all of the Saturday French Quarter Fest activities. The TV weather people were practically in a frenzy. Situation normal. So Thursday evening I decided it was time to replace my chain, since I'd gotten my 2,500 mile alert from Garmin Connect a couple of weeks earlier. This is normally a pretty quick process that I've done a LOT of times, even though I use Campi chains that require a bit of finesse with quality chain tools. Well, perhaps I was rushing, but when I went to push in the connecting pin with my trusty Park chain tool, the pin on the chain tool broke, and in the process broke the connecting pin. Crap! Nobody was going to have a spare connecting pin for an 11-speed campi chain on hand locally, and they certainly wouldn't have a replacement pin for the chain tool either. So at lunchtime on Friday I rode over to Bayou Bicycles and picked up a $22 SRAM chain to get me by until the replacement stuff arrived. Yes, I know the SRAM chains work just fine and cost less than half of what the Campi chains do. I just like the Campi chains for purely esoteric reasons. So now, it was just a matter of precisely when that cold front would be coming through on Saturday. A couple of hours one way or the other would make all the difference. Meanwhile, up in Fayetteville, the front was plowing through the middle of the Joe Martin Stage Race and would be dropping temperatures up there down into the 30s for the weekend. In the meantime, the Pro and Elite riders were treated to two days of cold and/or rain on Thursday and Friday. I was glad I wasn't there this time.

Hanging out on the riverfront listening to the music

Saturday morning I awoke early and stared at the radar and hourly forecast. It looked like we were in luck, but just barely. It would be windy, but if I could be back home before 10 am it looked like there was a reasonable chance I'd stay dry. I rode out to Starbucks wondering how many others would come to the same conclusion. Apparently many did, and we had a really good Giro Ride. By the time we were coming back down Lakeshore Drive, the western sky was getting darker and darker. Right on schedule, the rain started around 10:30 or so.

Monday's eagle

Unfortunately, the cold front kind of stalled shortly after it came through, so we had thunderstorms and rain for the rest of the day and most of Saturday night. By Sunday morning, though, the streets were dry, the air was cold, and the wind was blowing out of the WNW at 15-25 mph. Besides the Giro, there was another ride planned from the Scarsdale side of the Belle Chasse ferry landing down to Pointe a la Hache. I'd have liked to have done that one, but I was scheduled to head down to the French Quarter Fest after the Giro, and I figured that the Belle Chasse ride was going to involve a couple more hours than that. As expected, turnout for the Giro was a little thin, but not really all that bad. The wind, of course, made for a hard ride, but I was quite happy with it anyway, even if my legs were a little sore from Saturday's efforts.

Looking down from the Westin at part of the French Quarter Fest crowd

After the Giro I headed downtown where Candy had been working a conference since Thursday at the Westin. The weather was nice, but of course it was still very windy and a bit chilly. It never did really warm up much on Saturday. We hung around with Kenny and Candy and Sofia and listened to the music for a while before heading back home around mid-afternoon.

This morning the temperature was around 52, but at least the wind had died down a bit. I did my usual solo recovery ride on the levee, where I got a few photos of an eagle. I saw him again later in the ride, but he took off just as I stopped to pull out my camera. Whenever it's a chilly and clear morning you can be sure to spot eagles perched up high enjoying the sunrise. The forecast for this coming weekend?  You guessed it.  Cold front coming through on Saturday with rain. This time, though, I'll be way over in Wichita Falls with the Tulane riders for the conference championship at Midwestern State University where 15-25 mph winds are considered normal.

The Tulane Race

Last weekend was the Green Wave Classic, the collegiate race that the Tulane club has put on almost every year since around 2012. As often happens, people procrastinated, bureaucracy stalled, and things fell through cracks. To complicate matters, Spring Break ended just five days before the race, which meant that not a whole lot got done during that time. By Monday I was feeling pretty nervous about things. I didn't know if all of the follow cars had been lined up. I didn't know how much cash we were going to need to pay the police for the Time Trial. I was pretty sure we still didn't have official approval from Lakeshore High to use the campus for the TT parking and the criterium on Sunday. Even worse, the weather forecast for Saturday was showing a 100% chance of thunderstorms ahead of a cold front. I can't say I was looking forward to a weekend of officiating in the rain, but the worst case scenario was that between weather and the school availability, the entire event might have to be cancelled at the last minute. So on Monday I started rattling the cages. Pretty soon I got word that there was a problem with the school. They needed a form/waiver signed in order to get approval from the school board. The form wasn't ready until Monday. Unfortunately, all of the schools on the northshore were on spring break that week, which is to say that nobody was there and nobody was answering the phone. They wouldn't be back until the following Monday. What to do?

When I found out about the problem I called the school board office in Covington and was glad that someone answered the phone. That person gave me the cell phone number of the principal, so I relayed that to the student who was handling it and hoped for the best. Well, that kind of worked, and the principal forwarded the forms and insurance certificate to the school board for approval. A couple more days went by with no word. The principal stopped answering the phone calls from the student. By Friday, we still didn't have approval. I started trying to think of another course we could use, but it was just impossible on such short notice. Then I remembered that I'd worked with the Asst. Principal in the past for the Tour de La time trial, and I had his cell phone number in my contact list. I gave him a call and left a message. A couple of hours later he called back and basically said, "Don't worry about it, I'll unlock the gates for you." That was about an hour before I started cramming a truckload of race equipment into the Volvo.

Although I had originally planned to just drive back and forth across the Causeway on Saturday and Sunday, after looking at the weather forecast I decided to shell out the $200+ for a hotel room so I wouldn't be trying to load up the car at 5 am in a pouring thunderstorm. That's just not a good way to start a full weekend of officiating. Since I had a room, Gavin would be coming with me because he needed a ride, and Quentin would be meeting us over there later since he'd be working the race rather than riding it. At that point there were just two things I was worried about - the rain, and the turnout. Pre-registrations had been really low. I guess a lot of the Texas riders decided to skip this race. The MSU team, however, was actually driving even farther in order to ride the Sunny King races in Alabama rather than our race. Anyway, I loaded up the car with the new generator I'd bought (since the LAMBRA generator was up in Shreveport for a conflicting race), podium, P/A system, traffic cones, two tables, two chairs, two pop-up tents, two computers, finish line camera, race clock, traffic cones, megaphones, extension cords, medals, first aid kit, fence posts, clothes, etc. and headed out to pick up Gavin and his bike around 7 pm.

So early Saturday morning, sitting on the edge of the hotel room bed in the dark, I studied the radar. It was already raining outside and there was a line of heavy rain coming our way. The timing was critical, though. The races were scheduled to start at 9:00, which was right around when the worst of it would be moving through, but it was moving fast, and it looked like things would be a lot better by 9:30. I called Dustin and told him to tell the police to push things back by half an hour. As it turned out, this was the right call. We arrived at the RR venue around 7:30 with only a very light rain, and by the time the races started the street was almost dry and the rain had stopped. I'd been fully expecting to spend the day in pouring rain, so this was really a spectacular bit of luck. We set up the tents and generator, fired up the computer and race camera, handed out radios, logged in to Zello, put down the finish line tape and flag, put up the signage around the course, and started registering riders.

As usual there were a couple who had registered online and since they already had "permanent" SCCCC bib numbers, didn't stop by registration to let us know they were actually there and didn't sign the waiver. Damn I hate the whole "permanent number" concept. It only works when riders never upgrade and need new numbers and when riders never lose their numbers and when riders get new numbers at a different race and you don't know about it, etc.

Unfortunately, race-day registrations didn't do much to bump up the numbers and we ended up with an all-time low of 37 riders spread over five classes and categories. Really rather pitiful. On the plus side, everyone who raced scored big conference points. The road race went super smoothly. All of the follow cars showed up, nobody crashed, and with the tiny fields it was super easy to pick places, especially with three officials on hand.

That evening was the Time Trial. Naturally, a light rain started falling as we got ready to start. Fortunately, it never got any heavier, and with only 37 riders we were done at the start line in less than 20 minutes. We crammed everything back into the Volvo and headed back to the hotel to post the TT and omnium results and then found a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner. Officiating is pretty easy when there are so few riders.

Sunday's criterium also went really smoothly, although I was freezing for the first couple of hours because the temperature had dropped down into the 40s by morning. For once, there wasn't anything happening on the baseball field behind the course, so we didn't have any problems with cars or anything. The finish line camera worked fine and everything was wrapped up by 2:00 or so. All-in-all, I was amazed that we made it through the whole weekend without any significant rain. I got home, unloaded the car, posted the final results, updated the SCCCC spreadsheet and sent it off to Ben Davis, formatted and uploaded results to USAC, completed the USAC post-event report, created the officials' invoices, and poured myself a very big glass of wine.

Fifteen Percent Chance

"Wasn't expecting it to start raining this early," I said as the three of us were approaching Williams Blvd. in the dark. "The guys who didn't show up must have better radar than we do," remarked Jeff as the raindrops got larger and more frequent. Indeed, the forecast had been calling for nothing more than a 15% chance of rain until at least 9 am, and the 5:30 am radar had seemed to support that. Yet, there was no denying that the three of us, Jeff, Darren and I, were about to get good and wet anyway.

We continued on, water spraying in our faces, straining to see through cloudy glasses, and soon I could feel the water level in my shoes beginning to rise. I knew it couldn't be the larger line of rain ahead of the approaching cold front, since that was still way to the west of the city, so these had to be some scattered showers popping up ahead of the front. It was still just as wet, but at least it wasn't too cold.

We turned back at The Dip, which has become standard protocol whenever the turnout is low and the weather sketchy. With the levee bike path now soaked with water, it was sometimes hard to tell if it was still raining since there was a steady stream of wheel spray from the rider ahead anyway. It didn't matter. We were already soaked, so it was no longer a question of how wet we'd get. There was just one thing that might mess up what was left of the ride.

It went flat pretty fast. We were only eight or so miles from home, and it wasn't really raining at the time. I stopped and spun the wheel, brushing my un-gloved hand over the tire to feel for whatever might still be embedded in the tread. "Ouch!" This time it wasn't just a little shard of rock or glass. It was a tiny piece of metal, and it took a while to pry it out of the tire even with the help of my pocket knife. I pulled out the CO2 inflator and filled the tire, only to have it freeze onto the skin of my hand. It was the one day when I'd forgotten to put on my gloves, and now I had what amounted to freezer burn on my hand. Soon enough we were back up to speed, which in this case was 22-23 mph, and we even came upon a section of road near the city that was still dry. "Great," I thought, "I may dry out a little bit by the time I get home." 

No such luck. As I made my way down Oak Street the sky opened up again and I rode the last couple of miles through Carrollton in the rain. I was glad I'd made it out, since the rest of the day was definitely going to be wet, but as I stood there in the basement dripping water and wiping down the bike I couldn't help but think, "Fifteen percent chance of rain, my ass."

Omnibus Blog Post

Sundown over the swollen Mississippi at Baton Rouge

Like our Congress, which hasn't managed to pass our country's appropriations bills on time ever since they threw their only bargaining chip, the earmark, out the window, I've been pretty sluggish about updating my blog lately. And so it seemed only appropriate that I should wrap the entire past few weeks up into a nice long Omnibus web post. Fortunately for you, it won't take me 2,200 pages to do so like it did for the actual Omnibus Bill. Also fortunately for you, it won't be necessary for you to read 2,200 pages within 48 hours, which we all know is impossible since you would have to read non-stop at one page every 1.3 minutes for two days without sleeping in order to do so - a rate you probably haven't achieved since you were cramming for your English literature final exam in college. So anyway, looking back at the past few weeks, and realizing that between my advanced age and declining mental faculties I can barely remember who I rode with last Saturday, I figured I'd just start with last week and take it from there.

Last week wasn't too bad. The weather down here has been pretty good for riding, despite the early morning darkness, and although Tuesday's ride got cut a bit short due to there being only two of us, the other regular rides were pretty good. I logged 286 miles, which was, I suppose, satisfactory.

Nice turnout for Tulane Day at the Capitol

On Tuesday I had to drive up to Baton Rouge in the afternoon for our annual "Tulane Day" legislative event. This year, rather than standing around in the Capitol rotunda for hours, we decided to have an actual reception. Even better, we were able to hold it at the new Center for Coastal and Deltaic Solutions, which is basically a really fancy high-class, glass and steel fishing pier along the Mississippi just below the Baton Rouge I-10 bridge. The building is brand new and really nice. We had been pushing for weeks to get some good attendance for the event, and that effort was fairly successful, I think. We had a lot of Tulane alumni, along with the Tulane president and a few key legislators in attendance. The best part, though, was that because it was in the evening, and I wasn't involved in the various meetings that filled the rest of the day, I was able to ride in the morning. Unfortunately, that was also the morning we turned around early. The river had hit flood stage in New Orleans on Monday.

Flood Stage

So on Wednesday I headed out in the dark to do the WeMoRi. Out on Lakeshore Drive looking for the group of headlights, I saw just a single light with nothing behind it and figured it was just some solo rider unconnected with the ride. Well, moments later two riders go flashing past me at about 30 mph and I realize I missed the break. I look back and the pack is easily a minute back already. Oh well. So I jump into the group when it comes by and all is well, but there's no way we're catching the break, even after one of the riders, Rob, splits off early to head home. It ended up being a relatively easy WeMoRi for me. On Friday Jerry was leading the Tulane coffee ride, which meant we rode less and drank coffee more, so it was shorter than usual. By then, I had pretty much decided to drive up to Independence for Dustin's 80 mile birthday ride where I was expecting to get pretty well crushed.

Saturday up in Tangipahoa Parish

We had ten riders for the Independence ride, which turned out to be considerably less harsh than I'd been expecting it to be. Actually, we had only eight for about half of it. Logan crashed at an intersection going about 2 mph and kind of ripped up the palm of his hand. He and Jerry decided to split off a while later at a store to pick up some bandages and then ride backwards around the course to meet us. Otherwise, though, this was a nice ride - great weather, mostly double paceline, moderate pace except for occasional and random short accelerations.

Logan explaining how he crashed, I think.

Sunday morning I was feeling no worse for the wear and headed off for the usual Sunday Giro. That ride started out fairly fast, but after a while it seemed like only a few people were interested in pulling and things settled down quite a bit. A few riders just kind of rode away off the front on the way back without eliciting any sort of effort to chase. All-in-all, the past week was enjoyable but a little bit lacking in the intensity area, especially since it's already the end of March.

Last night I helped Charlotte change out cables, and install a new crankset and shifters. That took longer than I expected, partly due to my lack of familiarity with Shimano components, and partly because I cut one of the brake cable housings to short and ended up un-taping and re-taping he handlebar in order to replace it with a longer one. We were also lacking the special little tool to tighten the plastic thingy that basically holds the crankset in place, but I improvised and I think it will be fine. Anyway, I don't think I finally went to sleep until nearly midnight, which made getting up at 5:20 am this morning a bit of a challenge.

Rafal and Steve battling the headwind on the levee 

The wind this morning was impressive. I guess it was 10-15 mph from the southeast. I rode out to the levee fully expecting to be the only one to show up, but as it turned out there were four, one of which was visiting from the Chicago area and had ridden with us on Sunday. With a cross-tailwind at the start, I think we dropped one rider almost immediately even though we were going only about 22-23 mph. Then one of the remaining riders turned around at the pipes, so we were down to just me and Rafal. He's way taller than I, so I knew he would be suffering on the way back. Anyway, we did ease up a bit, eventually picking up Steve and David out by Destrehan. The return trip was mostly head and crosswind, and there were times when 18 mph was a struggle. After a while I dropped back and was surprised to find Rafal missing. He'd really blown up. David dropped off around that time as well. I knew that Steve would be turning back at the Pipes, so I continued trading pulls with him to that point and then turned back to find Rafal who was a couple of minutes back trying to recover. We rode back the rest of the way pretty easy. I told him to come with me down the ramp onto Oak Street and we'd stop for coffee. Well, he followed me down onto River Road but there was a car between us. I looked back and saw him, so I continued down Oak Street at an easy pace, waiting for him to catch up. When I finally looked back again he was nowhere to be found. I still don't know where he went! Perhaps he lost sight of me and ended up on River Road, or maybe he flatted?? Guess I'll find out eventually.

You Never Can Tell

There are lots of group rides around. I typically do some or all of a group ride four or five times a week. One thing about group rides I've learned is that you never can tell who's going to show up. Lots of things influence the turnout, especially the chance of rain and the certainty of strong wind. But every now and then the stars align in just such a way that nobody can come up with a credible excuse for staying in bed. And so it was for yesterday's Giro. It was supposed to be Rouge-Roubaix race weekend, so some riders were in decent early season shape. The wind was light. The morning temperature, which had been rather cold all week, was up to the mid-50s. It was the last day before we set clocks ahead and would be back to riding in the dark. Rain was predicted to start an hour after the Giro ended. A couple of riders were in town, one from Texas, another from Australia. The Tulane riders were planning to ride. So by the time we rolled out from Starbucks I guess there were 35 or 40 riders, and it was pretty clear we were in for a fast one.

Indeed, as soon as we came down the bridge onto Hayne Blvd. the speed went straight up to about 30 mph and mostly stayed in the 25 - 32 mph range all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. My Garmin said our average speed for the way out was something like 26.5 mph. Unfortunately, just as I put some power to the pedals on Hayne one of the old aluminum spoke nipples on my rear wheel broke. It wasn't quite bad enough to start hitting the chainstay, so I just kept going, being careful to avoid the bumps, and sprints. The latter was particularly frustrating because I would definitely have liked to have done some of them.

The whole way out on Chef Highway I was looking at 28-31 mph, but with such a big group it was relatively easy to stay in the pack. When there would be a little lull and the speed would drop down to 27, it felt like I was coasting. The return trip was definitely slower, but finally got going toward the end of Chef and was looking to stay that way until Brian flatted on the service road. About ten of us stopped and the rest continued, so I was thinking we'd just have an easy ride back. Well when we went around the curve there was Woody and a few more riders fixing another flat. Up the road, the rest of the group was waiting at the gas station at Bullard, so we ended up with practically everyone coming in together. Definitely the best Giro Ride this year. Even better, I made it home with my rear wheel still in one piece. So after I got back I rummaged around and found a brass spoke nipple that was threaded right, ran over to the bike shop to pick up a new rim strip, and had everything back in action half an hour later. I think that's the fifth spoke nipple I've replaced on that wheel - so far. Basically I'm rebuilding the wheel one spoke nipple at a time.

Wind and Water and Winter Again

A windy morning on the Lakefront

I guess that easy ride I did on Monday morning shouldn't have been so easy because Tuesday morning was rained out entirely, and while I can pretend that old guys like me need more recovery and skipping days must be good, I know better. The value of recovery days depends heavily on one thing - something from which to recover. Tuesday's rain, of course, ushered in a cold front and by Wednesday morning the temperature was down to the mid-50s, which is probably more or less normal for this time of year, but which was substantially lower than we've had for the past couple of weeks. So that morning I dug out the thermal knickers and long-sleeve jersey and headed off in the darkness for the lakefront battling a gusty and unrelenting north wind. Out on the unprotected Lakeshore Drive the wind was a bit worse with waves occasionally crashing over the seawall. I rode eastward over the bridge and across the London Avenue Canal looking for headlights. All I saw were four, and they were coming at me pretty damned fast, so I made a quick u-turn, accelerated up to speed, and latched onto the quartet as it approached the Bayou St. John bridge. Someone surged for the bridge KOM just as Emily, who was at the back, opened up a gap to let me in. I barely caught the draft, but I think she dropped off at that point. Up ahead was Rob, inexplicably on his track bike on such a windy day. Despite the wind and his fixed gear, he was killing us. Brian and Woody were there too, and for the next mile or two all I could do was let them rotate in front of me as I tried to catch my breath. When we turned onto Wisner and picked up a tailwind the speed surged up to 26 or 27 as Rob and Brian pounded the pedals. Woody was clearly suffering, as was I. We came down the overpass at 35 mph, turned onto City Park Avenue, and then the pace eased. Rob pulled off the front and headed home as the rest of us turned back into the headwind onto Marconi. I think we were down to 19 mph for a while. The rest of the WeMoRi was nowhere to be seen. In fact, we didn't see the remnant of the wind-shattered group until we were already past the Bayou St. John bridge and on our way back. Anyway, that was a pretty good workout, and I was glad I had a tailwind on the way home.

So much water

Thursday morning it was even colder and I pulled on the long tights for the first time in probably three weeks. It was somewhere in the 49-50 degree range, but with the wind it felt colder, especially once I got up to the levee. As often happens when it's cold and windy, only Richard and Scott showed up. We rode out to the big dip and turned around there, picking up David from Ormond for a while before he had to turn back. The river has been rising steadily, and will continue to do so for at least the next week. The water is just barely reaching the base of the levee now, but even so the Corps opened up some of the bays at the Spillway this morning to keep things under control.

Straggling

My little group of stragglers in the road race, probably starting the second lap

It was another long road trip last weekend. This time up to Fayetteville for the University of Arkansas collegiate (and some non-collegiate) races. My sore throat seemed to be on the mend and I wasn't yet showing signs of pneumonia, so why not drive 10 hours to race in some nice cold, dry air after what was essentially five days off the bike? As fate would have it, we ended up with only one collegiate rider, Gavin, plus Dustin and me. Gavin was thus assured of redundant and/or contradictory coaching advice plus lots of crit photos. This year's Arkansas Classic used entirely different courses from prior years. The road race, which was the only one I'd be doing, was on a nice rolling 12-mile loop with one short but steep climb and one longer but not so steep climb. It was considerably more forgiving than the course used in prior years, although apparently not quite forgiving enough for me.

Probably 1 lap to go.

The road races didn't start until late morning, after the time trial, with Dustin and I doing the "Open A" aka Cat. 1/2/3 race first, followed by Gavin in the collegiate Cat. C race a few hours later. Although I was feeling a little apprehensive about my pulmonary status, I can't say I was feeling all that bad as we rolled out for the neutral 3 or 4 miles to start the first of four laps of the race loop. By the time we started the temperature was close to 60, the sky was clear, and the wind was blowing at probably 10 mph with little but a few scattered leafless little trees to block the it as it blew across the cow pastures. It was scenic, for sure, but I knew the crosswind section was going to take its toll on the field of around 30 riders. With the very first section of the loop being essentially a direct crosswind, I made sure I was up near the front as soon as we turned onto it. That worked out pretty well for a while, but then Dustin attacked maybe five miles into it and right away there was a split with six riders off the front. Over the next few miles a few more took off on the tailwind section and I think most of them made the bridge. I think there was some team strategy, aka blocking, going on in what was left of the field, so there wasn't any sort of concerted effort to chase. Even so, the gap was growing pretty slowly at first. Then we came around a sandy right-hand corner and were immediately confronted by the big climb of the day, for which I was totally unprepared. It was maybe half a kilometer but also maybe 10%, and naturally I came around the corner still in my big ring near the back of the field. Someone up front attacked the hill. I didn't, and got really bogged down in too big of a gear coming over the top. A few of us stragglers came together and kind of sort of started to chase, but the effort was inconsistent and we never made contact. In retrospect, I probably should have just put my head down and made the bridge by myself. Anyway, we had a nice little group of five or six. One or two were just sitting on the back. I was taking fairly good long pulls, and this big guy was doing the same, and soon the one woman in our group started taking some pulls too, but although the group ahead remained in sight for over a lap, it was clear that we lacked the necessary combined horsepower, or willpower, or both, to actually close the deal. Even so, I felt fine climbing the "big" climb on the succeeding laps, so I guess I just got caught off-guard on that first lap and wasn't willing to dig deeply enough. Anyway, but then I was just focused on getting a good workout and unfortunately my pulls were causing some collateral damage behind me. The big guy was struggling on the climbs even though I thought I was going up them nice and smoothly. At one point I came off the front and dropped back to find only Ali, the woman from Arkansas, left. I said, 'What happened to that big diesel engine we had?" She replied something like, "Well you kept pushing the pace too much. You training for Kona or something?"  Oops.  Anyway, I think we were down three when we caught a rider who'd been shelled from the original break, and then dropped from whatever was left of the disintegrating field. He stayed with us for a while but eventually dropped off. By the end there were just three of us and we spend the last half of the last lap doing more chatting than racing. Turned out all three of us were 40+.

Meanwhile, up at the front, Dustin had spent half a lap solo and then gone back to the break. He ended up in 3rd place. After finishing I just kept on riding and did a nice cool-down lap. I mean, it was such a nice day I wasn't going to waste it, especially after driving 10 hours to get there! I stopped at the start/finish and waited for the Cat. C race to come through for their 4-lap race. Naturally Gavin was already off the front less than two miles into the loop. Later he attacked again and ended up in a 2-rider break that made it all the way to the finish. He finished 2nd, but was very pleased with his result, remarking later that it had been the hardest ride he'd ever done. Anyway, when he came through the start/finish for his second lap he motioned that he needed water, so I filled up one of my bottles and Dustin and I started riding backwards around to course to get to the feed zone that was practically on the opposite side. He got there before us, so I had to wait until the next lap to make the hand-up. Meanwhile, Dustin was so wiped out from his earlier effort that he was starting to get cold and got a ride back to the start/finish while I rode back a bit later. We waited for Gavin's finish then rode back into town as the sun was setting. By then the temperature had really started to drop and I was freezing.

Sunday morning the weather was much different. There were a few scattered showers around and it was cloudy, but at least it wasn't too cold. Gavin's race was one of the earlier ones and once again it was his early attack that created the winning break. There were originally two of them, but the gap was hovering around 9 seconds so a couple more bridged up before they put their heads down and really got to work. Eventually that 4-rider break established a safe lead, though. The finish was probably only 100 meters from the last corner, and Gavin came into it 3rd wheel. Rider in front of him almost overshot the turn, though, and Gavin hesitated and changed his line a bit, losing enough momentum for the rider behind him to slip past, so he ended up 4th. Even so, he had accumulated enough prime points that together with his 4th place time trial, he was 2nd in the Cat. C Omnium competition. It started raining right after his race, so as soon as they did the podium and he collected his medal we jumped into the van and hit the road. That got us home at the entirely satisfactory hour of 9:30 pm, which was way better than the usual 12:30 am! Links to photos and, eventually results, are on the cycling.tulane.edu results page.

Forced Break and Government Affairs

Monday morning I decided to sleep a little later and skip my usual morning ride. After the long drive back from Auburn and some follow-up uploading of photos and such, I hadn't gotten to bed until late. The weather was looking to be fine the rest of the week, so I thought there'd be no harm in skipping another day. Well, that was a bit of a mistake I guess. The sore throat started to make itself obvious around noon on Monday and by evening I knew I was in for a few days, at least, of head cold symptoms. I ventured out Tuesday morning anyway, but played it safe and turned back after only ten miles. Things kind of went downhill during the day yesterday, so I skipped this morning as well since there's really no way to ride the WeMoRi without aspirating whatever virulent slime might be dripping down the back of your throat, or for that matter, the throats of the two riders ahead of you as well. So this morning I'm in a restless contemplative mode and was glad to see the announcement in Tulane News about one of our researchers getting an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award.

With all of the often well-deserved government-bashing that dominates the daily news, not to mention the incessant but questionable din of pseudo-news on Facebook and Twitter, it was particularly nice to see something good happening. NIH is one of the few federal agencies that the current administration didn't mess with very much. It's still led by Francis Collins, a real-live MD-PhD research scientist. Although the President's budget annually proposes a stagnant budget for NIH, Congress, yes, that same body of lawmakers who haven't managed to actually approve an actual Appropriations Bill since they threw their only real bargaining chip, the much-maligned Earmark, out the window, keeps nudging their budget upward bit by bit anyway. Meanwhile, up in Bethesda, there are actual federal employees who actually care about actual biomedical research, and some of those actual federal employees actually do understand how university-based scientific research works. One new thing they came up with recently was the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award. It's kind of a leap of faith for a government entity to do this kind of thing where they intentionally back away from micro-management. It's right in line with the "hire good people, give them what they need, and leave them the hell alone" philosophy that I have always supported. The OIA awards are "intended to allow investigators the opportunity to take greater risks, be more adventurous in their lines of inquiry, or take the time to develop new techniques."  How about that? Here we are with the current administration doing its best to kill off support for graduate education, turn universities into trade schools, and generally make it harder for people to even go to college at all, and down in the trenches of the National Institutes of Health there is still the wisdom to give $6 million to an established researcher with a great track record, and basically say, "Here's a pile of money. We trust you to use it wisely, do great things, and make our country, and maybe even the world, better."  Imaging that.

With that, I'll go back to work where I will no doubt read about more and more federal insanity, and hope this head cold resolves itself before I have to drive up to the University of Arkansas this weekend for another collegiate race.

Up in Auburn

It was great to see such large fields at a collegiate race.

Last weekend was another road trip, this one to the Auburn University Cycling Weekend race up in, of course, Auburn AL. There were just two Tulane riders for this one, since it was outside of Tulane's conference (so no points on the line), but the goal for the weekend wasn't really to score any points. Instead, the goal was for these two guys to accumulate some good experience in larger fields and at the same time tally up some mass-start finishes to count toward future upgrades. Since this event offered both collegiate and non-collegiate races, each of them could race twice each day. Dustin and I could also race our category, or in my case age-group, races. The weather leading up to the race weekend was looking pretty bad for Sunday, but not so bad for Saturday. Since it's so early in the season (for me) I was planning on racing the 35+/45+ road race on Saturday but was not at all committed to racing the criterium on Sunday that I figured would be wet.

A nice climb right after the start.

The drive up to Auburn went really smoothly, even with the constant added stress of worrying about (a) not exceeding the speed limit and (b) not getting run over from behind because of not exceeding the speed limit, and (c) not getting killed while passing people who were going slower than the speed limit by getting into the left lane and not exceeding the speed limit (by much). Anyway, compared to a lot of the drives we make to the South-Central Conference races, this little 6-hour jaunt was a piece of cake. I was fully expecting to drive home through blinding rainstorms in the middle of the night, however.

The event was being run by TopView Sports, a professional events management company, which meant we had to pay an extra $10 for timing chip rental. On the plus side, the races went off on time and most of the results were correct, and I was glad to see Stuart Lamp serving as Chief Referee. Elliott and Gavin both rode well in both their collegiate and category races and I think gained a lot of great experience. Gavin elected to also ride the afternoon Time Trial that consisted of a full lap of the 8-mile course. Knowing how easy it is to screw up time trial results, especially when relying so heavily on timing chips, I took the precaution of timing him myself. When the TT results were posted the next morning, he told me that his posted time was almost 30 seconds slower than what I'd gotten. Sigh....  I went over to the big red officials' trailer motor-home thing and asked them to check it out since I had absolutely no doubt it was wrong. Fortunately, one of the officials had been doing a manual backup and could confirm the error. They had been starting riders about ten feet before the single timing mat so that when they rolled over it the first time their start times would be recorded and then when they rolled over it a second time their finish times would be recorded. Unfortunately, when Gavin picked up his bike to shift it to a different gear while waiting to start, it must have gotten too close to the mat and tripped the sensor and started his clock early.

Safely tucked into the masters pack

The Masters race had a decent sized field of 20 or 25, which was pretty good for an early season low-key road race like that. The course was moderately hilly with a couple of short but significant climbs along the 8-mile course. My race was only 5 laps or 40 miles, which was shorter than I'd have liked, but then again I was rather worried I'd get dropped like a rock if there were a bunch of attacks on the hills. After a nice easy climb up the first hill, just past the start line, there were a few rather hard attacks that strung things out. I was just trying to stay on wheels and wasn't even paying attention to whatever kind of battle might be going on up at the front. I think it was before the start of the second lap that one rider finally got away and the pace settled down a bit. Too few people willing to chase, I guess. As we got close to the final lap things started heating up again with a few tentative attacks here and there. I was surprised that there hadn't been a big attack each time we climbed the 1-km hill on the back side of the course, but on the last lap someone launched near the top, bringing another rider with him. There wasn't a big response from the field. I guess most of them, like me, were suffering from early-season insecurity. I had already started trying to stay closer to the front, and in retrospect could probably have gone with that attack. Whether I'd have been able to stay with them is another question altogether.

Found GW a the criterium

So it was looking like a pack sprint for, I think, 4th place, and as we got into the final few miles I concentrated on maintaining a good position near the front. There was a right-hand turn a little less than a kilometer before the finish, and we had access to the left lane for the final 200 meters. With the wind coming from the right, I positioned myself on the left side of the group, coming around the last turn a bit farther back than I'd have liked. As soon as we cleared the turn someone jumped, which was good for me. As riders started to fade, I found myself on a solid wheel up against the center line approaching the 200 meter mark. I could tell that the rider in front of me was going to jump hard at 200 meters, and when he did, I was on him like white on rice, easily coming around well before the line. I think I was 2nd or 3rd in the pack sprint (never saw overall results, just the 35+ and 45+ placings) and ended up 3rd in the 45+ race. I was happy with how I felt and in fact a little surprised that I felt as competitive as I did. A little while later I was down by the start/finish and heard them calling my name for the podium, which was up on a hill across the road. I grabbed my bike and climbed up the wash-out / path, and when I went to lean the bike on a nearby tree slashed the hell out of my shin on a piece of rebar they were using as a stake to hold up the backdrop. After the obligatory photo I looked down to see blood dripping down my leg onto my sock and went off to find the first-aid kit I'd thoughtfully remembered to bring along.

The women got thoroughly doused during their criterium.

Sunday's weather was better than predicted, which isn't saying much since the prediction was for nothing but rain. As it turned out, the first race, Gavin's, went off entirely without rain, although the street was wet anyway. At one point I heard someone say hello and turned around to find good ol' GW Wenzel who is famous in the cycling community for always wearing his cowboy hat, boots, and Auburn shorts at bike races. I should have expected to see him there since he's a researcher at the Vet school there. The course was a long rectangle with a nice little uphill toward the finish and a back stretch on a brick road alongside the railroad track. There was a 12-inch concrete apron between the bricks and the curb, and every lap it was just a long string of riders lined up on that narrow little strip avoiding the bumpy bricks. The tricky part was coming down a short downhill to a right turn onto the relatively slippery bricks. There were a few crashes there, including Elliott who went down in his category race just after free laps ended. I'm sure he would have had a very high placing if that hadn't happened. Anyway, the guys learned a lot about riding criteriums on wet roads with larger fields. Dustin and I both passed on racing the criterium. It had started to rain during the women's race(s) and we knew the field sizes for the non-collegiate races would be pretty thin (there were 6 for the masters race). Also, it would have kept us in Auburn another couple of hours, so it wasn't really worth it considering the long drive home. Amazingly, there was practically no rain on the drive home. I was shocked. I'd been dreading a long drive in the dark in pouring rain for days, so it was just wonderful to have dry roads and light traffic for the drive home. I think we got back around 9 pm or so, which was really nice compared to the midnight arrival times we usually see for some of the Texas races. More photos are at HERE. 

Aggieland Road Trip

Last weekend I went with the Tulane riders, of which there were only four, over to the Texas A&M "Tunis Roubaix" collegiate omnium. Although the only legitimate reason I had to go was to do the 13+ hours of driving, I was actually looking forward to the trip and hoping to get in a few miles on Saturday while the road races were going on. All week prior to the race the weather forecast had been looking pretty dismal. It wasn't until Friday that things started to change and the rain chances got bumped down from 90% to more like 50%. Still, I was fully expecting to spend most of Saturday and Sunday in the rain. We had a couple of Tulane motor pool minivans lined up and they wanted to get to College Station at a reasonable hour, so I decided to take Friday off from work so we could pick up the vans at 11 am and one of them, mine, could get an early start. After a quick ride Friday morning I stuffed enough riding gear into my bulging race bag to handle anything from 40° and raining to 70° and sunny. The forecast seemed to be changing hourly and there was just no telling what we'd actually see for the weekend.

After loading up the minivan with three people, bikes, tent, wheels and luggage we headed out before noon and right away Waze re-routed us north of Houston for some reason. I guess the combination of ongoing road construction and probably a major accident made what would normally be a 15 minute longer route the better option. So we left I-10 around Beaumont and spent a lot of time on smaller state and county highways with stoplights and constantly shifting speed limits.

On the subject of speed limits, I should mention that the Tulane motor pool vans now have GPS and cameras recording and reporting everything, including speeding, so I was trying not to stray much above the speed limit the whole time. The whole trip I had that feeling you get when you're getting dropped and watching the pack stream past you but you just can't keep up. To say it was stressful would be an understatement. On the plus side, we lucked into a practically new Toyota Sienna that had a number of features I wasn't expecting to find in a motor pool minivan (they are actually from Enterprise car rental under some sort of special arrangement). This one had a rear camera, numerous USB ports, Lane Departure Alert, and Dynamic Radar Cruise Control. Once on the interstate you could basically take your hands off the wheel and if it drifted too far to one side or the other of the lane, it would automatically steer itself back to the middle. Meanwhile, if were on cruise control and started to roll up on the car ahead of you, it would automatically slow down to maintain a safe distance. It was strange to have a car making its own decisions like that, but I could certainly see how it would be helpful for really late night driving when you're tired and maybe not quite as alert as usual. Anyway, other than the long detour, the drive went fine and both vans arrived in time for dinner.

Saturday morning the weather was way better than I'd expected. There was virtually no chance of rain until evening, winds were light to moderate, and the morning temperature was above 50°. Dustin and I decided to start behind the Cat. A race, which was the first one of the day. The Cat. Bs would be starting ten minutes later, with the Cs and Ds not starting until the first two races had finished. There was a short stretch of "gravel" for the start that was maybe 0.8 miles and was by no means actual gravel except for a section right in front of the parking area. Otherwise it was well packed down dirt with a few little washboard sections. No problem at all, really. I had decided to bring my old Orbea, both because I didn't want the Bianchi to get banged up in the van and because it had some wider "gravel-king" tires on it. Since I wasn't technically in the race and was supposed to stay at the back, I had my usual heavy seat bag with a couple of tubes, along with my daytime-visible tail light. Compared to the Bianchi in race mode, the bike felt like a truck, especially when I'd get out of the saddle to accelerate.

Photo by Brooks Bixler

As soon as we got out of the "neutral" gravel section the attacks started. It was really hard hanging on at the back where the accordion was in full effect with the pace constantly surging from 25 to 35 mph. When we made a right turn into a crosswind and the front of the group attacked again I decided it was time to let them go rather than ride in the oncoming traffic lane to get a draft. This was probably only about 7 miles into the race. A little while later I came up on another rider who had been shelled from the group, so we rode together for a lap of so until the Category B group caught us. At that point I went to the back of the Bs and followed them for a couple more laps, which was way, way easier than it had been with the As. With a lap or two left to go I felt my front tire going soft and just made it around to the start/finish area where dropped off the back of the B group and stopped to fix it. While I was there the Cat. A break came by, followed by a 4-man chase group. With the flat fixed, I took a shortcut to the feed zone and just as I arrived I saw the 4-man chase group coming, so I jumped onto the back of that group for most of a lap. That was by far the most fun part of the day. They were taking pretty smooth pulls and it was super easy to just shift over the wheel of each riders as he dropped back. Well, they were going fast enough, and the B group slowly enough, that we caught the B group, at which point I let them go and once again went to the back of the Bs, following them until they finished.

After those races finished I lined up again with Dustin behind the Category C group when they started. This time I brought my camera so I could take some photos (we had two riders in that race, and one in the A race and another in the D race). That was fun but significantly slower, and when they had one lap left to go I dropped off, rode across the loop to the feed zone and then back to the finish to watch the sprints. Jerry won the pack sprint for 3rd with Elliott finishing 10th. Gavin, who was in his first ever road race in the D race, finished 4th out of 35 in his road race. I ended up with like 80 miles, some of it hard, so I was feeling pretty satisfied.

That evening for the TT it started getting colder and a steady mist started falling, making the streets wet. They shortened the Cat. A and B Time Trial from 20 km to 10 km. As usual, full road race results weren't available and there was no start list. Dustin and I tried to keep the riders lined up more or less in number order, with moderate success. By the time that was done we were pretty wet and cold.

Sunday morning was more mist and fog and wet roads. I was a little surprised, since I thought the rainy stuff would be gone by then, but no such luck. Fortunately the on-campus course was all pretty good concrete, so there were only a couple of crashes, one of which was Elliott, who nonetheless took 3rd after establishing the race's winning breakaway in the first few laps. In the C race Jerry and Gavin worked well together with Gavin instigating the winning break and finishing 3rd and Jerry taking 2nd in the pack sprint for 5th. Grayson raced really well in the A races but kind of blew up toward the end. In the criterium he was in the winning break for a while, but the other riders basically kept attacking until they dropped him a few laps before the finish.

All-in-all, it was a good weekend. Now I just have to decided if I want to make the 8-hour trip to Auburn next weekend where I can get my butt kicked some more.

Red Dirt

There was a big group for the Saturday Giro.

It was another week of interrupted training, which is pretty much normal this time of year. I always say that February is actually my worst winter month, and I'm usually right about that. After a decent enough start to the week, Friday morning arrived wet and nasty and I decided it would be a good day to skip my morning ride and set my sights on Saturday instead. By the time I was ready to go to work things looked better, so the commute downtown was fine. There were to be complications, however.

Yes, Woody still rides bikes.

Danielle had left with the car the day before for Natchitoches, LA to help Shannon who would be doing the Red Dirt Ultra 100 mile trail run that started at 6 am on Saturday. We were scheduled to go up there ourselves, mostly as moral support, on Saturday after my 11 am LAMBRA meeting. That meant I needed to rent a car. So I left work a little after 4 on Friday and rode down Tulane Avenue to the Enterprise car rental place to pick up a Nissan Rogue. I threw the bike in the back and rushed home, grabbed Danielle's two dogs, threw them into the car, and headed down to Tchoupitoulas Street to drop them off at Canine Connection where they would be staying until we got back. My timing was looking pretty good, but then I ran into parade preparations at Nashville where various marching bands and other assorted parade components were staging. For a minute I was afraid they had already closed Tchoupitoulas, but fortunately they hadn't and I was able to make it to the doggie country club before they closed at 6 pm.  On the way out I had to wait for some horseback riders to go by. Yeah, it's getting to be Mardi Gras time in New Orleans. Saturday was going to be kind of tight, but I was determined to get in the full Giro Ride prior to the LAMBRA meeting prior to hitting the road for the 4 hour drive to Natchitoches.

This is what the trail looked like Sunday morning -
after the rain had stopped - and there was light.

The forecast for Saturday, whether in New Orleans or Natchitoches, was not looking too good, especially for people running through the woods in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with significantly degraded cognitive and motor skills. On the plus side, we had a great turnout for the Giro Ride. It wasn't very cold or terribly windy, and the whole entire group managed a few solid paceline rotations on Chef Highway before descending into chaos prior to the turnaround. The local riders are just now starting to think about getting back in shape before the spring races start, I think. The speeds never got out of hand or anything, but it was still probably the quickest Giro we've done this year. That was a good thing because it got me back home with enough time to jump in the shower and get something to eat before driving over to the Tulane Cycling headquarters for the annual LAMBRA meeting. The meeting itself went fine. It's really just a good time for everyone involved to exchange ideas and information about the upcoming year. Some ideas will actually come to fruition, some won't, but as long as we all keep heading in the same direction I guess it's fine. The LAMBRA Crit championship is still pretty much up in the air. One suggestion was to see if LAMBRA itself could promote it in Natchez. Another option would be downtown Jackson, MS. The fall-back plan would be do designate the Harbor Master crit in New Orleans as the championship. The Road championship is also a little bit up in the air as well, at least as far as the date is concerned. I think the consensus is that we should try to have it on the course we used last year in Flora, MS., so that's good. I think some decisions still have to be made about the date of the Mississippi Gran Prix stage race and then which other weekend will work for the Flora venue. We'll see. So anyway, I ran out of the meeting and rushed home where I threw some warm clothes into a bag and we somehow hit the road around 2 pm or so. By then it was starting to rain, and it would stay that way until some time Sunday morning.

Danielle helping Shannon immediately after finishing
as the timer chases her down to record her bib number and time.

The Red Dirt Ultra is held in the Kisatchie National Forest, near Natchitoches. The start is so far in the middle of nowhere that even in 2017 you can't get a reliable cellphone signal. That also means that Google Maps has some difficulty figuring out where you are once you get close. Fortunately we had the written directions with us, because by the time we exited the interstate it was dark and we were on lonely wet forest roads that we weren't familiar with at all. Amazingly we found our way to the parking area without any problems, and stepped out of the car into rain-soaked mud. Danielle had a pop-up tent set up but it took us a little while to find her.

Stream crossing near the finish

Shannon was expected to show up in a few hours for the, I think, 70 mile checkpoint, so we hung around in the cold rain. Every now and then you'd see a headlamp bouncing through the woods toward us and someone would yell, "runner!" Some were just finishing the shorter 100k run or even the 50k run.  Others had been planning to do the full 100 miles but quit. Their rationale was the same. It was too wet and slippery and they didn't want to get injured. By then I was giving Shannon about a 60% chance of finishing since she's injured knees and ankles and feet numerous times in the past and there was really no way to run on that trail in the dark without crashing a few times. Finally we spotted two headlamps coming our way through the trees. It was Shannon and another female runner. Shannon was, of course, absolutely soaking wet and, as expected, had fallen a few times already. She sat down and Danielle helped her change to dry shoes and socks and clothing as she tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to eat the rice and chicken she'd prepared. By the time she was ready to start going again she was shivering pretty badly. The woman she's been running with took off a bit before her with a Pacer, which was allowed for the last part of the run. A few minutes later Shannon disappeared into the darkness. Candy and I drove up to Natchitoches to get a little sleep at the hotel. We were up again at 5:00 to head back to the finish. By then it was chilly and very foggy, but at least the actual rain had stopped.

Checkpoint before the final 31-mile loop - cold and wet

It would still be a few hours before Shannon would finish. She had planned to mostly walk the stretch from the last mid-loop checkpoint to the finish, and by then it was clear that should would easily make the cut-off of 32 hours. Her optimistic goal had been 24 hours, although with the trail conditions that goal had pretty much gone out the window by the time she started the last loop. As the sun came up somewhere behind the solid cloud cover we decided to walk down the trail a bit. It was much, much warmer than it had been the night before, and by then we were expecting to see Shannon fairly soon. The trail was a combination of rocks, white sand, grey clay, and red clay/dirt, punctuated by the occasional shallow stream crossing. I couldn't imagine actually running on most of it, although we walked only a mile or so. As I was walking one of the finishing runners came by. He told me he'd been holding off someone behind him for hours. There wasn't anyone behind him. He'd been hallucinating, which isn't particularly uncommon after 25 hour of running. Anyway, not too long after that Shannon came sprinting out of the forest finishing at 25:58:49, which was pretty impressive, and yeah, there were still a number of people behind her. I doubt she'll be walking normally for a few days to a week. It all made me happy I'm not a runner!

The drive back home was nice and smooth and dry - way better than the drive up there had been. By the time we got home I was pretty tired. I guess it was mostly just the lack of sleep and long drive.

The Week Before

The Saturday Giro, what there was of it, tip-toeing across the slippery steel atop the Seabrook drawbridge

Running a bit behind, writing-wise, but since nothing interesting has happened this week, yet, I'll write instead about last week. It was the best of weeks. It was the worst of weeks. I swear, I've spent more time riding alone lately than I remember doing in a long time. Of course, I don't remember what I had for breakfast, so perhaps it hasn't been all that bad. As is typical this time of year, the weather has been all over the freaking place. Monday in the 60s, Tuesday in the 40s, Thursday almost 30s, Saturday wet, Sunday windy. On Tuesday I was rather disappointed to find just a couple of riders for the morning levee ride. It was chilly, and a little windy, but when the others decided to turn back early, I pushed on anyway. Thursday, perhaps feeling bad about having turned early on Tuesday, they soldiered on for the full distance. But distance is one thing, effort another, and lately the latter's been in rather short supply. Then on Saturday the streets were wet but the temperature was warm which resulted in a really low turnout for the Giro. Just a handful of us did the full ride, and of course I got home wet and dirty and had to hose the bike down, but I was glad I'd ridden.

Small turnout for what turned out to be a really good ride

On Sunday I'd planned a 75-mile ride on the northshore for the Winter Training Ride series. First, though, was a long slow drive across the Causeway under fog restrictions, which means single lane, no passing, and 45 mph unless, as was the case, you get stuck behind someone going 35 most of the way. Up north of Covington it was pretty chilly and damp, and the turnout was predictably much lower than the prior week had been, but we ended up with a really nice ride all the way up to the Mississippi line that took in a few new roads. Of course I flatted somewhere out there as we were trying to figure out which way to turn at an intersection none of us had seen before. On the plus side, I did a fair amount of work on this ride and felt like I got a good early-season workout. It turned out to be the first week since November that I got to ride every day, and the mileage total came in at just under 300, so not a bad week.

This week hasn't really been much to write about except that Tuesday the temperature was in the 30s and it was super windy and of course nobody showed up except me. With my speed often dipping down into the mid-teens I turned around early, logging only 28 miles but glad to get home to hot coffee before my toes started to freeze.

This coming weekend should be interesting. I've got at Tulane meeting tonight, then the Friday coffee ride in the morning, after which I'll be picking up a rental car because Danielle has the Volvo up in Natchitoches where she'll be supporting Shannon who is doing the Red Dirt Ultra trail run. I have a LAMBRA meeting after the Saturday Giro, and then we'll be driving up there to witness the carnage as the runners try to finish the final lap of the 100 mile run. There will be rain, but at least the temperatures should be mostly in the 50s.