Asphalt

A Mellow Monday

Back to the usual routine now, although not without thinking about the upcoming road trip to Dahlonega for Six Gap at the end of the month. The plan is to go up with three of the Tulane riders, who of whom were doing just the 50-mile ride. Amazingly, Tulane's travel service got us a room at the hotel right in Dahlonega, so that will be convenient. Getting the van, however, is still a little up in the air since a couple of them still need to get approved for driving. Every few years, as I get older, I get cassettes with lower gearing. I recently got an 11-32 cassette, along with a Wolf Tooth Roadlink that will hopefully allow me to use the 32 with my short-cage derailleur. I think it will work with the new chain I installed last Saturday. If I need a couple more links I have a backup chain I can use, although adding two more links will definitely make the sag in the 39x11 or 12, not that I am likely to need those particular gears. I'll just have to remember not to go there if that's the case. Anyway, I haven't installed the Roadlink yet, but I did put the cassette onto my good wheels to confirm that there is enough chain even in the 53x32. The only question is whether adding the Roadlink will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I'll put all that together next week and I'm sure I can make it work one way or the other. 

Friendly Friday - regrouping along Canal Blvd.

After a couple of months that definitely qualified as a drought, we finally started getting a little rain here and there, fortunately not at times that had interfered with my usual rides. 

On Labor Day we did a nice little "Holiday Giro" that was followed by some significant rainfall that afternoon. At the time, Pine Street alongside the house was a dirt road about eight inches lower than the adjoining asphalt, which turned it into a nice little pond for a while. That evening Adam was having a little 60th birthday party down at Barrel Proof, so I decided to go to that for a while. Dan Bennett was in town, so I knew he'd be there as well. It was kind of a meeting of the cycling dinosaurs with Dan, Adam, Mike Lew, Russ Broussard (who was playing drums for the band), Wendy, and a number of others. 

What a difference a day can make ... when they actually show up

The next day the roadwork crew showed up and by the time I got home from work they had fresh asphalt on most of the street. Of course the sidewalk is still torn up so getting the bike, or the garbage can, out the basement door is still a chore. The sidewalk work has been abandoned since they tore it up on August 17th, so almost a month ago now.

Adam and Dan at Adam's 60th

We've been kind of back into drought mode for the past week, but on the plus side the mornings have felt a little cooler. It's kind of amazing when you step outside and it's 78° and it feels cool. The good news is that the hurricanes are still staying away from the Gulf, at least for the moment. On Saturday I did the usual Giro, which on Saturdays has apparently shifted to a 6:30 am start from West End. This is both good and bad. The good part is that it's nice and cool, relatively speaking, for the first hour of the ride. The bad part is that I don't get my morning coffee even though I have to leave the house at the same time. The Sunday Giro hasn't been affected, so at least there's that.

As it turned out, though, I didn't get my Sunday morning coffee either. Charles and Steve had cooked up a 75 mile ride in Mississippi for Sunday and I figured I should probably do that since it at least wouldn't be flat and would give me a little more saddle time. With Six Gap looming on the horizon, a longer and slightly hillier ride wasn't such a bad idea. 

The day before I had finally decided to address some deferred bike maintenance. I needed to change out the cables, one of which was hanging up somewhere and often keeping the front derailleur from shifting into the small ring - not something I wanted to deal with in Georgia. Also, my rear shifter was so worn out that I had to remember to push the shift lever all the way to the outside before shifting or it would kind of lock up. It's happened to every Campi shifter I've ever had. I'd replaced both shifters back around the end of 2017, so they had accumulated well over 70,000 miles since then. Fortunately you can buy just the "shifter body" which includes basically all of the mechanicals for the shifter, so it's just a matter of transferring the brake lever, clamp, and brake hood. I'd ordered one that arrived a couple of days prior. I also had some new handlebar tape and a new chain ready to go. That all went smoothly except that I found the aluminum handlebar to be pretty well corroded on the right side where I guess the brake lever clamp had scratched through the anodization. I cleaned it up but definitely need to replace it. I happen to have a counterfeit 3T handlebar on hand, so I'll probably just put that one on until I decide if I want to bite the bullet on a carbon bar. I don't think 3T even sells aluminum handlebars any more but I really like the feel of the Ergonova. If I go with carbon I may get the Black Inc one since I can get that in the 38 cm (end to end) width which would be a bit narrower than what I have now and might suit me better. We'll see.

So Sunday morning I walked next door where we've been parking the car and drove it around to the side of the house to put my bag and bike into it. It was a bit before 6 am and dark, and as usual I looked up at the sky for Jupiter and Venus. It was a little more clear than usual, so it was easy to make out the Orion constellation and all. Just then I noticed something moving more or less west to east. It was a string of those Starlink satellites! I just happened to look up at the right time on the right day to see them. I've stumbled across the ISS a couple of times like that. Anyway, I made the hour-long drive to the ride and soon our little group of six hit the road, heading mostly north into a light headwind for the first half of the ride. It felt cool for the first hour or so, even though we didn't start until 7:30. One thing I can say about the back roads in that area is that they sure have some nice smooth asphalt. The pace was mostly Zone 2 stuff, although for some reason my legs were kind of achy from the start. Maybe I'd done a little unintentional damage during Saturday's Giro. Whatever the reason, I just compensated by taking relatively shorter pulls than most, just in case. The route eventually took us back to where we started, but there was another 10-mile loop after that to get us up to the advertised 75 miles. Only Charles, Peter, and I did that. The others called it a day with 65 miles. It was probably around 90° by the end, but even so I hadn't even gone through two water bottles, although I'd had a Coke when we stopped at a store along the way.

Again to Augusta

It's never simple. I'd taken the car to the collision repair shop over two weeks earlier to repair the damage done when some hit-and-run driver broke the passenger side mirror and scraped up the door panels in the process. What should have been a 3-day repair dragged on for the better part of two weeks thanks to the shop receiving the wrong part. When it was finally ready on a Friday I rode the bike down Tulane Avenue in 100° afternoon heat to retrieve it. The next day we discovered that neither of the keyless entry door handle buttons on that side of the car worked, so it went back to the shop where I thought they would find something that hadn't been plugged in. Two days later I was told, "We can't figure out what is wrong." So they were going to bring it to a mechanic to check out. It was almost a week later that they finally got it fixed after finding a broken wire and having to order a replacement. I'd been kind of sweating the whole thing out because I was scheduled to hit the road early Thursday morning to drive up to Augusta, Georgia for Masters Road Nationals. I got the car back Wednesday afternoon. That was close.

So early Thursday I threw the bike into the car along with my race bag and a few other things and headed out for the 9-hour drive. I'd been thinking that Candy and perhaps the dog too would come along, but Candy didn't want to have to deal with the dog and decided not to go. On the plus side, I had already reserved a nice room at the Homewood Suites with a kitchen and sofa and everything. Oh well. The drive went fine and although I could have tried to do a quick lap around the road course at Fort Gordon, I ultimately decided to go for an early dinner at Olive Garden instead. I'd selected the hotel mainly because of all of the nearby food and coffee options! Also I was hungry. I had already gotten my approved visitor pass into the base where the road race would be. It was the first day that I hadn't ridden since June 5th.

I was riding in the 70-74 age group, combined with all of the other dinosaurs who ranged up to 90 years old. Thankfully our race was the first of the day, starting at 7:30 am when the temperature was still in the upper 70s. By afternoon it would be around 100°. I had no idea what to expect of this race, but at least I was reasonably familiar with the course, having ridden it at masters nationals back in 1994, and then again when I was there helping out for Collegiate Nationals about a year earlier. Just to be on the safe side I had put the 11-28 cassette that I normally use only for Six Gap on so I wouldn't, hopefully, have to make a front chainring shift on the finishing hill where I'd come to grief back in '94. My main goal for this race was to not get dropped on the first climb and then hopefully stay with the front group. The finish of this course features a reasonably steep 1 km climb that tops out around 300 meters from the finish. In the field we had a couple of people I knew, one because he was basically famous in cycling circles, and the other because I'd raced with him numerous times, including there in '94. One was Kent Bostick, and ex-Olympian, ex-Pro, ex-national champion in multiple disciplines, etc., etc. The other was Tom Bain who has been beating me since at least the 90s in various races.

Road Race

I got to the road race about an hour before my start time just as the sun was coming up. Naturally I took a wrong turn somewhere on the base and went around in circles a couple of times before finding my way. In my defense, it was dark and I was counting on my memory from the prior year to guide me. Although ours was the first race of the day, I was surprised how may people were already there. I found a parking spot on the grass that happened to be right next to Lonnie Kennedy, who wasn't racing but was there with his team from St. Louis. What are the odds?  I had not seen Lonnie in years, so it was great to catch up with him and reminisce about the old Natchez Classic and other races that he would do with us. 

Eddie was in a break for a while. This was the feed zone near the top of the climb.

The course at Ft. Gordon has three significant climbs on the first half of the loop. Then it eases to nice rolling hills until the final climb around 2 km from the finish. From the start I was expecting a big surge or attack on the first climb, which comes very early, but surprisingly it didn't happen. Over the course of the next few miles I found it easy to stay near the front, occasionally even rolling off the front on the climbs. 

Tom and Kent off the front starting lap 2. Me chasing far right.

In general the pace was slower than I'd expected. Tom put in a couple of attacks on the first lap but with the pace being otherwise pretty easy they got pulled back quickly and then there would be another lull. Of course I think everyone was dreading the attack that we knew would come at the end of the first of our two laps. Sure enough, Tom and/or Kent attacked hard as that climb steepened, which was about where I started to blow up and had to back off a bit. As we came over the top the duo had a clear gap and I was thinking we'd be racing for 3rd. The rest of the field was pretty much scattered all over the place, but a little group of about six came together as we started the second lap. Looking up the road I could see that the break didn't seem to be gaining much ground on us, and after chasing for a mile or two our group caught. This is where someone should have kept the pace going, but instead everyone slowed down and nobody counter-attacked. 

Eddie reaching for a bottle in the feed zone

Over the next five or six miles a number of riders who had been dropped caught. I was feeling pretty good, but based on the prior lap I didn't have much confidence that I would make it all the way to the top of the final climb in a position to sprint. I didn't. Again, I got about 2/3 of the way up the climb before the "Check Engine" light came on. Once the road levelled out I was able to put in another little surge before the finish, coming across in 7th place, which I was pretty happy with. Eddie Corcoran was racing in the 60-64 race that followed mine, so I hung around with his wife and Sam in the feed zone to watch. They were doing four laps, and by then it was much, much warmer. It was a bigger field, which probably only meant it would be faster. Eddie was doing well, coming  up the hill in good position each lap. By the last lap it was hot enough that the wax on my chain was glistening in the sun, having melted into a thin liquid. As it turned out Eddie had cramps in both inner quads near the finish, so he ended up coming across solo in 23rd spot which was still impressive given the very competitive field.

My criterium wasn't until Sunday, so I basically had Saturday off. I ended up doing an easy 20 miles or so, starting from a nice little park along the canal. Saturday afternoon I was checking the results and discovered that Lisa Houser had not only shown up, but won her 35-39 road race. Naturally that meant I had to go to the evening's awards ceremony that was held at the Savannah River Brewing Company. Also, Debbie Milne had won her road race, so it would be nice to see that as well. Also, there would be beer.

The women champions from Saturday's road races. Lisa on the right. Debbie in the middle.

As it turned out, Lisa had jumped in the car that morning, driven the 9 hours straight to the road race, raced with one shoe closure held together with a rubber band, and won. She had planned on driving right back home, but when you win you have to attend the awards, and those weren't until 7 pm. At the awards I also saw Will Wherritt who had also raced earlier and was planning on racing the criterium the following day as well. Lisa couldn't stay for the criterium since she had to get back to New Orleans and be ready for work early Monday morning. Anyway, it was fun to see all of the day's winners getting their championship jerseys and medals and all.

Criterium

The 70-74 criterium start had been moved a week or so prior to 7:00 am! I think sunrise was around 6:45 am. Anyway, that meant a very early departure from the hotel. I got to the course and found a parking spot nearby a bit after 6 am, which gave me time for a nice 30-minute warmup. As they had for the  road race, they called up riders one by one, mostly I guess in random order since I'd been one of the first at the road race but was closer to the end at the criterium. I was expecting this race to be faster and more aggressive than the road race, and it was, although I'd guess that half of the field was just following wheels and hoping for a group sprint. At the start Tom attacked pretty hard, taking Kent with him. I'd been expecting something like that so I was on to them quickly. 

The first couple of laps were therefore pretty fast - 27-28 mph for this group - which I hoped would continue. It didn't and the pace settled down again.  As expected, there were a number of attacks during this 45 minute race, and I was kept busy near the front. I knew that with a field like this I couldn't really count on other people or teams to close gaps or anything, so being near, or occasionally at, the front would be critical in case there was a split. Somewhere toward the last half of the race a small break went off the front with Kent in it, but without Tom. The rest of the field was kind of looking at each other and I was thinking, "Are they really going to let that go?" I was over on the right side on the back side of the course and about to launch myself when I saw Tom go flying past on the left. I immediately took off and went pretty deep, not catching his draft until we had made the bridge. As in the road race, I was thinking that this would split the pack and therefore increase my odds, but also as in the road race they inexplicably eased up and although I guess we dropped a few  riders, it all came back together again. 

At that point I knew it was going to end up as a field sprint, so I just concentrated on staying near the front. With two laps to go riders I hadn't seen the whole race started crowding the front, which made things a little sketchy. I came around the last corner a couple of wheels farther back than I'd have liked but still maybe 6th or 7th I guess. Finish sprints are always a little blurry for me! Fifty meters from the line I made another surge to try and get past one more rider but he saw me coming and I ended up finishing 5th overall. Surprisingly, one of the riders ahead of me was in the 75-79 age group, so my official placing was 4th. 

Either way, I was very happy to have made it onto the podium, and it was kind of cool that I'd be on the podium again, in the same place, at masters nationals, with Tom almost twenty years later. So I hung around for the first awards ceremony around 10:30, collected one of the big medals, and hit the road for home. I was maybe twenty minutes out when I suddenly realized that I did not remember putting my tablet computer into my bag that morning. I pulled off at the next exit and searched my bags but it wasn't there. Then I tried to call the hotel and for some reason my call would not go through. I turned around and headed back, calling Candy en route to ask her to try calling. A few minutes later she called me back and said that they had the tablet in the manager's office. What a relief! So that cost me about an hour, but with the time change I still got home just after dark without having to resort to more than one cup of coffee.

In other races, Norman Zellers who occasionally comes over from Biloxi for the Giro had a good finish in the very competitive 45-49 road race. Mat Davis looked pretty cooked after his road race but finished 20th in the criterium. Will Wherritt finished an impressive 14th in the 35-39 criterium, which was probably one of the fastest and most competitive. All of the LAMBRA riders who were at M-Nats as far as I know:

Cars, Bikes, and the Weather

I mean, what else is there? Last week was just one day after the other of suffocating humidity with pre-dawn temperatures in the mid-80s and apparent temperatures over 110°F. The complete lack of rain just made things that much worse. Every morning when I'd turn on the Garmin to ride I'd get yet another heat advisory warning. I even resorted to putting a little electrolyte mix in my weekday water bottles. Still, that didn't stop me from getting in the usual rides, although I think the general intensity levels were perhaps a bit lacking. The weekend Giro Rides had really small groups. Lots of the regular Giro riders have been doing the 6:30 am SaMoRi on Saturdays instead, just to avoid those last 30 minutes in the sun, I guess. Indeed, both Giro Rides, while quite fast on the way out to Venetian Isles, were slower than usual on the return trips, no doubt due to the combined effects of the heat and the small group size.

Yesterday, on the morning levee ride, our little group almost got taken out by someone in a car coming across the levee from one of the grain elevator docks. Luckily he saw us (probably finally looked up from his phone) at the last second and hit the brakes halfway across the bike path.

The miserable weather continued all the way until yesterday evening when a little cool front finally came through, bringing with it a little bit of badly needed rain. At least two plants in front of the house have succumbed to the heat and dryness already.

This morning the 80° temperature felt positively refreshing thanks to the much-lowered humidity level. Of course one doesn't get cooler weather around here without paying for it, in this case by having a 12 mph north wind. As north winds often do, the group had already been shattered along Lakeshore Drive by the time I jumped into what was left of the front group on Marconi. As usual, I was nearly redlined all the way down Wisner, barely hanging onto the back. Then on City Park Avenue a gap opened ahead of Joe Paul and when he put his head down to chase I just hung on to his wheel for dear life. We came around the corner onto Marconi and then when he stood up to accelerate his right foot unclipped and my life briefly flashed before my eyes. Fortunately we both remained upright and eventually closed the little gap. He later told me that he had been having trouble clipping into that particular pedal, which is a Giant-branded Look by all appearances. He thought that he hadn't fully clipped in after he had had to put a foot down at a stop light a bit earlier.

On the plus side, I got the replacement cassette body for my Campi Scirocco training wheels, so I put everything back together and was happy to find that it solved the problem. I had ordered replacement hub bearings but everything seems fine at the moment so I'll  hold off on replacing those since that will require a trip to the shop in order to remove the old ones and press in the new ones (not that I haven't pressed in new bearings before using a socket, block of wood, and a hammer). The shifters are kind of on their last legs but I'll just live with that at least through nationals since fixing them will probably require rebuilding them and that's assuming I can actually get the parts for shifters that were superseded in 2014. Candy's Fitbit watch died a couple of weeks ago and after trying all of the suggested ways to fix it I finally called tech support, went through everything I'd tried, and got them to ship a replacement. We'll see how long this one lasts. Candy has a way of destroying electronic equipment that unparalleled. I've replaced the screen protector on her iPhone about four times and each time the old one has been practically shattered.

So the car. After going about ten days without a car I was happy to get a call from the collision center last Thursday that it was finally ready for pick-up. Of course that meant riding down Tulane Avenue again in the middle of the day in street clothes when it was close to 100° but I didn't want to be without a car for yet another day. Then on Saturday we discovered that neither of the keyless entry door handle buttons on the right side of the car, where the body panels had been repaired, would work. All the other doors worked fine, and those two doors would lock and unlock using the key fob, but the buttons on the handles were dead. So I brought it back in on Monday expecting it to be a quick fix on the assumption that somebody had just forgotten to plug some connector back in. I wasn't terribly surprised not to have received a call about it that day, but by late afternoon yesterday when I still hadn't heard anything I called. Turns out they can't figure out what the problem is and want to have their mechanic (i.e. no the body shop person) look at it. I suspect that there is some corrosion on the connector terminals, but I guess we'll see. I'll bet they want to replace both door handles and will try to come up with a way to make it my fault. 

Speaking of things that need to be fixed, my block of Pine Street that they tore up a couple of weeks ago has again been abandoned leaving us with a dirt road and clouds of dust. They poured the concrete for the curbs on August 1, then disappeared. It's now August 16. 

Wish I could say I was surprised.

Hotting UP

Monday morning haze thanks to the marsh fire out in the east

It's been nothing but hot and dry around here lately, and the outlook for the rest of this week isn't offering much else. Most of the rides can be described pretty much the same. Things start off briskly with the pre-dawn temperature in the 81-84° range. Then the number of people working the front begins to dwindle along with the water levels in the bottles. Eventually the speed drops and the number of people hanging on for dear life grows. I get home and walk into the 75° air-conditioning and quickly peel off the soaking wet jersey before I get chilled, hanging it on a rod in the hamper so it doesn't grow mold down with the rest of the laundry. The bike's top tube is spotted with sweat, and the glasses are practically opaque. August. Situation Normal.

The week started out with a nice enough Mellow Monday ride that didn't get too much out of hand as sometimes happens. Back at the Museum of Art in City Park I noticed that the little green plastic frog that had been underneath the statue of bacon (actually it's supposed to be brush strokes but I guess my imagination isn't artistic enough for that) had moved and was now atop a lily pad. It's been kind of like Elf on a Shelf - appearing in a different place every few days. Anyway, since Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all just more of the same hot rides I'll skip ahead to Saturday. 

With the unusually, even for New Orleans in August, hot mornings we've been having lately a lot of the regular Giro riders have been doing the SaMoRi that has shifted to a 6:30 am start. Of course the difference between starting a ride at 6:30 compared to 7:00 is entirely academic but nobody ever said cyclists weren't like sheep. So the Saturday Giro turnout was quite small. Then to make matters worse, a few of those who started announced they would be turning back with the SaMoRi group, effectively shortening their ride by ten miles or so. If any of those riders were on the fence about turning back early, their doubts were put to rest after Will and a couple others kept the Hayne Blvd. speed between 28 and 32 mph all the way out to Paris Road. Even with the light tailwind, it was pretty intense. So halfway out on Chef all but I think four of us turned back. In a way is was a relief because the pace slacked off a little bit, especially after the turnaround when that tailwind turned into a headwind. So we're cruising back, mostly just sitting in Will's ample draft when, after turning onto the Interstate Will's rear tire erupts into a volcano of sealant. I was two bikes back and still got pretty well sprayed. We took inventory on the shoulder and put in a tube, which got Will back to the Bayou St. John overpass where it went flat again. Another tube and a boot got him home.

Long Giro

So after the practically unavoidable dehydration event of Saturday you would have thought I'd have been smart enough to decline the invitation for a Long Giro out to Fort Pike on Sunday. Of course I wasn't. 

Knowing it was going to be a hot and possibly miserable 78 miles despite the store stop at the marina, I put a partially filled large water bottle in the freezer the night before. That morning I headed out with one big bottle of ice and water, a small bottle with electrolyte, a couple of gels, and a couple of bucks for a cold Coke. Once again we had a bit of a tailwind on the way out and when we got to Venetian Isles I was surprised how many people decided do the long ride. I think we had nine. Once we crossed Chef Menteur Pass the pace, which had already been pretty fast thanks largely to Brett and Will, picked up so that the average speed for that whole stretch was a bit over 28 mph. The whole time I'm sitting at the back wondering if they're saving anything for the ride back into the gradually increasing west wind. All I knew was that my own survival was going to depend on staying the hell off the front. I think everybody in the group ended up at the top of the Strava "Chef to Rigolets" segment. Indeed, the ride back was considerably slower. Despite the store stop rehydration and cool-down, I the speed on the way back was more in the 23-25 mph range as everyone was starting to get overheated and dehydrated. I finally limped back home from the lakefront at 15 mph and proceeded to down about half a gallon of cold fluids, after which I was still a couple of pounds low on the bathroom scale.

In addition to this being the time of year when rides get hot and brutal, it's also the time of year when equipment starts to fail, and my own equipment has been no exception. I'd been noticing some unusual drag and noise that, as is almost always does, sounded like it was coming from the bottom bracket area, which, as is almost always the case, wasn't. I moved the chain out of the way and the cranks spun as smoothly as ever. So then I swapped rear wheels, which confirmed that the problem was the rear hub that has over 30k miles on it and had recently weathered a few long rides in the rain. I found the cassette body to be kind of wobbly which pointed to the freewheel bearing, which I then found to be orange and rusty and generally a big old mess. I just threw up my hands, stuck an old wheel in there, and order an whole new cassette body which cost about what the entire wheel was actually worth. I badly need to change out all of the shifter cables, which I'll probably do some time this week. The shifters themselves are also about at the end of their lives but the Campi 11-speed system I have on there is like four generations old now and it's questionable whether it's worth replacing at this point.

Meanwhile, we've been without the car for, I think, ten days now thanks to some hit-and-run person who crushed the side-view mirror into the door. The car should have been ready last Friday but they were sent the wrong mirror, so now I'm hoping maybe late Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, since the street alongside the house is still completely torn up, which is to say it is just dirt, the car would be covered in dust anyway. The roadwork crew put in new curbs last week, built forms for some of the sidewalks but not all of them, and then ghosted us ... again. When will they return to finish the job?  Your guess is as good as mine. It's like they have a weekly Wheel of Fortune wheel that they spin and every now and then the pointer lands on your street, or Bankrupt. The electricity bill last month was almost $500, and every time I hear the a/c unit kick off, which isn't often, I wonder if it has broken.

Back to the Giro

It was a typical late July week - mostly hot and humid and stifling in a way that makes you want to do nothing by sit on the couch and drink cold sugary things that you know you shouldn't be drinking while contemplating all of the things you should be doing but aren't. A week ago Wednesday morning I'd gone out to meet the WeMoRi as usual, getting onto the tail end of the fast-moving string that turned out to be only the front part of the already decimated group. I was still near the back and practically on my limit from the sudden acceleration as we went around the corner onto Wisner where the accordion effect took me immediately from 28 mph down to 17, requiring a full-throttle sprint to close gaps that got me back up to 28 mph but did not actually close the gap. I blew up, throttled back, cut across the park at Harrison and soon jumped right back into the deep end on Marconi at Toussant. By then I was at least warmed up a bit so staying with the group was feasible. 

Friendly Friday was friendly enough, and all I had on my dance card for the weekend were two Giro Rides. The day before I'd seen a report that the Seabrook bridge was open again, albeit one lane only, so that would at least make the route a little less complicated than it had been for the past month. Still, turnout was a little low since some people have started riding the earlier SaMoRi at 6:30 in an effort to avoid some (actually very, very little) of the heat. That didn't really make it much slower, at least on the way out where the average speed was probably close to 27 mph. As has been happening lately, the return trip was considerably slower, I guess because by then the temperature was probably around 90° and the heat index was probably pushing 100°. 

Bad sign

I figured that Sunday would be similar, which indeed it was. The weather forecast for the morning was calling for thunderstorms starting around 10 am. It felt just a bit cooler when we started out, and although I don't think the speed was faster than Saturday's, I was doing a bit more work so it felt like maybe a little more of a workout for me. When we turned onto Hayne Blvd. on the way back the sky to the west was black and I knew that we were about to get wet - really wet. Soon it started raining really hard and for a moment I wondered if we'd end up hiding in the abandoned container underneath the Casino bridge like we had when the same thing happened about a month ago. Indeed, the ride over the Seabrook bridge was in an absolute deluge, but by then everything was completely soaked with water anyway so there was no point in stopping. Coming down the bridge I swung right onto Lakeshore Drive while most others went straight onto Leon C. Simon. Between the traffic, stop lights, and sharp-edged potholes on Leon C., I kind of hate taking that route even if it's a bit shorter. By the time I turned off of Lakeshore Drive the weather had eased up to just a steady light rain. Later that day I picked up a 50 pound bag of concrete to finish fixing a little section between the house and garage that I'd started a couple of weeks early but had not had quite enough concrete to finish. Well, I soon discovered that 50 pounds of concrete doesn't go quite as far as I thought, so I'll have to get one more bag to finally finish it off.

Monday's Mellow Monday ride turned out to be decidedly non-mellow but somehow most everyone stayed together anyway. The heat felt just a little less oppressive, at least. I was mainly focused on doing as little work as possible anyway. 

On Tuesday we had a nice little group that did the levee ride out to Ormond and back at a remarkably steady speed in the 23 mph range that felt like it required a lot more effort on the way back than it had on the way out. Somewhere out there I saw a text message on my Garmin from Candy telling me I might have trouble getting into the basement. The Garmin only shows a limited number of characters on the screen but I surmised that there was a road crew working on the street. I had seen the heavy equipment staged out there when I'd left in the morning. By the time I got home they were punching  holes through the road, breaking up the old asphalt and shaking the hell out of the house.

DESTRUCTICON

I soon decided it might be a good day to work from home just in case there were any surprises. We hadn't had any advance notice that they would be shutting down the street, unless you count the knock on the door that Candy got around 7 am telling her to move the car. At least there was a full-size crew on  hand, so by afternoon they had removed all of the asphalt and top layer of dirt on the block and were starting to lay down the underlayment and cover it with fresh dirt. How long it will be before we have a paved street and don't have to park a block away, of course, is anyone's guess. 

Charley keeping a watchful eye on the road work outside the window

This morning's WeMoRi was remarkably moderate compared to the past few weeks since a few of the usual instigators were absent. That at least encouraged me to put in a couple of brief efforts for a change. The road work crew was already hard at work on the street when I arrived home, so it will be interesting to see how much progress they have made by the time I get back from work. Tomorrow I have to bring the car to the body shop to get the damage to the mirror and door repaired. With my $1k deductible I'll be paying for almost all of the work, of course, and we'll be without a car probably through Monday, although the estimated three days. I'd like to get out to a northshore ride or somewhere that isn't flat one day next weekend, so that could throw a monkey wrench into the works.

A Bit of Recovery

Monday Morning on LSD

I was drifting off the back of the strung-out single paceline of the Saturday northshore ride, thinking to myself, "I think I'm going to need some serious recovery time next week" as we rolled down Lee Road toward 1072. I had been struggling with the pace, which admittedly was quite high, from the start and was pretty sure I knew why. 

A solid month

My last day off the bike had been the first weekend in June when I was officiating the Tour de La, and since then had done a number of fast training rides back-to-back. Everyone says that as you get older you need more recovery time, and although I think that advice sometimes gets blown a little bit out of proportion, it's not entirely untrue. Saturday's "Pine Loop" ride was just shy of 60 miles, but with it starting at the Lee Road playground I knew it would be all rolling hills. I also knew it would be fast. That's just the kind of ride I wanted, even though the little Strava voice in my head kept whispering something about accumulated stress. It didn't take long for the pace to ramp up once we turned onto Lee Road from Tung and Peyton went to the front. Somehow I found myself on his wheel as the speed settled around the 27 mph along the slight uphill drag toward the Firetower. The whole time I could see my heartrate, which had been a little high from the start, creeping upward despite my best efforts to exploit whatever slim draft all 115 pounds of 16-year-old Peyton, decked out in his national championship jersey, was providing. As we approached the long downhill to the Bogue Chitto I figured it might be a good time to pull over and seek some better shelter at the back of the 7 or 8-rider string behind us. My timing couldn't have been worse. With my Check Engine light already flashing red, the paceline hit the downhill just as I was dropping back, streaming past about five mph faster than I was going, and despite ramping it up to 34 mph I never caught any of the draft that I so desperately needed. I backed off to recover a bit, hoping that the group would pause at the intersection in Enon long enough for me to rejoin it. As the road flattened out I saw Peyton dropping back to pick me up and pace me back to the group, which was nice.

Up by Pine we did a nice short loop that I hadn't done in a long time. It wasn't quite as hilly as I remembered it, so I think we probably used to go a little farther before coming back into Pine back in the day. I remember one race that we put on that started around Pine. It was back in the early 70s and must have been in the middle of the summer because it was super hot that day. This was before feed zones and electrolytes and big water bottles, and it was probably supposed to be 80 miles or so, which was typical back then. I say "supposed to be" because what was left of the lead group made a decision to unilaterally shorten the race by one lap. The people at the finish line were a little surprised when we sprinted for the finish when they fully expected us to be doing another lap. Anyway, I digress....

OK, OK, I get it.

So I was still hanging on after we stopped at the store in Pine and headed back toward Enon and was feeling OK but was still not quite firing on all cylinders despite skipping pulls and generally trying to limit my efforts. Not far from 1072 on Lee Road there's a little hill near the church where I came off the back, again. Fortunately MJ turned around and paced me back the last mile or so to where everyone was waiting at 1072. Under the circumstances I was fully expecting to be riding alone by the time I was halfway up the firetower climb, but as it turned out everyone just rode that at a nice steady tempo, so at least we rolled back into the parking lot together. 

I figured the Sunday Giro wouldn't get too crazy. With the Seabrook bridge still out, the ride doesn't get a nice long stretch of road without intersections until we get to Almonaster, and between the heat and the alternate route the group size has been smaller than usual anyway. For me, this ride was an exercise in wheelsucking and energy conservation. I had already decided that my next couple of rides, at least, would be strictly Zone two-ish even if that meant, which I knew it would, dropping off the back at times to enforce the recovery goal. There were only a few people on the ride who were pushing the pace, so in general it was a pretty easy Giro, which worked out perfectly for me.

Checking Strava later that day I realized how long it had been since I'd taken a day off the bike, and then when I looked at what Strava calls my weekly "Relative Effort" the screen was red and included the word "historic." 

So with that confirmation of my own gut feeling I went out to the Mellow Monday ride on my old Cervelo with strict self-instructions to keep the pedal pressure light no matter what. When the speed ramped up on the way back down Lakeshore Drive I slipped off the back and spun in the rest of the way to Canal Blvd. before getting back into the group. It wasn't quite the "active recovery" it should have been, but close enough I guess. Actually, my legs felt fine, so apparently Sunday hadn't inflicted any discernable additional damage. Still, I knew I should take at least one more day easy, so I went out to the Tuesday levee ride with a plan to take only short pulls and to drop off the back somewhere on the way out to soft-pedal for a few miles before turning around and latching back onto the group on its way back. The "group" turned out to be just three of us after the usual suspects turned back at Williams Blvd., but fortunately neither Martin or Charles was pushing the pace much, so I was able to keep my efforts under control, pulling off from the front once my heart rate nudged above 130 bpm and watching it drop back down to around 110 in the draft. 

I guess I'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow morning and then play the WeMoRi by ear.

Mileage Insanity

July 4th Giro meetup

It's officially mid-summer around here and so by now the 82°F, 90% relative humidity pre-dawn morning air is starting to feel positively cool despite the little rivulets of sweat running down your face and dripping onto the top tube. On the plus side, it looks like we are getting into our regular summer weather pattern with gradually increasing clouds during the day culminating in afternoon thunderstorms. That at least cools thing down just a little bit, although sometimes at the expense of even higher humidity. Riders are going through insane amounts of water, often spiked with some sort of electrolyte mix, even on the shorter weekday rides, some of which are starting earlier and earlier in the morning. So ... situation normal.

Tuesday was July 4th, and so of course there was a "holiday Giro." The Seabrook bridge is still out, and although it was originally scheduled to be re-opened a couple days ago, they sent out an announcement saying it would be another two to three weeks because of "unanticipated structural issues." The alternate route we've been taking isn't quite a good and includes a few places where the road is perpetually flooded because the Sewerage & Water Board doesn't seem to feel any great sense of urgency when it comes to fixing long-standing water leaks in out-of-the-way locations. Even so, there was a good enough turnout on Tuesday that included Rachael (aka Red) in town from Texas, and Tim who seems to be getting back into consistent riding. As we rounded the sharp corner at the bottom of the Danziger bridge people started yelling about a flat that turned out to be Barry's. I turned around just before the spot where the road is flooded and could see him at the bottom of the bridge so I rode back over to see if he needed help, which he did. Although he was riding regular tires with tubes, the tire bead was stuck like glue to the rim and no amount of thumb force could dislodge it. It wasn't even possible to get a tire tool in there. After spending an inordinate amount of time, during which the statute of limitations ran out and the rest of the group headed out, I finally got out my little pocket knife and managed to get the screwdriver blade in there. Once I got one little section away from the rim the rest was easy. Of course by then we were ten minutes behind the group so Barry just sat on the front (he was on his Tri bike) with me on his wheel and one or two others behind me and basically towed us all the way down Almonaster and most of the way down Chef until we saw the group on its way back and could get back in. It turned out to be a decent enough workout, actually, since drafting off of a Tri bike isn't quite like drafting off of VJ.

Wednesday's WeMoRi was fairly typical. I'd somehow gotten myself out the door a little earlier than usual and so arrived at Lakeshore Drive a bit ahead of the group. They swept me up around Elysian Fields at 29 mph where I inserted myself into the paceline. It was fast but things were going along fine until there was a split as we crossed Toussant on Marconi after the "backdraft" sprint. The back half of the group hesitated just a bit too long and the front didn't ease up as it often does. There was a brief but intense effort to close the gap that failed, so despite maintaining a decent speed we never got very close. That evening Charles came over so we could pull his bottom bracket that he thought was going bad. It turned out to be fine, and we soon figured out that the horrible noises he'd been hearing were coming from his relatively new rear Zipp hub. Off the bike it seemed OK, but once clamped into the frame there was all sorts of drag on it and you could see that the freehub wasn't staying parallel with the bike as it turned, so the diagnosis was that "the hub is broken." He later took it to someone who took it apart and found that, basically, the bearings had just kind of blown up. That wheel is on its way back to Zipp and in the meantime he bought a new one. They sent him the 11 speed version instead of the 12 speed version but at least by the weekend he had a functional rear wheel again.

Thursday's levee ride was the last for Brandon who was heading back to California until at least next spring.

Saturday heading out on Stafford Road

By Friday I'd decided to skip the Saturday Giro and go across the lake to what I was sure would turn out to be a ruthless beating consisting of about 70 miles with Peyton and Lisa and a bunch of the faster riders. I wasn't disappointed. We started at St. Benedict's church on Smith Road at Stafford, near where the old Priory used to be where lots of our races and rides started back in the 70s. Now there's a little subdivision and church retirement home where there used to be cattle, and the old church that had been a little farther down Smith Road has been replaced by much bigger one with a parking lot at the corner. Anyway, after a little warmup on Stafford we got onto Million Dollar road and Peyton went to the front and towed everyone at 25-30 mph for about ten miles as I hung onto the back still trying to get the engine firing on all cylinders. After turning onto 437 I found myself on Peyton's wheel for a while and with my heart rate starting to head into dangerous territory I decided survival was the better part of valor and dropped back to the safety of the slightly more substantial draft at the back of the dozen or so riders. I could tell it was going to be a fast and aggressive ride, so I figured I'd stay as protected as possible for a while until things settled down a bit, which they eventually did. At one point before we turned onto Wardline Road a little gap opened up that split a few of us off the back for a few miles. Wardline was kind of a minefield of potholes and patches but at least there wasn't a steady stream of gravel trucks, and as bad as the road was, it was better than it had been the last time I'd ridden it when nothing had been repaired and there were random sections of sand and gravel. Anyway, we all regrouped at the store stop at 44 miles. 

Saturday's store stop at 44 miles - getting hot

I don't think the speed had ever dropped much below 25 mph since Million Dollar Road, so everyone seemed happy to take a little break. After that the pace stayed fast the rest of the way in. It was one of those rides that Strava called "Historic Relative Effort." Average speed was 23.7 mph, with a "best 20 minute heart rate" of 156 bpm and a max of 174. Even so, I felt pretty good at the end and thought I'd managed my effort well while still getting a workout similar to what I'd have gotten in an actual race.

Sunday morning double paceline

So feeling pretty good after Saturday's ride I went ahead and decided to make the drive over to around Biloxi for a long 115 mile ride that Alison had put together. This one was definitely not going to be fast, so I figured I should be able to survive it despite the lingering effects of Saturday's effort. For this one we had nine riders on hand for the start. For me it would be kind of an insane version of a recovery ride. I knew I could keep my effort and heart rate low and under control with this group, so the only real concerns would be the distance and the heat. Fortunately, we would be stopping at practically every store along the way so staying hydrated was never much of a problem for me. 

It felt absolutely cool as we started off heading north at 6:00 am, forming up into a double paceline. For most of the ride the pace stayed in the general neighborhood of 20 mph, although one or two riders occasionally pushed it up a couple of mph. At first that didn't cause much of a problem, but I knew that it would eventually. We took a number of rather long breaks at stores where people were getting cold water, cold drinks, food, and at one point a jar of pickles. I bought a couple of Cokes along the way and re-filled bottles but never got close to running out of fluids. I'd had to leave home at 4 am to make the drive, so I was already well into caffeine withdrawal by the time the ride started and wasn't feeling all that great. I wondered if maybe I'd bitten off more than I could chew after that hard ride on Saturday, but after a cold Coke at the second store stop I started feeling a lot better. 

As usually happens, by the time we were over 70 miles in some riders were starting to wilt a bit. The temperature by then was pretty high and although the ride was mostly pretty flat, this section of the ride was a little more hilly that the rest. As a result, there were a few time when the group came apart without the riders at the front knowing it, but each time they'd eventually slow down to regroup. This was not the kind of ride where you wanted to leave anyone out on the course alone. 

With all of the store stops and everything I was feeling better than expected over the last 25 miles or so, but then again I had expected to be feeling pretty bad, so... Joe Paul was spending more and more time on the front as the miles wore on. I guess we were maybe ten or fifteen miles from the end when it started to rain. Other than the wheel spray, the rain was kind of nice, washing away some of the sweat and salt and making it feel a little cooler. Over the last half hour or so the rain kind of came and went and came again, and just after we got back to the cars the sky opened up once more so everyone rushed to throw everything into their cars which kind of limited the usual after-ride chit-chat. Alison, Joe Paul, and I think one other still had to ride another ten miles or so to Alison's house from which they'd started. Just before I left I checked Google maps and it was showing over an hour delay on I-10 where they have just started work to repair a bridge or something. I called home to let Candy know I'd be later than expected, and headed out with a plan to stop for some fast food before deciding what to do about the traffic situation. Shortly after getting onto I-10 the rain got really heavy in a dangerous sort of way, so I stopped at a Wendy's right off the interstate to wait it out and in the meantime had Waze route me to home. Not surprisingly it routed me around the traffic delay by way of Picayune, which really added only about 25 or 30 minutes. That turned out to be better than I'd expected, so I was pack home by, I guess, around 3:30.

This morning my legs were definitely still a little sore, so I made my Mellow Monday ride as mellow as possible. After a 372-mile week following four weeks that were over 280 miles, I think it may be time for an easier week mileage-wise.

Zone 2 Sunday Miles Out of BSL

Front half of the Sunday ride paceline, somewhere in Mississippi.

It was around Friday when my back finally started to feel more or less like whatever normal is nowadays, which basically means I could bend down and put on my socks without holding onto something for support. That was good because it was a busy weekend. One of my nephews and his wife, along with their two kids, were at the house for a little visit which always entails various activities like trips to the zoo. Fortunately I was able to keep up with my usual rides while Candy kind of covered for me. That allowed me to skip the trip to the Aquarium and a few other excursions, which was nice because we were still operating under daily "excessive heat warnings" all weekend.

Looking for the WeMoRi

On Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi. The right side of my lower back was still hurting any time I stood up on the pedals but as long as I could stay seated it wasn't too bad. I merged into the group as usual along Marconi where, also as usual, I went from 18 mph to 28 mph as my physiology struggled to deal with the suddenly increased demand ... rather late as usual of course. I was still way at the back when we went around the right-hand corner onto Wisner, which turned out to be a fatal mistake. The back of the group always seems to slow down way too much on that turn, maybe because the inside of the corner is festooned with entirely unnecessary flex posts. If you're at the back going around that turn you are going to have to sprint immediately after it just to stay in contact. I was still unrecovered from the effort of merging into the group, and when the back of the group slowed to 18 mph for the corner I knew it was going to be bad. It was. The accordion effect had me maxed out right away and I pretty much blew up a little while later, along with a few others. I cut across City Park before the overpass and eventually got back into the group.

Thursday's ride didn't get off to a very good start. As I worked my way around the dangerous tracks at the streetcar barn on my way out to t he levee I suddenly heard the air escaping from my rear tire, accompanied by a loud "whack, whack, whack" of a big nail that was stuck in the tire. I hit be brakes hard to minimize the damage to the frame, which actually set off the Garmin incident detection alarm. I came to a quick stop, turned off the alarm before it started calling for help, and looked down to find a four-inch nail sticking out of the tire. I sent a quick text to Charles to let them know I wouldn't be meeting them for the 6 am start. So I had a nice easy ride up the river, eventually finding the group on its way back about a mile short of the Luling bridge.

Friendly Friday - last ride of June

Friday's Friendly Friday ride was, for a change, a legit recovery ride, which was definitely a good thing for me. The heat and humidity was still pretty intense and I think everybody who has been riding in it for the past two weeks was feeling the need for a little break prior to the weekend. I know I was. My back was finally starting to feel like it was getting better, but it wasn't quite up to considering picking up that sack of concrete mix I need yet. Friday night I installed a new 53t chainring. The old one came with the Campi Record crankset I'd installed 47,000 miles ago. It was pretty badly worn and when turning the cranks while on the workstand you could feel how rough it had become. For good measure, I also installed a new Campi Record 11 chain. The result was a very noticeable improvement in smoothness. Not so much in speed!

I knew Saturday's Giro Ride was going to be on the small side thanks to the heat and the continuing closure of the Seabrook bridge. Still, it seemed pretty fast once we got onto Almonaster and stayed fairly fast all the way out to Venetian Isles. I was still being a little cautious with my back, especially since I was seriously considering doing an early morning 80+ mile ride out of Bay St. Louis on Sunday. That ride was supposed to be a nice Zone-2 affair, which was just what I felt I needed in order to make sure I didn't have any setbacks with regard to my back. Shortly after getting home I was off to the Zoo to meet up with everyone. They had already been there for about an hour and a half, and we were all supposed to go to the "Cool Zoo" from 2-5 pm. Needless to say, it was hot. Also needless to say I was still a little dehydrated and tired. Fortunately I got there right as they were all ready for lunch and then was able to sit in the shade with a cold drink while the rest of the crew rode the little zoo train around to the swamp exhibit and back. After that we were off to the Cool Zoo section where I managed to avoid sticking my head out from under the umbrella at the table. Apparently the water in the "lazy river" was so hot that people were getting out of it early and the staff were considering closing it down for the day. The kids had a blast, though. We finally headed back home a little before 5 pm. By then I'd pretty much decided I'd be able to do the Bay St. Louis ride since the relatives were planning on leaving in the morning anyway.

Sunday's ride was scheduled to start at 5:45 am, so with the hour drive that meant a 4:30 am departure from home. At least we'd be a couple of hours into the ride before it got really hot. I arrived at the little park where the rides start to find Steve M, Charles, Brandon, Alison ( who recently moved back to the area from TX), and Robert B who was on his Trek e-bike. I was looking forward to the ride since it seemed perfectly designed to give me a nice long ride without any fast steep climbing. As usual with these rides I was glad I'd loaded the route onto my Garmin because I still don't know the roads around there very well, and in this case I'd be on some roads I hadn't been on before. The ride went nicely according to plan. Thanks to the early start, the first couple of hours didn't involve too much in the way of heat stress, plus we made a long store stop after only an hour and a half or so. We were at about 66 miles by the time we made our second store stop, and by then it was getting seriously warm and my water supply was getting seriously low. I downed a bottle of powerade or something and refilled both bottles with cold water, so was feeling fine by the time we headed out for the last twenty miles. I'd brought along a packet of Skratch gummies and had started with Skratch electrolyte mix in one of my bottles, so I was in pretty good shape since the pace had been nice and steady the whole time. We finished the 84 miles with an average speed of just over 20 mph, so although it was pretty hot by the end I wasn't feeling too terribly toasted, although the inside of the car was probably around 120°F at that point. Afterward we stopped for lunch at a little place over around Long Beach.

This morning's Mellow Monday ride started out pretty mellow, although the pace definitely picked up on the way back along Lakeshore Drive. It never too too intense, though, so I think I can still call it a recovery ride thanks to staying in the draft almost the entire time. Hopefully the weather will start shifting back to seasonal normal this week. We could definitely use some of those afternoon showers to cool off the rooftops and keep the foliage alive.