Sunshine on My Shoulders

Friday morning with the Friendly Friday Dawn Patrol

It's not quite the end of February, so still far too early for declarations about springtime, but this is New Orleans and as always we are relentlessly teased by Mother Nature. The mornings last week were, by my standards, still chilly, with temperatures in the low to mid-50s, but hey, I'll take that any day instead of low 40s or, heaven forbid, low 30s.

Last Friday we had a big group, no doubt a direct result of a morning conducive to summer kit. It's always funny how that first warm morning brings all sorts of people out of the woodwork. Riding home I briefly contemplated putting in a few extra miles, just to enjoy the sunshine. Back at the house, the oak leaves were falling like rain. If you live under live oak trees you soon realize that the season called "Fall" is a misnomer. Although the trees do drop a fair amount of leaves in the Fall, it is early spring when they shed most of their leaves, just as the new ones are starting to develop. At the moment there are at least ten big bags full of leaves out on the street waiting for Wednesday's garbage pickup. I hate to see them disposed of that way, but the front yard is well covered already and all of the leaves that fell, and are still falling, in the back yard are still there. These were just the leaves in the street that were clogging up the storm drains.

Free tools!

The weekend weather was looking to be better than anything we have had thus far this year. Saturday's Giro Ride had a good-sized group and was quite fast. I think Will was probably on the front for half of it all by himself. Even sitting toward the tail end of the paceline I can usually tell when Will has settled in for a long pull at the front because the pace becomes so steady that you'd think you were motorpacing. Although it was a pretty good workout, I arrived home feeling surprisingly good, probably thanks to my careful attention to wheelsucking. We were planning a longish ride over in Mississippi for Sunday, so I didn't want to do too much damage the day before. 

As a special reward, I found a nice soft-face hammer on the roadside when I was riding back from the lake, so I stuffed it into my pocket to add to my roadside tool collection. Over the years I have picked up some really nice tools that have no doubt found their way out of pickup truck beds.

Sunday morning over in MS

On Sunday I was scheduled for an 80 mile ride that Steve and Charles had organized over in Mississippi, starting at a playground just off of I-10. It was one of those days that challenges your wardrobe selection abilities. When I arrived at the parking lot around 7:30 am the car thermometer read 49°, but there was almost no wind and the sky was clear. The forecast was calling for upper 60s later in the morning. Although I usually opt for at least knee warmers when it's below 60°, I knew it was going to warm up quickly and decided to go with bare knees. Yeah, it was a little chilly, but that didn't last more than about twenty minutes after we rolled out just past 8:00. We had a good group of, I think, nine, plus one other rider on an E-recumbent who tagged along the whole way about five bike-lengths off the back. Most of the route was fairly flat, with some little hills up toward the northern part of the big loop that we rode. Riders were taking super long pulls at the front on the way out. I think we may have had a light but increasing tailwind, and with the pace mostly in the lower 20s riders seemed content to stay on the front a little longer than usual. I think we were at least twenty miles in before my turn came up for my second pull of the day.

After avoiding a bunch of peacocks that were crossing the road in front of us, we eventually came to a store stop at maybe 42 miles into the ride. I got a Coke, but was still carrying around two nearly full water bottles and emptied half of one of them so I could fill it back up with my leftover Coke. I ate a little granola bar that I'd brought along, but wasn't particularly hungry quite yet since the pace had been fairly moderate. I think some were probably just a little apprehensive about the distance. Indeed, when we got to around 65 miles I could tell that a few of the riders were starting to feel the distance. Also, this was where the terrain was the least flat. I was definitely starting to feel the prior day's Giro in my legs on some of the uphills. It wasn't terrible, but I certainly knew I'd ridden 60 miles the day before. 

This morning, Monday, the temperature was in the upper 50s and the wind was light. I went out with covered knees, a base layer shirt, and arm-warmers. I was a little chilly at first but otherwise pretty comfortable. The Mellow Monday group kept it fairly mellow this morning, which was nice because there was still just a bit of residual soreness in my quads from Sunday's ride.

There is a weekend of racing over in Mobile this coming weekend. I am hoping to go, but kind of tapped the brakes this morning when I looked at the forecast, which was calling for thunderstorms on Saturday and some more rain on Sunday. Of course it's still early, so hopefully that will improve. I don't bounce as well as I used to, so that is something that I have to consider nowadays. A rainy road race wouldn't be too bad if it's not very cold, and the criterium is on a pretty non-technical concrete course, so even it the rain it probably wouldn't be sketchy, but I would probably still hesitate to rail the one significant corner like I might otherwise. We'll see. Not looking forward to the time chance coming up on March 10 when all of my morning rides will be thrown back into the dark.

The Longest Month

Obligatory Rex Photo

February is the longest month. Not technically, of course, but definitely mentally. Throw in Mardi Gras complications and posts from other people who are actually racing already, and it just makes it seem even worse. It's always like that. Cold temperatures, strong winds, and lagging motivation. The only thing that kind of saves me would probably be diagnosed by some as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Or perhaps just the knowledge that the older I get the costlier become those skipped days. Anyway, somehow I survived Mardi Gras week without too big a hit to the training log.

We were off from work on Monday, probably because everybody knows that nobody would show up the day before Mardi Gras anyway. That offered an opportunity for a long ride, but of course Mother Nature had other ideas. I woke up that morning, as I'd expected, to a weather radar that was entirely green and a light rain falling outside. It was also pretty cold. So I initially set my sights on early afternoon, by which time the rain was supposed to taper off. As it turned out, though, a lot of the rain that was showing up on radar was not actually rain, and by 10:00 or so it looked like the streets were drying up a little bit. What I did not find was the motivation to push myself very hard into a wind that was occasionally trying to wrest away control of my front wheel. I still managed to log 40 miles, albeit with speeds ranging from 12 to 31 mph depending on the sinuosity of the Mississippi River. 

Tuesday was Mardi Gras and it started out very cold. I decided it would be a great day to skip riding, except for my usual ride to and from the French Quarter. Candy and I rode over to Napoleon Avenue around 10:00 and watched all of the Rex parade, after which I made my way downtown via, mostly, Prytania. Riding along toward downtown just a couple of blocks from St. Charles, I could see the parade off to my left at the intersections. By the time I was past Jackson Avenue I'd already passed all of Rex and was looking at Zulu floats. Zulu always comes down Jackson to St. Charles and ends up ahead of Rex. Fortunately, Zulu turns left when it gets downtown instead or right like Rex, so as long as you're ahead of Rex you can usually cross Canal Street pretty easily. 

I locked the bike up on St. Louis street where I ran into Dustin & company. We headed over to Royal, or maybe Bourbon, but as I was taking photos I soon lost track of them entirely. I wandered around downtown for a couple of hours as usual before finally heading back home, by which time the temperature had risen enough to make the ride quite nice.

So Wednesday's WeMoRi was pretty much of a disaster for me. I rode out to the lakefront as usual, with the group catching me just after the turn onto Wisner. Jaden came past me and I jumped to catch his wheel since nobody else was there, and immediately thought to myself, "This is not exactly the ideal wheel to be on right now." My speed went from 19 mph to 26 as my heart rate went from 94 to 155 bpm, at which point I moved over and motioned for Brian, who was behind me to come through. It was a small group and at the back I found little draft as the pace remained fast. I was barely hanging onto the tail end of the group as we went over the overpass and things got strung out. I wasn't recovering at all, and so just after turning on to City Park Avenue I quietly drifted off the back. I was thinking I'd take some time to recover, turn onto Lakeshore drive, and make a u-turn ahead of the group on its way back from the traffic circle, but then I ran into Jeff who was sitting in the parking lot fixing a flat, so I stopped there before riding out to LSD where I missed most of whatever was left of the group before heading back home.

Thursday's levee ride was going along nicely, even though there were just three of us left by the time we were past The Dip. Then, within sight of the Luling bridge, I noticed my front tire going soft, so I told the others to continue while I stopped to fix it. I assumed I'd pinch-flatted on a sharp little hole I'd plowed into earlier, but later that night when I did a post-mortem on the tube I discovered a piece of metal wire sticking a millimeter or two past the inside of the tire. How it didn't puncture the new tube before I got home I'll never know.

Old bike, old kit. Expecting to get wet but stayed dry.

Friday we had a big turnout for Friendly Friday, and the pace remained pretty moderate, so that was nice. Saturday, though, was a completely different story. It had rained all night and into the morning, so the Giro was completely out of the question. There was an off-and-on light rain falling most of the morning, but nothing too serious, so around noon I decided I may as well go for a ride. Assuming the streets would still be wet, and/or that it would start to rain again, I dressed for colder temperatures than we had. There was a strong northeast wind blowing at around 14 mph when I finally hit the road around 12:50, but the levee path turned out to be essentially dry. Still, it was a long battle in the wind, stopping occasionally to take pictures of the eagles that are so easy to spot this time of year when there's not much foliage on the trees along the river.

Saw four eagles on Saturday

The weather was a little better on Sunday, but it was still quite cold and windy, which resulted in a pretty small turnout for the Giro. We did the entire route anyway, although certainly not as fast as usual, and then a whole group agreed to continue down the lake trail to add what is inexplicably called the "shuffle," which took us eventually over to the river levee. By then the sun was out so it was a nice ride that added enough miles to make up for the missing mileage, if not intensity, earlier in the week.

Only three on Monday

This morning's Mellow Monday ride had only three of us. It was still rather windy and cold, so I guess a lot of the usual people decided to skip it altogether. I was feeling a little tired, so it felt like a good enough workout even though I didn't spend much time in the wind. Fortunately it looks like temperatures will be rising a bit for the rest of the week!

Early Mardi Gras Year

January and February, especially February, are always the toughest, and some years they are tougher than others. This year we seem to have had more than our share of early morning rain, or cold, or cold rain. Just last week we had quite a bit of street flooding in the city, no thanks to one of the ancient turbines having gone down in the middle of a rainstorm ... again. Then, to make matters just a little more complicated, Mardi Gras is early this year. You see, Mardi Gras (aka Fat Tuesday in English) is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the day that starts the period of Lent, which is supposed to be a 40-day period of fasting prior to Easter. The problem is that Easter, which you would think would be a fixed date, was long ago determined, probably by some committee that couldn't come to an agreement and had a flight to catch, that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon (basically closest to the summer equinox) that occurs on or soonest after March 21st. Which of course makes no sense whatsoever but has nonetheless survived more or less unchanged for centuries. In order to include enough (6) Sundays in Lent, that means Mardi Gras is 46 days prior to Easter. Makes sense, right? Anyway, the bottom line is that every now and then, depending on the phase of the moon and earth's orbit around the sun, Mardi Gras comes really early. This is one of those years. Having Mardi Gras in the middle of February puts it at possibly the time of the year then the weather around here is least predictable. And when it comes to unpredictable weather, this particular year has knocked it out of the park. Anyway, the bottom line here is that we've had a lot of sketchy morning weather that has impacted those of us who don't like riding bikes that go nowhere quite a bit.

Friendly Friday

So this morning, Sunday, I lounged in bed an extra fifteen minutes, as usual for a Giro Ride morning. The temperature outside was nearly 70°F, and the wind was negligible, neither of which you'd expect for mid-February. Saturday was nearly as warm. By Mardi Gras morning on - you guessed it - Tuesday, it will be in the low 40s. For the first time in a while I went out in, basically, summer kit. Saturday's Giro had been quite fast, but surprisingly my legs felt none the worse for wear. I cruised down Orleans where the street had already been cleared of the tons (literally) of abandoned Mardi Gras beads and related trash from the prior evening's Endymion parade. If there's one thing this city does remarkably well, it's cleaning the streets following parades. Of course, I'm sure the parading organizations who put on these free spectacles pay for that too because if the city had to do that it would probably happen on the same timeline as pothole repair. 

Given the Mardi Gras festivities that have been in full swing for about a week now, it wasn't surprising that the turnout was pretty slim for Sunday's Giro. On the other hand, considering that the forecast for Monday is looking pretty bad, I would have expected a few more people to have dragged themselves out onto the road this morning. Now, you'd think that a small turnout would mean an easy ride, but if you did, you'd be wrong. More often than not it means you'll be spending more time than usual on the front. As it turned out, the ride was pretty good. It was by no means slow, or easy, but the limited amount of horsepower available kept the speeds down to levels that allowed people like me to actually see the front now and then. It was a good ride, actually.

Afterward, I rode down to Magazine Street at State Street to catch some of the Thoth parade - the closest parade to my house, and the only one I've seen so far. It was threatening to rain the whole time but never really did, unless you count a few random raindrops that fell here and there. The uptown crowd there was friendly and easygoing and since it was only 12:30 or so not yet drunk enough to be obnoxious. We stayed for maybe 30 of the 40+ floats.

Thoth

So this year, since early Spring, I've been using Silca Super-Secret drip wax on my chains. At first I considered it to be quite an extravagance, considering the relatively high cost of a little bottle of the concoction, but it has turned out to be quite cost-effective since you waste so little of it. Yeah, I know that using the "immersion" chain waxing technique is the best, but this stuff, when done right, is a pretty reasonable compromise that required little effort and definitely extends chain life, keeps the chain impressively clean, and at least theoretically saves a couple of watts here and there - as if anyone could ever really feel the difference. The one thing you have to be sure to do is to thoroughly clean the new chain in mineral spirits to remove absolutely all of the factory lubricant. I do this by putting the new chain in a pickle jar with mineral spirits (aka paint thinner) and shaking it up and letting it soak and shaking it up again, etc. etc. Of course for me it's practically a waste since I have been in the habit for many years of replacing chains when they reach the 2,500 - 3,000 mile mark regardless of how worn they might be. Anyway, I think I like this drip-wax thing. 

One other think I recently did was to put latex tubes in my training tires. It's not something I'd normally do, but some place had them on sale so I figured I'd give them a shot. I put one of the latex tubes in my front training wheel, which had an old Michelin race tire on it, and it worked nicely, so the following day I did the same with my rear wheel which immediately exploded. One thing about latex tubes is that they will squeeze through the smallest of slices in a tire sidewall and blow out quite dramatically. Anyway, I ended up having to ditch that tire and install a new one that I fortunately had on hand. I can't say they made me any faster or anything, and of course they bleed air quickly enough that I have to pump up the tires every couple of days, but otherwise they seem fine. I suppose I could pretend that they make me faster. I mean, it's a possibility, right?

After the Saturday Giro

Last week, despite some discouraging weather forecasts, I somehow managed to log a little over 250 miles. While that is actually a little low compared to my typical weeks, I was nonetheless somehow pleasantly surprised. Tuesday's levee ride had been 40 miles of unrelenting crosswind followed by a mad dash to make an early meeting. Wednesday's WeMoRi had been good, but just a bit easier and smaller than usual. Then on Thursday we had only three of us up on the levee with a 10 mph east wind that turned the entire return trip into a slog and saw us turning around at the big dip rather than going all the way out to Ormond. 

By Friday it had started getting warmer and so we had a pretty big group on hand for Friendly Friday, which of course resulted in a rather fast ride that shelled a few people. It was great to be riding without three layers of clothes, though, and that really made it a lot more enjoyable. 

Sunday

As I said before, Saturday's Giro had a pretty good sized group with some significant horsepower, which made for quite a fast ride. I spent a lot of time focusing on the finer points of wheelsucking, of course, so although the speeds were consistently high, I was never in any real difficulty and felt pretty good.

So I'm off from work tomorrow ("Lundi Gras") and Tuesday, and as luck would have it the forecast is calling for a lot of rain all morning. Of course the forecasts have not exactly been batting 1,000 lately, so I'll just have to look out the window in the morning before making a decision. It looks like the cold front will be through around noon, though, so an afternoon ride is looking like a possibility. Going to have to play that by ear, I guess. Mardi Gras is going to be kind of cold, unfortunately, starting in the 40s and not getting out of the 50s, but at least the rain should be gone. Christian sent out an email about doing a Mardi Gras Giro, although I may just play that one by ear too.

Too Long in the Rain

Mellow Monday

It seems we are stuck in a classic south Louisiana winter weather pattern lately. You  know, the one where cold fronts stall out more or less on top of us, it rains, gets warmer and foggier for three days, and then another front comes through and pushes it out. Then the temperature drops and it gets super windy for two or three days, and then another front stalls out on top of us. Rinse, repeat, rinse. Some years are better than others, and so far this hasn't been one of those better ones.

Last Monday it was a little chilly, like in the mid-upper 40s, but otherwise not bad, and unexpected coincidences resulted in a pretty good turnout for this time of year. We had a couple of Tulane riders, since the Spring semester had finally started, and Apryl was in town from Mississippi, and a few other riders showed up who are often questionable. Things went smoothly until we made the loop at the Armory and picked up a tailwind, at which point the speed ramped up to the upper 20s as riders started getting shelled off the back. Eventually everyone regrouped at Marconi, though, so it was fine. The weather forecast for the rest of the week was not looking very promising, however.

Tuesday was just nothing but flat tires.

Tuesday morning it was even warmer, but overnight rain had left the streets quite wet. Apryl and her friend Regan (who had an inoperable rear derailleur stuck in the 11), and a bunch of the regulars made for another nice-sized group. Looking at how wet the levee bike path was, I was just waiting for the first flat tire. I didn't have to wait very long, either. Bo flatted first, but told us to go ahead, then just a mile or two later Regan flatted. Then, just another mile or two later Regan flatted again. By then we'd already lost a good fifteen or twenty minutes, so we turned around at the Big Dip. We all made it back to the start without any more flats, but after arriving  home I found out that Regan had flatted again, and I think Charles had also had a puncture. By then, the three of them were fresh out of CO2, so Charles rode to his house to retrieve a tube and more CO2. Aside from those flats, there were reports of numerous other flats that morning from other local riders. Somehow, my own Michelin tires that had come off of my race wheels survived, although I did have to pluck out a sharp shard later that evening that would have eventually added my name to the list.

Wednesday on the rain bike

Wednesday morning the streets were again super-wet from overnight rain, and there were all sorts of dire warnings of impending storms and flooding clogging up my message app. Looking at the radar, though, it didn't look like it would rain for a while. There was a huge front off to the west with lots of heavy rain, but it seemed to be just streaming toward the northeast and barely moving from west to east. I decided to go out on the old rain bike, heavily over-dressed, to just tap out a few miles without worrying about flats. It was fairly warm, and with the bike's full fenders I at least stayed more or less dry. As it turned out, there was, unsurprisingly, no WeMoRi group out at the lakefront, which was probably a good thing because part of Lakeshore Drive was flooded anyway. On the down side, it was yet another day of minimal intensity, even though pushing the old Pennine with its fenders and heavy tires and Mr. Tuffys and antique Concor saddle into the east wind did seem to provide a bit of a workout even at 16 mph.

Finally lumbering through on Wednesday.

So that brings us to this morning, Thursday. It had again rained overnight, but the really bad weather was still temporarily stalled off to the west. It was practically 70°F, though, so the prospect of wheel spray didn't seem quite so bad, leading me to roll the dice on flats and ride the Bianchi out to the levee. The problem this morning wasn't the temperature or the wet streets, it was the fog. With the warm humid south wind blowing across the freezing cold Mississippi River, much of the bike path was shrouded in a dense fog. I headed out with just Charles, and it was clear we wouldn't be getting much of a workout because going more than about 15 mph was rather terrifying in the dark in the places where the fog was thickest. A couple of times I hit the brakes because I hadn't seen a curve in time, and when we approached the little bridge over some pipes we both hit the brakes because at first it looked like we were about to run right into a wall. As the sky got lighter, though, our confidence improved, but we turned around at the Big Dip since our average speed had probably been in the 14 mph range. As we headed back we picked up Rich who had planned on riding indoors until his Wahoo trainer blew up or something and he resorted to the levee. It was another nice enough ride, but another super low-intensity one. 

The upriver gate near the bathroom

The weather is really messing with my training lately. It looks like this pattern will continue, too. On the plus side, I am not seeing any low temperatures below 42° for the next ten days, and a lot of mornings with lows above 50°. To make matters worse, we are just waiting for the bike path to be shut down at the Jefferson/St. James parish line for levee work that is going to take at least a year. Perhaps we'll do two laps of the shortened route, or just go out to the lakefront. Getting around the closure via River Road seems like it will be kind of sketchy and I don't think we will be up for that except perhaps on weekends when traffic is lighter.

Low Temperature, High Wind Winter Week

Three-fifths of the Sunday Giro. Would have been a great day without the wind.

The winter vortex dipped down into the south this week with unsurprising results. Monday was MLK day, which provided the questionably nice opportunity for a third Giro Ride in a row. It was kind of a typical holiday Giro, which is to say it wasn't particularly fast, and at least it wasn't too cold. Of course to me, 50°F always feels plenty cold enough, and you can bet my knees will be covered if it's below 60°, but there are always others for whom 50° doesn't seem to require much more than summer kit. The hourly forecast for Monday was calling for a dramatic temperature drop later in the day, and a Tuesday morning temperature in the high 20s. I'd love to post a bunch of photos, but operating a phone camera while wearing two layers of gloves is just not worth it.

Late Monday night I dusted off the old wind trainer that I hadn't used in about two years. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere, and a morning temperature in the 20s fits that criterion for me. Tuesday morning I managed 55 minutes on the trainer at a average speed, which doesn't really mean anything, of like 13 mph. It was something, I guess. It was cold enough on Tuesday that I decided to make it a WFH day, like pretty much everybody else. Wednesday morning wasn't much better, though. The temperature was again in the 20s, accompanied by a stiff north wind. I went out anyway, knowing full well that the WeMoRi was unlikely to happen. Charles had said he was going to ride but would meet whoever might be out there at the same place I usually do. We met up along Wisner, and got to the end of Marconi at the lake a few minutes later than the WeMoRi usually arrives there. Looking east, there was no sign of headlights, so we figured everyone else had bailed and decided to just do half a lap around the park and then go home before any of our sensitive extremities succumbed to frostbite. As we found out later, thanks to Strava, Little Joe and MJ had indeed set out on the WeMoRi route earlier that morning, but Joe had flatted at Elysian Fields, so they were significantly delayed. I don't even know how they managed to change a flat with frozen hands, but they did, and actually rode the full route without ever seeing us, or vice-versa.

Friendly Friday a week ago - before the freeze

By Thursday the cold had moved away a bit, leaving us one morning with the temperature in the 40s. Fortunately, a few people showed up for the levee ride that morning, so we had a good ride out to Ormond and back. Later that day we learned that the construction crew had put up fencing from River Road up to the levee top between the bathroom at LaRose and the Jefferson Parish line. 

This was in preparation for a levee raise project there that will tear up the bike path there for at least a year. We're hoping there might be a way to circumvent the closure, but I don't think we'll know until it happens. It looks like it might be another week or two before they close it off. Coming home from work I got caught in a rain shower and was pretty well soaked. Glad I had my Assos rain jacket on. Friendly Friday the next morning had a low turnout of five or six thanks to the winter wind, and although it wasn't freezing cold, yet, it felt harder than I would have liked.

So that brings us to Saturday. The temperature was hovering around 0°C when I went out into an absolutely brutal north wind. I was wearing three or four layers of high-tech winter gear, but I very nearly turned back within the first mile. I arrived at Starbucks a little later than usual, but still with enough time for a cup of coffee. By the time 7 am rolled around there were just three others there. It was also the day of a gravel ride/race up in Hattiesburg that drew away a few riders who I guess wanted to pay money to ride where it was even colder and the roads weren't paved. The ride was about as miserable as you'd expect, given the wind that was probably averaging 12 mph with gusts up to 25 or so. We ended up turning onto the service road along the interstate and looping back, which made for a short 37 mile ride. Although the temperature was pretty low and I was fairly cold by the time I got home, the real story was the wind rather than the temperature. 

It was still better than being on the trainer.

That's a winter morning sky for sure.

Unfortunately, the weather on Sunday was a carbon copy of that on Saturday. So was the turnout! The temperature was again right at freezing, and the wind was again right at ridiculous. We ended up with five people, so we did the same shortened route as Saturday, but ended up adding a lap or so around the park before heading home. At the moment it looks like we'll have at least a week or more without any more freezing temperatures, so at least there's that. Hopefully I'll feel better on the rides once it warms up a little. I never did set up a northshore winter ride schedule this year. With this year's early Mardi Gras, and the unusually cold temperature, I guess I'll just play it by ear this time.

Meanwhile, there are a few races showing up on the calendar for March and April. Entry fees, however, are getting kind of ridiculous. Rouge-Roubaix is $150 for a fondo-style event with no or minimal course control or other support or prizes. I was looking at La Primavera over in Texas and those entry fees are like $50 and $60 for each day of the 3-day event. There's another gravel race in Mississippi in a couple of weeks. Those are $75. I'd like to do a gravel race, but most definitely not in the freezing cold and/or mud. The Auburn collegiate race weekend is February 24-25, so I may be going there if we have a couple of Tulane riders who want to do it. The Mobile races are scheduled for March 2 and 3, and the entry fees and prizes are both good, so that's a possibility. If I do Auburn, Mobile, and Rouge, that would be three race weekends in a row, which hasn't really happened for me in a few years. We'll see. The way things are going, I'm not likely to be in shape for any of those, but then again, I never am this time of year.

Fine Anno Giri d'Orleans

Monday's Holiday Giro heads out along Marconi

Made it through another orbit of the Sun, and as is usual for this time of year my fitness has already been in a steady decline for over a month. Back in the day that was status quo for everybody because few had the mental fortitude to endure long workouts on wind trainers or rollers or cold, windy country roads. We rationalized that we needed the recovery, as if we were Pros who had been racing every week since February and actually needed it. We didn't, of course, but at least we were kind of all on the same page from November through at least the end of February. Then, however, came major improvements in winter cycling clothing with vests that were actually wind-resistant, and shoe covers that blocked the wind but didn't leave your feet in a pool of sweat, and technical fabrics that were soft an fuzzy on the inside but smooth and aero on the outside. I remember doing winter rides in cotton summer shorts and jerseys underneath snazzy jogging suits that did nothing to block the wind, and knit caps pulled down over our ears. You'd use safety pins at the bottom of your right leg to keep the baggy jogging pants from getting caught in the chain, and all you had for riding in the dark were reflectors and anemic arm-band lights that ran little flashlight bulbs on two C batteries that lasted about a week. Now, though, there's hardly any valid excuse for not riding outside on most winter days around here where typical pre-dawn temperatures are usually in the 40s to low 50s. Still, the allure of interactive indoor training "systems" like Zwift and Rouvy are certainly tempting and make it easier to do actual structured workouts, if that's your preferred form of masochism. It's not mine, though, and even though it is hard to get out the door into the dark on a cold windy winter morning, I still prefer the company of humans over avatars, and wind resistance over computer generated hills. Guess I'm crazy like that. Or stubborn. Maybe both.

Anyway, things have sort of gotten back to relative normal following Christmas. Earlier, I had thought I'd be able to log a lot of enjoyable mileage between Christmas and New Year's Day, the weather and that lingering head cold made that pretty much impossible and definitely inadvisable. Nevertheless, I ended 2024 with a record 14,179 miles, thanks mainly to the hot arid summer that didn't provide as many rain days as usual, I guess. Since I started logging rides to Strava back around February or March of 2012, I've ridden an average of 10,530 miles per year, including three or four significant orthopedically induced sabbaticals. All of which serves as compelling empirical evidence that riding more miles does not make you faster, although perhaps it has its psychological health benefits.

New Year's Day fell on a Monday this year, the net result of which was that I rode three Giro Rides in a row, each substantially different from the others. 

It was a rather cold start for Saturday's Giro, but there was a big group on hand and the wind was relatively light for this time of year. As we came down the overpass onto Hayne the riders at the front dropped the hammer, resulting is a lot of gaps and chasing and droppage. The sudden jump in intensity, and available draft, put me into the red almost immediately, and in consideration of my still scratchy throat and distaste for pneumonia I backed off, hoping that things might come back together, which of course they didn't. I ended up off the back with a couple others, so we took the Bullard shortcut, arriving at Chef well before the group, into which I merged fairly easily once it streamed past. There was a lot of action up at the front with riders launching attack after attack, but by then I was warmed up so it wasn't too much of a problem sitting at the back in the draft. The return trip was also pretty fast. Afterward, I rode down to Faubourg Marigny with Dan and Charles and Apryl for coffee before making my way back home.

Sunday's Giro, the last ride of the year, was mostly just nice smooth tempo. I think perhaps some, including me, were still a little unrecovered from Saturday's thrashing. 

11 years of Strava

After a night listening to a whole lot of fireworks (and around 3 am gunshots), I dragged myself out of bed for yet another Holiday Giro on Monday to get the year started off right. With the annual odometer reset to zero, and the starting temperature at least out of the 40s, it was a pretty typical holiday Giro - not particularly fast. There was lots of sun, and I was fairly over-dressed by the time we were halfway back, but the pace was relatively collegial and I'd already stuffed the wind vest in my pocket. 

On the way back I stopped with Will, Charles and Dan at French Truck on the Lafitte Greenway for coffee, which was quite nice. I had ordered a Redshift suspension stem for my cyclocross bike and it arrived later that day, so I went ahead and installed it so I could take a short ride. I'd gotten it in case I wanted to do any extended gravel riding, knowing that the 'cross bike wouldn't be too forgiving on my neck and shoulders and back without it. I have some 40mm gravel tires that I just can't seem to bring myself to install on the narrow aluminum 'cross bike's non-tubeless rims. They are tight as hell, so fixing a flat out in the middle of nowhere with cold hands would be problematic at best. I figured that the extra cushioning from the stem might allow me to stick with my regular 33 mm 'cross tires, since I have no intention of pushing my luck speed-wise on dirt roads anyway. The stem made quite a difference when riding on the brake hoods, especially since I had probably 45 psi in the tires, and if there was down side to it, I couldn't detect it. There's not nearly as much cushioning when on the drops, but the only time I'm on the drops on the 'cross bike is when I'm on nice smooth asphalt anyway. The stem is, of course, a little heavy, especially since I got the regular one and not the even more expensive lighter one, but saving weight and going fast on unpaved roads is definitely not a priority for me, so I'm pretty happy with it. I just need to give it a try on some long stretches of dirt/gravel, which are unfortunately in rather short supply around here. Maybe a trip out to the mountain bike trail at the spillway and some unpaved levee riding out there is in the cards. We'll see.

By Tuesday morning the weather had gone from warm and sunny to cold and windy. It was so cold and windy that I fully expected to be riding the levee alone and had decided to do a shorter ride even before I got there. Then, I was surprised to find Boyd waiting at the top. I was not surprised that my legs felt pretty dead. The two of us battled the 10 mph northeast wind out to the upriver end of Jefferson before turning back. By then I was really glad to have Boyd on hand because he was taking long pulls at the front into the headwind on his Pinarello Nitro. If I'd been up there alone I'd definitely have been going three mph slower, and probably would have turned back even sooner, but I was happy to have gotten in a ride because the forecast for Wednesday was offering no hope at all. Indeed, it was raining Wednesday morning, and in fact much of the day, so I took the day off. Besides, it was the first day back at work since Christmas and things were really busy at the office.

This morning's levee ride was pretty nice, even though the increasing northeast wind made the return trip feel a lot harder than it looked.

Best Laid Schemes ... Gang aft a-gley

Thursday heading back into the sun ... and wind

The Daughter arrived in town from Olympia last Monday evening, and I was off from work by Wednesday afternoon, having devised a plan to get in some long rides over the holidays without missing out much on family frivolities. Nephews and Nieces and associated kids were also scheduled for post-Christmas visits. A little complicated but manageable, assuming things didn't start to unwind, which of course they eventually did in more ways than one. I rode out to the WeMoRi where I sort of accidentally got onto the 2-person break instead of the group. It was Lisa and Jaden, and they seemed committed to making it to the end without being caught. Meanwhile, I was just sitting on the back, switching smoothly from one draft to the other as they rotated. I doubt I would have been of much help, actually, and they did indeed finish ahead of the group, or at least what was left of it. 

The Thursday and Friday rides were just the usual, although made a little more difficult because of the wind. At least were were finally starting to tilt toward, rather than away, from the sun.

Saturday the 23rd I rode out to Starbucks to meet up with the Giro, and by the 7 am start there was a nice big group on hand. The weather was pretty nice with the temperature just below 60°F. There were even a couple of people from the Mississippi coast on hand. As usual, I was a little over-dressed, probably a result of my habit of riding out there early, in the dark, which always makes it feel colder. The ride itself was going along just fine until someone at the front, in an egregious violation of protocol, attacked after the Goodyear sprint and split the field, leaving a few in no-mans-land and a slowly re-forming chase group. I use the term "chase" loosely here. The group finally got going and wasn't losing ground too fast, but traffic complications on Bullard killed off any chance of catching and also split things up even more. Somewhere around Lake Forest we had lost Apryl. Charles had been in the front group but then that group split again on Hayne. Eventually of course we all ended up on Lakeshore Drive where Charles and I turned back to find Apryl, who was doing her first Giro, and make sure she didn't get lost. She wasn't far back, though, and there were a couple others with her I think. Then, riding down Marconi about a quarter mile from Starbucks she slammed into that big new hole in the concrete and blew out her rear tire, so we made a quick repair before everyone parted ways for the day. The forecast for Sunday was already looking really bad.

So that Sunday morning, Christmas eve, it was raining and wet and it was looking like it would stay that way all day. I sat around the house looking out the window and compulsively checking the weather radar, and around 12:30 I decided to put on the rain jacket and go for a little ride on the levee, mainly for psychological wellness reasons. There was some light rain on-and-off, but it wasn't cold, so I was never particularly uncomfortable. Somewhere out around Kenner I ran into Joey who already had 50-odd miles. He turned around with me and probably ended up with around 70 miles in the rain. Anyway, I was glad I'd gone out and gotten in a few miles despite the weather. 

Mellow Monday

There had been some talk about doing a Christmas morning Giro on Monday, but that never happened, so I went out to City Park to see if anyone would appear for the usual Mellow Monday ride. Not surprisingly, there were just a couple of people, but we had a nice enough ride anyway. I was already nursing a sore throat, though, and just hoping it wouldn't develop into anything more debilitating. Christmas day came and went and along the way the family members who were going to come down for a day or two bailed because they were sick, some with COVID.

By that evening I knew my plans for long rides were down the drain, though. The throat was still a little sore and I wasn't feeling all that great, and the idea of going out on the bike in the cold dry air would have been a bad one, and the plan to ride 100 miles that day would have been worse. It's Wednesday now and The Daughter headed for the airport at 4:30 am, and the throat is much improved, but I didn't feel up to a cold ride, much less the WeMoRi, this morning, and I doubt anyone would have recommended it anyway. The dilemma now is that the temperature here will get up to almost 60 this afternoon, but then a very cold front will be coming through, leaving us with a few really cold mornings. Do I go out for a little ride this afternoon, or do I skip another day just to be better recovered just in time for Thursday morning's cold 44° temperatures?

Winterish

Almost home - Thursday

Along with morning temperatures in the 40s come the time-consuming pre-dawn wardrobe decisions that usually involve substantial amounts of compromise. I usually opt for warmth right out the door, knowing full well that I'll be over-dressed an hour or so later. Or not. It depends on things like cloud cover, wind speed, ride pace, what riding clothes are still clean enough to pass the smell test, and probably the phase of the moon. Suffice it to say, it's a roll of the dice every time. To make matters worse, selecting (and often finding) what to wear, and pulling on layer after layer, takes up valuable time, especially when the gap between the alarm time and ride time is in the 15-minute range, as it always seems to be.

Wednesday morning featured a stiff north wind, and as often happens the clothing decision matrix delayed my departure for a few extra minutes. With every intention of expediting my ride out to meet the WeMoRi group, I put my head down, shifted up a cog, and then managed to catch every single red light along the way. By the time I reached City Park I knew I was running dangerously late and would have to implement Plan B, which is to turn onto Toussant rather than go all the way to Lakeshore Drive. I made a U-turn at Marconi and headed east waiting to be scooped up by whatever was left of the group, which I figured would be smaller than usual thanks to the wind and all. Fortunately there were enough bodies that when I latched onto the back halfway down Marconi there was enough draft and a slow enough pace to allow for the necessary physiological adjustments. Somewhere in the group was Big Red, and at some point Ice Cream Man, but lots of regulars were still missing. I wasn't complaining. I have a hard time pushing myself when it's cold and windy, so despite the moderate pace I was still doing my best to stay in the draft. Toward the end, that draft was directly behind Jaden, who made a surge after the bridge, pulling us past the overly optimistic riders who had launched way too early. He urged me to go past at the end, so I felt obligated and did.

Friendly Friday - regrouping on Canal Blvd.

Thursday morning's levee ride was just plain painful for me. It happens some times. I was cold the whole time, my legs were hurting, my neck was hurting, and my back was hurting. It was just Charles, Rich and me for most of it, and the return trip was largely into the wind, which didn't help. Had I been out there by myself, I would surely have turned back early and limped home at 14 mph. It's an open question whether that would have actually been the better option anyway.

So on Friday the temperature was a little warmer and the wind had died down a lot, which meant a nice turnout for the Friendly Friday ride, to which I arrived with about 20 seconds to spare. The ride itself was relatively civilized, so when we were coasting down the overpass toward the end, I was a little surprised that Dylan wasn't with us. Then, as I turned into the park I got a text from him. He'd flatted both tires out at the Elysian Fields traffic circle, and so needed another tube, so I immediately turned around and headed back out there. 

We got that fixed, even though the valve extender I had was missing the threaded part and was basically just an aluminum cylinder. Somehow it worked well enough that we got the tire inflated, though, so all was good. Later that evening when I had my bike up on the stand I discovered that I'd completely worn through the rubber in one spot on my rear tire and was quite lucky to have made it back home myself. Those tires had over 8,000 miles on them, so I guess I got my money's worth out of them. Fortunately I  had a pair of Michelins I'd taken off of my race wheels before Nationals because there was a little bit of sidewall damage on one of them, so I put those on.

Saturday Fog

The weekend weather was a little sketchy. Saturday morning there was a dense fog advisory. Although the temperature was still reasonably warm at around 60°, the fog was pretty thick and the roads quite damp. As it turned out we had enough to make a quorum and headed out into the patchy fog. I think a few people turned back early. It wasn't until we were practically all the way to Venetian Isles that the fog started to lift. Before that, visibility was dangerously low in some places. It was pretty good ride, though, even if it never got really fast.

Sunday was cooler with damp streets from some overnight rain showers and a hefty 29 mph northwest wind at the lakefront that was gusting to 36. I sat at Starbucks wondering if anyone was going to show  up under the circumstances. An early arrival was Constantine, a rider from Germany who was in town for a conference. Eventually more riders showed up, so we headed out into the wind with everyone doing battle with their front wheels in the crosswind. Had it not been for the wind, it would have been a great day for riding, but as it was I spent most of the time tucked in behind the biggest riders I could find.

Monday morning it was much colder and still quite windy, which not surprisingly resulted in a Mellow Monday ride of just four or five riders. Once again, the ride was mostly a battle with the wind, this time from the northeast, which kept the speed low on the way out along Lakeshore Drive. With so little available horsepower things never got very fast, but it nonetheless felt like a workout.

This morning there were five or six of us up on the levee at six-o'dark. The temperature was till in the 40s with a significant north wind, and by the time I was past Williams Blvd. I was on my own, so I just settled into an easy pace, turning around just before the Luling bridge, since I knew the headwind on the way back would cost me some time, which it did. So it was a nice smooth and easy 39 miles for me this morning, probably a couple mph slower than it would have been if I hadn't been on my own. The next few days should be windy but otherwise pretty good until the next cold front lumbers through at some point on Saturday or Sunday.

Better Judgement

Riding straight into the storm Friday morning.

The weather battles continued most of last week, which I guess is par for the course this time of year. Likewise for flat tires, both tubed and tubeless. I rushed out to Wednesday's WeMoRi with the temperature in the 40s, and not surprisingly found a number of the usual riders were playing hooky that morning. On the plus side, it did keep the speed down a notch, if that's even a plus. The forecast for the next few days was looking particularly bad with a front coming through and then likely stalling on top of us. In those kinds of situations the only thing to do is wait until morning, look out the window, check the radar, and guess.

So Thursday morning it was not looking bad at all. The temperature was in the low 50s with a moderate east wind as I made my way down the still not-quite-finished Neron Place to Carrollton Avenue and then to the levee. For some reason the turnout for Thursday's ride was a little bigger than usual, which is to say there were maybe seven of us up there in the dark next to the recently re-painted "pipes" that had already been decorated with more extremely non-artistic graffiti. Unfortunately, by the time we were past the airport there were only four of us left, and then Subway turned back at the Little Dip, leaving just three of us. We were going pretty well with a nice little tailwind, though, so I was just trying not to think too much about the ride back. Fortunately, we picked up Boyd on his Pinarello e-bike shortly thereafter, which turned out to be a blessing for the ride back. Boyd is doing great after having to deal with some AFib problems that resulted in an ablation plus a pacemaker, and with the assist from the Pinarello he was taking nice long steady pulls into the wind until he peeled off for home at Florida Street. I was happy to have gotten in the full ride, but things were not looking too promising for Friday and Saturday.

Saturday morning flooding - State Street at S. Claiborne

Friday morning I looked at the radar and decided that the rain wouldn't hit us until maybe 9 am. The forecast model seemed to agree with that, so I headed out to meet the Friendly Friday group, what little there was of it. I think we started out with just Steven, Charles, Mitchell, Dave, and me, so the pace was nice and steady heading out to Seabrook on Lakeshore Drive. I was still feeling confident that I'd made the right call on the weather ... until we turned back toward the east. Just as we came around the loop at Seabrook it felt like the temperature suddenly dropped ten degrees and the wind shifted almost 180°. I remarked, "That's not a good sign," and looked up to see an ominously dark sky ahead of us. A moment later it started to rain, and a moment after that it started to pour down rain. We turned off of Lakeshore Drive, and Charles and I headed straight home down Wisner while the others headed home toward Metairie. Dave had dropped off the pace shortly after we'd gotten onto Lakeshore Drive so I was thinking  he was the smart one and got home dry. I was wrong, though. It turned out that he had continued on the regular route behind us, so had to battle all of that alone. I was well soaked through-and-through long before getting home, of course. When I took my shoes off I had to pour the water out of them and then set everything in front of the basement box fan to dry. I rushed upstairs and jumped in the shower right away so I wouldn't get chilled.

More rain ahead - Saturday on the levee.

By Saturday my shoes were almost dried out but the streets weren't. In fact, the torrential rain that had started in the middle of the night and was still coming down had flooded a lot of streets in New Orleans, partly thanks to some non-functional drainage pumps that had "power issues." Situation normal. There was no question that the Saturday Giro wasn't going to happen, so I didn't even get out of bed until around 7 am. I was scheduled to attend the Tulane playoff game at 3:30 that day, so I was looking for a little break in the weather. Around 10:00 it looked like there might be a little respite from the rain, so against my better judgement I went out on the old Orbea (didn't want to risk another flat on the Bianchi) with the idea of riding out to the Dip and back on the levee. Given the meteorological uncertainties of the day I stuffed my rain jacket into my pocket before heading out. At least it wasn't cold, so I knew that even if I got rained on, which I fully expected to happen, I probably wouldn't be too miserable. Well, I didn't even get to Williams Blvd. before I started feeling the raindrops. Up ahead to the northwest the sky was black, and when I started hearing nearby thunder, I stopped and put on my jacket. I probably rode less than a mile further before the rain got heavy and the gap between the lightning and thunder got down to about a second, so I made a U-turn and started back. At least I had a little tailwind and there was nobody on the bike path, well until I saw Will W heading in the opposite direction. Granted, the rain had slackened up a little bit by then. I rode back by way of Audubon Park and Tulane to minimize time in traffic. By the time I got back home and pulled off my soaking wet shoes (again) my front tire was dead flat from some big chunk of glass I must have picked up along Broadway. The flooding around there had washed a lot of stuff out into the street.

Took the Orbea out for a bath Saturday.

Finally, the weather was looking a little better for the Sunday Giro. It was still warm enough for basically summer kit. I got to Starbucks half an hour early, as usual, and sipped on a cup of Christmas Blend as riders started to arrive. There was a pretty good group by 7 am when we headed out. The Seabrook bridge still  has the right lane blocked off, but of course that's where most of us ride since we'd probably get run over by speeding cars in the left lane. As we got close to the top of the bridge, I heard Charles' tire explode rather dramatically as he rode over one of the many bits of debris that have accumulated in the right lane. The group eased up and stopped on the other side of the steel grate at the top while I stopped with him just before it. He'd already had a puncture on the way out to the ride that had sealed itself, but this was a big slash that no amount of sealant was going to help. So began the long and messy process of getting a tubeless tire off the rim in order to put a boot and tube inside. The nut holding the valve in place was frozen and it took quite a while for Charles to coax it off and pour the sealant out of the tire. I had a piece of race number to use as a boot and three CO2 cartridges, so we put Charles' spare tube in with the usual great difficulty that you'd expect with a tubeless tire, only to discover that the tube must have gotten pinched by the tire lever. Luckily I had two tubes with me and two more CO2 cartridges. About that time we heard the drawbridge horn blowing and waved goodbye to the group that was on the other side.

So we finally got the second tube in and inflated, only to find that the boot had moved in the process and the tube was now bulging through the slash in the tire. We were now down to one tube and one CO2, so we dropped the tire pressure down to about 30 psi and Charles headed straight home while I continued on, probably fifteen minutes behind the group. By then, the drawbridge had been back down for a while. Charles didn't make it more than a few miles before having to throw in the towel and call an Uber. On Hayne Blvd. I ran into Howard who had turned back at Bullard to look for us. He turned around and we rode out together, finally turning around well before Highway 11 when we saw the group on its way back.

My little "neutral support" episode had cost about ten miles, so after the ride I went down to the levee with Chris and rode out a few miles to make up the difference. As I started back I heard, "Hey Randy! Get on!" behind me. It was Will and Mark who had done the shuffle route after the Giro and were on their way back along the levee. Will was kind of in high Zone 2 mode just motoring along smoothly, so I had a nice ride back to Oak Street where he continued on to the park and I split off for home. All-in-all it was a wet, low-mileage, low-intensity week that was actually a little better than I would have predicted earlier in the week.

Monday's Mellow Monday ride was pretty normal, although for some reason my legs felt a little sore. It may have been from shoveling river sand out of the street and back to where the rain had washed it out from. The roadwork people had just dumped river sand onto the space between the sidewalk and the street after they re-did the sidewalk, and without any grass, and considering the much greater slope, a couple hundred pounds of sand get washed into the gutter now every time it rains. I put down some grass seed last week but I'm not too hopeful that it will actually germinate this time of year.