No Good Deed

After another particularly fast levee ride on Thursday I wasn't feeling too bad about missing the easy Friday morning ride this week. It was staff service day at Tulane, aka "Wave of Green," and I'd volunteered for a day of construction work with Habitat for Humanity. Along with a whole lot of other people, I got on the bus and ended up way down on Frenchman Street where they were building a number of homes. When they asked for people to work on the roof I raised my hand since I figured it was better to stay above all of the people who were probably going to be dropping hammers and nails all day. It was practically crowded up there - I guess there were about eight of us -- but at least the sky was cloudy so it wasn't too hot. Once I got up there I quickly realized that I'd better stay away from the edge because some sort of allergy or head congestion was making me dizzy every time I turned my head too quickly. Once we got the felt paper down and the first couple of rows of shingles done my head was clearing up and I was finally able to be a little more productive, although it was rather difficult pulling nails out of my pants pocket since the apparently had run out of nail bags. Damn, I really should have stopped by Freret Hardware and picked up one of the tool belts they had on sale. All that roofing I'd done back in high school and college came back to me very quickly and soon I was wishing all those other people would just get out of my way because I was definitely on a roll, running up and down the slope retrieving shingles and having a great time nailing them down.

When it started to rain a bit before 2:00 we finally climbed down, soaking wet, and boarded the buses back to Tulane. The good thing about having to quit early, however, was that meant I'd be able to make it to the Tulane Student Organizations Expo where we had a table for the cycling club. I was supposed to ride rollers behind the table, mainly to attract some attention since there were probably fifty different organizations there trying to recruit new members. I ended up doing two solid hours on the rollers trying not to stare too much at the girls.

Well, by 10 pm that night as I was finishing up the start list for Sunday's Time Trial Championship I knew I was in trouble. My quads were getting really, really stiff and sore. It was the same kind of soreness I get if I suddenly decide to go for a run after spending all year doing nothing but riding. We're talking actual tissue damage here. I went to bed around midnight hoping for the best, but forgetting to set my alarm clock.

Luckily I woke up around 6 am, which would have been fine except that I was supposed to meet a rider who was in town from Miami at 6:15. My legs hurt like hell, but I hobbled down to the basement and rushed out into the darkness anyway. There was already a light mist falling, and by the time we got to Starbucks it was getting light enough to see how bad the sky really looked. We were definitely going to get wet. Of course the turnout was very light because of the weather, and perhaps also because of the impending Time Trial, but we headed out anyway in a light drizzle. The plan was to ride out Leon C. Simon, cross over the two bridges, and then head back for a lap or two around City Park if possible. The real rain caught up to us on the way back, and between my sore legs and the increasing rain I figured this ride wasn't really doing me anything but harm so when we got back to Marconi I just headed home. It never stopped raining for the rest of the day, but finally stopped for the most part around 7 or 8 pm.

It's 10 pm now and I can barely walk down a flight of stairs without wincing in pain, so I think I'm going to have to skip the TT tomorrow. You know what they say, "No good deed goes unpunished!" That doesn't mean I don't have to show up, however, since I'm one of the referees. That means a 5 am wake-up so I can load up the car and get out there by 6 am to set up for the 6:45 start of registration. I doubt I'll be walking normally tomorrow, but what I'm really dreading is the possibility of rain. The forecast is calling for a 70% probability.

So tomorrow the 29th is the 5-year anniversary of Katrina and there are constant stories and reminders on TV. We had evacuated on the morning of the 28th, so the last thing I wrote before the hurricane was late at night on the 27th. It was a short post that I wrote up after watching the news and realizing that the Mayor was probably going to call for a mandatory evacuation the next morning, which he did. That post ended with the sentence, "I think this is going to be bad." It was. We were on the road all the next day and I wasn't able to post anything again until the 30th as the city was beginning to flood from the broken floodwalls. By the following day it was becoming clear that we wouldn't be going home for a long time and we didn't know if we'd even have a home to which to go.

Teasing Us

Tuesday morning came up fast. Faster than the sun, it seemed. A bit before 6 am I opened the basement door and looked up at the eastern sky. It seemed a whole lot darker than it had just a week earlier, so I rummaged around and found my little headlight, fumbled for a while trying to get it clamped to the handlebar (for reasons I wouldn't discover until this morning), and headed off, safely enclosed within a bubble of flashing light-emitting diodes, for the levee bike path. My legs felt stiff and tired and I was reminded of the quote, "Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug." I was already sinking in to a state of depression due to the aforementioned reminder of the approach of the dark mornings of winter when I noticed that Woody and Rob were out on their time trial bikes again. So needless to say the ride went from fast to faster and I went from the front to the back. I just wasn't up for a fight, I guess, so I was happy to sit in well behind the rotation, not that it was all that much easier to do so.

There was a new rider with us on Tuesday. Zack is a Tulane student from San Francisco who had just gotten to town, put his bike together probably the night before, and rushed off down the streets of Carrollton in the dark to find the morning ride. The first thing he found a New Orleans pothole where he crashed, but still got to the ride on time despite some road rash and twisted brake levers. Considering the horsepower at the front of the paceline that day he'd unwittingly jumped right into the deep end, so to speak. He hung on pretty well for most of the way out and then jumped back in for a little while when we came blasting past on the way back. That evening I got a facebook message from him saying that his frame was cracked, so he'll be stranded until a replacement arrives.

Anyway, I was kind of preoccupied that morning because I planned on taking the car in to the Volvo dealer a much-needed control arm repair and a slightly overdue timing belt replacement. Taking a Volvo in to the dealer is always a traumatic experience similar to handing one's wallet to a guy wearing a ski mask and holding a gun to your head. I took the free taxi ride back home and rode in to the office only to later learn that the car would actually be ready by the end of the day, assuming I thought it was worth $1,200 in cold hard cash. So around 4:30 I called the cab company back for my free ride back to the dealer, waited about forty minutes for them to arrive, and picked up the car after commiserating with one of the Tulane faculty members who was picking up her own Volvo and was about to shell out $500 because she'd lost her fancy-dancy electronic "key." Now we all know that one can easily purchase a perfectly nice laptop complete with wireless and software for $500, so there is just no getting around the fact that $500 for a key fob, however electronic it might be, is just a high-tech way of holding a car for ransom. But I digress. The bottom line is that both The Daughter's car and ours are reasonably road-worthy again for the bargain price of around $7,500. The fact that this wad of cash might have been sufficient for the purchase of, ohh let's say a new 14 lb. Van Dessel Rivet decked out with Campi Record or Cervelo R3SL with SRAM Red has, sadly, not escaped my notice.

Anyway, that's just water under the bridge now, and I'm a creature of habit, so rather than drench my sorrows in cheap Merlot and sleep late, I headed out Wednesday morning for the usual training ride. The weather this morning was really teasing us. It was actually not hot. I mean, it must have actually been in the 70s for a little while, before sunrise. It felt absolutely spectacular. What didn't feel spectacular, however, was my front brake. I'd noticed it on the Tuesday ride. The brake lever had a lot more resistance than normal and I kept running through my head all the things that might have caused it. I was thinking that perhaps something, such as copious amounts of sweat, had gummed up the works, or that one of the cable housing ends had collapsed. Whatever it was, it wasn't getting better, so I reluctantly planned to take it all apart some time soon to investigate.

The Wednesday ride was a nice traditional one -- 23-24 mph, nice smooth paceline, long pulls, no surprises. It was just what I needed. I even got to the end without being completely drenched in sweat for the first time in weeks. As I spun my way back home through the neighborhood my mind came back to that brake lever problem. Suddenly a little light bulb (the incandescent type, of course) appeared above my head. I reached my hand around the bottom of the headlight mount that I'd installed on Tuesday. Yep. Sure enough, I'd gotten the blasted front brake cable *inside* the clamp, practically squashing it against the handlebar. I released the clamp. Problem solved! If only it was always that easy. An hour later I rode to work by way of the Reily Center where I signed up for the Sept. 11 CPR course. Tulane's club sports folks require a couple of people to have CPR training, and at the bargain basement price of $10, and considering my friend Stan's recent massive heart attack, how could I refuse? I rode through campus, which this time of year is filled with bright young students, and then to the office by way of Audubon Park where I spotted that moss-covered bike.

Just Across the Border

The 5 pm start time of the Masters criterium of the Meridian-Cuba Challenge Omnium up in Meridian was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Dave and I didn't need to leave until the luxurious hour of 11 am. On the other hand, it was going to be pretty warm up there in the middle of Mississippi. I'd ridden the Meridian criterium course a few times before. It has a nice mix of features -- some nice tight corners, some rough road surfaces, a nice little climb, and a fast downhill turn leading into the long and wide finish straight. On the drive up I could tell that Dave was psyched for this one. I was feeling a little uncertain about my prospects, however. Looking around at the other masters riders in attendance, I figured it would be a good race. The Gulf Coast team, based in Biloxi, had six riders on the start list, and Alabama Masters had Jim Brock, Andy Maddux and Miroslav Novak on hand. Also in the mix were Mitch Evans from Baton Rouge and Lonnie Kennedy from Mesa Cycles up in St. Louis (he has family down here). I figured it would be an aggressive race. As we warmed up I told Dave that Lonnie was an experienced breakaway artist and pointed out some of the other riders who I thought would animate the race.

The race started spot on time and the attacks started soon thereafter. I felt like I was on the ropes almost from the start, but didn't dare drop too far back from the front. After a few solo attacks were pulled back I found myself in a somewhat promising one of four or five riders. It was still very early and I was not much help and after a lap or two we were brought back. Shortly after that Tony Scott from Peachtree and Tim Carbonneau from Gulf Coast took off. The timing was good and the response from the tired pack was weak. A few more laps and the break was out of sight and the pace eased up a little bit, but there were still some attacks. I had already burned a lot of matches but I really didn't want to be sprinting for fourth place so I was still doing my best to help pull those back. Just after I'd put in a big effort doing that, Lonnie attacked hard on the technical part of the circuit. Since he was racing in the 55+ category in this combined 40+/55+ race, there wasn't much of an effort to go after him, although I would have been nice if Dave or I had been able to tag along. We were probably four or five laps from the finish when the lead break lapped the field, but since they didn't try to blow through to the front I doubt most of the riders realized it. With a couple of laps to go I started working hard to maintain a spot near the front, and with one to go looked around to find Dave. I caught a glimpse of him behind me, so I figured I'd go earlier than usual for the sprint and hope he was still on my wheel by then. There didn't seem to be any sort of big team leadout on the last lap, so things got a little tight coming down the hill into the last turn and I was a few spots farther back than I wanted to be. Just before the turn a couple of guys came screaming through on the inside and I changed my line just a bit to catch a little bit of that draft. I was probably already in a 53x14, but as soon as we straightened out I was out of the saddle and looking for more gears. I was still way too far back, but the run-in to the finish is a long wide slightly uphill drag so two or three of the guys in front of me started to fade. I got lined up a few bike lengths behind the wheel that was moving forward the fastest and ended up coming in second in the pack sprint with Dave right behind me in third. Since two 40+ riders had been in the break, that meant we were 4th and 5th. I was a little angry with myself for missing the crucial break, but on the other hand I was glad to have finally put in a decent sprint after so many disappointing efforts this year.

After a nice dinner at the local Olive Garden with Vivian and Elise, it was back to the Super8 to start worrying about Sunday's road race. The road race that starts in Cuba, Alabama, is a pretty tough one with lots of hills and long sections of hot chip-seal that make your bike feel like it's suddenly ten pounds heavier and you're riding through wet sand. Almost from the start of the road race I knew I was in trouble. My legs were loading up way too quickly on every little climb and I was seriously wondering if I'd be able to keep from getting from dropped on the big climb about ten or eleven miles in. Just after we started we figured out that two of the riders who had finished ahead of us weren't riding the road race, so suddenly Dave an I were in 2nd and 3rd for the Omnium. On the other hand, Donald Davis was on hand, and although he wouldn't be eligible for the Omnium since he hadn't ridden the criterium, it was soon obvious that he was not planning on taking any prisoners in the road race. As I'd expected, there was a big surge up the "big" climb, but somehow I remained more or less in contact. Right after that, though, a break went off the front with Donald, Dave and a few others. The pack wasn't quite ready to concede defeat yet, so after a long chase it was pulled back by the time we were about halfway around the course (we were doing two laps of a long loop). By then I was camped out near the back of the group wondering why my legs were feeling so lousy. A little while later I saw Donald ride off the front again, and a little while after that I saw that another rider had bridged up to him. I wasn't sure who it was and although I did a little work to try and keep the gap from getting too big, I wasn't getting much help. I really should have figured it out. One of the riders who was working hard trying to mount a chase at the front was in the 55+ race, but Lonnie, who was leading the 55+ race, wasn't up there. Anyway, the break was soon a minute or so up the road. Around that time we started to figure out who exactly was up the road and I realized that none of the 40+ riders were chasing because the other rider in the break was Miroslav who was in the 55+ race. Since Donald wasn't in the Omnium, the Gulf Coast guys, who I guess were focused on protecting their teammate's lead in the omnium, weren't interested in chasing the break at all. That's about when Lonnie discovered that one of the riders up the road was in the 55+ race. He made an effort to get a chase going, but it was way too late and there weren't enough surviving 55+ riders left to do it. After that, the pace in the pack really slowed down. It was getting hotter and hotter and I could tell that some of the riders were starting to struggle. On the other hand, my legs were actually starting to feel a little better. I was still reluctant to put my nose into the wind, however. Ten miles from the finish it was starting to look like a pack finish for 2nd place, and although I did a bit of work to chase down some brief attacks, for the most part Dave and I were just watching and waiting as the pace occasionally dropped down into the mid-teens. I think that the Gulf Coast guys would have done better to have gotten together and really pushed the pace at this point, because they might well have dropped a number of riders, including me. Instead, the pace remained slow enough that I was actually feeling better than I had on the first lap.

After we made the final turn, three miles before the finish, things started to pick up as riders began thinking about the impending uphill sprint finish. About a mile before the finish the course goes over a little rise as it crossed the interstate, and at that point Mitch Evans launched a well-timed attack. Dave was right there and went with him. The rest of the pack looked around at each other to see who would start the chase. They got a good gap as the sprinters watched each other and I thought they would make it to the finish. Dave was figuring that he could make it ahead of the group, but even if he didn't, he knew I'd be surfing wheels back in the pack and would be ready to put in a good sprint. Our sprint really didn't start in earnest until just before the climb, maybe 400 meters before the finish. My suddenly recovered legs felt good and I went hard for it from the start, passing a few riders on the steepest part of the climb, one of whom was Mitch. As the road levelled out a bit at the 200M flag I dumped it into the 12 and crossed the line in 3rd place, a few seconds behind Dave who had held on for 2nd (remember that Donald had been in that 2-man break most of the day and had finished minutes earlier). So as it turned out, Dave won the omnium and I was 2nd, so thanks to some good luck and satisfying sprints we felt like we had a pretty decent weekend. Elise took some great photos of the masters race, one of which is above.

Woody

Thursday morning I went out as usual to the levee for the long Thursday ride. There was a pretty big group and I was expecting to get a little exercise during the 40-something mile ride. When I spotted Woody turning around to join us on his TT bike, all I could say was, "Oh, oh." Somehow, a few miles down the road, I found myself on Woody's wheel. In fact, Woody's rear wheel is pretty much all I remember about the entire ride. Of course, it's not surprising that I remember it so well since I probably spent ten miles with my nose about two feet from it. Once Woody got to the front, he settled in to a steady 28 mph pace and just kept going, and going, and going. When he finally pulled off I did about fifteen pedal strokes at the front and pulled off, looking for the wheel of someone with a little more of a draft. After the turnaround, guess what? Yeah, same thing. Woody went to the front and just rolled for miles and miles.

So the Tulane Cycling team kit prices are about ready to go and although the actual team members will get small discounts, and most will just place their orders in person at the first meeting currently scheduled for Sept. 1, everyone else can order from the BikeReg site. I think Murali will get the link up on the cycling.tulane.edu soon to be updated home page in a day or so. There will be a student activities expo on the quad on Friday the 27th where we'll have a table and hopefully someone riding rollers. Unfortunately, I will probably miss it because that's the Wave of Green day when I'll be doing the Habitat for Humanity thing somewhere in town.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to Meridian, MS for an afternoon criterium, followed by a road race the next morning in Cuba, AL at the Meridian-Cuba Challenge. This is one of those races that just keeps trucking along year after year. It may not be the fanciest race around, but it's challenging and consistent and the courses are good. It's a good 3-hour drive, but fortunately my race tomorrow doesn't start until 5 pm. I'll probably end up leaving before noon anyway so I can watch some of the earlier races, but at least it won't be another 4:30 am wake-up call. It looks like we have only a few teammates going this year, and for various logistical reasons I'll be going up alone and coming back accompanied by The Great White Box, the generator, and various other items of race equipment. The LAMBRA Time Trial Championship is the weekend after, so we'll need all of that stuff down here. It seems early, but the TT championship will mark the end of the local road racing season. Fortunately, there's a good stage race in Pensacola in mid-September that I'm hoping to make, and of course there's always the Six Gap Century Sept. 26. I really need to find a cassette with something bigger than a 25 this year!

The Rest of the Story

The rest of the story from Ruston: So Sunday's road race up in Ruston was on a short 5-mile loop that I remembered from some races a long time ago. What I remembered most was the final kilometer-long stair-step climb up to the finish line and the full minute I lost once when I blew up one year at the start of the sprint. The back side of the course featured a couple of significant climbs and one nice descent before the final turn leading up to the big climb. The route is so far out in the middle of nowhere that there's grass growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. The temperature forecast for the day was about the same as Saturday's, which called for highs in the low 100s. Fortunately, the Masters race was in the second wave, starting around 9 am, and the distance was short - about 30 miles. Of course, than meant six laps and six times up the hills in fairly rapid succession.

As the earlier Women's race was ending I pulled the bike down from the rooftop carrier, filled my bottles, and rolled down the road for a little warmup. When I looked down I was surprised to find my rear derailleur canted inward at a fairly dramatic angle, no doubt a result of the prior day's run-in with Dona's front wheel. It was bad enough that the derailleur was rubbing the spokes when it was on the 25, and I thought to myself how lucky I was that it hadn't snagged a spoke on the final climb the day before. I was so out of it at that point that I don't even remember what gear I was in. I assume I used the 25 but don't remember hearing anything hitting the spokes. I stopped and carefully bent it back into alignment, more or less, wondering how many times I'd get away with that before the aluminum derailleur hanger broke. I had a spare one in my bag, but since one of the tiny Allen bolts holding the old one onto the bike was mangled, replacing it would probably require power tools and another bolt. Anyway, I got it all working fine in plenty of time.

The Masters race was fairly animated with a number of breakaways by LaS'port and S3 riders that were, no doubt, designed to make Donald and me work. Since Donald was riding pretty defensively, I ended up chasing down a couple of them pretty much all by myself. My legs were feeling OK, but I knew I'd end up paying for the extra work I was doing. It might have been smarter, from an Omnium standpoint, to let one of the breaks go so that the 1st place points would get sucked up by someone who couldn't win the omnium, but I always have a hard time with that sort of thing. Halfway through the last lap someone attacked hard just after we'd been passed (once again - we passed each other a couple of times) by some of the Cat. 4 riders who were apparently having a much faster race than we. The pack didn't respond at all and for a little while I wondered if it had been a Cat. 4 rider. It wasn't. I decided I didn't want to race for second place, so I went to the front and pulled it back, finally making contact just before the start of the final climb, probably about a mile before the finish. Halfway up the hill Donald and Grant attacked up the left side and I was too slow to go with them, so I ended up finishing 3rd in the race and ultimately 3rd in the omnium. The last 200 meters were past the steepest part of the climb and it took forever to get to the finish line. Despite the heat and low Masters turnout, it was a fun race on some really challenging courses.

In the earlier Women's race Mignon and Ashley had finished 4th and 5th, which I think was a little disappointing, giving them 3rd and 4th in the overall omnium for the weekend. We hung around for a few laps of the Ca.t 1/2 race, but it was getting pretty hot and with a 5 hour drive ahead of us we left before the finish. On the way home I learned that Mike W had crashed pretty heavily during the Giro Ride - something about the traffic barricades down at the end of Hayne and the fact he was riding his track TT bike with, I assume, just a front brake.

This morning's levee ride got uncharacteristically fast for a Wednesday when Woody hit the front on his TT bike. A few miles earlier Scott had yelled to him that his saddle bag was starting to come loose, but apparently he hadn't heard it. I planned on reminding him about it, but once the pace picked up I forgot all about it. Someone pulled out of the paceline as the speed ramped up to 27 or 28 and I soon found myself on Woody's wheel searching for a draft. Suddenly I saw something fall and knew immediately what it was. His seat bag had fallen and wedged itself between the rear wheel and the frame, completely locking up his rear wheel. Woody went left. I went right and got by him as he skidded to a stop, burning completely through his rear tire and twisting or bending his front derailleur until the crankarm caught it. Somehow nobody went down. This all happened just as we were passing one of the ubiquitous police cars up there, so by the time I'd slowed down, turned around, and gotten back to him, Woody was already loading his bike into the officer's car to get a ride back to the parking lot. The pace got a lot slower after that!

drisKILL

Sweat was already dripping from my face as I pinned my number on for the noon start of the Mount Driskill race up here in Ruston, LA. I'd driven up with Mignon, leaving around 5:30 am and arriving shortly before 11. This was going to be a tough 50 miles. As if the jagged course profile wasn't enough, we would also be dealing with temperatures in the upper 90s. The masters field was small, about a dozen in size, so there wasn't going to be any place to hide. We weren't more than six or seven miles into the first 25 mile loop when I pushed the pace up a rather unimpressive little hill and discovered that two of us had opened a rather large gap. I rolled through and pretty soon we had maybe 30 seconds on the field, but the rider I was with was starting to have second thoughts and dropped off. I looked back and could see a few riders trying to bridge, so I kept rolling hoping that we could make something of it. Soon we had a nice group of Donald Davis, Grant Dona, one other rider, and me. We kept the pace pretty high and the next time I looked back I couldn't see the field. I was feeling pretty good at that point. We lost one rider but kept working together as we approached the end of the first lap. Donald took off early to go for the hot spot, but I stuck with Grant and we ground our way up the steep climb. I shifted up one cog and stood up to sprint, and when I did Grant did the same. I just didn't have the heart to come around him after he'd pulled most of the way up the hill. I guess I'm getting soft in my old age.

As we started the second lap I made the mistake of not taking anything from the neutral feed. I still had a large bottle of Heed and water, and about a quarter bottle of regular water, so I thought I'd be OK. Five miles later I was starting to get the feeling I'd made a mistake. It was getting really, really hot and I was starting to suffer on the hills a bit. I think we all were. By the time we were halfway around Donald was starting to skip some pulls. I had no idea how far back the rest of the race was, but I knew that our speed had dropped considerably. Grant seemed to be suffering the least. About five miles from the finish Donald pulled over and said, "sorry guys" and eased off the back. I think Grant picked up the pace just a bit at that point. I had already been rationing my water for at least five miles and knew I was approaching heat exhaustion territory. When we got to the bottom of the final climb up to the finish line, the Mt. Driskill "summit," I told Grant I was done and watched him ride up the hill as I shifted down into my lowest gear to trudge up that final kilometer. It took me a good half hour after the race to get my body temperature back to normal, and that was after downing three delicious slushee type things and a bottle of cold water. It was a tough day on the asphalt. Stephen Mire, the race organizer, did a great job with the race - everything went off on time, results were quick, there were lots of cold drinks and even watermelon. Tomorrow will be a different course, but I have a feeling it won't feel any easier. At least we'll start a little earlier.

TD-5

What was left of Tropical Depression #5 came barrelling right through New Orleans early this morning, bringing some truly impressive thunder, lightning and torrential rain. I guess it was before 5 am when the really heavy rain started, and by the time it finally let up there was a fair amount of street flooding in the usual places. Feeling kind of desperate for a ride, considering I'd missed both Monday and Wednesday, I decided to take the rain bike out for a quick 20 miles before work. I left around 7 am, but which time the rain had eased up considerably and there was just a light drizzle falling. I put on the rain jacket and headed down the street. A few blocks later I could see that Carrollton Ave. was flooded, so I turned at Short Street. The only problem was that the intersection there was about three feet deep, so for a little while I was up to my water bottle in water.

When I got to Montecello, just a block from the levee, traffic on River Road was practically at a standstill because of flooding on either side of the railroad tracks. Once again I dove into the deep water, riding the last block of Monticello in about two feet of water, which BTW is like riding on a trainer with the resistance set to high. Once I got up onto the levee, though, I was high and dry and had the entire thing to myself. I took a couple of photos and then got in eight or ten easy miles with my rain jacket flapping in the wind before turning around. By the time I got back the flooding was already subsiding as the pumps started to make some headway on the rain. Even so, I had one more stretch of deep water to circumnavigate (I rode on the sidewalk for a block or so) before getting back home where I immediately cleaned and lubed the chain. I'll have to re-grease the old classic Campi hubs and bottom bracket tonight since I'm quite sure that water got into them while they were submerged.

I just signed up for this weekend's Mt. Driskill Omnium in Ruston, about five hours away, which features two very hilly road races for which I'm feeling quite ill-prepared and possibly over-geared. I have to bring some of the LAMBRA equipment up there anyway. Mt. Driskill is the highest point in Louisiana, towering some 535 feet (yes, I said "feet") above sea level. I hope the altitude doesn't get me! Actually, the steepness of the climbs up there is definitely something to be worried about.

Rain Day

When it rains, it pours. As I'd planned, I skipped riding Monday morning on the dubious theory that my legs needed a day off the bike. Midway though my morning shower, however, I started to notice a lot of police and ambulance sirens. When I looked outside I could see there had been a fairly serious accident a block away, at Claiborne and Broadway - air bags deployed, smashed minivan, ambulance. Even so, there seemed to be a lot more police cars than usual. I threw on some clothes and walked outside where I could see numerous police officers walking around on the other side of Claiborne. Apparently the driver of the offending vehicle had taken off running after the accident (the victims were uninjured thanks to their airbags), and the police were searching for him in bushes, underneath houses, etc. I presume they found him, because a little while later one of the ambulances moved a coule of blocks away where there was a cluster of police officers. By then I was running late, so I scarfed down a couple of leftover Gulf shrimp and headed off to work. So that's how my week started.

The Tuesday morning levee ride had a pretty big group, but was relatively civilized this week, which is to say that the group mostly stayed together. It helped that John flatted on the way out and most everyone stopped to wait.

The Tulane cycling club's jersey design is finally ready and Rich has put up an order page on BikeReg (may still be some refinement to that before he officially announces it), so things are moving along on that front again. By early afternoon I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room with my dad for one of his routine visits. We were there a good hour for a ten-minute visit.

After that I drove up to Baton Rouge with The Wife to check out some reported damage to her mother's house that has been vacant for the last five years. We arrived to find that the entire road in front of the house is completely ripped up and in the process of being widened, so we had a little hike in the mud just to get there. What we found was that someone had gotten in there and broken every single pane of glass in the entire house, kicked in every door, ripped down every light fixture, kicked holes in the walls, and generally had a fun old time doing as much destruction as possible. So we filed a police report just on principle since there's only liability insurance on the property at this point, stopped for dinner at the local Outback, and got home around 9:30.

Naturally, since I'd already taken one day off the bike this week, this morning I stepped out the door all dressed for riding, only to be greeted by a loud clap of thunder and rain. We're already getting rain ahead of the tropical depression that's out in the Gulf. It's projected track has it heading straight this way, but all indications are that it won't be very serious -- just very wet. Maybe I'll ride out to the lakefront this evening, weather permitting.

Stan Truxillo, who had that massive heart attack last week, had bypass surgery yesterday and seems to be doing great. Two hours of surgery for four bypasses, and by 5 pm he was back on his feet. If all goes as planned he'll probably be out of the hospital in a few days.

The Truth

The Time Trial is often referred to as The Race of Truth. That may be close to the truth, but the real race of truth is the Team Time Trial. You see, in an individual TT, there's always ample opportunity for self-delusion, rationalization, and generally convincing oneself that one doesn't really suck as badly as the stopwatch might indicate. In a Team TT, on the other hand, there's no hiding from the reality of one's own suckage, even when you're the smallest guy in the paceline.


So Saturday morning I was in the car at 6 am on my way up to Baton Rouge for the annual Team Time Trial. We'd pulled together a 40+ team consisting of Jorge, Rob, Keith and me. I knew Jorge would be up for a fast pace. Keith had been riding strongly of late, and although I hadn't ridden much with Rob, I figured he'd be up to the task as well. I wasn't so sure about myself. The TTT registration process was kind of confusing, at least from the official's side of the table, but I got all of the teams and riders entered into the computer and then had twenty minutes or so to change and get in a little warmup. We got our countdown and headed out on our 51.6 km torture test. The start went smoothly, and with a little tailwind we were soon up to 28 mph despite the plan to avoid going out too fast. I was feeling OK until the road started to turn into the wind. Jorge was taking long fast pulls, Rob seemed to be having a little difficulty with the pace, and Keith and I were holding our own. Every time I'd come to the front my legs would really start to load up after about 40 revolutions. This was not a good sign since we were less than ten miles into the time trial. It was around that time that we unexpectedly lost Keith. By the time we were halfway through the second of three laps it was going like this: Jorge would pull for about a mile, usually at about 27-28 mph. He would finally pull off, at which point Rob would come through and immediately pull over. Then I'd come through and the pace would kind of grind down one or two mph until I'd pull off and Jorge would come through again. Then I'd have to really put my head down to catch onto the tail of our 3-man paceline as the pace went up again. The last lap was just plain painful. In retrospect, I guess I was probably a bit dehydrated, but I think the real problem may have been that I'd never taken enough recovery time the prior week. Anyway, we did a respectable time thanks to Jorge who pulled a good 80% of the distance. Took me a while to recover from that one! I packed the station wagon back up with the LAMBRA equipment and headed home to post the results on the website.

Sunday morning I was back on the bike at 6 am, riding out to meet the Giro Ride. There was a little breeze already, but I knew the real issue would be the heat. With a few of the regular riders still up in Louisville for Masters Nationals, the group was a little smaller than usual, and I was surprised to see Jered and Ashley who had arrived back in town at something like 4 am after a very long drive from Denver. As soon as we hit Hayne Blvd., a small group rode off the front of the still-disorganized group. After some shuffling around, we finally got a good rotation going at the front and basically chased Rob K. and his breakaway companions until they eased up around Chef Highway. That didn't last long, though and another group took off on Hayne, so we were once again chasing, finally closing in on them a mile or two before the turnaround. The effort took a pretty big toll on the pack, though, and at least half of them turned around early to meet the front group on the way back. I think everyone was getting pretty toasty by then because the whole group was rolling down Chef Highway at about twelve mph for a long time. I eventually rode up to a small group that was down the road and soon found myself doing a 2-man time trial with Steven N. as I waited for the rest of the group to awaken and come storming by. We got reabsorbed toward the end of Hayne, but after the sprint the group came apart again so a small group of us rolled off the front for the last time. We kept the pressure on until the end of the service road, but after that things eased up. We were toast -- at least I was. A couple of miles from home I sucked the last drops of water from my big insulated bottle and promised myself a real recovery day on Monday.

The Weekend Already?

It was the shortest of weeks and it was longest of weeks. Every day I'd tell myself, "I'll post an blog update tonight," and every day I'd fall asleep before I did. So here it is Friday night. It's pouring down rain outside thanks to one of those little unpredictable summer thunderstorms, and I still need to get my act together for tomorrow's team time trial over near Baton Rouge. Since I have to bring a bunch of essentials for the race (generator, clock, etc., etc.) I'll need to leave around 6 am.

So this was a long and hot week. Tuesday's long levee ride was kind of strange. The ride out to the turnaround was mostly pretty civilized until we got way out past the dip. At some point I think Donald got irritated at Howard's surges, and by the time things really got rolling on the way back I had the distinct feeling that they were battling each other up at the front. Brady was there too, so the bottom line was that the ride back was way faster than the ride out. That evening I went out to the Arena for a little practice criterium. I wasn't really into it, but nonetheless got in a pretty good workout. I was impressed with Steven Noya who launched a couple of really strong and well-timed attacks. That afternoon I'd learned that Stan Truxillo, who was a very active racer and NOBC president for a few years before moving to Texas in the mid-80s, had collapsed on a bike ride with a "massive" heart attack. Someone administered CPR and luckily the hospital in Austin was equipped to put him into therapeutic hypothermia right away. I was still fearing the worst, but when they warmed him back up early Thursday and he came out of the induced coma he seemed to be in great shape. He's now scheduled for bypass surgery on Tuesday.

By Wednesday morning I was still not feeling fully recovered from the weekend, much less the previous day, and although the morning ride was smooth and steady, I probably should have done an even easier recovery ride alone. I was certainly wishing I had on Thursday morning when the levee ride got pretty fast. Then, on the way back, I found myself off the front with VJ and Rob, both of whom were on their TT bikes. It was like doing ten miles of motorpacing. I think I went to the front twice and very briefly at that. This morning's ride was a pretty typical Friday ride, which was a good thing. Hopefully my legs will still be functional tomorrow.

In the meantime, a number of LAMBRA riders have been up in Louisville at Masters Nationals. It hasn't been going too well for some of them, apparently. I haven't gotten any reports from them yet, but I've been surprised at how far down some of the area's strongest masters have been finishing in the Road Races. On the plus side, Debbie Milne won her Road Race for the second year in a row, apparently finishing something like five minutes ahead of 2nd place. The criteriums start tomorrow.

Electrolyte Season

It's 9 pm on Monday night. The thermometer out on the porch reads 92F and the air is thick and humid. I guess they were right about that specific heat of water thing. The last few days have been a bit uncomfortable around here. Welcome to summer in New Orleans!

There weren't any conveniently located race this weekend, which is to say there was nothing within a three-hour drive. Mid-summer us usually kind of slow down south, but once we get into September there's often a little flurry of activity again, kind of like a second little mini-season. So anyway, that all meant translated into two Giro Rides for me.

With no chance of relief from the subtropical sun for the Saturday Giro, it was time to dig into the electrolyte drink mix jar. Most of the time I go with plain water, but we were now in the middle of electrolyte season. I pulled the regular water bottle out of the seat tube cage and put it aside. Instead, I grabbed one of the big bottles, dumped in a heaping scoop of Hammer electrolyte mix, and filled it to the brim with water. I would have done the same with the other bottle, but the frame triangle is so tight on the Orbea that it's kind of hard to get the big bottles in and out. So for the downtube location I went with a regular bottle with regular water.

By the time I got to Starbucks to meet the group I was already dripping sweat. I got my usual iced coffee and tried to cool down as more riders filtered in and the sun started to come up. There was already a breeze blowing as the big group finally headed out for the usual warmup spin out to Chef Highway. It got pretty fast pretty quickly. A small group rolled off the front and a minute later the pack started to chase. I was feeling pretty good, but I knew some of that was just because we had a tailwind. I always wonder if the guys at the front understand that if there's a tailwind on the way out it means there will be a headwind on the way back.

On this particular day, a number of the riders doing the damage were on TT bikes, so frankly, I didn't feel like I needed to be spending much time out in the wind myself. The lead group eased up at the end of Hayne, so things mostly came back together, but by then we'd already lost a lot of people. We wouldn't see them again until the turnaround, because once we got to Chef highway the pace went back up for the duration. Actually, it was a good workout. As expected, things slowed down a couple of notches on the way back. Yeah, I drank every drop. A bunch of us stopped at Matt's house just off Robert E. Lee to rehydrate before riding home.

Later in the day we walked down to the monthly crafts fair at Palmer Park. I was so hot that I didn't want to stop walking, so I kind of zipped through looking at the usual stuff on offer and headed home for the comfort of the a/c.

Sunday morning was kind of a repeat of Saturday, except with fewer riders and a slightly slower pace. Fast on the way out, slower on the way back. Everyone seemed pretty wilted by the time we got back, myself included. Typical mid-summer Giro Ride!

When I wasn't riding, I think I spent most of my time last weekend hiding in the air-conditioning.

Back and Forth

So I have a few nice photos from Saturday's Giro to put up and really intended to use them for a weekend blog post yesterday, but instead I opted for a little computer moratorium. I've been going back and forth among three computers and two flash drives lately and I think it all tripped the circuit-breaker in my head some time on Sunday morning. The photos are on the computer at home, and the writeup is still bouncing around in my head, and it's all taken a bit of a back seat to work and cars and trying to stay out of the sun. Maybe the Mellow Monday ride this evening will smooth things out and I'll get back to normal tonight.....

Cracked

Well, I finally made it out to one of the weekday evening time trials on the lakefront. I'd told Kenny I'd bring him some leftover race numbers and pins, so I was committed at least to the ride out there and back. Once I was there I figured I may as well get in the extra 10 km anyway, so I inserted myself into the 39-rider line, inching forward every 30 seconds until it was finally my turn to go. Of course, I was on my regular road bike, so I was kind of riding "retro style." I wasn't inclined to kill myself on this TT, so I started out at a moderate speed with a plan to wait until the last couple of kilometers before putting the hammer down. Just as I was approaching the turn-around pylon I caught a couple of riders. I passed the first one before the turn, but almost ran into the second one halfway through it. Man, those triathletes sure turn slowly! Two miles before the finish the course goes over the Bayou St. John bridge, and just before I got there Brady came flying past me. I picked up the pace a notch and practically sprinted up the bridge, but after that he steadily pulled away. His time, the best of the evening, was a minute and a half faster than mine! After crossing the line, he was so toasted that he crashed while turning around. No real damage done, though.

So Thursday morning I headed out to the morning ride and was a little surprised to find that the wind direction and speed felt more like Fall than Summer. Once again, the ride got really fast, especially the first half of the way out. It was a pretty hard ride for me, and by the time I got home I was feeling like I'd been ridden hard and put up wet.

This morning I was still feeling pretty dragged out for some reason, and even the 20 mph pace of the Friday recovery ride sometimes seemed like a struggle. The day before I'd gotten a call from the Jeep dealership up in Iowa telling me that The Daughter's car has a cracked block. This was after we'd already replaced the radiator and a/c compressor and resurfaced the cylinder heads, so we've already put $2,600 into a 2002 car and this evening they tell me replacing the engine block would be another $3,600. The car's probably only worth $5,000, so I think we're going to have to pull the plug on this one. Anybody want to buy a nice Jeep Liberty with a cracked block? Oh, yeah, it's in Iowa City. Is it better to fix it and then sell it, or try and sell it as is to someone willing to deal with the engine repair?

High Pressure

I went out to ride Tuesday morning with the best of intentions. It is getting noticeably darker now when I leave the house at 6 am, which is a somewhat depressing sign of things to come, namely Fall. I suppose I'll be able to get by without lights for another week or two, unless its cloudy, but soon enough I will be digging through that pile of stuff on the table down in the basement looking for blinky lights and wondering where those extra AAA batteries are. Yesterday's morning group was about average, and as usual the pace started getting out of hand somewhere out near the country club. There I was, sitting in the paceline somewhere around sixth or seventh wheel, looking at a gap starting to open a couple of bikes ahead of me. The usual alarms were going off in my head, but my legs were having nothing to do with them. It was one of those slowly growing gaps that you hope will close despite ample prior experience to the contrary. Mark G went around and started to bridge, but by then the little gap had expanded into a ten second crevasse. We were going around 30 mph and I could sense that things were coming apart quickly. A couple of minutes later the four or five riders were still riding away from us, our speed slackened, and the entire paceline breathed a collective sigh of relief as things settled down to a more sustainable level. I kicked myself, ever so gently, for not having gone when I knew I should have. The urge to suck wheels is indeed strong. We regrouped at the turnaround and wasted little time in kicking up the pace again, this time into a growing headwind. The group shed a few riders along the way, but that's not really unusual for these Tuesday rides.

After lunch I decided it was time to dig in with the new computer and spent some time crawling around under the desk sorting out the electrical spaghetti so that I could temporarily have both the old and the new running concurrently for a while. By the time I had to leave for a 3 pm meeting I had downloaded and installed Office 2010 and configured Outlook to get my email (well, most of it anyway).

This morning the effects of the high pressure area that's moved in were obvious. It was hot. The sky was clear and blue. We're expecting more of the same, with highs well into the 90s, for the next few days. Not bad riding weather, but the kind of stuff that makes me happy I'm not a runner. The Wednesday ride was nice and smooth today. It has become customary for this ride to stay in the 23-24 mph range with riders taking long smooth pulls. When Mike W got to the front and surged, Scott said, "Mike, what are you doing?" and he immediately eased up. Mo and I stopped off at Zotz for some coffee (we owe them 50 cents - we'd forgotten that they are cash-only) before I headed back home and ultimately to work. Today has more or less been dedicated to getting this computer set up. I've been buying and downloading and installing software, changing preferences, and transferring files via flashdrive pretty much all day. Flashdrives can be painfully slow when you're moving gigabytes at a time! Right now it's nearly 5 pm and I'm looking at the dialog box on my old computer that says "177 minutes remaining." Sheesh. At least I got all of my email archives transferred over this morning because I'm not waiting around this evening. I'm thinking I'll make my way out to the lakefront for the little 6pm 10 km time trial. I'll probably do it retro-style, on my regular road bike without the aero helmet or skinsuit or clip-ons since I'll be riding out there and back anyway.

Attitude

I knew I was going into the race with the wrong attitude. The LAMBRA criterium championship was held last Saturday over in St. Francisville on the same course we'd used for the West Feliciana Classic back in May. This was a course that didn't exactly play to my strengths, which is to say that the ability to suck wheels wasn't very helpful. So when I headed off for I-10 that morning for my early afternoon race I was kind of dreading it. The course has a short but painfully steep climb on it that totally dominates the race.

So I wasn't feeling particularly optimistic when I lined up with Dave for our 45 minute Master-40+ race. In contrast to my own attitude, Dave was totally psyched for this race. He'd been anticipating it for weeks, doing hill repeats to be ready for the sprints up the wall. He had the right attitude. If all that wasn't enough, there was a King of the Hill bonus that awarded points for the first five times up the hill. Kenny was there too. This was going to hurt.

For the first few laps I was feeling reasonably good, and in fact was no having any particular difficulty with the climb, which is to say it wasn't quite as terrible as I'd been expecting. Up ahead, Kenny and Dave were battling for the KOH points (Kenny got the $100). Nonetheless, I was only a few laps into the race when I thought to myself, "This is like a criterium course with all the fun parts removed." Once we got through the first five laps without a break going off the front, things settled down a little bit, but I was starting to struggle on the climb. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

We were probably down to five or six laps when a big gap opened up on the climb. Luckily Donald Davis lit the afterburners on the downhill and pulled us back up to the lead group. That took a lot out of him ... and me. We were down the second to last time up the hill when Tracy Martin attacked hard halfway up the climb. When I saw him launch, all I could do was look down and say, "shit!" I'd really been hoping they would wait until the last time up the hill. The front of the pack responded, but I didn't have anything left and found myself off the back with Chuck and Peter. With the lead group, now down to only six including Donald who was not quite in contact, chasing Tracy full-bore, there was no way we were going to close it up on the bell lap. Chuck pulled us around for most of that lap and we sprinted for 8th place. It took me forever to cool down after that one. I had a splitting headache and felt seriously overheated. I guess maybe I was a little dehydrated. I found a first-aid kit with some Tylenol in it and washed it down with a bottle of beer. Eventually I started to feel better, but I never even considered entering the Cat. 1/2/3 race later in the evening. On the plus side, although Tracy held out all the way to the finish, Dave was able to take the pack sprint for 2nd place. Anyway, it was actually a pretty nice event despite my lackluster attitude.

Sunday morning I thought I'd wake up with sore legs, but instead I woke up to pouring rain and perfectly fine legs. By noon the sun was shining, so I went out to the levee and rode all the way out to the "new" end. They recently added another mile and a half to the upriver end of the bike path, making for a nice 45 mile out and back from my house. I'm still wondering why I didn't have sore legs on Sunday. I guess my problem must not have been in my legs.

Meanwhile, back at the office, my new computer arrived on Friday. This will be replacing my six year old machine and I am not really looking forward to the transition. I am looking forward to the new faster computer, of course, just not the whole process of switching from one computer to the other. I set it up on the edge of my desk this evening. Next I'll have to get Outlook and email set up so I can download Office and WS-FTP and Acrobat Pro and Dreamweaver and Firefox and Photoimpact and get it working with the network printer and institutional networked applications, and transfer over twenty or thirty gigabytes of archived email and other documents. I'll probably be running back and forth between the two computers for a couple of weeks.

A Hard Week

The cold, foggy, unforgiving, and highly anticipated climb up the Tourmalet still loomed many miles ahead for the Tour riders as our group headed out for the usual Thursday morning levee ride. It had already seemed like a hard week to me, and with a difficult criterium coming up on Saturday I knew I needed recovery time more than another hammerfest up the river. The Tuesday ride had been fast and furious, and Wednesday's was no walk in the park either. Even so, I was planning on doing the training race criterium over at the Arena after work because, well, because they're so damned hard, I guess.

The weather this week has been particularly hot and humid, and I've really been missing those nice little afternoon showers that tend to cool things down a bit. When I stepped out of the office yesterday afternoon to ride back home, it was probably still in the mid-90s with nary a cloud in sight. There was also a pretty good wind blowing, which is kind of unusual for a mid-summer afternoon around here. At home I filled a couple of water bottles and headed off for the Arena, which is located immediately behind the Superdome, for another impromptu criterium. The ride out to the Arena always seems like a bit of a luxury to me compared to the after-work ride to the lakefront that I've done for the training races of years past (when they weren't tearing up Lakeshore Drive). Even at an easy relaxed pace, it takes me only about fifteen minutes to get there. Yesterday we had a group of around twenty, I guess. The first 20-minute race started out with a neutral lap, but as soon as that was over, Diego shot off the front with me, barely, in tow. Surprisingly, he stayed up there hammering away for at least three or four laps as I tried desperately to keep from getting dropped. Finally, he eased up a bit and we got a slight respite from the 28 mph pace. A few people rotated through, and I immediately noticed that Tim wasn't one of them. That could mean only one thing. Sure enough, the moment the pace slacked off, Tim attacked down the left side and promptly rode away from the rest of us, ultimately lapping the remnant of the field with four laps to go. I think we were down to just three or four by then. Anyway, despite a significant lack of motivation on my part, I managed to get in some much-needed intensity. The next race was a win-and-out. Five laps to start out and then a sprint every other lap. I waited until the third sprint to make an effort, and then continued to ride around the course for a few more laps to cool down.

The Thursday morning levee ride turned out to be faster than I'd expected. Thanks to a little tailwind on the way out, it got fast pretty early. Rob and Erich were off the front for a long time, but Erich had to turn back at some point, so it all came back together eventually. I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, not to do too much work since my legs were feeling a little tired, but just staying in the paceline at those speeds often requires a bit more than just "a little" work. I was also anticipating a hard ride back into the growing headwind. Indeed, it seemed like the return trip took forever today. When I got home I was anxious to get to the office so I could catch the last hour of the Tour. This time I got a nice video feed that was in Spanish, so I just muted that and opened up the live audio feed from Eurosport (which BTW, was lagging about a minute behind the video). It looked like it had the makings of an epic stage, but Contador and Schleck are just too evenly matched on these hard climbs and aside from a single unsuccessful attack, Contador seemed perfectly content to sit on Schleck's wheel the whole way up the mountain, knowing that he'll probably put big time on Andy in Saturday's time trial anyway. I was glad to see Horner and Armstrong finish in the top 20 in this stage. They have had a pretty hard week too!

Another Day, Another Giro

I was up early again this morning, but it wasn't to ride. You see, our garbage collectors are very reliable. Every Saturday morning at precisely 4:45 am, I am awakened by the melodious sounds of the garbage truck and its crew as they make their rounds way over on the other side of S. Claiborne Avenue. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and it this case it's the fact that I often forget to put the garbage out on Friday nights. Since they don't actually get to my house for another couple of hours, I get the questionable advantage of an early warning. On the downside, it usually costs me an hour of sleep.

So an hour later I got my sleepy self out of bed again, filled the water bottles to the brim, and rolled out toward the lakefront. Well, to be specific, I rolled out to Starbucks. The lakefront would come later.

By the time I sad down with my iced coffee, a fairly large crowd had already gathered. A bunch of the Herring guys were there, including Realdo who is still in town. I looked around, added up the horsepower, and knew it would be a fast one. With access to Lakeshore Drive blocked off once again because of the levee work, we headed off down Robert E. Lee Blvd. for the usual warmup, picking up more riders along the way. It was the calm before the storm.

As usual, it started on Hayne Boulevard, and within a couple of miles the pace went from easy to 29 mph. Next thing I knew there was a small group already off the front. We chased. They eased up at the end of Hayne, so it was grupo compacto as headed toward Hayne Blvd. It didn't really slow down a whole lot, though. As the group got rolling again after making the turn onto Chef Highway, I pulled out the camera and, with great effort, rode up near the front to take a few pictures. They never seem to come out very good when we're going like 27 mph, though. By the time I got the camera back into my pocket and got back into the draft I needed a rest. Photography can be very tiring! Fortunately, the wind today was light, making it easy, relatively speaking, to sit in when necessary, and yeah, it was occasionally necessary. It was good training, though.

Anyway, the Giro was good but uneventful today. I put in a couple of short sprints up the overpasses. Halfway up the Seabrook bridge I could have sworn my rear tire was soft. It wasn't. Must have been my legs.

Rust and Clouds

I sat up in bed, taking inventory of the morning's crop of stiff joints and muscles. One calf muscle in particular was complaining, amid the usual dull cacophony of reluctant leg and back muscles. I remembered what Bob Perrin had said to me once when I was first starting to notice the effects of aging (which was over twenty years ago now). "It takes a long time to warm up old meat." He followed it up with something like, "Just wait until you hit 40." Indeed. I stepped out of bed and felt a sharp but familiar twinge in my right hip. It's been acting up lately. Although there's always the temptation to give in and pull the covers back over my head, I know better. Nowadays, it seems the moment I stop moving, I start to rust. Five minutes later I was out the door.

Up on the levee it was the usual quiet Friday morning ride with just four of us. I rode alongside Donald most of the way out, probably one or two mph faster than I would have gone if I'd been alone. The sky was just a bit overcast today, and I was enjoying the temporary reprieve from direct sun, especially after we turned around and headed back to the southeast. As we started back I noticed some dark clouds off to the south, but they seemed far away and not likely to interfere with the morning ride. By the time we got to the bridge I could see that those clouds were building very rapidly into a big thunderstorm. I looked over at Scott and remarked, "Man, those clouds sure are building up fast!" In the span of five minutes we went from a normal summer morning to the edge of a thunderstorm. Suddenly we were hit with a strong cold downdraft and crosswind that threatened to blow us right off the levee. We picked up the pace a bit, passing Vivian, hoping to beat the inevitable rain. I split off at Oak Street and looked up at the sky. It seemed a bit improved and I didn't have the feeling it would rain right away, so I decided to stop at Zotz for a quick coffee before riding the last mile or so to the house. Sitting at one of the little tables out on the street, I had just finished checking my email when I heard a loud clap of thunder behind me. Not good! I jumped up, grabbed my coffee cup, and hopped on the bike. Thirty seconds later I felt the first raindrops. I'm racing down Oak Street and Carrollton and then Spruce on wet streets in a light drizzle with a cup of coffee in my hand, hoping I don't need to stop suddenly and just waiting for the sky to really open up. Luckily, I made it home before I got very wet. Then, of course, the rain stopped completely. On the plus side, my ride to work was a lot cooler than usual today!

Big Gears

It was another hot and humid morning down in New Orleans. This is the time of year when things on my bike start rusting, corroding and generally getting all gummed up from the gallons of sweat they're exposed to. It's a constant battle. This morning I put a little drop of oil on the rusting thumb-shifter mechanisms on each shifter. Of all the things I've tried, good old 3-in-1 oil seems to work the best for that. As I do every morning in the summer, I cleaned the lenses of my sunglasses with a little soap and water. By the end of the day's ride I knew they'd be covered with sweat once again. The first pair of gloves I grabbed was still damp from the day before, so I pulled on an old pair of team gloves instead.

We had a pretty big group for the long Thursday ride today. We also had a rather unusual, at least for summer, northwest wind. That didn't seem to slow things down very much, though. The ride out to the turnaround was your basic hammerfest and I soon found myself well into the big gears just trying to stay in the draft. I was determined to stay in the rotation at the front today. It wasn't easy. I don't think it was easy for anyone. After the turnaround, it took a long time for the pace to ramp back up, but once it did, I stayed there. I got back home a few minutes after 8 am, completely drenched in sweat.

I caught the last 10 km or so of the Tour today, watching it in a little window on my computer thanks to Eurosport.com. The sprint today started out like a big free-for-all, but once the leadouts really got started things at the front thinned out pretty quickly. Julian Dean came over and tried to move Renshaw, Cavendish's leadout man, over toward the barricades with about 300m to go, but Renshaw held his line, delivering a couple of head-butts to Dean in the process. Seeing the possibility that the door might close on him, Cavendish saw daylight between Renshaw and the barricade and started his sprint early, blasting past his leadout man. Renshaw then glanced to his left, saw clear air and swerved over to try and catch a bit of Cavendish's draft, nearly taking Tyler Farrar, who was accelerating down the left side, into the barricades. I was impressed with Renshaw. The officials were not and kicked him out of the Tour, which I think was way too severe a penalty. In my humble opinion, based on the helicopter video, Dean was more out of line than Renshaw. I guess they'll be arguing about this for a while.

Out to the Lake

The Daughter was headed back to Iowa City early Tuesday morning, so I skipped my ride in favor of breakfast at La Madeleine before driving out to the airport. Coincidentally, the Tour de France was just starting the mountain by the same name as we left. I told myself I'd get in a ride after work. Yeah, right. By the time I got home all I wanted to do was vegetate on the couch with a glass of wine. I felt so guilty -- at least until the second glass of wine.

So naturally I was up early for the Wednesday levee ride, which started out at a nice moderate pace as usual. A bit up the river, however, we picked up a few more riders, and a bit farther up the river we picked up Realdo and a couple more. The pace, which had been holding at around 22 mph, soon started to creep up and up, finally stabilizing at around 25 mph. Mignon's worries about getting to work by 8pm soon vanished. The ride back nice and fast too, so at least my guilt level dropped down a notch or so. Even so, I had already decided to ride out to the lakefront after work to watch the training time trial that Kenny runs and then watch some of the Tour de France at Kona Cafe.

Back at work, my 3 pm meeting ended a bit after 5:00, so I was back home around 5:15 or so. It took me a while to find my bike lights and pack a little backpack so I would have a pair of shoes other than my riding shoes. I wasn't sure exactly when the TT was supposed to start, but since I wasn't planning on riding it I didn't really rush. Anyway, as it turned out, the time trial had close to 40 riders. I toyed with the idea of riding it myself, but since I was on my regular road bike and wearing a backpack, it just didn't seem like it would be worth it.

It was around 9 pm by the time I headed back home. I decided to ride down Lakeshore Drive to Wisner rather than taking the slightly shorter route on Robert E. Lee. I was surprised to find that they had closed the road to traffic (naturally I ignored the traffic cones). I was even more surprised to find that there were absolutely no lights. None. It was really pretty neat to be riding down the darkened road along the lake as the sailboats returned from a little evening regatta. Then, when I got onto Wisner, I found that there were no streetlights there either! I was glad I'd brought my little headlight. I really enjoyed the ride home.