Giro and the Park

 Stacked up at the start

 

Cool-down on the lakefront

Back to the lakefront along the bayou

 



 

City Park bike path

Through the Rain

The Katrina flood line at Starbucks

It was still too dark to see much of the sky when I hit the road this morning to meet the Giro Ride.  A balmy south wind made it feel easy, and ten minutes later as the sun came up over the bayou I could see the threatening clouds off to the southwest.  Sipping coffee at Starbucks I checked the radar, which didn't offer much in the way of hope.  Even so, a pretty good-sized group headed out, perhaps a few minutes late, with little real chance of staying dry.  By the time we were approaching Chef Highway it was starting to rain.  I wasn't planning on doing much work today. 

During the Wednesday training race (I think there were only four or five of us, so it was more like a hard training ride) we had come up behind three rather large guys on mountain bikes.  At the time we were about to go over the levee west of Elysian Fields.  We were going maybe 27 mph.  They were going maybe 10.  As we started around them, one rider suddenly swerved to the left.  We had to hit the brakes fairly hard, and in the process of yanking my bike around I must have pulled something in my left ribcage like an intercostal or something. It started to hurt in the way a side stitch hurts, and toward the end of the next lap I pulled up alongside John and told him I was going to back off and head home.  Well, it's still bothering me a bit when I have to exhale strongly, which for me happens a lot during a Giro Ride.  So I decided to latch onto Matt's wheel for the ride down Chef Highway.

There was a nice group rotating at the front, and with the little tailwind we had we were soon rolling along steadily in the 27-31 mph range.  Matt was on his TT bike, staying a couple of bike lengths behind the paceline, so riding his wheel was smooth and steady.  When we were a couple of miles before the turnaround the pace at the front surged and suddenly riders were dropping out of the paceline all over the place.  Matt was keeping the same pace, weaving through the droppage, but now a big gap had opened up so he amped up the pace another notch.  I dropped off of his wheel at about 32 mph, just before he closed the gap.  By the time we were on the way back the rain had passed over us, but the group seemed to have lost its motivation.  Then Jaden flatted.  He was riding tubulars and didn't have a spare, but luckily a couple of people in the group had cans of sealant.  It was messy, but it worked and he made it back with maybe 60 psi in his tire.

At the moment we're still holding out hope that we can pull off the track races this evening at 5:00.  If nothing new pops up, it looks like the worst of the rain should pass through Baton Rouge before that, but we're kind of playing it by ear for this one.

Water, Water, Everywhere

.....but for some, not a drop to drink.

I was up at my usual 5:45 am this morning, digging through my cycling kit drawer looking for something that matched when The Wife opened the bathroom door and said, "There's barely any water pressure."  I immediately thought of the extensive road work they are doing a couple of blocks away on Broadway Street and figured they had managed to take out a water main.  There was nothing I could do about that, so I headed off to the levee to meet the Tuesday morning group, getting caught by a rather long train in the process.  Luckily, Robert was busy trying to fix a flat and the group was still hanging around, even though the others who had caught the train and I were about five minutes late.  Finally we rolled out a good ten minutes later than usual.  The pace going out was fairly consistent today, mostly staying in the 24-27 mph range except when we slowed down when Robert broke a spoke, thinking he had flatted again.  I was feeling fairly good and was staying up in the rotation out to Ormond where Woody, who was probably watching the clock and figuring he'd be late for work, made a quick  U-turn and started back immediately. 

The group took a mile or so to re-form, which is typical, after which the pace very gradually started to improve.  Woody was probably a minute or so up the road by then.  We had picked up the Ormond Gang -- Steve, Roland and Pat -- and their relatively fresh legs were keeping the pace up.  After a few miles we must have been starting to close a bit on Woody, which only inspired the front of the group, now down to maybe five who were pulling through, to ramp it up another notch.  The Ormond guys were planning on turning around at the pump, so they each put in a couple of fast pulls as we neared that point, at which time we caught Woody.  The pace eased for a bit and then started ramping up again until we were near the bridge and had to hit the brakes for an oncoming pickup that got trapped on the bike path by some surveyors. It was a nice workout, and by the time I stopped at Zotz for an iced coffee I was soaked with sweat. 

The air this morning was thick and warm and sticky. As I was waiting for my coffee someone mentioned a water line break around Cohen Street, which was on my way home.  As I rode down the bike path on Carrollton I could see flashing yellow lights up ahead, and then I found the entire street completely flooded and blocked by Sewerage and Water Board trucks (old joke:  What's big and yellow and sleeps six?  A S&WB truck.)  I worked my way through some very badly flooded streets and stopped to talk with some of the workers there.  It was so bad that they couldn't yet move their equipment in and were waiting for other workers to shut off water valves all around the area.  The water main that broke is one of the largest ones that comes from the city's water treatment plant about half a mile away, so the rupture, which had apparently happened around 5:30 am, had been a virtual volcano.  The water lines in this part of the city are probably around 90 years old, so it is not all that uncommon for them to break, but explosive breaks in the really huge ones like this that cause major flooding are relatively unusual.  Down the street I could see on car that had partially fallen into the hole caused by the blowout, and all around me the water was flowing like whitewater.  It was *a lot* of water!  Fortunately, there was still a bit of water pressure at my house about an hour later (I waited that long for the pressure to come up to a level at which I might be able to at least shower off the road grit and grain dust), although my morning shower was extremely abbreviated.  

Luckily there was water pressure at work, but many areas of the city are still under a "boil water advisory," including our office and parts of the main campus.  Such is life in the old city.

Long Summer Week

There are usually only a handful of weeks each year during which I log over 300 miles.  Last week was one of those.  They aren't typically a result of extra motivation or some specific training plan, and in fact the extra mileage often comes with a cost, namely a decrease in quality.  Indeed, high-mileage weeks for me are usually simply the result of a run of good weather and one or two extra rides.  Last week started off in typical fashion with an easy Monday ride and moderately fast Tuesday ride up on the levee. 

Tuesday evening was one of Kenny's bandit time trials out at the lakefront, and this one was a 2-man version.  I had not been planning on riding it, but when I got home from work reasonably early I decided to ride out there to lend a hand and get in a few extra miles.  When I arrived I hadn't even put my foot down before Kenny asked me if I needed a partner.  I politely declined, but then a little while later Charlie asked if I'd ride it with him.  Since he was in full aero TT mode, I told him I'd do it but that I would not be much help since I was on a regular road bike and had already put in around 50 miles that day. All I could promise were a few brief pulls to give him a break, but it was still clear that it would essentially amount to an 10.4-mile individual time trial on Charlie's part. 

We started out into a headwind at a fairly conservative pace with an effort level that I think would have yielded 25-26 mph on a calm day, but with the headwind was giving us more like 23.  Fortunately, Charlie is tall and was providing ample shelter.  He pulled steadily for about two miles, then I took a brief pull up and over the Bayou St. John bridge before dropping back onto his wheel.  The return trip was considerably faster, more like 27 mph.  Again, I took only a few brief pulls.  We ended up with an average speed a touch over 25 mph which was respectable, I guess, under the circumstances, but not even in the same ballpark as Ben and Jaden who did a blazing 29 mph average speed to post a better time than even the Frank and Woody combo.  I rode home easy.  Wednesday's lakefront training race was rained out, and then on Friday, as I rode home from work, I hit some glass or something and slashed the sidewall of my front tire.  Fortunately I had a spare tube on hand, but since I was Friday and I was tired I considered for a while the option of just walking the rest of the way or riding the rim.  I really didn't want to have to mess with changing a very dirty tire.  I ended up doing it anyway, after hunting around for a discarded piece of cardboard for a boot.  The old retired Michelin Pro Race that I'd had on there for the past year somehow got me back thanks to the boot and the Mr. Tuffy, but this morning it went in the trash and was replaced by a well-worn Vredstein that I'd been saving for just such an occasion.

So the weekend finally arrived and I headed out to Starbucks to meet the Giro group. It turned out to be a pretty typical mid-summer Giro with some fast sections and some slow sections. After the turnaround the group was going really slowly, as often happens, and so I rolled off the front alone for a while to maybe provide a little motivation.  I was going only around 23 mph and fully expected the group to come streaming past around Highway 11, but apparently they were feeling particularly lazy and the only person who came up to me was Mike W, so we started a little 2-man rotation at a moderate 24 mph, again expecting a 30 mph group to come blasting past us at any moment.  As it turned out we were nearly all the way to the Goodyear sprint sign before Ben and a couple others flew past with the rest of the group still a bit behind.  That afternoon I had to drive over to Baton Rouge to officiate the second race of the summer track series.  I drove through a big thunderstorm around Laplace wondering if it was going to be a wash-out in Baton Rouge, but it turned out to be just a random storm.  Although it slowed things on the interstate down to 50 mph for a while, things in Baton Rouge remained dry and the races went smoothly.  I again brought my track bike with me, and Lance was able to use it for the races.  With no rain delays this time I arrived back home around 11 pm I guess, which made for a rather long day.

John Dias had send out an email about doing a northshore ride, and so I headed across the lake Sunday morning despite the possibility of getting into one of those scattered thunderstorms that were popping up randomly all over south Louisiana that morning.  He and a couple of the S3 guys were starting from Abita Springs in order to put in around 90 miles, so Adrian and I met them at the regular northshore ride start at the Lee Road school at 8:00.  We would be doing only 65 miles of their longer ride.  Surprisingly, there was nobody else to join us, so we had a 5-man group for the day's ride.  John was kind of pushing the pace and Newman was suffering a bit, while Adrian was attacking the hills.  It all made for a very nice training ride, despite a few stops along the way.

After we looped around the top of the course and started heading back south, we could see our future in the black clouds that were building up on the horizon.  I guess we were still about an hour from the school, heading west on 1072 when it started to rain. It never got particularly heavy, and stopped entirely after a while, although we spent a lot of time on wet roads after that.  I had not been particularly aggressive on this ride, and I think I was starting to feel the accumulated fatigue from six consecutive 250+ mile weeks.

This morning I went out to the levee for an easy recovery ride where I ran into Robin.  I did 26 miles at an average speed of about 16 mph.  The forecast for today still holds a good chance of rain, but after that the rest of the week is looking to be fairly dry and hot.  That's good because I will be getting around by bicycle this week a lot.  They are finally putting down new asphalt all up and down Broadway Street, and so a lot of it is going to be closed off this week. Driving a car to work would probably take more time than riding.  I'll have to go back to the optometrist this week and make a decision on the contact lenses.  I think I'll end up going with the single-vision option since they work so well for riding and are cheaper, even though reading a menu is going to be a problem.

Back to Track

The weekend was looking pretty good, weather-wise, on Saturday morning as I rode out to meet the Giro Ride. There was a pretty big group on hand since we seem to be in a bit of a road racing lull right now.  Of course, that meant that the Giro Ride would become a de facto substitute race.  Fortunately for those of us not planning on spending the whole time up at the front of the group, the wind direction allowed for adequate shelter for much, but not all, of the ride out to Venetian Isles.  It was by no means an easy Giro, but with such a large group it was not too hard to find a place to recover when necessary.  I was scheduled to officiate the first of a four-race track series over at the Baton Rouge velodrome that day, but since the races didn't start until 5 pm, there was no conflict with the morning training ride.  I had, literally, dusted off the track bike the night before thinking I might be able to squeeze in a few laps here and there, but I was really planning on bringing the track bike in case someone needed to borrow it.  As it turned out, young Lance Abshire fit quite nicely on it so I never did get a chance to ride.  For a 13-year old kid, Lance rides more like he's 18 and seemed to have no trouble at all dealing with the fixed gear in a pack, even attacking a couple of times in the Scratch Race.  Turnout at the track was pretty good, which is to say there were 19 registrants, making for a nice sized Cat. 4 field but only a 4-rider Cat. 1/2/3 group and 2-rider Women's group.  None of which was particularly unusual, although I would have hoped for a few more in the Cat. 1/2/3 race.  I had the LAMBRA finish line camera with me and this would be the first time I attempted to set it up and use it myself.  I knew it would struggle as the sun went down, but my main purpose for bringing it was to get a little experience with it.  As it turned out, it came in quite handy for a couple of the very close finishes, one of which had a separation of about 0.007 seconds.  The only thing I screwed up on was when I pulled the wrong rider in the Miss-and-Out.  Otherwise, things went pretty smoothly and I was glad I didn't have to judge any Points Races that night.  I got home around 11 pm or so, which is pretty good under the circumstances, and finally got to have some of the very non-traditional Gazpacho (V-8 Juice, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, bell pepper, tomato, cucumber, garlic, onion, all hand-chopped) that I'd thrown together right before I had left that afternoon.

So Sunday morning I was out at the Giro again, and it was basically a repeat of the day before, although perhaps a bit slower here and there.  I was feeling pretty good for both of the Giro Rides this week, ending my fifth 250+ mile week in a row. Fortunately we got some rain in the afternoon so I didn't feel too guilty about not finishing the painting on the front windows and instead spending the rest of the day eating everything in sight. On Friday I had gone back to the optometrist and after quite a bit of back-and-forth we decided to try some single-vision contacts instead of the multifocal ones I'd been using for riding the prior couple of weeks.  I found the new ones to be generally better for riding and much better for driving, the only problem being that close-up reading, not surprisingly, is a real struggle.  I find myself rather on the fence between the two options.  The multifocals are pretty good for riding and allow for a much better, albeit not perfect, view of the computer.  However the distance vision with those left something to be desired, especially when driving.  The single-vision lenses are much better for driving, which makes it much more convenient and comfortable when driving to a ride or race in the morning since I can put them in at home and just leave them in the rest of the day.  The only problem, of course, it that if I go with them I'll probably have to go get some low-power reading glasses to have on hand for any reading or computer work that might come up.  So basically it's going to be a compromise one way or the other unless we hit upon some other multifocal solution that will work.  One thing in favor of the single-vision solution is that they are significantly cheaper.  I am extremely reluctant to go the dual-vision route with a near vision contact in one eye and a far-vision contact in the other for fear it will mess up the depth perception and peripheral vision that I think is crucial for riding.  Decisions, decisions.

Missing the Breaks in Acadiana

The annual Vuelta d' Acadiana over in Lafayette was a well-organized event with a fairly good turnout this year.  For reasons I cannot quite wrap my head around, a number of the local New Orleans riders missed this one.  I ended up making the easy two-hour drive alone on Friday evening, which allowed me plenty of time to worry about the weather.  It was looking quite unlikely that we would completely escape the rain that was going to be randomly streaming in from the Gulf of Mexico all weekend, but it was also impossible to predict where, when and how heavily that rain might fall.  This time of year in southern Louisiana a 30% chance of rain is the status quo and it's considerably easier to predict where a hurricane will land than an afternoon shower.  Anyway, it was a smooth drive and after checking in to the hotel I went down the street and had a hamburger all alone at a nearby Chili's restaurant.  I had forgotten to bring my clip-on aero bars and posted something on FB about how I expected my TT to suck even worse than usual when I got a comment from Matt who offered to pick them up from my house early in the morning on his way over. 

Stage one on Saturday was a 4.something mile time trial. It started to rain the moment registration ended, as I was sitting on the concrete underneath the school's covered walkway fixing some bad formulas in the results spreadsheet so they could print out the start lists.  The rain was over pretty quickly, so by the time I started about half an hour later it was practically dry again. The rider ahead of me, Kevin Landry, pulled his wheel over at the start (TT bike with track dropouts and no set screws) and had to stop twice to get it tight enough.  He was just remounting his bike when I rolled past him at the start, right into a headwind/crosswind.  Pretty quickly I was looking at speeds in the 22-23 mph range, which was not exactly encouraging.  The return trip had some tailwind to it of course, and while I was seeing speeds in the 26-28 mph range, I knew for sure I was going two miles per hour slower than the real time trial riders.  That knowledge was reinforced when Kevin blew past me shortly after the turnaround.  All I can say about my TT was that I at least didn't do too much damage and didn't feel quite as terrible as usual. My time of 10:19 was a good 30 seconds off the pace I might have been able to manage if properly motivated, but nearly a minute slower than the fastest of the masters.  Situation normal.  I picked up a sandwich at Subway and retired to my hotel room for a while.

The criterium was Saturday afternoon directly across the street from the hotel.  I drove the car around to the parking lot on the other side and set up the NOBC tent, put out a few folding chairs, and got completely soaked when a thunderstorm came though and pelted us with rain for half an hour.  Once it stopped I mostly wandered around during the first few races taking pictures.  By then Mignon, Isaac, Sherri and James had arrived.  Terri had done the TT earlier and would also be doing the criterium.  Isaac's Junior's race unfortunately had only two people in it, so he basically rode it alone.  The women's race had a small but competitive field with seven or eight riders from Texas and elsewhere to spice up the action.  Sherri was skipping the criterium since she had never raced one before. A two-rider break went off the front early and was never seriously challenged. Mignon stayed with the pack but didn't really contest the sprint.

The masters race had a pretty good field of 22 or so and I was expecting it to be a fun race.  I was not disappointed, at least in that regard. I was much more interested in this race than I had been for the time trial and did a fair amount of work at and near the front.  There was an early break that was reeled in and then somehow four strong riders went off the front and I just basically missed the break.  I knew immediately we were in trouble. As often happens in smaller masters races, there were only a few riders seriously interested in trying to pull that one back (none of whom were from the Acadiana team since Alex was in the break). We did get some fairly consistent help in mounting a chase, but it was too little too late and after a few more laps the chase fizzled.  Somewhere along the line near the end of the race another rider got away.  At the time I thought we had caught him and would at least be sprinting for 5th place (stage prizes were 5-deep), but I was wrong so we ended up sprinting basically just for the exercise.  I ended up 2nd in that pack sprint, so 7th for the race.  Under the circumstances, I was OK with that, but I *really* hated missing that break.  The Cat. 4 race had a big field of 40-something riders and was fun to watch, but we didn't have anyone in it.  We did, however, have one rider in the 25-rider Cat. 5 race -- James Rollins.  I was glad to see him riding well, keeping himself in good pack position for most of the race, although I think he got caught up behind a crash on the last lap that sent one rider to the hospital with a broken collarbone.  That evening we got together with VJ and Judd for a nice dinner at the Blue Dog Cafe' near the hotel.

Sunday was the road race about half an hour north of town.  This was a longish course with a number of turns and nothing you could really call a hill.  Once again, we could see the rain coming as we prepared to start, and the first lap of the three-lap race was ridden pretty much entirely in the rain.  This was the first time I was wearing my new contact lenses in the rain and I was very reluctant to take off my clear-lens Oakleys since they were at least keeping the wheel spray out of my eyes.  Unfortunately, they were also completely fogging up and I was having some significant problems seeing where I was going.  Part-way through the second lap I finally had a chance to drop back where I could sit up, take the glasses off, and spray when with water.  That helped a lot, but what I then saw through my nice clear glasses was a 3-man break that included Donald Davis, Alex Habbit, and Jason Lewiss, already off the front.  The latter two had also been in the breakaway the afternoon before in the criterium.  Of course the Acadiana riders weren't going to do any chasing but the other riders didn't have teammates in the pack, so I thought we at least might have a chance of catching them.  I eventually worked my way to the front and found maybe three other riders willing to chase.  Once we got going I could see that we were at least not losing ground on the break which was hovering maybe 40 seconds up the road, but the occasional lull caused by Acadiana riders getting into the paceline, or just disorganization among the chasers, finally started to take its toll and the break started to disappear up the road.  The pace did eventually split what was left of the pack, and flat tires precipitated by the wet streets, along with a crash that I didn't even know about until later, thinned out the group as well, so by the time we were halfway through the last lap my group was down to maybe six riders. 

With the chase long abandoned and nobody in sight behind us, this group would be racing for 4th. By then Kevin was the only one showing any signs of aggressiveness, launching a number of hard but very brief attacks. With about a mile to go we continued straight to the finish, which was not on the loop, at the intersection where I crashed last year and broke a rib or two.  Just past that point we were directed into the left lane as there were some riders on the ground with race volunteers assisting.  That turned out to be a very serious injury to one of the women and she was later airlifted to the hospital with a concussion, punctured lung, broken ribs, broken collarbone, fractured scapula, etc.  (she seems to be recovering nicely at this writing but was still in the hospital on Tuesday).  Just after that and with the 1 km flag in sight, Kevin launched another attack and I went with him immediately.  I think that the other riders figured it was too early and that he would get pulled back before the sprint as had happened with his earlier attacks.  This time, though, he held on a little longer.  Suddenly he started to fade, but by then we were only maybe 250 meters from the finish and I knew there was still nobody on my wheel. As I pulled alongside I yelled "come on, you can win," but he didn't seem to have anything left at that point.  I sprinted the last 200 meters, finishing 4th, but Kevin was passed by one of the other riders before the finish.  So, although I was kicking myself once again for missing the break, I was glad to have at least gotten into the prizelist.

Back at the finish line I heard about a number of crashes.  It's odd, but there were a lot of crashes on that course last year as well.  Even the Cat. 1/2/3 race had had a big pile-up on a slick turn that took Frank and Kenny out of contention.  On the plus side, Ben Bradley had gotten into the break and finished a very impressive 2nd to the Puerto Rican rider from Dallas who had also won the criterium.  So I was fairly content with my racing, if not particularly thrilled with it, and overall the weather hadn't been nearly as bad as it might have been, so that was a plus for sure.  My time trial still sucked, and I was disappointed with myself for missing the two key breaks, but those things happen sometimes when you are not quite as attentive and responsive as you should be.

Saturday starts a series of track races that will continue for the next four weekends, and as usual I will be splitting my time between officiating and riding them.  I guess it's time to dust off the track bike!  Mark McMurry has been really focused on the track for the past few weeks and is, I think, planning on going to masters track nationals in Indianapolis around the end of the month. After that, most of the month of August will be LAMBRA championships, including Track, Team TT, Road (Category), Individual TT, and then Road Age-Graded.  This will be the first year we are having separate weekends for the skill-based and age-graded road championships.  The skill-based championship will also be the first stage of the Rocky Mount Omnium up in Shreveport.  Should be interesting to see if it generates better turnouts and competition.

Independence Day Giro

It was late Wednesday night and I could still detect no consensus on a July 4th group ride.  The leading options seemed to be the regular weekend Giro route and time, and a long levee ride also starting at 7 am.  Finally I sent an email out to the NOBC group saying that it sounded like it would be the Giro.  In reality, there had been little feedback, but I knew that filling the void with something that sounded like a decision would create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It did. 

I headed down a very quiet Carrollton Avenue toward Starbucks around 6:05 wondering how many riders would show up.  The rumor that it would be an easy ride because of the upcoming Vuelta d' Acadiana weekend was kind of funny to me.  Out of the entire Giro group there were maybe five riders who might actually be racing it.  It felt just a bit cooler than usual for this time of year, which is to say it was probably only 80F before sunrise.  By the time we rolled out at 7 am the group was about the size of a regular weekend Giro.  Fortunately the pace was in general a bit slower, because I really didn't want to do so much damage that I'd still be feeling it on Saturday.  Back when I was in my 30s and 40s I could ride hard on a Thursday and be fully recovered by Saturday morning.  Nowadays it's more a roll of the dice.  On the other hand, it now seems that if I haven't gotten in some significant exercise by 10:00 am I will have already started gaining weight!  It's kind of a Catch 22.

Anyway, it was a very nice Giro.  I spent some time sitting comfortably in the draft as the group rolled along at 25-28 mph, and generally stayed out of the wind.  We were in a long skinny paceline heading east on Chef Highway when there was a loud explosion up ahead.  Brian had recently put some new clinchers on his bike and the latex tube he had used on the front must have gotten pinched under the bead because it blew out in rather dramatic fashion, wrapping itself around his front axle between hub and fork end.  It was bad enough that we had to pull out my little Swiss Army Knife to cut the tube a number of times in order to unwrap it.  It was very lucky that it didn't lock up his front wheel, and that he didn't lose control when the tire came unseated from the carbon rim.  On the way back on Chef Highway Daniel flatted, so we got another little unplanned rest stop.  It was just the kind of ride I needed today.

So yesterday we (LAMBRA) sent our contract and payment in to USAC for the new RaceClean program.  For what it's worth, we were the first in the country to do so.  USAC and USADA had just, finally, come to agreement on the program and costs, the result of which was that it cost us quite a bit less than the $3,000 that we had originally allocated.  With USAC matching, the program promised to provide USADA drug testing at one LAMBRA event this year. Of course, we have no control over which event USADA chooses.  Should be interesting, but I really see it as a deterrent more than anything else.  USADA can always show up at any licensed rider's door or at any race anyway, but other than specifically targeted riders I would never expect to see them at any of our races otherwise.  It's still a lot of money for us to spend on something like this, so we'll see how it goes.  If it's well received and not too much of a burden on the event organizers we can then consider doing it again next year for one or two events.

Improvisation

One thing you generally don't want to have at a bike race is a lot of improvisation on the part of the organizers and officials.  Last weekend down in Houma, however, we had plenty.  I had expected the Independence Day Classic to be a fun event with a low to moderate turnout, and was happy to have an omnium only an hour's drive from home.  Pre-registrations for the event were pretty sparse, but for an omnium like this one with a smallish prizelist the weekend before a larger omnium in Lafayette I was neither surprised nor worried.  I figured a number of riders were planning to pick and chose which race or races to ride, and since the late fee was barely less than the online registration surcharge, there was little motivation for riders to pre-register.  Up until the evening before the race the weather forecast was looking pretty good -- a typical summer pattern with 10-30 percent chance of rain.  That all seemed to change Friday night when the 10:00 news was showing a line of storms heading down from the northwest.  Even so, it looked like it would all be over before morning, so when I left home around 6:30 am I didn't even check the radar. 

When I arrived, however, the first thing I was told was that there was some heavy rain coming our way.  Then I learned that instead of the eleven or twelve police and sherrif's officers who were supposed to be there, only four would be available.  The road races course that morning went down a fairly busy street in town and included various traffic signals and stop signs.  Then is started to rain pretty hard.  Between the police issues and the rain, the start was officially pushed back by at least thirty minutes.  There was a good enough Cat. 1/2/3 and Cat. 4 turnout on hand for the first wave of road races, and after being told that the course was secured they started those two races.  Shortly after the second group took off, the Cat. 1/2/3 field suddenly showed up at the finish line having decided amongst themselves (quite correctly it seems) that the course was too dangerous.  At one point they came to a traffic signal with a red light that was not monitored and the whole field had to slam on the brakes and stop.  The officials cancelled the race and stopped the Cat. 4s when they came through shortly thereafter.  Then they improvised a criterium in the big Civic Center parking lot where the road race had started.  By then most of the Cat. 1/2/3 riders had demanded refunds and gone home, so they held a Cat. 1/2/3/4 race and a Cat. 4/5 race.  Both were actually fairly good races and the ad hoc criterium course was a pretty nice 4-corner square that was maybe 0.8 km around.  I rode the Cat. 1/2/3/4 race where I got a good workout after Jaden went solo and eventually lapped the field.  I narrowly nipped Matt E. in the field sprint with a well-timed bike throw to take 2nd.  Hopefully I will eventually see a prize for that.  In the Cat. 4 race there was a crash in the final turn when a rider hit his brake and another rider was sent into the curb, resulting in an exploded carbon wheel, cracked helmet and some way over the top raised voices and finger-pointing.

The evening time trial had been planned for the same impossible course through town as the road race, so more improvisation was necessary in order to make that happen.  After the criterium the officials took a drive and found a nice community center parking lot for the start and a quite nice 7-mile out and back TT course a few miles farther down the road on which much of the TT had originally planned.  Now, I normally need a huge amount of motivation in order to do even a mediocre time trial, so as you can imagine in this case I went out at maybe 80% effort, getting caught by my 30-second man at the turnaround and then immediately by my one-minute man who went by so fast I didn't even recognize who it was.


On the plus side, I had gotten new multifocal contact lenses a couple of days before the race specifically for riding.  Having never used contact lenses before I was a little concerned about how they would work out for racing, especially after having to spend a good fifteen minutes putting the nearly invisible things on my eyes earlier that morning.  I may still need to make some adjustments in the prescription since my near and far vision is not a clear as I'd like it to be, but in general I was quite pleased that they were otherwise quite nice, didn't dry up and fall out, and worked fine with my trusty Oakley M-Frame sunglasses.

So Sunday morning there were more criteriums on the schedule, and once again there was some improvisation involved since the original course completely encircled a hotel, which was another extraordinarily bad idea.  I was hoping that a few riders would show up for the races, but after the debacle on Saturday I think a lot of them decided that the regular local group rides would be the more reliable option.  I was therefore not surprised that the fields were tiny.  I think that the Cat. 4 and Cat. 5 races at least had more than ten riders, but the Masters race had only four and there were no entrants at all for the Cat. 1/2/3 race.  It was too bad, really, because the course, which was the same on we'd used the previous day, was quite nice.  The Masters race had only four starters, two from Acadiana, Peter from Gulfport and me.  The handwriting was on the wall from the start, of course, as the two Acadiana riders took turns attacking. I was expecting it, so Peter and I didn't have too much trouble handling it. Early in the 45-minute race I was trying to leave one of them out there off the front as long as possible without letting the gap get too big to close.  That would at least minimize the number of attacks to which we'd have to respond.  Eventually, maybe ten laps from the end, Charles attacked taking me with him and splitting the group.  I figured I may as well go with it and started taking pulls.  Although Charles had to pull the whole last lap and a half, I kind of bungled the sprint when I panicked and tried to shift down one cog but got what felt like three in return. I should have attacked him before the last turn, obviously. So I came in second again, or in this case, mid-pack or third-to-last.  In the Cat. 4 race there was again controversy involving the same rider who had crashed the day before, so I'm not entirely sure what was going on there but it seems that his strong personality is rubbing some of the riders the wrong way and his reaction to that is getting out of line. 

As a result of all of the problems with this race I have resolved to write up a document containing some basic best practices that we can give to newer race promoters.  This race provided a number good examples of what not to do, including tiny free race numbers, gigantic safety pins, registration located too far from the start, courses with too much traffic and intersections, inadequate police to control the course, missing release forms, prizes "to be mailed out," etc.  Some of that could have been avoided if we at LAMBRA had taken the initiative to engage the promoter a little more and get some more detail about the planned courses and general organization.  What looked fine on paper turned out to be basically impossible in real life. 

Hot Times on the Tarmac

After a nice Saturday Giro that pretty much squeezed me dry of fluids, I spent much of the day in front of the television trying to rehydrate.  I was planning on driving up to Alexandria for the district Criterium Championships, and since I had to be there early in order to deliver the LAMBRA generator and race clock, along with the USAC championship medals, that meant a departure time on Sunday no later than 4:00 am.  So I spent some time down in the basement sorting out medals and pulling out everything I needed to bring with me:  sound system, generator, pop-up tent, NOBC flag, race clock (fully charged), my own race bag with jersey, shorts, etc., a clean bike with race wheels and spares all pumped up, and a little ice chest for some cold cokes that I knew I'd need.

Somehow I actually hit the road Sunday morning more or less on time, although I was certainly missing my morning cup of coffee.  Traffic was light, of course, so it was an easy drive, and I arrived at the LSU-Alexandria campus right on time and got started setting up the officials' tent and unloading stuff from the car.  I had raced on this course so long ago I could hardly remember the details.  I guess it was around 1985 or so the last time we used it, and I at least remembered that some of the turns were fairly tight, the road was bumpy in places, and there was a long straight drag to the finish line.  When I arrived, I could see that little had changed, but I never got a chance to go around the course since I was busy helping with setting up and judging for the first couple of races.  When the second one finished, I had barely enough time to run back to the car, pull on my shorts and jersey, and ride to the start line.  I didn't even have enough time to pin on my number.  In fact, I didn't even have time to pick it up in the first place.  I told Ricky, the Chief Referee, I would be the one without a number.  Since I'd electronically signed the USAC release form, at least I knew they were covered.

The Masters race, like most of the races that day, was rather sparsely attended.  It was a combination of things, I guess.  Although the location was somewhat closer than last year's race in Lake Charles, it was still a 3-hour drive from New Orleans. The race promoter had had some disagreements with a couple of local clubs over the past year or so, and perhaps there were some riders who didn't attend for reasons related to that.  And then there was the fact that it was now mid-summer and there was no avoiding the fact that it would be hot.  I think the biggest disappointment, albeit a totally predictable one, was that the decision to have a separate Cat. 1-2 race resulted in a virtual boycott by those riders since they knew that the best they could expect was a field of maybe ten.  The Herring team instead headed up to Alabama for the Southeastern Regional Series road race and criterium that had a Cat. 1-2 field of close to 90 riders.  As it turned out, our little Cat. 1-2 championship criterium had an embarrassing turnout of four, including me.

So the Masters race, despite its small field of only twelve, turned out to be a fairly interesting race.  Unfortunately, like a number of races this year, it was dominated by the Acadiana team that had four competent riders.  The result was fairly predictable, of course.  You can watch the entire thing on youtube.  Basically, an Acadiana rider attacked early and stayed out there for a few laps before being gradually reeled in by the one or two riders able and willing to be on the front.  Once he was caught the next Acadiana rider attacked.  I think John Dias sat on the front pulling the entire field along for at least five or six laps.  I was actually hoping we would not catch this rider very quickly since that would do nothing but guarantee another attack.  John was thinking the same thing, so that rider kind of lingered up there at about ten seconds for what seemed like forever.  I went up to give John a break a couple of times and was surprised at how bad I felt. It seemed like I just had no power at all.  Maybe it was the drive or the lack of sleep or the fact that I hadn't gotten a warmup or food.  Anyway, I ended up basically sucking wheels for most of the race.  Eventually that rider was caught, after which there was another hard attack to which Donald Davis, who had been uncharacteristically passive up to that point, responded.  That attack very nearly split the pack and I felt pretty lucky to be able to make contact half a lap later.  Then, with three laps to go another Acadiana rider launched and there just wasn't much of a response.  He ended up staying off the front for the win.  I wasn't feeling very aggressive and came around the last turn way too far back in the paceline, and then I ended up backing off in the last 50 meters when things got a little too close for comfort.  Later, I decided to make a donation to the promoter and enter the Cat. 1/2 race since there were only three other riders signed up, one of whom was John Dias who had also ridden the Masters race.  The others were Tracy Martin, his teammate, and Grady Hodge, a recent transplant to Shreveport from Austin.  Grady was already bummed out because of the turnout.  We started out with a few relatively sedate laps before John attacked hard.  I jumped for his wheel as we flew through a couple of the turns and when he looked back and saw me there I thought maybe he was ease up to try again later.  Instead he just put the hammer down a little harder and within a few seconds I was coming off of his wheel.  Not long after that Tracy attacked and bridged up to him.  I was hoping that Grady and I could work together and chase since they weren't going so fast that it catching was out of the question, so I was surprised when Grady attacked me about a lap later.  I stayed with him pretty easily, we worked together for another lap or so and then he just sat up in disgust, I think.  So I ended up riding the rest of the race at a nice steady pace and at least getting in a little workout. There was a pretty spectacular single-rider crash right at the finish line in the Cat. 4 race that I happened to get on my iPad since I was using it as a backup finish line camera.  I uploaded the clip to the NOBC Facebook page.

So I think that the experiment with having a separate Cat. 1-2 criterium no matter what was a dismal failure.  I think if the Cat. 1/2 riders had known that it would be a combined Cat. 1/2/3 race, more would have showed up.  I know that the Herring guys were not interested in making a three-hour drive to do a criterium with only a handful of riders, especially when there was full weekend of racing with big competitive fields that was five hours away.  There are 31 Cat. 1/2 riders in Louisiana and Mississippi combined, and of those I would say that only about 20 are actively racing right now, and of those 20, nine are on the Herring team and five or six race mainly masters races, so do the math.  There were only 11 in the Cat. 3 race.  The other experiment was having both an open Women's race and a separate Cat. 4 Women's race.  The open women's race had seven riders with the Cat. 4s in that race finishing 5th, 6th and 7th.  Later in the Cat. 4 women's race, those same three Cat. 4s finished in the same order in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, so the net result was basically the same except that three more women rode in the Cat. 4 women's race.  I suspect that all three of them would have ridden the open women's race if there hadn't been the separate Cat. 4 race, which would have made for a field of ten and basically the same results.  On the plus side, the Cat. 4 women got to win some money, although that could also have been done if it had been a single combined race.

Tuesday's levee ride seemed really fast on the way out, but much easier on the way back, and then today's ride was a nice steady Wednesday paceline at 22-23 mph.  Thinking I'll head out to the lakefront soon if it's not raining.

Smooth and Steady

For a few miles it actually felt cool this morning, and by "cool" I mean "not oppressively hot and humid."  It didn't last, of course.  There was the usual small group for the Friday ride today -- four in all -- and once we got up to 22-23 mph the pace just stayed there as riders took long pulls with a light wind at their backs.  The ride back was much the same, but toward the end the wind, which by then was more or less a headwind, really started to pick up.

This afternoon I went in for an eye exam, largely to talk about options for riding.  After explaining my desire to read my computer while at the same time be able to tell the difference between a pothole and a shadow, I was a little surprised that the recommendation was for multifocal contact lenses.  I guess it's worth a try.  I'm going in for a fitting in about a week. Personally, I'm giving it a 50/50 chance of success, but the other options aren't all that great either.  On the plus side, my vision hasn't gotten a whole lot worse over the last two years so I'll hold off on getting new glasses for a while.

The La./Ms. criterium championship is this Sunday and for some reason the pre-registration numbers are looking really weak even though the location is more centrally located than it's been in a few years.  I really don't understand why so many people are content to ride the weekend group rides rather than going to actual bike races.  It's almost like using the word "race" automatically discourages a bunch of people.  If it's a charity ride or gran fondo type of ride they all turn out and basically race anyway, albeit under considerably more hazardous conditions.  Anyway, I'll probably be driving up to Alexandria around 4 am or something since I have to bring some of the necessary equipment, in particular the race clock and generator, both of which seem to have somehow recovered from their near-death experiences in the rain at the Tour de Louisiane.

Unwanted Intervals

We had a great training race out on the lakefront Wednesday evening.  Sometimes the pace is just too brutal, and sometimes there aren't enough people there to make it fun, but yesterday's training race turned out to have just the right combination, at least for me.  For reasons I cannot even begin to explain, I was feeling pretty good after rushing down S. Claiborne Avenue during rush-hour traffic, risking my live through the Palmetto Gauntlet, and finally locking up the rear wheel when some ahole tried to take me out with an unannounced right turn.  After that I decided that I was probably going to be late for the start anyway, so I may as well back off a notch, enjoy the ride, and get to the lakefront alive.  So I met up with the group as they were on the second half of the first lap, around Franklin Avenue, where I made a very quick U-turn and sprinted to catch them.  For the next few laps there were a number of attacks, a couple of which were mine, that kept things interesting. 

It is probably no coincidence that I sometimes oversleep the morning after those two-ride days like yesterday.  This morning when I awoke, after falling back asleep when the alarm went off, it was already 6 am, which is when I am usually leaving the house.  Somehow I made it out to the levee in time to meet the group.  Once things got rolling the group settled into a consensus pace of around 24 mph.  Unfortunately, Howard was in the paceline on his time trial bike.  Every time he would come to the front he would up the pace to 28 or so, so every now and then we would have an unwanted interval, usually followed by a slow-down below the speed we had been going in the first place until things settled back down to the 24 mph pace. I did manage to try out my new Nikon Coolpix AW110 camera, although I do need to change some of the defaults and figure out what will work best for those photos taken while riding.  I don't really know yet if using the combined motion detection/ vibration detection is a good idea or if it will mess with image resolution enough to irritate me.  Anyway it's a fun new toy, compliments of The Daughter, and since it's waterproof and shock resistant I can dispense with the ziplock bags.

Mid-week Summer

It was anything but cool this morning as I rode out to meet the Wednesday ride group up on the levee.  I'd had to turn back early on Tuesday in order to comfortably make a morning meeting over at Gibson Hall, although by the time I dropped off of the group we'd already been dropped like a rock when a gap suddenly opened up a few bikes ahead of me.  It was just as well, I thought, as I peeled off my soaking wet jersey and stinky gloves.  Cycling gloves certainly do develop their own unique smell in the summer, don't they?  The morning meeting that disrupted my training ride was kind of a mixture of frustration and depression.  There were a couple of Google Fusion maps I wanted to show and discuss, but for some reason the data wasn't loading for one of them.  Together with the increasingly depressing federal and state funding situation and various other problematic issues, I can't say I left the meeting in much of a good mood.

We are in one of those "summer pattern" cycles right now, and around here that means it's around 80F in the morning, rising into the low-mid 90s during the day, with a 30% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Status quo for summer. Down in the basement at home I keep a fan running most of the time in order to keep things from getting moldy.  There are other sure signs of summer.  Last night I went downstairs to lube the chain on the bike and noticed a big cockroach strolling along a nylon bag I had on the floor.  I grabbed the bag and gave it a shake but didn't see the roach fall to the floor.  A moment later I felt him walking across the back of my neck. After a little impromptu break-dancing I got him off of me and onto the floor where he met his demise.  I spent a little time after that spraying bug spray in the basement.

Tour de La

It was warm and humid this morning, but there was actually a pretty good-sized group up on the levee for the Wednesday training ride. The Wednesday ride is really quite relaxing.  The speed generally stays in the 22-24 mph range, but everyone takes really long pulls.  Often I get in only one pull on the way out, which is around 11 miles, I think.  The whole time I was irritated with my sunglasses which had fogged up the minute I had slowed down at the start and never really cleared up.  Speaking of glasses, I finally broke down and made an appointment for the end of the week for an eye exam and especially to talk about my options for prescription riding glasses.  When Kenny wrote on Facebook the other day that he'd pinch-flatted both tires on a pothole that he thought was just a patch of sand, it reminded me that I'm liable to do the same, or worse. So I guess we'll see, literally and figuratively, how that goes.  I'm thinking bifocal sport glasses of some type that will sit high enough on my face that the top frame won't be in my line of sight. My Oakley M-frames are the only glasses I've ever had that really worked for that, and I don't know what the possibilities are for prescription glasses like those. The "district" championship criterium, aka LAMBRA criterium championship, is next Sunday up in Alexandria on a course at the university there that I last rode some time in the 80s.  I have been feeling pretty sluggish on the bike lately, so I'm planning on heading out to the lakefront this evening to see if we can do a little training race. I could use the intensity.  I have been fooling around with Google Fusion lately in order to create some maps for work, and took a few minutes this morning to make a quick interactive map that shows where the Tour de La pre-registered riders came from.

After the Tour

I'd rather be riding.

The 42nd annual Tour de Louisiane went pretty well.  Turnout was a little low, as I had expected, maybe 35 entries short of what I'd call a very good field.  The races, however, were all very competitive and generally had big enough fields to make for good racing.  A couple of days before the race, the weather forecast was looking great with nothing higher than a 30% chance of rain.  That all changed the day before the race when the Sunday forecast went up to about 80% depending on whose forecast you checked.  I was confident that the road races on Saturday morning, and probably the evening time trial, would be dry, but I was worried about the criterium.

The Road Races were pretty good.  That course can be pretty deceptive and usually is just enough to make a selection in many of the categories.  At then end of the first lap we were surprised to find that the Cat. 5 race turned in the fastest lap by about a minute.  Of course, that shelled a number of riders from that group.  After the races Ricky and I sat there under the tent and got all of the results and times entered, then we stopped at a McDonald's on the way back to Covington where I uploaded the preliminary results to the website.  We hung around there for a while, but when I saw the sky starting to darken I told Mark we'd better get over to the TT course early so we could get the tent set up.  When we arrived there we pulled it out of the trailer right away and got it set up just before a big thunderstorm came through.  There was enough lightning and thunder that if it had happened an hour later the time trial would definitely have been in jeopardy.  Fortunately it passed over and cleared up nicely by the time the first riders took off at 5:30.  We started plugging in the results on-site, but decided to finish up at Jason's house when the insect repellent started to wear off and we were attacked by deer flies.

So Sunday morning started out looking pretty bad.  I had just gotten up around 6 am when the phone rang.  It was the Covington police captain calling to see if we were going to cancel. Once again, we arrived just in time to get the tent set up before the sky opened up above us.  It was still about 45 minutes before the first race.  Unfortunately the big race clock got wet enough that it later freaked out, so we didn't have it for the races.  Even worse, the generator suddenly stopped and we couldn't get it started again. Clearly water had gotten into it somehow. The rain had eased up a bit and it was looking like we'd be able to have the races, but without power we would not have the finish line camera which was definitely going to present a bit of a problem.  Luckily there was an electrical outlet in front of a nearby building so we pulled out the 100' extension cord and were back in action.  The first couple of races were held in a light drizzle on very wet streets, resulting in a couple of crashes.  Things were just beginning to dry up a bit when the Masters race got underway, and by the time the Cat. 1/2/3 race started it was mostly dry.  I had been worried about the possibility of cars getting onto the course, since we were in the middle of downtown Covington and there would certainly be some cars that were trapped inside the course.  Sure enough, at one point the Cat. 1/2/3s came flying around the fastest corner on the course at around 30 mph to meet face-to-face with the front grill of a pickup truck.  Luckily they are all very experienced riders and although a couple of riders flatted when they had to hop the curb, they all handled it well.  They neutralized themselves and we stopped the race until the course was cleared.  Since it was still pretty early in their 60-minute criterium, it didn't cause a big problem. We got the final results done quickly, stopped for lunch at Buster's on the course, and headed home to unload the trailer and get the results up on the website.

So all-in-all it was a successful race unless you measure success in dollars because we lost over $4,000 on the event since we were lacking our usual stage sponsors this year.  On the plus side, the Covington folks were very happy and we are already on their calendar for last year with plans to do some expanded pre-race publicity and better course contol planning.  After the race a number of videos showed up on Facebook from riders in a few of the races.  I posted most of them to the LAMBRA Facebook page. 

On Monday the streets were wet so I decided to spend my usual riding time doing online post-event paperwork.  At this point I have the results up on the website, they have been uploaded to the USAC database, all of the post-event reports have been submitted, all of the wet race equipment has been dried out and stored (the clock seems to have survived after I disassembled it and left it in front of a fan overnight).  No word yet on the generator.  I still have to update the LAMBRA LCCS rankings.

So after four days of the bike I jumped back into the Tuesday levee ride, following that up with a Wednesday morning ride and the Wednesday evening training race at the lakefront.  By this morning I was feeling pretty dragged out.  The air was thick and humid, and I really had to force myself onto the bike where I struggled through the long Thursday ride. Unfortunately, it looks like my trusty Nikon Coolpix camera has died, so photos will probably be in short supply for a while.

Three Days to Go

After skipping my Monday ride to allow for a little recovery time, I was hoping to feel fresh on Tuesday morning. So I was disappointed to find that everything felt achy on the long Tuesday levee ride. I felt pretty lousy all day, so I guess perhaps it wasn't just the riding to blame. Whatever the reason, I blew off late night bike race work and hit the sack a little early.  The Tour de La is only three days away.  The race bibles are being printed and should be ready today.  We've touched base with all of the appropriate authorities for the three venues, volunteers are more or less lined up (there are never enough), we have a few motorefs coming for the larger groups, the results spreadsheets are done, etc., so there aren't too many last-minute emergency things to which to attend (yet).  I'm planning on buying a new printer tonight.  It's getting hard to find a simple printer, but I think Wal-Mart has the standard $35 HP printers. The ink cartridges cost about as much as the printer. Printers always seem to be a problem out in the field for some reason, and my old one just flat out died after the 2-Person Time Trial. 

I still need to go through all of the NOBC race stuff to sort it all out, organize the bib numbers, figure out how many and which types of batteries I need, charge the radios, and of course pick up some Turkey Bags in case of rain.  They are clear and large enough to handle a clipboard and your hand so you can write on dry paper in the rain.  The forecast is looking pretty good for Saturday and Sunday, but this time of year you can get a little thunderstorm at practically any time.

So this morning I felt a little better for the regular Wednesday ride.  One thing for sure:  It's starting to feel like summer around here, which means I get home from the morning ride pretty much soaked in sweat, even after relatively easy rides like today's. I stopped off at Zotz for a coffee after today's ride, sitting outside watching the Mississippi Kites soaring above and thinking about how they are one of the sure signs that it's summer.

Wind and Rain

A bunch of club members headed over to the Tour de Louisiane road course on Saturday to ride a few laps, sweep some corners, and have lunch in Covington.  As usual, I rode the first lap with a can of bright green road marking paint in my bottle cage stopping at each intersection to freshen up the arrows.  We regrouped at the end of that lap and then did one lap at a faster pace, regrouping again at the church.  For some reason the group got all split up after that.  I started out with a few of the guys, rolling easy and waiting or the rest to catch up, but as I looked back I could see nothing but empty asphalt, so after a couple of miles I dropped off and turned around, wondering where everyone was.  Finally a couple more riders appeared, but the road behind them was still empty, so we went ahead, not know if the others might have decided to turn back.  The front group was probably four or five minutes up the road, so we took a shortcut and as we emerged back onto the course met right up with them.  Perfect timing or random luck.  By then it was getting pretty hot and to me it felt like the first truly hot summer weekend day of the year.

So I went innocently out to meet the Giro Ride this morning, having neglected to check the radar since the forecast had been unremarkable and the sky looked find.  Arriving at Starbucks, though, Jeff said he thought we'd get wet.  Apparently the radar looked worse than ominous.  Well, when we hit Lakeshore Drive, we could see nothing but black clouds over the lake and people were already talking about where we might turn around.  From there it got worse really quickly.  I was thinking maybe we'd make it to the end of Hayne Blvd., but as we came over the Casino bridge we felt this shockingly cold downdraft and suddenly we were being buffeted by 30 mph crosswinds.  There were no dissenters when we turned around half a mile later to head back over the bridge.  By then the gusty winds were getting pretty scary, especially as we went over the bridges, but at least it was about 80% tailwind by then.  I took the shortest route back from Lakeshore Drive, stopping for a moment to chat at the off-road duathlon in progress at City Park, and arrived back home just as the big raindrops were starting to fall.

Calm Friday

Weird and unpredictable weather around here lately.  On Wednesday I had been planning on going out to the lakefront for the training race, but it was pouring rain at my office at 4:30 so I pretty much wrote it off. I left work around 5:30 on wet streets under dripping oak trees, but a couple of miles up the road at the house the street was almost dry.  I don't think it ever actually rained at the lakefront.  So I set my sights on the Thursday evening race at the NOLA motorsports track.  At 5 am that morning it was pouring rain.  An hour later the rain had stopped but the streets were wet, so I dusted off the old Rain Bike, thinking I'd probably be the only person on the levee. Not so. There was a group of seven or eight up there despite the damp asphalt. It would have been a nice ride except for Howard who was on a TT bike and insisted on pushing the pace to an unsustainable level, which of course split the pack.  I dropped off the back pretty early since both me and my 1972 Pennine with steel fenders and $9.95 tires were not quite up to the task of drafting behind Howard's random surges, even though there was a pretty significant tailwind. I think most of the group turned back early anyway.  I rode out to the Big Dip, aka LaRose, meeting up with Judd who came up from behind on his TT bike.  We both turned around at the Dip.  After taking a few pulls into the headwind, I dropped back onto Judd's wheel and he spend the next ten miles practicing his time trialing while I practiced my drafting.  It felt like a hard ride anyway.

So Thursday evening I rushed back home, changed, jumped in the car, and drove across the river to the motorsports park expecting a big crowd. Unfortunately there were all of fourteen or fifteen people total. Perhaps the still-strong wind had something to do with it.  The track over there of course has no wind protection at all, so it's basically like riding in central Texas.  We did a couple of warmup laps that were way faster than warmup speed and I remember thinking to myself, "this isn't much fun!"  Then we split into two groups for a little handicap race where Kenny, Stephen, Ryan and I gave the rest of the group a couple of minutes' head start.  I had already told them I'd be sitting on most of the time, which is exactly what I did.  It felt a lot easier this time, probably because those riders were riding consistent lines around the sweeping curves rather than the random ones that I'd experienced earlier.  Ryan somehow got out of the draft too long and came off the back, so I took a few pulls to give Kenny and Stephen some recovery, and we caught the group with a lap to go (laps are something around 2 miles, I think).  So anyway, I got in a good afternoon workout.

This morning I was happy to do a fairly easy ride on the levee, after which I stopped for a cup of organic fair-trade rocket fuel at Zotz and contemplated all of the stuff I still need to get done before the race next week.

The Tour de Louisiane is just a week away now and the club is busy tying up loose ends.  I was rather late getting the race bible finished this year, but finally posted it yesterday.  I still have to get copies printed, of course. Entries are trickling in slowly as usual.  Tomorrow we will be riding the road race course, marking intersections and sweeping corners.