Riding, Rainstorms, and Rest

The WeMoRi Gossip Lap

The weather around here has been occasionally dramatic lately.  After Sunday's race some big thunderstorms rolled through, causing lots of street flooding and some power outages.  We had to abort an attempt to feed the cat we've been taking care of (the one that belongs to the doctor who is still in the hospital after heart bypass surgery) because the streets were too flooded.  We ended up stranded on some relatively high ground (we're talking inches here, not feet) for about 45 minutes until we could even get back to the house.  It's been kind of hit-and-miss like that all week.  On Wednesday I went out to meet the early morning WeMoRi group, knowing that the prospects for the remainder of the day were entirely up in the air.  I met the group right at Lakeshore Drive, so got in about ten miles of reasonably fast riding for the first lap around City Park.  Their second lap is always done at gossip pace.  Sometime I think the main attraction of that particular group ride is actually the gossip rather than the training.  Anyway, there was more rain that afternoon so I didn't even try to go out to the lakefront.  The rain had stopped, but it was clearly just a lull because the city was entirely surrounded by rain, some of it pretty heavy.  By 7:30 it was storming again, complete with more minor street flooding.  Kenny had gone out toward Kenner, gotten a flat just as the sky opened up, couldn't get the flat fixed, rode I don't know how many miles in the rain on a flat, and finally called for extraction.  Last night is stormed again for a couple of hours.  More is predicted for this afternoon, for whatever that's worth.

Lisa Colvin, one of the LAMBRA officials and coaches who had been in Europe getting her UCI coaching certification, was airlifted from Monroe to New Orleans last night.  She caught some virus while over there and it has developed into myocarditis, so it's fairly serious. She's over at Ochsner's CCU, probably along with Fred whose cat we've been taking care of.  Lane, her husband and also a LAMBRA official and our event permit approver, drove down in the middle of the night.  I guess he got in around 2 am or so.

I was glad to see no rain nearby this morning.  We had a very small group for the Thursday levee ride, but at least we got in the full ride, mostly at a steady 23 mph pace except for the time I spent fixing the flat tire I got when I rolled through a patch of gravel or something.  Even though I didn't get to do the training race yesterday evening I am still feeling like I need a rest.  Last night we got an email from a Tulane faculty member who is about to leave for a new job in Santiago, Chile.  He did some track racing in college and grad school at Northwestern and is giving the Tulane cycling team some nice equipment that he doesn't want to take with him. It includes a couple of very nice track frames, a road bike, and a mountain bike, in addition to some miscellaneous parts.  Perfect timing, since we are planning to get the WattBikes unpacked and set up in the cycling center over the weekend.

Jack of All Trades, HarborMaster of None

Last Sunday was the Harbor Master Criterium. This was a first-year event held in New Orleans, mainly in the parking lot of the casino boat that used to be docked at the South Shore Marina.  I was to help officiate along with Ricky who came down from Monroe and Tim from River Ridge, but I was also hoping to jump into the Masters race so the day wouldn't be a total loss riding-wise.  The course was a tight, curvy, 0.6 mile affair, the details of which had remained somewhat of a mystery until a few days before the actual race day.  The Semi-Tough club had spent a lot of time on Saturday clearing away all of the sand and debris that had accumulated, as one would expect, on a parking lot that had been closed off for years.

My preparation for the actual race, and by that I mean my participation therein, not the officiating part, had been pretty bad.  On Sunday morning I loaded up the car with various officiating-type things - tent, generator, flags, banners, clipboards, computer, etc. - and then almost as an afterthought clamped the bike to the roof, threw shorts and jersey into my bag, and headed out to the lake.  The forecast was promising a hot day on the asphalt with only a slight chance of rain.  This was good since there were a couple of places on the course that involved riding over painted asphalt that had been part of the entrance to the old casino.  Pre-registration had been pretty slim, but I had a feeling that there would be a lot of race-day entries.  That often happens for a one-day race in a metro area with a minimal late-registration fee.  I was right, and over half of the day's entries came on race day.  Ricky and I hustled around setting up the finish line and registration computer, and pretty soon I was plugging entries into the laptop as fast as I could.

The early races went off pretty well, and I was glad to see that the tight, short course wasn't causing a lot of problems.  One of the women crashed and broke a collarbone, but I don't know the circumstances. Otherwise there were hardly any crashes of note unless you count Daniel who crashed in the last turn before the finish sprint because he inexplicably decided it would be a good time to fiddle with his computer.  He ended up walking across the finish line.

Racing a crit from the back is hard.

The Masters were up after the Women's race and since the latter was pretty easy to score I was able to head over to the car as soon as they were done to change and get the bike ready.  I even got to take maybe three warm-up laps around the course. Although it usually takes me half an hour before I feel truly warmed up nowadays, this was a good thing because the first few laps of the race were full gas.  It wasn't too long before a little break rode off the front, but by then I was already struggling near the ever-dwindling back of the pack, too busy closing gaps and sprinting out of every turn to worry about what was happening at the front.  Things settled down eventually for the middle part of the 40-minute race and I was finally able to recover a bit.  Another attack split the pack, so I ended up in I guess the third group with eight or nine riders already way up the road.  It was a good workout but I have to say that trying to be a Jack of All Trades, switching between officiating and racing and then back to officiating, doesn't really allow one to master either.  Still, it was better than nothing and the other two officials were more than capable of handling things without me.

The Cat. 1/2 race was pretty fast and interesting despite a small 12-rider field.  When it became obvious that a 3-rider break was going to lap the field, which by then had dwindled to maybe five or six, I asked out loud if the riders in the pack would be able to work with the riders in the break.  I knew the answer to that one, but wanted everyone to be thinking about that. A couple of laps later, when the two groups had merged, Stephen, who had been in the break yelled something about pack riders working for their teammates who had been in the break.  He didn't think they could.  Of course, they can.  The only restriction on that sort of thing involves riders who have been *dropped by the field,* and in this case those weren't riders who had been dropped by the field, they *were* the field.  Granted it was a very small field, but it was the biggest group on the road.  Anyway, it was all worked out and Stephen won anyway.  All-in-all they did a great job with the event.  The course was much better than I thought it would be, they had food trucks out there and beer and stuff like that, so everyone had a great time and we're hoping we'll be able to do this again next year.

Old Portage, New Routine

I almost made it out to the lakefront in time for the start of the Wednesday training race.  Almost.  I guess I missed just the first half-lap, but at least my timing was otherwise pretty convenient.  As I approached the Elysian Fields traffic circle I could see them coming toward me, so I just looped around and merged smoothly into the front part of the group.  For the next three and a half laps we averaged 26+ mph, topping out at 35.1.  It wasn't particularly windy, so the group remained mostly intact for most of the ride.  For a change I felt pretty good, despite having ridden the WeMoRi that morning, but got shuffled too far toward the back when things ramped up for the final sprint.  As usual, the ride back from the training race felt cool and refreshing as I was finally producing less sweat than was evaporating.  It was probably still around 84F, but it felt great anyway.

So on Thursday I drove *way* out on River Road once again, parking on Plantation Ave. to meet the levee ride.  I guess this will be the new routine for a while. Despite the fact that we keep getting pushed farther and farther away by the Corps of Engineers' contractor, the group size is still holding pretty steady.  Rich and a couple others are still riding out and back on River Road, although that has not been without it's own controversy. The ride was pretty nice although I was definitely starting to feel the effects of Wednesday's rides by the time we were heading back.



Lakeshore Drive, heading east

This morning I was happily looking forward to an easy recovery ride.  I left home nice and early, around 6 am (Isn't it nice to have light at 6am?  That's what I like about summer the most!) and headed toward the lakefront via Jeff. Davis, following the old portage along Bayou St. John, and finally crossing over to Wisner.  There were some big classic summer clouds lurking around this morning, which helped block the sun and kept it from heating  up too fast.  Way off to the east I could see a little rain shower.  Even with a bit of tailwind, I don't think I was going more than 15 mph along Lakeshore Drive as I rode east to the Seabrook loop and headed back.  Around Franklin Ave. I saw Ben, Jaden and Kevin going the other way so I made a quick U-turn to meet up with them.  I knew they'd be stopping for coffee on Esplanade, which had been my plan regardless. I guess that increased my speed by a couple of mph, but on the other hand I spent pretty much the whole time on Kevin's wheel. I guess I'll do the Giro tomorrow, and then on Sunday I'll be helping with officiating at the Harbor Master Criterium, and jumping into the Masters race, probably with little or no warm-up.  We'll see how that goes!

So the Tulane Cycling Center setup is still moving along - two steps forward, one step back.  The WattBikes that are stuck over at Receiving should get delivered to the suite next Wednesday and the big video monitor should get installed on Friday. Some time around there we should get the doors re-keyed and at that point I'll probably move a bunch of the team stuff that's been in my basement over there.  Looking forward to that!

Barricades and Bike Noises

I've been back into the "new" routine this week, although not without a few little modifications.  After a much-needed recovery ride on Monday I drove out to meet the Tuesday levee ride for the 6:15 am start.  The Corps recently put up a barricade/gate on the levee bike path a bit upriver from the Huey P. Long bridge, so now I have to drive another half-mile to park on Plantation on the side of the PraxAir shop.  On the plus side, it's on the west side of the building and hence in the shade when I return.  The Tuesday ride was fairly uneventful, averaging twenty-two and a half mph and never getting much over 28.  I wasn't feeling too frisky, so it seemed quite a sufficient workout from my perspective. Since I've been on home-health duty for a cat down on Tchoupitoulas Street my morning routine has been a bit more rushed and I've mostly been taking the car rather than riding, mainly so I'm not too late, and sweaty, getting to work.

WeMoRi - City Park Avenue.
Apparently I didn't get the memo about the photographer.

So my new Wednesday morning routine involves rolling out from home at 5:45 to ride out to the lakefront to meet the WeMoRi ride, which also starts at 5:45.  For now it's light enough that I just use a rear blinky light on the way out, and I could probably get away without that.  Of course that won't last very long, and when this hemisphere starts tilting more I may be re-thinking that particular ride.  Anyway, I made good time on the way out there and was all the way out by the "swim hole" on Lakeshore Drive before I saw the group coming.  There were a few guys off the front who I didn't try to go after, but then a few more came by in chase mode so I latched onto one of them at around 28 mph.  The front group eased up a little later and everything came back together.  Things eventually ramped up to 31 mph for the lead-up to the overpass where there is apparently a sprint.  Then there's another sprint halfway down City Park Avenue where Woody came past the whole group on the left about 3 mph faster than the 30 mph we were already going. The last sprint was just before getting back to Robt. E. Lee Blvd., and that one topped out at about 31 mph.  I haven't really been contesting these little sprints but I'm starting to figure out that a number of riders seem to focus on those.  Anyway, it was a nice ride back home with 30 miles in the log and then a rush to clean up and get to work.  I guess I'll drive out to the levee ride again tomorrow, but I am really hating all this driving in the morning.  It beats getting run over by impatient morning commuters and truck drivers on River Road, but riding out to the levee in the morning used to be so relaxing and took only five minutes.

For the past few weeks, ever since I changed out the headset bearings on the Bianchi, I've been getting this pop or crack sound kind of randomly when I stand or put a lot of pressure on the pedals. Since it started immediately after I'd done the headset work I assumed it must be that the bearing wasn't seating well, so I twice removed, cleaned and replaced it.  It didn't go away, so Monday evening I turned the bike upside down so it was resting on the saddle and rear wheel, and put my weight on the pedal.  Yep, the problem is with the bottom bracket or crankset (which nowadays are basically the same thing).  I haven't had time yet, but I guess I'll have to take that apart and clean it all up.  Hopefully the bearings aren't a pile of rust like they were the last time, which was less than a year ago.  Never had these problems in the old days!

Today the surplus furniture (a couple of desks, a work bench, a bookcase, and a few old desk chairs) got moved into the Tulane Cycling Center suite as planned.  Then, around mid-afternoon, I got a call from the Receiving Department saying that the driver of the semi who was delivering the WattBikes (about 800 pounds worth) didn't find anyone at the suite, and was at Receiving.  I doubt he really checked for anyone since I had a note and my card taped to the door, but anyway he wasn't going to move the bikes into the room anyway, apparently, despite the fact that the company we bought them from asked for all kinds of information about loading ramps, hallway widths, etc., and I had sent them all of that information plus photographs and my contact information.  So apparently the driver just dropped off the pallet at Receiving, which is about a mile down the road, and now Receiving will have to get a work order for Facilities Management to deliver them to the suite here at University Square.  When, I don't know, but at least they are getting closer. Two steps forward, one step back.....

The Week After

By all accounts, the 43rd Tour de Louisiane went off quite well, which is to say nobody went to the hospital and nobody was arrested.  Turnout for the Cat. 5 and Masters races was, in a word, disturbing.  The racing, however, was great, the results timely, and the after-race photo albums numerous.  As usual, I headed across the lake around mid-afternoon on Friday, allowing plenty of time to check in to the Hampton Inn before driving over to The Spokesman to set up for Friday night registration.  In the interest of minimizing race-morning chaos, we keep pre-registration and number pickup open until 10 pm Friday night.  This has worked out quite well, actually.  Nowadays, we don't get very many riders who haven't pre-registered online, but having 50-70% of them pick up their numbers on Friday means there won't be long lines at the registration table Saturday morning.  Indeed, thanks in no small part on the smaller than usual turnout, race morning registration was smooth and relaxed, and we got the first race off pretty much on time.  Robin had already gone around the course putting up signs, patching asphalt, sweeping corners.  The road races went pretty well.  A fairly large break in the Cat. 1/2/3 race got a good gap early in the race and then split in the final few miles, yielding five riders with a couple of minutes on the rest of the field.  By the time road races were over it was getting pretty hot, but the cold watermelon that Robin had for the riders helped cool things down.  We got the RR results taken care of right there on the side of the road and then stopped at McDonalds on the way back to grab cool off in the a/c, get a bite to eat, and upload the results and TT start list to the website.

The Mayor leads out the Cat. 1/2/3 race.

The Time Trial, as usual, went smoothly so I had the results up on the website before Ricky and I had dinner.

So Sunday was the big criterium in downtown Covington.  We were all set up and ready to go for the 7:30 am start of the first race, but waited another twenty minutes for the police to tow away a couple of cars that were on the course.  It was a good thing, too, because one of them was on the outside of the last turn, right where the Masters race would later have a big crash.  The criteirums were a lot of fun to watch, and once Erich Mattei arrived to start his colorful announcing it got even better. The NOBC women rode well and got Sherri on the podium just one second ahead of teammate Mignon.

There were two crashes of note on Sunday. The first was on the last turn before the finish of the Master's race.  I don't know exactly what happened.  I saw the race coming around the corner a couple of blocks away and then they all suddenly disappeared to the outside.  A few riders were ahead of it and a few got around it, but a bunch of them ended up on the ground.  Since it was close to the finish they all got pack time anyway and most came through it OK.  The Cat. 5 race was won handily by teammate Taco de Vries who should be upgrading shortly.  Much later, in the Cat. 1/2/3 race, there was a crash on the back side of the course that took a couple of riders out of the race.  In that race there was another early break.  This one included only a couple of the riders who had been in the RR break the day before.  The break ended up with a big gap on the field, although not enough to make up for the gap in the road race.

The Cat. 1/2/3 Break

Michael McBrien, who had been the last rider to bridge up to the break, was working hard for his teammate Stephen Mire who was leading on GC, when he flatted with maybe five laps to go.  Free laps had ended, so he rode the flat for at least five laps, losing about a minute but amazingly managing to finish about twenty seconds up on the pack.  Post-race publicity was great this year with articles and photos in a couple of newspapers.  For the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium the Mayor had come out on his bike and we had him lead the first lap.  When he pulled off, I blew the whistle and the race started.  It worked out great and there were some great photos.  It was interesting that, thanks to making the break in the criterium, Frank Moak ended up 2nd on GC.  Frank is 54. Stephen Mire, who won, is 26 and Evan East, who was 3rd, is 17. By the time I got home and unloaded the car and uploaded the final results on Sunday afternoon I was pretty much wasted.

Bike Path Problems

So I guess we lost only a little money this year rather than a lot.  Anyway, I didn't make it out on the bike on Monday, so by Tuesday I was more than ready to get back in the routine.  We had a good group up on the levee for the long Tuesday ride.  Things split a couple of times and there was just a small group in front toward the end.  At one point I saw something on the edge of the bike path and initially thought it looked like a tire retread that you see on the side of the interstate all the time.  Then I thought, "There aren't any trucks on the levee!"  As we got closer I recognized it as the tail of an alligator but we were going too fast for me to get the camera out.  Then, as we got to the end of the ride we found that while we'd been out riding the levee construction contractor had put up a fence across the bike path right before the parking area.  We still able to get to the cars without riding on River Road, but it was at any rate not a good sign for future levee rides.  On Wednesday I want out early and got in a good morning ride out to the lake trail bike path, and then followed that up with a somewhat late ride out to the lakefront training race.  I missed the first lap, but was really happy to find a big group.  I really enjoyed the three laps I was able to get in before returning home.  One of the psychiatrists who had been on Tulane's faculty, and had just separated from his wife and moved into an apartment down on Tchoupitoulas Street three days ago was in the hospital waiting for an unplanned quadruple bypass, and I had been volunteered to stick his diabetic cat twice a day.  The cat does not enjoy this process any more than I, and I have the scars to prove it.  Hopefully we can get a little help with this task since I suspect it will be quite a while before the cat's owner will be able to handle it again.  I went out early on Thursday for a long ride out to the lake rather than deal with driving out to the river levee where, as it turned out, they had moved the fence even farther upriver since Tuesday.

Big Giro Ride Group

So after a nice and somewhat wet Friday coffee ride I was looking forward to the Saturday Giro.  The weather was pretty nice that morning with hardly any wind and slightly lower than normal humidity.  Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought it would be a good day for the Giro.  Leaving Starbucks I counted forty riders, so I guess we must have ended up with at least fifty.  As soon as we hit Hayne Blvd. the pace ramped up and pretty much stayed there.  On Chef Highway I though maybe I should go up to the front and take a few pulls, but when I looked up the road all I saw was a three block long single file line of riders going 30 mph and I knew it wasn't going to happen.  As it turned out we averaged 28.5 mph for the 16 mile outbound stretch.  It took a few miles for everyone to recover from that on the way back but of course it eventually ramped up into the high 20s soon enough, so despite the fact that I practically never saw the front, I felt like I got a great workout.  This morning's Giro was a little less dramatic speed-wise.  After the turnaround the group was being particularly sluggish and I just rolled off the front at like 22 mph, soon being joined by a couple of other riders.  We were just doing a nice smooth rotation awaiting the inevitable catch by the rest of the group but then we caught VJ who was on his TT bike.  We did one more rotation and then VJ just sat on the front and motored at 24-25 mph for miles and miles. A couple of guys finally caught us at the end of the service road and eventually things mostly came back together on Hayne.

So the Tour is mostly wrapped up for another year and I somehow got in a good 270 mile week.  I have a pile of things still backlogged at work and at home but hopefully I can get most of those taken care of during the week.  There's a super-tight criterium in New Orleans next weekend and so that should be interesting.

Ready as We'll Be

I guess we're about as ready as we'll be for this weekend's Tour de Louisiane.  The road race course has been painted and marked and Robin was out there today patching some of the little holes in the asphalt.  Jason went out and marked the TT course with mile markers, and the police and Mayor are all lined up for Sunday's criterium.  In general I think we're in pretty good shape.  The only thing that is worrying me is the relatively lackluster pre-registration list.  I mean, where are the Cat. 5s and Masters?  A couple of years ago we were filling up the 50-rider Cat. 5 fields and the Masters had one of the largest fields.  This year the Cat. 1/2/3 field is looking pretty good, and the Cat. 4 field is looking OK, but overall, registrations are down quite a bit.  We're not alone, of course.  Most of the other races seem to be seeing the same thing. I can't really explain it, but it is certainly frustrating.  Every year it gets more and more expensive to put on a race with adequate police, volunteers, and challenging courses, so entry fees become more and more important.  For this race we absorb the online registration surcharge, which for a $65 entry fee is $3.60 (over 5%).  Some of the more vocal riders are always pushing for separate fields for various categories and/or age groups, but the field sizes we're getting aren't doing anything to encourage promoters to move in that direction.  Anyway, it's the same amount of work to put on a stage race with 100 riders as it is to put on a stage race with 300, and I'm gearing up for that weekend of work, at least psychologically.  On the plus side, the weather forecast looks fine with only a slight chance of rain for the weekend.  Not having to deal with huge summer thunderstorms makes this whole process go a lot more smoothly.  Anyway, I'll be officiating along with Ricky and we'll have a number of moto-refs for the Road Race since there will be five groups out on the course at once.

Front of the WeMoRi group on the Wisner overpass  - the easy lap

Wednesday morning I was up a little early so I left home around 5:45, which is about when the WeMoRi starts out by the lake.  That ride does a lap of Lakeshore Drive, around 10 miles, before turning off onto Marconi to ride two laps around the park.  It's about eight miles from my house to Lakeshore Drive.  I've figured out that if I leave around 5:45 I can easily catch the group at the lake near Marconi.  This works out pretty well.  I was almost to Lakeshore Drive on Marconi when I saw Woody, Jaden and a couple others come flying around the corner.  I knew they must be off the front of the group, and maybe twenty seconds later I saw the group so I turned around and merged into it.  They weren't going particularly hard, which was fine since I wasn't really fully warmed up anyway.  The WeMoRi group likes to hammer down Wisner, sprint for some random spot on City Park Avenue, hammer down Marconi, and then do a slightly modified second lap at a conversational pace.

TUCA Cycling Center

Actually, for this group, I would have to call it a gossip pace. Anyway, I was glad to get in a few fast miles and still be back home relatively early since I had some Tour de La stuff to attend to before work.  This morning I drove out to the Thursday levee ride at 6:15.  The Corps of Engineers is beginning to put up the fencing upriver of the Jefferson Playground in preparation for the next section of levee they will be tearing up.  Once that happens, riding on the river levee is going to become impractical for me.  Big Richard called the Levee District and said, "the contractor will pave the first 10k ft section (the stables) once completed. It appears about 2k ft needs to be raised before they reach the stables."  That's about the best we can expect, I guess.  At any rate, it looks like I will be riding out to the lakefront pretty much every day in a week or two.  Hopefully they will get the Jefferson Davis bridge work finished by then so I can avoid Carrollton and add a couple of miles.

Bike Storage Room

Meanwhile, it's been a frustrating week at work, mostly waiting for other people to get back to me so I can move ahead on a couple of things.  One little bright spot, however, was when Facilities Management showed up the other day to start working on the Tulane cycling club's space.  The bike storage room and little locker room are now ready to go, the WattBikes are on order (I hope), and I'm awaiting a call from Facilities on delivering the surplus furniture that we have on 'hold' over in storage.  The big video screen is supposed to be installed by a subcontractor and I haven't heard anything about when that will happen, but I assume it will be pretty soon.  I never got a reply to my most recent email to Card Services about the card-swipe system that we need to install, but The Daughter has written up a draft risk management/safety policy that I probably won't look at until next week.  At least things are moving along.  Once I can get the locksmith in here to make us some real keys I can move a bunch of stuff out of my basement into the storage room of what I am calling the Tulane Cycling Center.  We still need to get a number of things, like workstands, tools, etc., but that will be relatively easy.  I think.

Tour Course

Those clouds looked a lot worse than this photo would imply!

I was up early Saturday morning with plenty of time to get ready for the Saturday Giro Ride.  All suited-up, bike in hand, I opened the basement door just in time to see the rain start.  Another day off the bike looking out the window at wet streets. On Sunday we were planning a recon ride on the Tour de La road race loop.  After meeting at 6:30 or so we made the drive across the lake and up to cucumber corner.  I put a can of neon green marking paint in my bottle cage, force-fit an actual water bottle in the seat tube cage (small frames don't accommodate large water bottles very well) and we headed toward the road course up near Stoney Point.  We met the loop at its last turn where I was surprised to find that a number of the cracks and holes in the pavement had been marked with orange paint.  I remarked that there must have been a recent ride around there.  Since we started out on the final stretch of the race loop, the first thing we came to was the old 1 km mark.  I was glad to be able to actually find it and jumped off the bike to re-paint it.  We rolled past the start/finish and then again noticed that the corner had more orange paint.  I stopped to freshen up one of the arrows, but since this is Turn #1 and is about 100 meters from the start/finish it doesn't really need to be marked.  Four or five miles later, as we approached Turn #2, I could see Robin's truck parked at the corner and Robin standing there with a paint can!  I stopped to freshen one of the arrows, but since Robin was already going around the course marking everything I just stopped briefly at the key spots and freshened up one or two of the markings rather than all of them.  The course was in pretty good shape this year and didn't need any sweeping, although there were a few spots on the smaller roads where the asphalt was starting to crack up.  I stopped to mark the three or four spots where there was enough of an edge to maybe cause a pinch-flat.  Overall, though, the 16 mile loop is pretty smooth, partially shaded, and deceptively challenging.  I used up the last of the paint on the final turn, stashed the can where I could pick it up later, and we started our second lap.  While the first lap had been nice and easy since I was stopping every few miles, the second lap got faster after we all re-grouped at the start/finish.  I guess we did about a lap and a half at a pretty good pace, splitting the group a couple of times so that by the end there were just four of us left.  We mostly re-grouped at the last turn and rode down to the start/finish before coming to the consensus that one more lap wasn't going to happen.  Sixty miles on that course is usually quite sufficient, actually, if one or two laps are done at a significant effort level.  Although there are only a couple of hills that you might call "climbs," this course is all up and down, offering virtually no flat sections for recovery or gap-closing.  Any time there are a couple of guys pushing the pace, the course seems to suddenly go from easy to hard.  So anyway, between Robin and me we got the course very well marked for next Saturday's road races, and after a stop at Starbucks we headed for the Causeway.

Now normally, when I have bikes on the roof of the Volvo, I can go through the 7 ft height sensor fast enough to not trip it and I get charged only the regular $3 rather than the $6 intended for trucks.  This time, I again went through undetected and the screen showed $3.00 as usual.  Then the damned toll-taker manually changed it to $6.  Really?  Of course, sitting there blocking traffic in order to argue with a toll booth operator is a pointless exercise, but I am seriously contemplating a letter to Carlton Dufrechou at the Causeway Commission about this ridiculous extra toll for having fifty pounds of bicycles on the roof instead of inside the car.  I know it's been brought up before on a number of occasions but I had always assumed that the toll-takers weren't able to change the toll and had to collect whatever was indicated.  Now I know that isn't the case and if they wanted to, they could set a policy of allowing rooftop bicycles through at the regular automobile rate.

Knowing I'd be missing a whole weekend of riding because of officiating the Tour I did a slightly longer and harder ride on Monday than my usual recovery ride.  This morning we did the regular long levee ride under some impressive clouds, and I was happy to have made it back home well before any of the rain started.  On the way to work I dropped off the Tour de La Race Bibles for printing.  They end up costing almost $2 each for 175 of them, and that's including my staff discount at the Tulane FedEx/Kinko location.  Meanwhile, pre-registrations are just starting to trickle in.  Although I am certainly guilty of waiting until the last minute to register for races myself, it sure is stressful when you see only a couple dozen riders registered less than a week before the race.  The Tour is probably the best deal around since we absorb the whole online registration fee, but maybe I overestimate the general public's ability to figure that out.  We also forgo the usual T-shirts and water bottles, instead putting the money into police, portable toilets, officials and moto-refs, and prizes.  Crazy, I know.   So I was looking at the 1974 article from Competitive Cyclist about the Tour de Louisiana and thinking about the guys who ended up finishing in the top places.  It's amazing how many of them are still racing and/or involved in racing.  These were the top 5 that year.

1. Tom Officer:  Three podiums at this year's Masters Nationals.
2. John Howard:  Need I say more about John Howard?  He has his own Wikipedia page.  Cycling Hall of Fame, Olympics, Ironman, etc., etc.
3. Dell Blundell:  Recently started up the Dino Riders South facebook page.
4. Mike Neal:  Cycling Hall of Fame, Olympics, national coach.  
5. David Ware:  National Champion.

Weather...or Not

You know, sometimes you start out on a nice fresh new week with a plan, only to have it squashed by Mother Nature and that little part of life that does not involve the bike.  This was one of those weeks.  After last weekend's rather disappointing race performance, followed by Monday's long but easy holiday ride, I was back to the routine on Tuesday morning for the long levee ride.  My legs still felt inexplicably tired with some lingering soreness that I could attribute only to age-related recovery sluggishness. This aging thing is really a PITA!  So anyway, that was one decent 35 mile training ride.  I was looking forward to Wednesday when I usually have a chance to ride in the morning and then follow it up in the evening with the training race.  Well, having seen the weather forecast the night before, I got up early Wednesday morning and checked the radar on my phone before getting out of bed.  There was a lot of very bad-looking rain just west of the city.  For some reason my phone wasn't loading the animated weather map, but since the weather here this time of year is almost always moving from southwest to northeast I guessed it would be raining by sunrise and went back to sleep.  Of course it didn't actually rain and I could certainly have ridden.  I should know better.  The rest of the day was threatening weather but the worst of it was just barely bypassing the city to the north, so I was thinking I'd be able to ride after work.  Naturally, it rained after work, so Wednesday was a loss.

I drowned my sorrows with a couple of glasses of $2.99 wine that night.  Thursday morning I got up early out of habit and was all ready to get dressed to go out and meet the Thursday levee ride when I remembered I had to take The Wife to the hospital for a 7:45 am appointment to have the staples removed from her hip surgery.  Naturally, the weather was nice that morning.  The staple removal went fine and she was cleared to return to work next week, so that was nice.  I was thinking maybe I'd get out for a few miles after work.  Nope.  It rained again shortly after I got home, so that made two days off the bike.  I finished off that bottle of wine instead.  So this morning I didn't check the radar and went out around 6:30 under a cloudy sky, determined to get in some mileage.  I felt like I'd been off the bike for two weeks as I rode down Carrollton Avenue toward the lake.  It wasn't until I was past Causeway on the lake bike path that I finally started to loosen up a little bit.  I guess the tailwind didn't hurt either.  I decided I was going to ride all the way out to the western edge of Kenner where the bike path basically ends.  Once I passed the Casino at Williams Blvd. I noticed that the asphalt was getting more and more wet from a recent rain shower, and a little while later I started feeling some light drizzle falling.  I made it out to the end, turned around and had just gotten going again when the rain got a little heavier, but I guess it wasn't moving to the east much because a couple of miles later it was relatively dry again.  Anyway, I was glad to get in a couple of hours on the bike even through that will be just a drop in the bucket of missed miles this week.

The Tour de Louisiane is coming up next week and the handful of club members who help put it together are now in the "oh shit" stage.  We have a meeting this afternoon to see what has fallen through the cracks.  As usual, very few have pre-registered yet, so I sent out some reminders this morning.  It seems that every year it gets more and more expensive to put on a reasonably safe event and harder and harder to break even.  There were a few years back in the late 70s and probably even into the early 80s when I put about $300 out of my own pocket into the race, prizes were all merchandise from the bike shop, and that was about it.  Now we're talking about an event that requires $10-12k in cash, minimum, with a field size only a little bit larger.  On the plus side, it's been great working with the town of Covington where the criterium will be held.  They have made a nice poster for the race that they will be putting up around town, and the police department, fire department and mayor's office are very supportive of the event.  We had to make a little change to the crit course that will shorten the sprint and require us to move the finish line down a bit, but I think it should still work out OK for the field sizes we will have.

Off Sunday, Monday Off

It was good long weekend for riding, although we're now starting to wish for just a little bit of rain around here.  The temperatures are working their way into summer, and lots of riders are schlepping two or three bottles on routine two-hour training rides already.  The 3-day Memorial Day weekend offered a couple of nice twists.  On Sunday there was the Feliciana Road Race, a nice nearby race on good roads with some decent terrain and even some partial shade.  Then on Monday was the now-traditional Memorial Day ride where we  visit the Chalmette Battlefield, Metairie Cemetery, and the WWII museum.

The Saturday Giro was kind of interesting.  A number of riders were planning on racing the next day, so I was expecting things to be a little subdued.  The ride out to Venetian Isles, however, was really not particularly subdued, averaging around 26 mph for the most part. The return trip turned out to be much more civilized and was in general slow enough for conversation, at least at the back. I wasn't feeling terrible, but on the other hand I wasn't feeling great either.  By the time I got home I was beginning to realize that summer is here.  The jersey was wet, the glasses coated in sweat, and my single large water bottle empty.

I was glad to see a couple of New Orleans expatriates who have been living in Texas, Colorado, and now West Virginia, which is one of those states I'd probably have trouble picking out on a map. Traci and Gary have been very active racers in road, mountain bike and cyclocross for a long time and I was glad to see that they were both obviously in good shape.  Neither was having any trouble with the faster sections of the ride, and as usual Traci seemed always to be in a good position near the front of the group.

So Sunday morning I was feeling kind of off as I drove up to the race in St. Francisville with Brian Baum, arriving a little later than planned.  Brian, who hadn't pre-registered, had to talk his way into the race since for some reason they didn't want to register any race-day riders that late.  Anyway, he did manage to get his bib number for the Masters race.  Our field was about typical for this year, which is to say the combined 40+/55+ had only twenty. The 66-mile, 3-lap race wasn't likely to be very easy, however, considering the riders who were on the starting line.  I hadn't been feeling too sharp and probably should have done an easy ride instead of the Giro on Saturday, but that didn't stop me from accidentally rolling off the front with a couple other riders practically from the start. With most of the horsepower still back in the pack, I knew we wouldn't last long and wasn't putting much effort into the break.  I figured it would be a nice smooth warm-up and might shake something loose when the chase started.  We were out there for seven or eight miles at around 24 mph before a line of riders flashed past at about 28 mph.  I had to make a pretty significant effort to get up to speed there.  There were some attacks and a counter took Brian Baum and Kevin Landry off the front.  I smiled.  This looked like a good deal for Brian since few of the riders in the race knew him (he loves to time trial and can motor along forever) and Kevin had five teammates in the pack who would definitely not be pulling. Jerry Simon, who had only one or two teammates who could help, would have to work pretty hard if he wanted to close the gap.  Unlike some of the races earlier this year there were a few other riders willing to pitch in for chasing duties. I was feeling like crap and was pulling through only when the pace was a little slower, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that there were enough strong riders in the pack to have a chance of catching without forcing teammate Mark McMurry or me to kill ourselves.

That little dot at the back?  That would be I.

Unfortunately, they had already given the duo up the road way too much rope.  I know I heard they had 90 seconds at some point, probably with about 25 miles to go, and thinking they weren't going to be caught. We were only halfway through the second lap and Jerry was already getting frustrated with having to do so much work at the front and having so many riders sitting in.  At one point the pack split and I had to put my head down and motor at 30 mph for a while to regain contact, unfortunately bringing most of the rest of the group with me because the first group kind of eased up as I caught.  By then I was on the ropes.  We were about mid-way through the last lap when we saw Brian up the road by himself and I knew the group would catch him.  I had no clue how far up Kevin was, but we never saw him and once we caught Brian everything started slowing down as everyone decided to race for second place.  Brian was starting to cramp up and I wasn't feeling too good myself.  The last few miles have a couple of significant climbs, the last of which tops out about 300 meters from the finish.  I usually have a lot of trouble with those 300 meters, even under ideal conditions, and conditions for me were already starting to deteriorate.  One thing at which I really suck is the matched sprint.  Accelerating from zero to 30 is just not something I am built for.  Unfortunately, the end of this race was starting to look like it would be a 12-person drag race.  Of course there was an attack as we hit the last hill which is about a kilometer from the finish, and I didn't really have a ton of trouble with that, but then it slowed down - a lot - before the next attack.  I was already too far back and when that went it seemed like I just went backwards.  I really don't know why I had so little power at that point, but I just had nothing and most of the group started the sprint.  I pretty much stopped pedaling with 200 meters to go and rolled across the finish line in like 10th place.  It was kind of disappointing.

We had Monday off, and when I got up with surprisingly sore quads I immediately thought to myself, "You have been spending way too much time sitting in the draft and way too little time sprinting and climbing."  It wasn't exactly a revelation.  I rode out to Starbucks to meet a group that would then be riding to the French Quarter to meet up for the Memorial Day ride.  For reasons that are beyond me they departed almost an hour before we were supposed to meet downtown, despite the fact that it's a ten-minute ride to get there, so I rode halfway there with my still-hot Americano in one hand.  We finally got rolling a bit after 8:00 after a history lesson by Kenny, with occasional commentary by a local street person who was drinking out of an almost empty half-gallon bottle of Smirnoff.

We made our way out to the Chalmette Battlefield, came back to town and then out to Metairie Cemetery, and then back downtown to the WWII museum.  There we gathered outside as a 93-year old Marine from New Orleans told us all about his experiences during the war.  This guy, who still runs 3 miles every morning and works at the museum, was a Pearl Harbor when it was attacked (and shot down a Zero), and spent the rest of the war at practically every single battle in the Pacific. In the middle of all of that he came home on leave, met a girl at a dance, married her the next day, and shipped out again.  Then, after the war, rather than going home he was sent to a few other places, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amazing guy. You would have guessed the guy was 65 years old, but whatever, he was one damned lucky soldier.  Later that evening I watched Pearl Harbor on TV.  Nice way to finish out Memorial Day weekend, even though it is only barely acknowledged as a holiday down here.

Long Days, Long Week

I am feeling pretty wiped out right now, but I'm not seeing any rest for the weary in the near future.  It all got busy last Thursday when The Wife and I showed up at Ochsner Hospital for 5:00 am, on her birthday, so she could have her hip replacement surgery.  I paid a bit over $2,000 to the hospital despite the fact that we have the most expensive insurance package that Tulane offers.  The surgery went really smoothly and surprisingly quickly.  I guess this sort of thing is pretty routine nowadays.  She was out of recovery and in a room on the 9th floor before noon, calling her office to check up on things there.  The original double room overlooked Jefferson Avenue to the north, which wasn't really worth opening the blinds for, but nobody else was there so it was fine, if a little cramped.  By Friday she was feeling quite good and hoping to go home, but they needed to get in some more PT and OT, so she didn't get out until Saturday morning.  She was in such good shape that I went out and did the Giro Ride on Saturday before heading over to the hospital.  I got there just as they were signing discharge paperwork.  I was surprised how little pain she was feeling and how easily she negotiated the fourteen steps up to the house. She was supposed to be under some restrictions as far as walking and bending were concerned, but by that afternoon she convinced me to drive her and her walker over to Barnes & Noble so she could look at Nooks.

Anyway, things were going pretty smoothly so on Sunday morning I went out and rode the Sunday Giro too.  That's not to say I had a lot of free time, however. Since last week I have of course had to pick up additional duties such as dog-walking and feeding, laundry service, meal preparation, grocery shopping, and nursing, some of which has been for our geriatric dog Cosmo for whom I have a veterinarian appointment this afternoon.  I am not entirely sure if he will be coming back from this one.

Tuesday Morning on the Levee.  The fog got worse as we went upriver.

Meanwhile, I missed a little race up in Alexandria last Sunday that was promoted by Ed who had just had an appeal hearing with USAC for some issues arising from his association with a club in Lafayette.  He is kind of an odd character, as are his races.  Anyway, I didn't lose any sleep over missing that race and was just glad that I had been able to get in a couple of good rides.  The rest of the week has been a series of long days.  I've been getting up at 5:30 every morning so I can deal with the dogs and stuff before riding, and I am really starting to miss that little bit of extra sack time.  Fortunately, I have been able to get in my usual morning rides.  I had planned on doing the lakefront training  race yesterday, but in the early afternoon The Wife called to tell me her leg has suddenly swollen up rather dramatically, so I rushed  home to make sure we weren't dealing with a DVT or something.  The doctor wasn't particularly concerned, so I eventually went back to the office, but then forgot completely about the training race until I left again around 5:45.  It would have been pretty tight anyway, so I guess it's just as well.  On Tuesday I met with the mayor's office folks and police department people about the Tour de Louisiane criterium that we'll be having there on June 8, which is sneaking up on me really quickly this year.  They wanted a change in the course to avoid going past a new hotel that will be having its first fully open weekend.  Then this morning they called and are worried about a popular brunch restaurant that is now on the altered route.  I've been holding off on finishing the Race Bible until I can make the new criterium map, so this is delaying things a bit.  I'm sure it will all work out fine, but until I know for sure which course we'll be using I can't make the map and I can't make a decision on where the finish line and officials will be.  Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see some action on the Tulane Cycling space renovation work that was held up by the student activities people, so that has cost us three weeks delay so far and may cost us an extra five thousand dollars for a card-swipe system.  I am hoping there is a cheaper way around this but at any rate I now have to come up with a Risk & Safety Management Plan and Access Policy document.

There's a nice road race up in St. Francisville this Sunday that I am planning on riding. I'm just training through this one, since my schedule has been kind of screwy lately, but it should be fun anyway and it's only a two-hour drive, which is really nice.  With so much going on I don't feel like I am in race shape at all, but as I see it, that's no reason not to race!

Season of Change

The more things change, the more they stay the same. May is always a complicated month.  We sent Danielle back off to Olympia for the summer on Saturday.  As usual, things didn't quite go as planned.  Some bad weather was moving across the south on Friday evening, and some time before midnight she got an alert that her early morning flight had been "delayed" and rescheduled for something like 8:30 am.  That meant she would miss her connecting flight, and no help was forthcoming on what to do about that. Ordinarily a long layover might not be too big of a problem, but in her case she was flying with two small dogs in a bag under the seat and the travel time to bladder size ratio was way too high for comfort.  With no satisfactory resolution coming from the telephone ticket agents, we loaded the car with the bike case, borrowed from Bob and unprofessionally packed by me, a huge overweight bag, the dogs, etc. and went to the airport in time for the 8:30 flight.  Luckily we got a good ticket agent who got her set up on a later flight, so we checked the bags and went to breakfast at Morning Call in City Park. The streets were wet and it had been raining a bit so I wasn't feeling too bad about missing my Saturday training ride.

With exams at Tulane ending, it's furniture season in the neighborhood.  Students departing for good leave their thrift store and Walmart furniture out on the curb all over the place. Some of it I'm sure finds its way into the hands of the next generation of students.  Anyway, the general feel of the neighborhood changes a little bit this time of year, which is good since it substitutes for the change of seasons that we don't really have around here.  I ended up not riding at all on Saturday, so I was glad to see a big group and much improved weather for the Giro Ride on Sunday.  I don't really know what it was, but that Giro seemed particularly hard to me.  Granted there were a few critical sections where I had to dig really deep to close a gap or stay on a wheel at 30+ mph, but overall it didn't seem like it should have felt quite as hard as it did.  Anyway, it was a good ride and I got home with slightly sore quads.  The house was much quieter without the two little dogs! Later in the day I ripped the old 1986 Race Across Louisiana video and got it started uploading to youtube, which at my home wifi upload speed probably took ten hours. It kind of needed to be there for posterity, although I have heard that it was blocked for some people because of the music.  Still seems to work for me, though.  So on Thursday The Wife is having hip replacement surgery.  That will probably keep me pretty busy through the weekend and well into next week, so I'll miss the road race this weekend.  Hopefully things will go smoothly enough that I'll be able to get out for the Giro or part of the Giro or something on the weekend.

Things are getting busy here at work now and after a really slow week I suddenly have a whole list of projects.  Funny how it always seems to work that way.  I'm hoping they will be able to start work on the Tulane Cycling space here at University Square soon.  It's been held up for two weeks by Club Sports for no particular good reason.  Very frustrating.  We have been working on this for over two years now and the pace has been absolutely glacial, even by university standards.

Tough Morning

Levee ride group waiting for everyone to arrive

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been up all night.  I'd been expecting a certain level of fatigue, but this seemed a bit more than that.  Wednesday I had gone out a little earlier than usual, thinking I might catch the WeMoRi somewhere along Wisner, but as it turned out I was a bit too early for that.  I headed down Robert E. Lee Blvd. to the west and picked up the bike path along the lake.  It was practically deserted, and with a nice little tailwind I ended up riding all the way out to the casino.  By the time I got back home I'd logged around 30 miles, a few miles more than I'd planned with some of it a little faster than I'd recommend, considering I was planning on riding the training race that evening.  Indeed, I rushed home from work and then out to the lakefront, catching the group right at the end of its warmup lap.  There was a pretty strong wind blowing from the southeast that was playing havoc with the paceline, such as it was.  Somewhere in the second half of the first lap I found myself near the back of an eschelon that was taking up both lanes and occasionally some of the oncoming lane.  I wasn't too comfortable with any of that, so I dropped off with plans to turn back early and catch the group as it was coming in the opposite direction.  That worked out OK, I guess.  Regardless, the combination of crosswind and fast pace made for a pretty hard ride, and by the time I got back to the house I guess I had 65 miles for the day.  The Wife was flying back from a meeting in New York and her flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:30, so I jumped into the shower thinking I had lots of time.  Then, when I checked the flight status, I saw that it was going to arrive about twenty minutes early, so I had to drop everything and rush out to the airport.  I was about five miles from there when she called to say they had landed, so by the time she had picked up her fifty pound suitcase I was already there.

So back to this morning.  My legs were a little sore, but more than that I just felt kind of run-down.  I didn't want to skip the long Thursday ride on the levee, especially since the forecast for Friday and Saturday was not looking particularly good, so I went out there anyway with a plan to stay in the draft as much as possible.  Although there was a pretty big group today, there was also a pretty strong wind.  It allowed for a fast pace on the way out, but the whole time I was just thinking how hard it was going to be on the way back.  Indeed, it was.  I have an early meeting tomorrow, and the forecast for the morning is calling for a 40-60% chance of rain, so I guess I'll have to play that by ear.

Flats and Flexibility

I was not surprised Monday morning to find my quads a little tired from last weekend.  Although my sprinting proved to be entirely ineffective as far as the finish order was concerned, it was apparently enough to do a little damage.  Clearly, I need to be doing more of this.  Anyway, I had already planned on an easy morning ride for Monday, and headed out toward the lakefront at 6:30.  I decided to take a left at Lakeshore Drive and ride to West End, with plans to then do a short circuit around City Park before returning home.  Somewhere along Filmore I felt the squishiness in my rear tire and contemplated my options.  It seemed like a slow leak, so I decided to see if I could make it over to the Starbucks on Harrison before it went completely flat. The lure of a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair to ease the task of fixing the flat was too much to resist. That all worked out nicely, and I ended up swapping out a few recovery ride miles for a nice recovery coffee break.  It was nice to have that kind of flexibility on this particular Monday morning.

Tuesday morning it was back to the routine as I rushed out to the levee to meet the 6:15 ride.  There was a pretty big turnout that included Luke who was in town from his new residence way out in the Utah territory.  Howard was there, seemingly locked into surge mode, but his pulls were fairly brief so everyone would just string out as he surged from the 24 mph consensus speed to around 27, and then it would slow down to about 22 before settling back to normal until his turn came around again.  At some point we picked up Mike W., and for reasons unknown I think he was having some kind of problem with, I guess, Howard on the ride back down the river where we picked up the two big guys.  Every time someone would pull off in front of him he would soft-pedal, which of course was causing some confusion and havoc for those farther back in the paceline. He said a few things to me as he came alongside that didn't really make sense to me - something about teaching them about teamwork of something.  I dunno, at least it was all pretty much a non-issue as far as the ride went except that it made the pace a bit more erratic than usual. Toward the end Howard and someone else kind of attacked, the rest of the group didn't respond, and Mike took off apparently in pursuit but eventually sat up before drifting back to the pack, only to launch his own sprint for a random sign post somewhere around the bridge.  I was feeling a little sluggish, but otherwise OK, all the while re-playing the weekend's races and coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I need to be doing considerably more intensity and considerably less eating of Easter candy.

Mississippi Gran Prix weekend

I rushed home from work early on Friday afternoon, threw some stuff into my bag, clamped the bike to the roof and took off to run a couple of errands before hitting the road for Brookhaven Mississippi for the annual Mississippi Gran Prix stage race.  A couple of minutes later I realized I'd forgotten my clip-on aero bars for the time trial and briefly considered the pointlessness of returning home for them.  I wasn't too far from home, though, so I backtracked to pick them up, and then suffered through school zones and early rush hour traffic before finally turning onto the relative calm of I-55 North.  It was only a 2-hour drive, and I wasn't racing until Saturday, but I wanted to help officiate the evening criterium for the Cat. 1/2/3 race and pick up my race numbers.  Surprisingly I arrived in plenty of time, enough in fact to run over to the local store and buy a broom to sweep a corner that looked a little sandy.  The race went off pretty well, and despite the darkness and incompatibility between the flicker rate of the lighting and the finish line camera, Ricky got everyone placed fairly quickly. Afterward I met up with a number of the club riders for a quick dinner at the little Italian place near the course.

Saturday morning Chris and I drove out to the road race course, about half an hour to the north. Although my back was feeling a lot better, I was still on Aleve, not really in shape, and going into this race with practically zero confidence.  This would be the first race of my 42nd or 43rd racing season and I was a little worried that my lower back would seize up the first time I tried to climb a hill.  I was also a little worried that I'd just flat out get dropped.  Basically, I was not feeling too sharp.  Fortunately, the race started out without too many fireworks and I soon realized that my back was not going to be that big of an issue.  In fact, I ended up spending a fair amount of time in the wind on the first lap of the three-lap 57-mile race.  Probably too much. A rider from the Acadiana team went off the front early and fortunately there were enough other riders to keep the other five Acadiana guys from controlling things too much.  The rest of us kept him hanging out there at about fifteen or thirty seconds for all of the first lap and much of the second lap until he was finally back in the smallish 17-rider field. A crash on the first lap had taken a couple of riders out of the mix.

About halfway around the loop on the second lap a gap opened up on a little climb when Mark and I were, frankly, way too far back.  Whoever was behind the gap never reacted and we hesitated for a moment thinking it might not be serious.  It was.  When they got to the top of the climb, one of them looked back, saw the gap, and someone up there put the hammer down. By the time we could do anything about it, it was really too late considering the fact that much of the group's horsepower was up the road in a 4-man break. Mark and I were practically the only ones without someone in the break, and neither of us would be able to motor across the rapidly expanding chasm. So now we were racing for 5th place, which didn't really do much for my already diminished level of enthusiasm.  With seven or eight miles to go the other Acadiana riders in our group started taking turns attacking.  I was already feeling pretty dead, so Mark had to cover almost all of them himself, which of course was their plan since he is a strong sprinter.  In the end, one of the Acadiana guys nipped Mark for 5th, while I struggled across the line in a disappointing 8th place.  I shouldn't really have been disappointed considering the circumstances, but, yeah, I kinda was.  I really had no sprint in my legs at all. We went over to Broma's Deli for lunch and then once I got the results and TT start list I uploaded those to the LAMBRA website.  That evening was the 3-mile TT that I've done a number of times before.  I was completely uninterested, however.  Given sufficient motivation I can usually scratch out a respectable TT even with the now commonplace TT bike and aero wheelset, but with four riders already uncatchable on GC and the knowledge that I'd probably lose time to three or four other riders in the TT, I just could not come up with a reason to suffer.  I would say I went out at about a 75% effort level, and even so I found myself wheezing for air within the first mile.  The combination of spring pollen and the exceptionally dry air were really playing havoc on my lungs.  When I got to the 1km to go mark I figured I may as well drop it down into a bigger gear and put in some effort.  The last 500 meters is uphill and I was too lazy to even shift to an appropriate gear, so I just trudged up it in a 53x13 or something.  It must have looked comical.  I think my cadence dropped to about 50.  Predictably, my time was 14th out of 15.  On the other hand, my legs and back felt fine!   The TT had almost been interrupted when some local redneck drove by and yelled at the officials about how it was a public road and we were blocking it off.  Naturally he called the sheriff's office and a little while later a deputy came by saying that they didn't know anything about the race.  The promoter, who was also warming up for his TT, explained that he had made all of the appropriate arrangements with the Sheriff, who had apparently forgotten to let the rest of his staff know about it. We had dinner at a local Chinese/Japanese place and then I waited for the CR to send me the official results which I got posted to the website around 10 pm.

The Sunday criterium is always fun for me because I like the course.  Mostly.  The one thing about this course that always kills me is the screaming fast downhill that comes right before a steep but short climb up to the finish.  For some reason I am always at my limit on the downhill whenever there is any pressure on at the front.  Anyway, Mark was in 5th place by a few seconds following the TT, with no hope of moving up since the break in the Road Race had put those four riders up by a good five minutes. As long as the guy behind him on GC didn't get any significant time bonuses, Mark would be safe.  Complicating things, however, was the fact that this race offers stage prizes in addition to GC prizes, and a decent placing for me would have at least salvaged something for the weekend.  For the most part, the race was not too fast.  A few of the riders were on the defense, I guess, so nothing was able to get very far.  There was a hot spot bonus at the mid-way point of this 60-minute race, which of course was what a number of riders were waiting for.  The bonuses ended up going to riders who had been in the RR break, so basically Mark was safe, but the sprint had strung things out considerably.  As the front group started to come back together I started telling them to keep the pace rolling because a few riders were off the back.  That effort got the front group down to 7 or 8 riders.  As we got closer to the final laps the tension increased and there were a couple of brief attacks that resulted in a little slow-down at the start of the last lap.  Then things started to bunch up on the back side a bit.  I was contemplating jumping just before the last turn that leads into the long downhill about 500m before the finish, but just as I got to the decision point for that Mark did exactly what I'd been thinking, attacking hard just to my right.  I was already to the right of most of the riders, although three or four were ahead of me to the left.  As soon as Mark jumped I soft-pedaled so that the rider to my left couldn't go with him.  The ones ahead of me, however, did react, although they were forced to kind of go the long way around the turn. I, of course, was immediately gapped as everyone hammered down the downhill at 38 mph.  I was absolutely going as hard as I could but wasn't making up much ground.  Mark got passed just before the finish and I rolled across in 6th place.  Surprisingly, that moved me up to 7th on GC.

So I came back home feeling a mixture of relief and frustration.  It hadn't been too bad of a race for me, and was in fact considerably better than I'd been expecting earlier in the week.  Even so, missing that break in the road race was really frustrating since I knew it was partly my own fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was also feeling kind of disappointed with the fact that I just didn't have any power in my legs for the sprints.  Sometimes, even though you fully expect things to go a certain way you're still a little disappointed when they actually do.

Our women's team was missing one of its riders because of an injury earlier in the week, and it looked like they had a pretty good race.  Mignon was only able to pull out a 10th place in the road race, which was a little surprising, but on the other hand Sherri hung in there for the criterium, which was her first.  Alison had a small crash in the road race and headed home after that, so they were really two riders short for the weekend.  

Final Straw

By all accounts it was a good weekend.  A solid Giro Ride on Saturday, followed by a Tulane Cycling party at the house, and then a nice club ride on the northshore on Sunday.  Earlier in the week when Mignon suggested a northshore ride, it sounded perfect.  I'd missed out on a little mileage and intensity that week because of the incident on the levee and crash on the lakefront, and with the Mississippi Gran Prix coming up the next week the timing was good.  We met up at Puccino's at 7 am and I drove across the lake with Tom, which of course meant half an hour of discussing university administration from the perspective of the liberal arts professor, which is frankly something I rarely get to do.  The sky was a bit overcast, but the air was warm, and as I'd been able to do for most of the week I rode in just shorts and a summer jersey.  I love the rides this time of year when there isn't that winter burden of making crucial wardrobe decisions and compromises.  We had over a dozen on hand as we headed off from the Lee Road school with a nice little tailwind at our backs.  My legs were a little tired from the prior day's Giro Ride, which had been surprisingly fast, and in consideration of the inevitable headwind on the return trip I was trying to keep my effort level under control for the first half of the ride.  Since it was a club ride with a mix of riders, we were stopping at all of the intersections to regroup, but there were a few who were already getting impatient by the time we were halfway 'round the traditional 65 mile route, and on that long stretch at the top of the course heading toward Sie Jenkins Road the group split pretty significantly.  Even so, I have to admit I was liking the effort level.  It was hard enough but not too hard and pretty much just what I felt I needed. I pushed it a bit on some of the climbs just to see where I was.  Eventually, of course, a few riders split off to take a shorter route and we turned more and more into the headwind.  As usual, those last four miles straight into the wind on a dead straight road was just a slog.  I got back to the car feeling pretty satisfied with a bit under 300 miles for the week and a plan for an easy recovery ride on Monday.

Well Monday arrived a little on the damp side.  It wasn't quite rain, but it wasn't quite dry.  I went out anyway with the plan to just spin the legs for an hour around Audubon Park where I wouldn't be tempted to go fast. I guess my lower back was feeling just a little stiff, but it wasn't anything I was really thinking about.  After a few circuits around the park the raindrops got a little heavier and so I bailed out a few minutes early for home.  No problem, since all I'd wanted to do was some no-effort spinning.  Back at the house I noticed the two big ice chests from Saturday's party.  They were of course still half-full of partially melted ice, so I decided it would be a good time to empty them out and let them dry. I don't remember them being particularly heavy, nor do I remember feeling any particular strain on my lower back, but a few minutes later when I bent over to wipe up some spilled water I could barely stand  up again.  I guess the combination of some big gear seated climbs on Sunday and the lugging around of tents and ice chests and such from Saturday had taken its toll and lifting those ice chests turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back, or in this case mine.  I took a couple of Aleve, but the back was bothering me the rest of the day anyway.  I skipped riding on Tuesday, and by the end of the day it was feeling better, but then last night I didn't sleep well because of it, so skipped riding this morning as well.  In an hour of so I'm going to ride out to the lakefront.  Sometimes these kinds of things don't seem to hurt when I'm riding and sometimes they do, but I think it'll still be better than sitting on the couch eating Easter candy.  If it hurts, I'll just take it easy.  We'll see.

Meanwhile, there's a little controversy brewing about Lakeshore Drive. The Orleans Levee District decided to open up Lakeshore Drive again to traffic on weekends.  For the past ten or fifteen years, it's been closed to eastbound traffic on weekends, but a group in the eastern part of the city decided it was a racist policy and so they voted to open it back up. For most of us it won't make a bit of difference since the guys who race are there mostly early in the morning or late in the evening on weekdays, when it was never closed anyway, or early in the morning on weekends before the general public is likely to start cruising up and down the street.  A local bicycle advocacy group got the ear of the levee district and presented a plan to turn half of the 4-lane road into a multi-use bike/pedestrian path full-time.  That would probably be more of a problem than a help for riders who train there in the mornings and evenings, and would likely kill the informal training races entirely.  Some signage along the route would be great, and a reduced speed limit even better, but the idea of groups of riders in training ride mode weaving through joggers and dog-walkers is frightening.

So I'm planning on going up to the Mississippi Gran Prix this weekend, one way or the other.  Depending on how this evening goes, it'll either be as a bike racer or an official.  I'd much prefer the former.