Quickie to Mobile

Friday a week ago on Filmore, riding past the City Park golf course

The first thing I do upon awakening this time of year is check the weather radar. The second thing is to calculate the size of the wager I'm willing to make on getting soaked. This week we, or at least I, mostly lucked out. Tuesday's levee ride was pretty normal until the batter died on my Garmin just before the turnaround. Fortunately, and unlike a lot of other riders nowadays, I have a couple of decades worth of experience riding without the benefit of speed, distance, cadence, power, elevation, grade, weather, text-message, and Strava segment data. It's unusual for me to let my computer's battery get that low, and I think I must not have plugged it into the charger fully because it charged up normally the next time. Go figure. 

The Wednesday WeMoRi was likewise unremarkable, which in the case of the WeMoRi is always a relief. With the days getting shorter, and the morning light further compromised by often-cloudy skies, it seemed suddenly much darker as I made my way out to Lakeshore Drive. The city has torn up practically every street between Fontainbleau and S. Claiborne, so I've been taking S. Claiborne to Carrollton lately. At 5:45 am it's not too bad. They have the right lane blocked off for a few blocks because of yet another big hole they dug in the street, so I can slip past on the right side of the traffic cones there which provides at least the illusion of safety. By the end of Wednesday's ride I'd pretty much decided to do the first stage of the Mobile Cycling Classic on Saturday. Of the three races over the weekend, that was the only one that was an actual circuit. The other two races were back-and-forth affairs with U-turns at each end - something I would otherwise call "intervals" for those of us who would not likely be up at the front of the group. Relatively speaking I'm actually pretty good racing on courses with U-turns but I didn't really want to spend the whole weekend in Mobile since I will be heading off to Olympia for a few days at the end of this week. Anyway, by Thursday I was starting to think about easing up a little bit on the riding so I'd at least be fully recovered for Saturday.

The Thursday levee ride started out with pretty much the usual group. At the start there were rumblings about people needing to turn back early for one reason or another, which isn't all that unusual but seems to be particularly common during the first couple of weeks after schools start back up for the Fall semester. Even so, I was a little bit surprised when, after taking a pull around Williams Blvd., I pulled off and realized there was nobody behind me. I'd been abandoned! It was probably a good thing, though, because it allowed me to drift back down to a steady, easier pace. I turned back a bit early to accommodate the slower speed, which got me back home at the usual time. Friday's Friendly Friday ride was fairly routine, which is to say it had a few fast sections but was overall fairly moderate. By then I was avoiding putting my nose in the wind, so perhaps my perspective was a bit different.

Guess I should have brought the LAMBRA
finish line camera to this Alabama race
but they were using chip timing, so.....

So Saturday morning I rolled out of be at 5 am, threw the bike and the big NOBC P/A system (lending it to the race in Hattiesburg for next weekend) into the car, and headed East. My gut was not very happy from the start, likely thanks to the prior night's dinner of steamed artichoke, but things eventually settled down during the 2-hour drive to the race, just east of Mobile, Alabama. As usual, the weather forecast was all over the place, which is to say it would probably rain at some random time and at various random locations. Whether your particular race would be wet or dry was just a roll of the dice. Even though the road surface was practically perfect smooth concrete, I had lowered my tire pressures a bit just in case. I think the 25mm Michelin's were at around 80-85 psi, which is still about ten PSI higher than most would recommend. Personally I'd rather deal with a bit extra harshness in order to avoid pinch-flats and the barely perceptible increase in mushiness.

The sky was still looking OK when the 50-minute Masters race started, so that was good. I lined up in the middle of the 24-rider group along with Brett Reagan, Peter Stephens, and a few others I know. The rest were just wild cards, which was fine since I was there just as packfill anyway, and my goal was basically to stay with a group and not get lapped. I knew things would get messy because there were at least eight different races going on within the same race. The Alabama riders were racing for their state criterium championships - in three different age groups. Some riders were also racing for the overall 3-event Omnium prizes. Some were probably racing for the overall win. There were a couple of Alabama teams that would also be playing team strategy games as well. 

Cat 1/2/3 race lining up on Saturday

So the race starts and of course I miss clipping in. I look down and the left pedal is spinning at about 200 rpm. I step on it and then finally flip it around and get clipped in, but not without having most of the field pass me up. So much for the good starting position. Fortunately things started out pretty easy, so I was never in difficulty. We were only two or three laps in when I see Brett rolling off the front. He glances back, sees a little gap, and presses gently on the accelerator. As the gap starts to open at, what for me was an alarming rate, I look over at whoever was next to me at the time and remark, "I don't think they really want to let that one go!" 

I guess the gap was out to close to 30 seconds when the pace picked up and a small group spit off the front. It didn't seem to be going fast enough, or with sufficient determination, to catch Brett so I just stayed where I was in the cheap seats at the back with the old guys. It was a couple of laps later, just after turn #3 (the turns were more like wide 2-lane curves, so I use the term broadly) when I see Emile attacking down the right side. My instinct told me that was the only chance to get back up to the real chase group, but I wasn't in a very good position and was somewhat lacking in motivation. As it turned out that pulled a couple more across the gap and established a chase group of 8 or 9 riders, none of whom were in the 60+ age group. That group did eventually catch Brett, after which Eric Nelson must have attacked because he ended up finishing over 30 seconds up on the rest of that group. Brett finished 3rd or 4th, which was 2nd in the 50+ age group. Meanwhile, back the off-the-back pack, the pace was relatively steady. With two or three laps to go I started trying to move up a bit as the pace began creeping up. The last lap was at around 28 mph, which was faster than it felt thanks to the easy, fast "corners" and ample draft. Between the third and fourth turns Peter Stephens attacked hard and opened a nice gap that allowed him to hold off the sprinters all the way to the line. I'm not sure exactly where I was through the last turn, which was about 300 meters from the finish, but I eventually put in a decent enough sprint, finishing 3rd or 4th in that group. A light rain had just started to fall as I did a cool-down lap, and by the time I rode over to pick up my spare wheels from the pit we were in the midst of a serious thunderstorm, complete with enough lightning that they postponed the next race until it eased up. I ended up completely soaked, of course, but what better time to get rained on than immediately after a hot summer criterium?

I hung around until the rest of the races were finished and enjoyed seeing Peyton take the win in the Cat. 1/2/3 race. When he was up on the podium someone asked him how old he was (he's 15), which was followed up with, "Can you drive yet??" (he can't, of course). So I ended up getting back home around 3:30 I guess, after surviving one of those fifteen minute blinding summer rainstorms on I-10.

Sunday Giro heading out.

I got up Sunday feeling none the worse for wear and headed out for the Sunday Giro Ride, which had its moments but was a pretty normal Sunday Giro. I ended the week a bit below 250 miles for the first time in over then weeks so I can't complain about that. I probably needed a little less volume anyway. This morning, Monday, I dusted off the old Orbea and rode it for the Mellow Monday ride which was anything but Mellow. I guess there were a couple of guys trying to make up for missed intensity from the prior week or something because it got pretty fast for a while. I was doing my best to limit my efforts for the most part, though, because, well, it was a Monday for chrissakes. 

As it has been for the past few weeks, the weather forecast for this week has a lot of rain in it. Maybe I'll find myself underneath some of it. Maybe not. One thing that has my attention, though, is some new activity in the Atlantic coming off of Africa and heading my our general direction. It already has a name, "Invest 90," and 5-day cyclone formation chance under 40%, but that's normal for anything at that point and it can change practically overnight. Intensity models are putting it into tropical storm range within a couple of days, so we may well end up with a "named" storm, in this case Danielle. A week from today will be August 29. Hurricane Katrina hit us on August 29.  Hurricane Ida last year was August 29-30.  Hurricane Laura in 2020 was around August 27.  The end of August and most of September are definitely prime time for hurricanes. Hoping this one doesn't ruin our plans for next week.

 

Three Days Worth

Monday, Monday

It was another week of sketchy weather down here in New Orleans, although considering the fact that we are entering the busiest part of the hurricane season, nobody's complaining too much. Thus far the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic have been relatively quiet. Nonetheless, I had to break out the old rain bike twice last week and had to get a car ride home from work once because of rain, or the threat of rain.

Movie Crew Monday

Monday's group ride was good, though, and I was glad we managed to avoid getting wet. I arrived at the Museum of Art in City Park, where the ride starts, to find the whole area looking like Hollywood. They had rented out the whole place to film scenes from some movie, the title of which I promptly forgot. As we were assembling at 6 am one of the park security guards checked with us to make sure we weren't going to be hanging around long. 

Last Friday was the last day for Tulane's COVID surveillance testing program that started almost exactly two years ago. During that time the university did well over half a million PCR tests, 524,665 to be precise, of which 6,215 were positive. This week students will be moving into their dorm rooms. I'm still tracking state and local cases and all, but the pressure is kind of off at this point since the usefulness of the reported data has been questionable for a while now, especially since the home test kits became so readily available and the severity of the cases seems to have declined with the currently circulating strain of the virus.

Tuesday on the levee

On Tuesday we had Dan temporarily back in town and were able to do the full ride out to Ormond and back, but Wednesday was an entirely different story. It had rained early in the morning and I figured the WeMoRi would be washed out, so I waited an extra half hour or so, aired up the tires on the old Pennine, and headed out for a short spin on the levee. There was still a light rain falling as I rode down to the river, but within three of four miles I found myself on perfectly dry asphalt. That's typical this time of year. It can be pouring down rain in one place and then two blocks away it can be dry as a bone. Anyway, Wednesday's ride had far more psychological benefit than training benefit, but I probably needed a little break anyway. So then there was Thursday, and again the weather was threatening. I again went out on the rain bike fully expecting to be riding alone but ended up riding with Charles. He had to turn back early since school had started for his kid, so it was another short and easy day.

That brings me to Friday, which for once didn't have imminent rain in the forecast. I guess there was a lot of pent-up energy in the group from the prior days of limited riding because it seemed like it was one of the fastest Friendly Friday rides in quite a while. Fortunately, those are short. Toward the end of the ride Woody rode up next to me and said they were planning a northshore ride on Saturday. I texted him later that evening and he said they would be meeting in Abita Springs at 7 am and had a 70-mile route planned. The route didn't have a whole lot of climbing, so I figured it would be fast. That turned out to be an understatement. At any rate, I figured it might be a good idea to put the race wheels on the bike and make sure I had a big bottle with Skratch Superfuel in it. 

Part of the Saturday group. Phone already coated with sweat.

Rolling into a parking spot along the school fence where I've been parking for these rides for at least three decades I noticed Peyton, who is just back from a few weeks racing in Belgium. We headed out onto the bike path and immediately had to close a gap to Peyton. Handwriting on the wall, indeed. We rode from there to St. Benedict's on Smith Road where we picked up more riders. This ride started out fast and for the most part stayed that way. We rode up Stafford Road to Million Dollar and then up Lee Road toward Enon. It was almost all single paceline and I was being careful to take short pulls because I knew it was not likely to get easier. Right around where Hwy 40 splits off toward Folsom I rode straight into a big jagged lengthwise crack that I never saw and rather dramatically pinch-flatted my front tire. We were back on the road pretty quickly and I was glad that the tire hadn't been sliced open which had initially fully expected. I was not feeling particularly bad, but I knew the distance and hills and speed would take a toll, so I was riding pretty cautiously, which is to say I was sucking wheels a lot. Toward the end we turned onto Old Military Road and as I was having flashbacks of long-past road race finishes at Pat O'Brien Road and looking at Peyton about thirty seconds ahead, Eddie, who was right in front of me, suddenly accelerated. It didn't take me long to decide that I was close enough to Abita Springs to ride the last five or so miles as a cool-down rather than literally race from there to Smith Road, so I eased over and happily backed off. I ended up with precisely the 70 advertised miles. Back at the car I ended the ride on the Garmin and discovered that I'd never turned my heart rate monitor on. I'm sure those numbers would have been interesting, but perhaps it was for the best that I couldn't contemplate how closely I might have come to having my heart explode. Anyway, I was really glad I'd made the ride and left thinking I really should try to do more rides like that. I felt like I'd gotten three days worth of training all in one morning.

By the time I got home it was raining and I was a couple of pounds lighter than I'd been when I left.

Today's Giro Ride was far less intense, at least by comparison, although there were a couple of brief segments on Chef Highway where it surged up to 32 mph or so for reasons that I presume only the people at the front would know. On the way back I found myself near the front as we came over the Casino bridge and after flying down it at close to 34 mph I ended up on TJ's wheel. He just put his head down, went around a couple of people, and hammered as I tenaciously hung in his draft dreading the possibility that he might blow up and give me the elbow. Fortunately he held the pace at around 27 until just before the bridge. I could hear Jaden back there yelling for me to go earlier, but I knew better. TJ finally eased up and of course we were streamed by a number of riders, many of whom themselves blew up before reaching the top of the bridge. I stood up anyway and made an effort, passing a few of those riders near the top.

Impossible Forecasting

Thursday morning's sky. Practically every morning's sky lately.

It's mid-summer in New Orleans and means that just about every day it might, or might not rain, and that rain might be a brief shower or a sustained torrential downpour. If that constitutes a weather forecast, well then I guess your standards are lower than mine. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to predict where it will rain, or how much it will rain, or how long it will rain. It's just a matter of whether or not you happen to be under whichever cloud unleashes the rain at the time it does so, and in the location in which it does. Basically, it's a roll of the dice. So rather than pay any attention at all to the weather forecast, we just check the radar and make our decisions based on that. We don't generally bring along rain jackets even when we know we'll probably get wet because the rain will probably be brief and the temperature will still be warm which means that wearing a rain jacket will leave you just as wet from your own sweat as would the rain.

Tuesday morning on the levee ended up with just Charles and me. Maybe it looked like it might rain and people bailed? We pushed the pace all the way out to Ormond, which was actually a lot more effort than it would have been if there had been a group. By then we were both kind of cooked and took it pretty easy all the way back.

On Thursday it rained hard early in the morning and although it was easing up by 6 am I waited another half hour or so and went out for a short solo ride after things had dried off a little bit.

A big Friendly Friday ride that of course turned out to be more fast than friendly.

The Friendly Friday ride had an unusually large group, probably because people had been skipping rides all week because of the rain. Naturally, the big group meant that the ride was a little more fast than friendly. Likewise, the Saturday Giro was well-attended. In fact, Frank Moak had even driven down from Brookhaven where I presume he usually rides alone. Then, after the turnaround at Venetian Isles, I looked up and saw Kenny Bellau. I think he's putting in some saddle time ahead of a planned cycling trip somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. Predictably it was a pretty fast Giro.

Saturday Giro

Sunday morning the radar looked fine when I headed out around 6 am. There was a smaller Giro group than Saturday, which was not unexpected. What was unexpected, however, was the rain that started when we were halfway down Hayne Boulevard. For some reason I was staying reasonably close to the front dealing with the water spraying in my eyes and thinking the unexpected rain would probably be brief. When we made the turn at the end of Hayne I was surprised to find that most of the group had turned back and we were left with maybe 7 riders. Oh well, we were already wet, so we continued on as the rain slacked off. Of course the roads were still wet most of the way out to Venetian Isles so it was hard to tell when the rain actually stopped because the wheel spray didn't. Somewhere behind us it turned out there was another small group of four or five that had been gapped off on Hayne when people started turning back but hadn't themselves turned back, so we had a bigger group for the ride back. I got home and for about the 4th time that week had to rinse off the bike and lube the chain. The forecast for the coming week wasn't looking better, either.

It was not my finest training week, mostly thanks to Mother Nature, but I did manage to get in 260 miles, which was pretty good under the circumstances, even if most of those miles were pretty easy.

Monday morning on the relatively dry lakefront.

On Monday I went out to meet the Mellow Monday ride but almost nobody was there, apparently because they had consulted the radar which I hadn't. As I came to a stop at the ugly sculpture fountain in front of the museum of art I could see the raindrops starting to fall. There was one other person who showed up but he turned off quickly to head home. I went ahead an rode the route anyway, running into Mark on Lakeshore Drive for a while. I was feeling like I needed an easy day, so the solo ride was fine even if I did end up soaking wet once again.

Tuesday's morning ride didn't happen, at least for me. I was standing next to the dresser at 5:30 am pulling on my jersey when I heard the rain coming down outside. The radar was just a big glob of greens and reds all over south Louisiana and I was thinking I might not be able to ride at all that day. I'd already been drenched riding home from work the day before, so I decided it would be a good day to work from  home. Since I was already up, I at least got a jump on the day by a couple of hours. By early afternoon, despite the pessimistic weather forecasts, the sky and the radar were looking a light brighter and decided to try and get in some miles on the levee while I had a chance. Given the impossibility of knowing where and when it would rain, and wanting to do something to improve my chances of not getting rained on, I put my rain jacket in my pocket. I knew that if I left it at home it would definitely rain but if I took it along it probably wouldn't. It's kind of the same thing as talking about how long it's been since you've had a flat tire, which will reliably and promptly result is a flat tire. So I had a nice solo ride on mostly dry roads, but as often  happens after riding after rainstorms I ended up with a flat tire out by Williams Blvd. It was still worth it.

White Kitchen Ride

Coming back over the Rigolets with Fort Pike off to the left.

Last week the state unexpectedly closed the old Highway 90 bridge over the West Pearl River, which reminded me that it had been probably thirty years since I'd ridden east past the Rigolets. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Charles soon suggested doing a "long Giro" out to White Kitchen, and considering my recent steady diet of same-old same-old, I figured that would be worth doing. It's really not all that much farther than the regular Giro, which for me, from home, is around 60 miles. The additional distance would add maybe 30, and since we'd be starting with the SaMoRi group at 6:30 rather than with the regular Giro group at 7:00, I'd probably be back home just an hour or so later than normal. 

I remember stopping at the White Kitchen on
family road trips to Florida. It burned down 
decades ago.

Still, it was going to be hot and sunny, so I brought along a large water bottle with a bunch of Scratch Superfuel mix in it, plus a regular bottle with just electrolyte mix. I stuffed a couple of gels in my pocket just in case, but since we were planning to stop at the marina at the Rigolets I knew they would probably just be along for the ride, which they were. I left home at my usual time Saturday morning, but of course had to skip my wake-up coffee at Starbucks. I think this was the first time I'd ever ridden with the "early" group, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but whatever it was I was planning on minimizing my efforts until Venetian Isles where the regular group would turn back but we would continue east. Things were going pretty smoothly on the way out with the pace hovering mostly in a very reasonable 23-25 mph range along Hayne, so that was good. Shortly after turning onto Chef Highway we had to stop for the light at Michoud, and then for some unknown reason some of the riders decided it was a good time to launch an attack while the rest of us were still trying to clip in. That required a mile or two of chasing at 28 mph before we were back together and things settled down a little bit.

At Venetian the "long group," which consisted of about six of us, regrouped and crossed Chef pass, gradually ramping the pace up to a nice steady 22-23 mph paceline. I was feeling pretty good and was taking somewhat longer pulls than usual.

End of the road. Bridge is closed "indefinitely"

Once past the marina on the east side of the Rigolets the nice smooth asphalt changed to 50 year old concrete which wasn't too bad except for the annoying expansion seams every thirty feet or so. It was just about five miles to the bridge that was, as expected, barricaded. Apparently a recent inspection discovered some significant structural problems. I'm sure we could have climbed over the barricades and crossed if we'd wanted to, as I expect the weight of a bike rider wouldn't turn out to be the final straw for the old bridge. Anyway, we turned back, then stopped at the marina briefly for refreshments as the locals who were launching boats and buying bait eyed us cautiously, the way you'd watch aliens debarking a flying saucer. 

By the time we were heading back it was getting warmer and there seemed to be a very light headwind. A couple of the guys seemed to be starting to wilt a bit, some of us started taking long steady pulls to keep it smooth and keep everyone together. I guess the pace was more in the 20-22 mph range by then, which seemed to be fine. I got back home with 90 miles of the computer but feeling none the worse for wear thanks to the moderate pace.

On Sunday I went out to the regular Giro Ride, which was a pretty normal Sunday Giro - sometimes fast, but not debilitating. A little group rolled off the front along Hayne on the way back, and although there wasn't really a chase, they were still only maybe 30 or 40 seconds up the road as we approached the Seabrook bridge. That's when Brandon, whose wheel I was on, pulled over at 28 mph, looked over at me, and said, "Go get 'em, Randy." So naturally I had to put in a little dig, sprinting up the bridge and closing much, but not all, of the gap before blowing up just before the top and then immediately feeling my rear wheel come to a skidding stop. I'd picked up a roofing nail that had momentarily caught on something and stopped the wheel. Rather than try to put in a new tube at the top of the bridge I cautiously rolled down onto Lakeshore Drive, choosing a spot in the shade of a big oak tree to make the repair. Cliff stopped with me, so that made the ride back home much more enjoyable.

95

Sunday Giro starting to ramp back up on Chef Highway

I wish there were some races around here right about now because it was just another week of routine sweat-soaked training rides. Yeah, it's hot and all, but if we survived the Tuesday/Thursday training races and all of the weekend races back in the 80s when the only electrolyte replacement was Gatorade and shorts were lined with actual leather, we could certainly handle it now. Anyway, it seemed like a decent enough week of riding for me. It's funny how one's "fitness" ebbs and flows in the absence of actual racing. It's mostly all in the head, though. 

Last weekend I watched the Saturday night pro Criterium in Salt Lake City, which looked plenty fast and featured some controversy in the end that resulted in a little punching match and a couple of disqualified riders. Whether the move in question was intentional or accidental is impossible for me to say but I can certainly see how it might have looked intentional to some, especially the rider involved, considering where and when it happened.

Big Friendly Friday Group

Last Friday's Friendly Friday ride drew a pretty good crowd which of course made it fairly fast. 

The Saturday Giro had a pretty decent turnout, though, and so the ride out to Venetian Isles averaged around 27 mph. I was atypically in a reasonable position when the sprint started, which took me up to 36 mph before I bailed with about 100 meters still to go. Felt good, though. We had a delay in starting back because of a flat, and as often seems to happen the return trip was a bit slower. Quite surprisingly, the roads out to the east were quite wet from a rain shower that we kind of mostly missed, so there was a lot of wheel spray for a while and even a little bit of actual rain, I think.

Sunday's Giro was at least dry, and as is usually the case, a bit slower than Saturday's. I felt good both days, and for a change didn't end up riding in with just a handful of people after stopping to help someone with a flat. After the Sunday ride we went over to Poydras Home for a brief 95th birthday party for my father. My brother is in the midst of moving from Orlando to Madison MS, so he was there with a couple of my nieces, and of course my own sisters were there as well. Dad's attention span is pretty short nowadays, and it was all over in an hour or so.

Monday, Monday

Monday's Mellow Monday ride was more mellow than usual. For unknown reasons, only four of five were on hand, which at least had the effect of keeping the speed down a notch or so. Sometimes that ride has four of five miles that get pretty fast, which isn't really quite the kind of recovery ride I probably need, but let's face it, recovery rides can be pretty boring, and I don't need that either. 

Meanwhile, Charley the dog has been chewing up anything he can find when we're not looking. This week it was a baseball cap, my pocket comb, and the TV remote, the latter being kind of an issue since it's for the DirectTV box. Candy went over to the AT&T store where of course they didn't have any and they ordered a replacement that is theoretically coming via US postal service one day. Fortunately the phone app lets me cast to the TV, so that worked fine. Last week I finally broke down and ordered a bike travel bag. I've never been too keen on dealing with the big rigid cases. Last time we went to Washington I packed my old bike in a simple soft bike bag that we originally got when we toured Colorado back in 1983. It was about at the end of its useful life, of course. So I sprung for a rather expensive Airport Ninja bag that is nice and small and can be carried as a backpack. 

The latest victim

Of course in order to do that you have to remove the seatpost, handlebars, front brake, fork, pedals, rear derailleur, etc., but that's not really too much of an issue for me.  Given the size of my bike it's entirely possible that I will be able to leave the seatpost and just lower the saddle and still get it in there. We shall see. We're planning a visit to Olympia at the end of August that unfortunately means I'll miss the criterium in Hattiesburg, but the tickets were already purchased before we knew the race date. 

Now we just have to worry about whether there will be enough pilots and airline personnel to keep the flight from being cancelled. I'm also a little worried about the COVID situation which is currently blowing up across Europe and has been on a steady rise here for over a month. I'm hoping that the Tour de France survives all the way to Paris without losing too many more riders to positive tests. I'm also hoping that I survive all the way to Olympia without any more positive tests. I've been on the fence about getting a second COVID booster since the currently circulating strain is now pretty far removed from the original and immune responses from that don't seem to be doing a whole lot to prevent mild and asymptomatic infections, although the vaccine has certainly brought the number of ICU cases and fatalities down dramatically. 

My data are kind of fuzzy right now because the amount of testing is way down but the percent positives are way up. Louisiana today was showing 24.5% positive and New Orleans was showing 18.3, both of which are pretty high percentages. Although hospitalizations have been rising persistently but slowly, deaths have been quite low. In the last two weeks New Orleans has reported only one fatality and the state has reported only 43. I think it's likely that a whole lot more people are being infected but aren't having symptoms serious enough to get tested at a location that is reporting to the LDH, especially since the at-home test kits are so readily available now. What I'd really like to see is a new version of the vaccine that targets the more recent variants, and although they're working on that, the variants are changing more quickly than they can get the new vaccine versions ready. They're saying we may see something in the fall. 

  

Pushing Zone One

Mellow Monday

Last week was what I'd have to call "high-volume," at least for me. It all started on Monday, which was July 4th, which meant a Holiday Giro Ride following up on the regular Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides, one of which had been quite fast. As holiday rides typically go, Monday's ride was notable more for the heat and humidity than the speed, but anyway I covered the details in an earlier post. 

I went out on Wednesday morning, still with a bit of the long weekend miles in my legs I guess, and met up with the WeMoRi as usual. It was a pretty normal ride - not too terribly fast, but by not means slow either. Thursday was the usual morning levee ride, including the detour around Powerline Drive which will likely be the status quo for another couple of weeks, and then the regular Friendly Friday ride which was occasionally fast, but not so much as to prevent me from making a little effort on the Wisner overpass.  And then there was Saturday.

Friendly Friday

I got out to Starbucks at my usual time, around 6:30, and as I was settling into one of the chairs out on the patio a guy walked up to ask me about the ride. Turned out he was in town from Houston and would be riding with us, so I gave him the usual summary - where it would get fast, where the holes were on Hayne, etc. As usual we had a nice warmup along Lakeshore Drive, and then once we came down onto Hayne the speed went up to 29 mph and stayed there. It was fine sitting in the draft, as there didn't seem to be much wind, but I couldn't really check up on the guy from Houston who was somewhere behind me. I heard he was still there when we turned onto Chef, but I never saw him again. We passed the early SaMoRi ride earlier than usual on Chef, and I surmise that they have started rolling out from West End at 6:30 lately to avoid a bit more of the summer sun. 

Saturday Giro

Anyway, it was a normal Giro, which lately means it's fast until somebody flats, which happened that day on Bullard shortly before the turn back onto Hayne. I stopped along with a few others, but the rest of the group didn't. We still had a good brisk ride back down Hayne after fixing the flat, and somehow I found myself out in front of the little group along Lakeshore Drive. I looked back and wondered why they were going so slow. By the time I got to the traffic circle at Bayou St. John they were nowhere to be found, so I did a loop around the fountain. I was afraid there had been another flat, but they soon appeared so I was able to get back together. Someone mentioned stopping for water at Starbucks. There had been some talk earlier about extending the ride. Once again I found myself way out ahead of them on Marconi, but figured we'd all regroup at Starbucks. I waited for a while, chatting with Howard and Todd. Apparently they decided not to stop, so never showed up. Oh well. I was feeling pretty well toasted anyway so I headed back home.

Saturday Giro

Early Sunday morning around 4 or 5 am I could hear it raining outside. By 6:00 it looked like the rain had stopped, at least for the moment, but the streets were soaked. Figuring that nobody would show up for the Giro I decided to wait a bit longer and go do a solo ride on the river levee bike path instead. I knew it would at least be a little more dry up there. I finally rolled out around 6:45 am and by the time I was two or three miles up the river the bike path was dry as a bone. The sky was overcast and it looked like it was going to stay that way. My legs were feeling heavy so I kept the effort level down as I pedaled into the light headwind, contemplating just how far I was willing to go. I'd already been considering riding all the way to the end of the bike path, about 44 miles, so had half a bottle of gel and two water bottles, one of which was a big one with Scratch in it. 

Upriver end of the levee bike path, 44 miles and change from the start.

So I ended up doing that full ride, probably almost exclusively at a Zone 1 effort level. On the way back I spotted what we call a brake tag station and what everyone else calls an inspection station. In this case it was a tiny little building that had once been a roadside gas station. Outside, however, was a coke machine! I had a couple of dollars with me, so I stopped and gulped down two cans of fruit punch in quick succession. None of the buttons on the machine had indicated fruit punch, of course, but I wasn't complaining. Anyway, by the time I got back to around Oak Street my calculations indicated that I'd be just a couple of miles short of 90, so I went ahead and rode a lap around Audubon Park for good measure, which brought me conveniently back home with 90.3 miles on the computer. Good enough under the circumstances, even if my average speed was barely over 16 mph.

Cold Drinks!

So I ended up with a 367 mile week, which is a lot for me, especially this time of year, but still infinitely preferable to sitting on the couch second-guessing team strategies in the Tour de France.

This morning I was back up on the levee for the 6 am ride. We rolled out with 6 or 7 riders, and as had been the case last Thursday, the bike path was still open at Powerline Drive. I could see all of the workers gathered on the river side of the levee, and up above I could see that they had already pulled one of the big transmission cables across the road to the top of the new tower. I knew the path would be closed on the way back. After losing all but three of us at Williams Blvd., and then picking up one rider around there, Jeff said he would need to turn back at the Big Dip, so that's where Charles and I turned back as well as Dave continued on to Ormond where he lives. By 11:30 this morning it was raining buckets. There's some disturbance down in the Gulf just south of us that is apparently going to be causing a lot of rain for the next few days. In fact, the daily weather forecast right now just says "Scattered Thunderstorms" all the way to the 28th with the chance of rain between 42 and 58% throughout, which basically means that wherever you are at any time it might or might not rain on you because there's just no way to reliably predict where and when it will rain. 

Midsummer Rides

The July 4 Giro heads out along Marconi

We are more or less back into our summer pattern now, both meteorological and cyclelogical. The relentlessly hot temperatures have been slightly subdued by the occasional thunderstorms and replaced with a mostly suffocating blanket of humidity. One arrives back home after a ride soaked to the skin with sweat, an occurrence that even the $100 high-tech fabric jerseys through which you could read a book in the dark are nonetheless powerless to prevent. Glasses are smeared with sweat halfway through the morning ride, and top tubes are splattered with body fluids, mostly sweat. Still, I admit I prefer all of that to those 30° winter rides into those 15 mph north winds. To each his own, I guess.

Sunday Giro - some wet roads out to the east made for a nice sauna feeling

The group rides this week were sometimes a little less intense than usual, probably because after a while people were feeling like wet dishrags that had been left out in the sun too long. After the usual Monday and Tuesday rides I went out earlier than usual to meet the WeMoRi, turning onto Lakeshore Drive a few minutes ahead of the group so that they didn't sweep me up until I was already on the way back from the Armory loop. The pace was still pretty fast, and after the turn onto Wisner a big gap opened up ahead of me (of course). There was a little help with the chase, but it was looking pretty hopeless until the group ahead had to stop for a light and were able to re-group. Then, crossing Toussaint, the front of the group blew through just as the light was turning red, causing another split as the rest of us chose life over WeMoRi fame. A few reacted quickly and made the bridge. I wasn't one of them. Still, it was a good enough workout and my early arrival meant some bonus miles as well. The Thursday morning levee group turnout was sparse and since apparently I wasn't the only one with dead legs, we turned around really early, chopping about 15 miles off of the usual 41 mile ride. I wasn't complaining, though.

By Saturday I was feeling a little better for the Giro Ride, which in this case turned out to be moderately fast and more than moderately hot. It was July 4th weekend, and as things were going it was looking like I'd be doing three Giro Rides in a row. On Sunday we had one flat shortly after turning back from Venetian Isles, and then one of the riders slammed into one of the big cracks on Lake Forest and pinch-flatted both tires. I gave him one of my tubes and an valve extender, and although obviously it took longer than usual we were back on the road in a reasonable amount of time. Somehow, though, stopping in the sun mid-ride on a hot summer morning really takes the wind out of your sails.

Mellow Monday before the July 4th Giro

The July 4th holiday Giro had a reasonable turnout, and fortunately nobody was trying to really push the pace. I had gone out early to do the usual Mellow Monday ride, which had only four people including me, before turning off just in time to meet up with the Giro group at Starbucks. Shortly after we got onto Hayne, JC slammed into one of the broken up concrete potholes over on the right and not only flatted both tires but also practically destroyed his rear rim. Luckily after changing the tube the tire didn't blow off the rim where it was badly dented, so he was able to limp back while the rest of us continued on. As if we hadn't had enough holiday weekend flats already, there was yet another just as we were getting back onto the Interstate at Lake Forest. By the time we were halfway back my neck and upper back were on fire despite the Naproxin I'd taken earlier that morning. I guess the extra miles and extra Giro finally took their toll. At any rate, the ride home was kind of miserable.

We had a couple of the neighbors over for dinner that night, which was nice even if I did end up drinking a glass or two more than the recommended daily allowance. The dog is slowly getting better, having refined his begging style to minimize the incessant barking, but he's still got a long way to go. As we were saying good-night to everyone at the front door he managed to get both paws up onto the table and take a big bite out of the cake. Frankly we were both too tired by then to give him much grief about that.

This morning we had a small group for the Tuesday levee ride. Charles was at home waiting for the long-awaited air-conditioner replacement that involved an extra thousand dollars or so for a crane to lift the equipment over the front part of the French Quarter building. At least the Vieux Carré Commission didn't make him get the color of the compressor approved for historical correctness. Anyway, I was still clearly feeling the effects of the long weekend but nonetheless hung in there for the full ride that was mostly just Boyd, Martin, and me, and eventually just Martin and me. I was feeling pretty wasted by the time Martin pulled off to head home and pretty soon I just shut it down and cruised in on whatever fumes were left in the tank. It looks like Entergy has finished building the big new towers on the levee to support the transmission lines over the river. Those were the ones that came down during the Hurricane when the tower on the westbank collapsed. They have signs up now saying that the levee bike path, and likely also River Road, will be closed from July 6 (tomorrow) through August 01. I guess we'll find out how it's going to work on Thursday. I guess we won't have a problem on the way out since we will be there by about 6:10 am. Coming back, though, will be another matter. I can't see them closing down the road full-time, but who knows?

There's not much on the calendar for July, but things will start to pick up again in August. I'm hoping to finally be able to make the Mobile races on the 20th and 21st, but will miss the next weekend's races in Hattiesburg because we'll be visiting The Daughter up in Olympia. 

I did my time a long
time ago!

People are inexplicably rushing to sign up for the NOMA to NOMA "race" which is traditionally basically a 160-mile Alleycat. They're limiting registration to 100, probably in hopes of keeping it all under the radar of the various jurisdictions through which it secretly passes. They're charging only $15 to register, so I guess people are figuring "why not?" I'm sure they will fill the 100 slots within a few days. The route, which last year was more or less optional, involves a fair amount of Tammany Trace bike path and Highway 21 on the northshore. Some of the riders will actually race it and finish in a mere seven and a half hours or less. Some will do it at a more moderate pace with a couple of brief stops and take more like eight and a half hours. Some who probably shouldn't have registered in the first place will be halfway around the lake and already an hour and a half behind before realizing they've made a horrible mistake and will be out there for ten or more hours. Last year one rider took 14 hours and the last rider was out there for around 16 hours. None of them will be me, as I'm quite sure I'd need narcotics to handle the expected neck and upper back pain, but if the weather is OK I may ride out to at least the Spillway as I did last year to see the first of the riders come through. Hopefully everyone survives and nobody ends up in the hospital ... or back seat of a sheriff's car.

Summer Pattern

Friendly Friday

Although most of last week was abnormally hot and dry even by New Orleans standards, by Sunday it looked like things were starting to settle back into the more typical summer weather pattern. On the plus side, that means a daily chance of scattered thunderstorms to cool things down a bit. On the minus side it also means no huge blob of high pressure to protect us from storms and hurricanes coming out of the Gulf. Indeed, there are already three disturbances that are being tracked out there - two with relatively low chances of development but one with a high chance. The models are currently keeping that one well south of the Gulf, but then again, it's early.

Sunday Giro starting back from Venetian Isles

Last week was just a series of really warm but mostly uneventful group rides here in the city. They all seemed a little harder than they should have, as rides on hot summer days always seem to. 

Summer Pattern

For some reason the Saturday Giro was particularly fast. I'm pretty sure there was a bit of a race going on among a handful of riders up at the front, where I definitely wasn't. We had a significant west northwest wind, and as a result our average speed from the time we hit Hayne until the turnaround out at Venetian Isles was 28.2 mph with a max a bit over 34. Even sitting in the group that was a significant effort. On the way back we were more in the 25-28 mph range, and as always the headwind made it seem easier as long as you stayed in the wheels and off of the front. We were just about to Fortier Blvd. and starting to ramp up for the drag race to the Goodyear sign sprint when I saw Richie sit up with a flat. He was already toward the back and nobody was stopping, so I eased over and went back to help out. It was still a long way back into a headwind and it would have been a pretty miserable slog alone. So he got the flat fixed and we rode back together, which must have looked almost comical since he's about the tallest rider in the group and I'm about the shortest. Anyway, he continued on to the west when I turned off at Marconi. A minute later I thought to myself, "Damn, I should have given him a spare tube and CO2." I'd noticed he had only the one spare back when he fixed his flat. As it turned out, he didn't even make it to Canal Blvd. before he had another flat and ended up calling someone for a ride home. As I made my way town Norman Francis, sucking the last drops of electrolyte solution out of my water bottle, I came across Joe who mentioned he was supposed to be helping a few people do a practice duathlon out around Audubon Park later that day.

Charley

By the time I got home and took a quick shower the dog, who now thinks he should be taken for two-mile walks in the park on a daily basis, was already harassing me so I threw him in the car and drove over to Audubon Park where we could take a long walk under the oak trees. Halfway around I hear, "Hey Randy, is that you?" It was Joe sitting under an oak tree with water and stuff waiting for his people to arrive at the ad hoc transition area. As I stopped to chat Keith Andrews, who was riding around the park, also stopped by. So ultimately the word for the day on Saturday was "dehydration." I spent the rest of the day drinking whatever cold fluids I could lay my hands on. Thankfully, the dog was good and worn out.

Sunday's Giro, although it featured pretty much the same wind conditions as Saturday, was considerably more civilized, which is to say I wasn't hanging on for dear life quite as frequently. Later in the afternoon we took the dog for a long walk in City Park, followed by a much-needed stop at the coffee shop on the Lafitte Greenway for an iced coffee.

Finally wore him out

This morning, Monday, there were a few light scattered showers around in the morning. I aired up the tires on the old Orbea and rode that bike just in case the roads were wet so that I wouldn't be risking a puncture on the somewhat nicer tires on the Bianchi. Only four of us showed up at the start, joined a little later my Mark M, so we had a pretty nice ride. There were a few light raindrops here and there, but really nothing that was enough to get the pavement really wet. This time of year I almost welcome a little rain shower now and then. At any rate, the cloud cover kept the temperature, but definitely not the humidity, down to more tolerable levels than it had been for the prior week, so that was good.

Brandon Weekend

The Cat. 1/2/3 road race winners - a race is a race even it it's small!

Last weekend was the Brandon Grand Prix that included the LAMBRA road championship in Saturday and a criterium on Sunday. Since my brother recently bought a house up in Madison (basically the other side of the Jackson MS area), and was going to be there over the weekend painting walls and stuff, I figured I'd camp out at the empty house over Saturday night to save on the hotel cost. With gas running at around $5/gallon, the road trip costs were already adding up, so I was glad to have that opportunity. A final check of pre-registrations on Friday night left me wondering, "Where are all the bike racers?" I hadn't seen numbers that low since the 70s when everyone started together, the road race was 110 miles, there was no course control, jerseys were made out of wool, and the race had to be done within a 2-week period in July. Back then we considered a field size of 20 to be big. No field last Saturday achieved half that size. This kind of thing is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Potential riders look at the start list, find it to be small, and so they don't sign up themselves. Some races have stopped showing the "Who's Registered" page on BikeReg lately, probably for the same reason. Anyway, I was going regardless and looking forward to riding both the road course and the criterium course, both of which I'd ridden the year before when the event was held in September. With the scarcity of nearby races lately, it would be the first criterium for me since that same race last year.

The Saturday morning alarm went off at 3:30 am and I stumbled down to the basement to load up the car, not just with my bike and bag, but also with the radio equipment, a big ice chest that I almost never bring, my new Jackery power supply (just in case), the laptop, spare wheels, and a bottle of merlot. By 4 am I was on the road for the 3-hour drive up to Brandon, Mississippi with an ETA of 7:00. We have been in the middle of a pretty significant heat wave down here lately, and I was expecting the race temperature to get up in to the 90s, so I had a bag of Scratch electrolyte mix and some HammerGel on hand. The masters race was to start at 8 am and would be under 60 miles, so I wasn't too worried about it, but better to play it safe rather than end up with heat exhaustion on the side of the road somewhere. Turnout at the race itself was, to put it mildly, pitiful. Those who were there were excited to be racing but everyone was asking what the hell happened to the bike racers. This was an event that should have attracted at least 100 riders. As it was, there were, I think, a total of 30 riders on hand, and some of those were from outside of LAMBRA. We had riders from Texas and Tennessee and Alabama but I think nobody from Lafayette, four or five from the New Orleans area, and about that many from the Jackson area.

Frank and I finishing up the road race

Of course, every cloud has its silver lining, and it this case it was that the Masters race was slow, unlike last year when it was quite the opposite. So this time I made it up and over the "big" hill on the way to the loop without any problem and settled in to the back of the dozen rider combined Master and Women's field. Of note was the fact that we had on hand Frank Moak, Woody Boudreaux, and Julia Simpson. My guess would be that Frank had twisted Woody's arm to get him to come! So as I said, the pace was pretty slow. I guess everybody was a little worried about the heat combined with the small number of people to share the work. I doubt we were halfway through the distance when the Cat. 4/5 breakaway (apparently the rest of the race was already shattered) caught us. The front of our group sped up when that happened and we were all mixed together for a number of miles. I chatted with a couple of the riders to let them know it was technically illegal for us to be working together, and also that it probably wouldn't matter since there was apparently no chance of anyone else from their race catching them. Eventually one of the Masters drifted back to ask what we should do and I told him that the Masters should neutralize until the 4/5s had a significant gap. He went up to the front and made that happen, so everything was back to normal after that. 

Somewhere on the back stretch one rider had hit a pothole and flatted. Later, I saw Woody looking down at his front wheel which was rapidly deflating (he'd hit a big chunk of gravel that was in the road). Julia also flatted, although I'm not sure if it was before Woody or after. Woody ended up changing his tube - he has a newish bike with disc brakes and didn't have spare wheels - and finishing. Our race really started about ten miles before the finish when a few of the stronger riders started launching attacks. I survived the first big one, but there was a quick counter-attack and a little gap opened up that I just couldn't close. That left five riders ahead of me and just two, including Woody, behind me. It also left me all alone, so I just resigned myself to a long time trial. Fortunately the last 8 or 9 miles of the course is relatively flat and probably a net downhill, so it wasn't all that bad. I could see the group up ahead the whole time, and about a mile from the finish I saw one rider come off the back. I was Frank who looked fairly spent. He had been one of the riders doing all of the work. He latched on when I came past and we rode in the last bit together. So actually I was not all that unhappy with myself under the circumstances. Granted, I had avoided putting my nose into the wind like the plague, but I wasn't feeling too bad and with a bit more motivation might very well have been able to survive one or two more attacks. 

After the race I waited around until things were packed up and had a nice lunch with the officials at some place near the hospitals in Jackson before continuing a few miles north to Madison where my brother was busy painting walls. It was really the first day he'd been able to get into the house and unfortunately one discover was that the air-conditioner was barely functioning. I looked up at the wildly oscillating ceiling fan and soon realized that one of the five blades had the wrong bracket installed and was blowing air up while the others were blowing air down. I installed a couple of shower heads and a toilet seat and took a cool shower (the gas hadn't been turned on yet so no hot water). Luckily one of my brother's daughters lives nearby so we left the hot house for a nice dinner where we polished off the bottle of wine and spent the night in fully functional a/c. 

Finish camera image of Julia and Zion finishing the criterium

The next morning I headed back down to Brandon for the criterium where the turnout was no better than it had been the day before and I discovered my rear tire was flat. It's a fun little course that includes a short but steep rise from the road up into a parking lot that makes things interesting. It's probably about 8 percent, but just for five or six pedal strokes. Anyway, the Masters race was a good workout even if I ended up off the back. By then it was starting to get pretty hot, especially since we were basically in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. A little while later I decided to jump into the Cat. 1/2/3/4 race to provide a little pack fodder. For that one we also had Julia and Zion from NOLA. That one started out pretty fast and I found myself feeling a little out of practice on the fast downhill sweeper which of course resulted in me being off the back. There was a 2-rider break by then and, as is my usual MO, I continued until they caught me and then jumped onto the back. By then I was nicely warmed up and it wasn't too difficult to sit on the back of the duo (would have been illegal for me to lead, anyway) until they lapped more riders. So, long story short, I ended up riding with Zion and Julia, dropping off on the last lap when we were about to be lapped again and I didn't want to be in the way of the finish sprint. I hung around until everything was packed up and was back home by 4:30 or so. Robert was using just pencil and paper for registration and results, so I still haven't seen the official criterium results, although I did take photos of what was posted for the road race. 

Despite the tiny turnout I had a pretty nice time at the races and by the time I got home I was feeling that good kind of soreness in my quads that I only seem to get when I race. I'm hoping it will go away by Wednesday!