Transition Day

In the grand tours they often have, “transition days.” These are the days in between mountain stages. For example, there are usually a few relatively flat days as the peloton travels from the Alps to the Pyrenees during the Tour de France. 

Tonight, after the Driveway (more on that later), we are heading home to Baton Rouge for the weekend. We have a wedding on Saturday night, and it gives us some nice time with family. But all day I just feel like I’m heading toward the trip home. There is nothing hard about it, but I know at the end of the day we’re getting in the car and driving for seven hours. It’s just a weird feeling.

JiBW2 is getting off to a slow start. This week has just felt somewhat condensed. I’ll have good opportunity for pictures this weekend with the baby ducks, the wedding, and being in a different place. 

The theory tonight is that Carrie is picking me up at the race and we’re heading out. That is, if I do the race. I really want to do it. It’s the course configuration where I first completed a race, so I do feel this configuration is good for me. I’m just nervous about having to leave the house and then get picked up to head straight out. Plus, I sort of have to travel home stinky. Though, if it keeps raining I’m not going to go out there. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’ll close with saying that I finally got our cruise pictures posted. Here’s a small sample. Enjoy!

Wasn’t quite there

I can try and blame the course’s two tight corners for my getting dropped last night, but that would be lame. Bottom line is I could tell I was a little duller than I was before the cruise. I did like almost two laps with the group just right in front of me. Sigh. But I couldn’t quite catch them. 

Now, here’s the deal. I should not have been so far back in the group. I should have moved up and stayed up. But alas, I let myself slip back. I felt like I was having to work a little harder to stay in there, so it isn’t surprising that I couldn’t quite stay attached. 

But something else that I noticed was that when I was trying to chase back on, I didn’t try to get out of the saddle and really hammer, just for a few seconds, to get back on. I think that is something that I am going to have to work on. The ability to generate a short burst for situations like this. I think my consistent efforts have gotten much stronger, but I am still lacking in the bursts of power.

Of course, none of this is unexpected after the two weeks of no cycling with an extra week tacked on of no racing. Next Thursday we will be heading to Baton Rouge after the race, so I am hoping that I can have a better result. Next week is also one of the more normal courses, so I can just put that out of my mind and race.

Rain

Today was filled with water. 

First, a small drip coming from our vent in the bathroom, dripping into the toilet. Calls were made, it seems to be fixed. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, this put me in a rut for the rest of the day.

Despite the rain that started to fall, I headed out to the Driveway to race the 4/5 crit. All the weather forecasts said the rain would stop by race time, but as I was stuck in my truck on Airport Blvd. waiting in traffic in the rain, I started to accept the fact it was going to be a wet race. Then I started to wonder if I was even going to make it to the race. I did make. No warmup, barely got everything together and myself to the start line.

The first few laps my brain did not trust the fact that the tires were going to hold. There is something innately unsettling about having a puddle in the apex of a turn. I don’t know what surface they have out there, but man, it was impressive. I never felt any slipping whatsoever. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay attached to the “pack.” I think there 10 of us total in the race. The main group being 4 people. Oh well, with the season pass I wanted to get out there and take advantage of it. Better luck (and hopefully weather) next week.

I am working through the few pictures I took this past weekend in Baton Rouge. We had a wonderful, albeit short trip. Saw lots of people in the time there, so that’s always nice. I saw some of my cousins that I had not seen since my grandmother’s 90th birthday party. I even got in two bike rides. Heck of a weekend, I only wish Carrie could have stayed for the whole thing. But she and her coachee did great in the Cap 10k on Sunday morning, so hooray for that. :)

On the work front, it seems I finally broke through the mystery slowdown. I can now actually run the real experiments that I was hoping to run, what, two/three weeks ago? Sigh. But, progress is always good, so I think this paper is going to form up well over the next two weeks.

We have a workout with Drew tomorrow morning bright and early. I need to make up for tonight’s less than stellar showing and hit it out the park. Two 3 hour rides on tap this weekend, looking forward to it. I think I might go and get spit out the back of the ATC ride for the first time. I’ve always heard so much about this ride, so I figured I’d give it a go. Plus, it starts at 8:30 which will get me done nice and early.

Happy almost weekend!

What a Growing Body Knee-ds

The pun is for Lynn.

Saturday did a great 70 miles out and back to Elgin. The nice thing about riding to Elgin is you get to get some barbecue to break up the ride. While my ride companions chowed down on brisket and sausage (oh, to be 22 again) I had the chicken. Still quite tasty, by the way.

Felt great the whole ride… except for the part on the way back when my knee started to feel a little catchy every now and then. I didn’t think much of it as it really didn’t hurt, it just was there. We stopped in Manor, and I stretched. But as we got closer to home I still felt it.

Then it started to really hurt. Not constantly, but anytime I stood up or did more of a forward mash than a supple spin, pain. And clipping in was unpleasant. 

When I got home I actually felt great. I felt like I could have kept riding. 

However, on Easter Sunday, I didn’t feel so hot. We got up to go to 9 AM Mass, as I was supposed to be riding three hours at some point. I also wanted to watch the Ronde on TV and we had to eat our celebratory Easter pizza. (We gave up cheese for Lent.) The ride didn’t happen, because I felt beaten down. I took two naps, and still went to bed early. After alerting Drew of the knee issues, it was decided to be careful and make this week extra resty.

So far, so good. I did an easy spin on Monday, and there was no pain. Today I did two hours in zones 1 and 2 and again there was no pain. It feels a little tight, but the painful catch has not come back. The inner quad right above my knee is tight and tender, so I have been hitting it with ice and the TP quad-rolller. 

Considering I went from sedentary to riding a lot pretty quickly, I am not surprised something eventually was annoyed. Saturday’s ride was also the longest ride I’ve done yet, and definitely the longest ride of “not my own pace.” I feel confident that this easy week will be good for things. I have the Driveway tomorrow (it’s the full two-mile course going down the corkscrew, should be interesting) and I am bringing the bike home with me to Baton Rouge for rides this weekend.

On that subject, we are going to Baton Rouge this weekend to celebrate my grandmother BeBe’s 100th birthday… crazy! It will be a quick trip and jam packed. Riding, family, friends… the camera is coming with me so I hope to have lots of pictures when I get back.

Finally, my experiments finally seem to be making some notion of sense (thanks Allen!). It sort of took one of those moments where you realize you were kind of an idiot, but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole it takes somebody else to snap you out of it to see it. But alas, the Lagniappe paper seems to finally be taking shape after all these years. Whew.

With that being said, I’m going to switch back over to my terminal windows and see how those experiments are going.