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!

Happiness and Sadness

First off. I had a great race last night. I am still walking like somebody beat me, but apparently my walking muscles and my riding muscles aren’t the same. I came unattached from the group on the last lap, but I was up there when the bell rang. I actually moved up with two to go, because I found myself slipping back. That took some energy, but it was kind of fun.

As I said in my feedback I sent to the gym for the Resolve Your Resolution competition, last night I found myself asking different questions. It wasn’t just, “Oh goodness, how long is this again? Hang on, just hang on…” It was more like, “Hmm, we’re coming up on this turn, I want to be on this side.” Or, “I need to get ready to step on it after this turn when we hit the tail wind, I’m going to follow that guy’s wheel around.” In other words… I was actually racing. It was awesome. 

Second Thing. The paper I have been working on. Let me frame this out some. This paper was on my dissertation work. We have recast it and extended it to make it interesting to a different community than I had, in theory, worked in during grad school. But, I like where it is, and I wish it would have had this direction from the very beginning. That being said… finishing my dissertation and defending was a weird and tough part of my life. I mean, let’s be honest, tough is a very relative term, I’m looking for no sympathy here. I still got to work in a nice office and with a nice computer and all, so I mean… I’m lucky and appreciative. But, emotionally it was straining for various reasons.

I hadn’t worked on Lagniappe much since then. On and off, but not really pushing on it. I couldn’t really. It was like hearing a song on the radio that you used to listen to when you were in the midst of teen angst, and all of a sudden you feel sort of weird. Oh, is that just me? Anyway… yeah, it was like that.

But today I submitted the paper. Finally, a full paper on the subject. Now, of course, it still has to go through the reviewing process. A submittal in no way guarantees acceptance, far from it. But just getting this paper out the door, and being proud of it in the process, is a big win.

Third thing. Tomorrow we leave for a 7 day cruise on the world’s largest cruise ship. Carrie and I are both very excited. I know that cruises are a love’em or hate’em sort of thing. Carrie and I have never been on one. But what I am the most excited about is that it is 7 days of not having to think about stuff. I don’t have to worry about how we’re going to get somewhere, I don’t have to worry about finding a hotel room, I don’t even have to worry about where we are going to eat. It’s all planned out. Sometimes the adventure and mystery is fun. But right now, I need the relaxation. 

And as a bonus, I got up early this morning to check us in to our flights and found out that we got upgraded to first class all the way to Ft. Lauderdale. Woohoo!

Not to end on a down note, but all these wonderful things that I am very blessed and thankful for are happening at a sad time. The oil spill that is now hitting Louisiana’s extremely fragile coast is heart-breaking and infuriating all at the same time. My home state didn’t need another tragedy. My hopes and prayers are out there just hoping that some good news will break on this. But right now, it just seems to get worse. 

Things To Do This Week

We leave for the cruise Saturday before dawn. I need to submit my paper on Friday. Oh, and I need to rock this week’s crit. So here’s my todo list for the week:

1. Survive.
2. Tell Carrie “I love you, and thank you” more. She has been a huge help not only during the Resolve Your Resolution time period, but specifically as I have been working more. I love you, Carrie, and thanks!!
3. Get my bike rides in. As the stress ramps up, can’t drop off the exercise. That has always been my downfall. 
4. Stay on wheels and stay near the front in the race. I am confident that I have the legs to stay in it. I need to work on my positioning and race smart.
5. Finish this paper strong. We have 5 days, need to work hard and put out a quality submission that will hopefully get accepted.
6. Pack for the cruise. Carrie is already packed. Me… eh, not so much.

I guess that’s about it for the moment. When we step onto that boat I will be ready to relax.

A good race gone bad

I threw out a tweet last night about this, but I wanted to break it down in more detail. I don’t know why, call it cathartic.

The course last night at the Driveway was very interesting. It had you going up the corkscrew, and then quickly afterwards taking a sharp, over-90-degree turn to the right. At the top of the corkscrew you turn to the left, so ideally you want to be on the inside of the turn at the top of the hill so that you can have the nicer line going into the sharp turn.

So while I felt great, even up and over the corkscrew, I let myself slip back in the group beyond halfway. I was maintaining that position with no problem. I just wasn’t working to get any closer to the front. Bad mistake.

Every time we went over the corkscrew I would line up early on the left side of the road. And every time I had to pull some maneuver to not get pushed off the course by some jackhole who decided he wanted to be where I was because he hadn’t thought fare enough ahead entering the corkscrew.

Then we were going up the hill, and I am looking ahead of me and see this group of people, and they all seem to be trying to get into one spot. I think to myself, those people aren’t all going to fit. 

CRACK CRACK BAHM SCRRAAPE

Yep, they didn’t fit. The pile of bodies and bikes continued to grow to the right. I squeeze my brakes enough to keep me from plowing into it. My job is to protect my front wheel. On that subject, my front wheel does role over or get hit by something on the ground, but I stay up no problem, though I come to basically a complete stop. The people further back all zoom past me.

Here is my fatal mistake. I didn’t instantly jump up out of the saddle and kill it. I got rolling and waited until we got around the two sharp corners and then started back down the hill to get on top of it. I chased like mad for a lap, slowly making ground, but when we came back up the corkscrew my legs popped for just a few seconds. 

I kept riding with an AT&T guy for several laps just getting some workout in. With a few laps left a side stitch cropped up. I am not sure why. I’m assuming the humidity had me sweating more than I thought, and that I didn’t hydrate enough pre-race. Who knows? I was able to fight it for a lap, but it got worse with like a couple laps left in the race I pulled out and spent some time spinning around the general area to cool down and get the stitch to go away.

So very frustrating. I mean, I really felt good. I felt comfortable in the pack, I didn’t feel nervous. I was able to keep up with the accelerations and never feel overexerted. My two mistakes were not staying near the front enough and not reacting fast enough after the crash to get back on. Oh well, live and learn. I was excited that I reacted fast enough to the crash itself to not go down. 

I am feeling great in my training, and the results are starting to show up in the race. I think this is the strongest I have ever felt. I am looking forward to the race next week before our cruise. I am hoping to actually come out of that with a solid finish.

Quick discussion of the paper. This paper, being about my dissertation work, is at times bringing me back to a weird place in my life. Finishing my dissertation wasn’t the happiest time ever. This paper, unfortunately, has occasionally brought back some weird ghosts of that time. I will be very glad to ship it out next Friday. That being said, cycling has been helping to keep me sane. Going out and riding my bike has helped me to focus and to let out some of the anxiety and frustration. While I have traded time working for riding, I find in the long run I have been more productive and more sane.

Death of a cycling computer

So the race last Thursday was really wet. Apparently, somewhere in the race or the drive home in the rain, my trusty Polar CS200cad decided its time had come.

Unfortunate considering it was both my heart-rate monitor and my cycling computer. And all my workouts from Drew are heart-rate based. 

I went out for two really enjoyable rides this weekend with no computer. I just went out and rode how my legs were feeling. The crazy thing: they actually felt really good. I haven’t felt that good going uphill since probably May 2007 when I really hit my peak of cycling fitness. I definitely am recovering much faster than I ever have. 

I am going to borrow Carrie’s heart rate monitor for the time being. In month or two I’ll pick up a new all-in-one computer. I could go and get a cheap one, but I have my eyes on a nice one, and I just hate spending money on something that I don’t really want.

The weather is currently looking good for Thursday, so hopefully it will be a nice and dry race. They are running a course layout that I have never seen (they apparently only did it a few times last year) so that should be fun. Lots of intervals this week, though, so it will be a tough (but shorter, time wise) week on the bike.

Paper countdown: 11 days. Cruise countdown: 12 days.