CANCELLED!!!

The day before professionals would race in what has become to be known as the hardest one day race in the world (the Paris-Roubaix). Here in New Orleans we cancelled a race. Not because of weather conditions (while raining and windy in the morning, the day actually turned out to be pretty nice), but because the weather the night before had covered our Lakeshore Drive with mud and debris from the lake.

I called my coach to get a work out to replace the race; and soon realized I would have rather done the race. The TT would have been 8.5 miles. Instead I now needed to do 2 x 5 mile intervals. My numbers from the power meter were OK but not anything to brag about. I’m pretty happy considering that it’s still kind of early for me and I am still not feeling right from the crash last week. I do think that I would have done better in a real TT because of the pressure, the environment, warm-up, and focus that are naturally a part of a race.

Sunday I did The Giro group ride. It was pretty hard. I wanted to sit in and see how my sprint was going but the group started to break apart at the front and I tried to go up front to help bring it back together. I didn’t attack just rode to the front and started to gradually increase the pace. I was only going ~45k when I looked back and only one guy was on my wheel. A couple others bridged up and I pulled the group most of the way up to a few guys in front of us. From then on out we were doomed. We couldn’t catch the 4 guys in front of us and we were managing to stay ahead of the main group. It stayed like this the entire way out! Kenny B. is riding pretty well and put in a pull that shelled the 4 other guys that were with us. We eased up a little to allow them a chance to get back on but I was more intent on catching the group in front. In the sprint at the turn around Kenny once again put on the hammer. I held on the longest but let him go about 400m from the finish to ride in at my sustainable speed. A few seconds later he looked back and eased up letting me get back on for a nice lead out.

On the way back, we stayed together on Chef Hwy. I attacked with about 1k to go before the sprint line and only 2 came with me. They easily passed me in the last 200 meters but I was surprised that nobody else was there. We had a sizable gap on the group at the finish. After that a group rolled off the front and we once again were chasing. (BTW: I decided that I don’t like chasing) After we came back together we were rolling with a stiff wind when I heard scraping metal on the ground. CRASH!!! If it were a race I’m sure the pace would have picked up but being the friendly bunch of guys we are everyone stopped to help in the scraping of the carnage off of the pavement. It was nothing serious just some guys that touched wheels. Thankfully I wasn’t in it. From there on out nobody was motivated. I rode at the front of our group which turned out to be the first group pretty much all the way back to the lakefront. I was surprised that no one tried to sprint past me on the bridge. I didn’t pick it up too much but just stayed seated and set a nice tempo. After the ride I went up on the levee to fight the winds by myself to end up with a total of 4 hours riding on the day. I felt good and could have probably done more but I was also a little motivated to get home.

Next week is the MS Grand Prix. I am hoping that I will be going well for the race. Ideally all road rash, bruising, and stiffness will be gone.