Tuesday Night Worlds came to Saturday morning last weekend during the "Seize the Road" fundraising bike tour for epilepsy. Pulling out of the Stoner Park and heading north on the 62-mile ride, about 15 members of LaS'port pulled away early on from the rest of the tour riders. Mat stayed at the front pulling our little group for the first 8 miles or so, usually keeping the pace around the 23+ mph range. Things eased up a bit, which was good for us mere mortals, but the pace never really slowed down. It was at near race pace (for a normal Category 3 road race) and people took their pulls, although some of us, like me, sat out a few rotations for some "rest".
I was on my old steel bike, the Bradley, custom built for me back in August 1986. Except for using it in a few time trials, I had not been on it as a pure road bike since 2001 when I got the K2. Well, I decided last week that it would be my off-season bike and I got it put together last Friday for its shakedown ride on Saturday. I'll keep the K2 as a TT bike for now and maybe I'll get to use it for duathlons this winter. Everything on the Bradley is old school....skinny steel fork, some of the original Campagnolo components and a lot of old Shimano 105 parts. I got a relatively new 105 front derailleur for $15 (way cheap) to install Friday and Scooter put the whole thing together (I try to spread the wealth between the two bike shops - LBS's - in Shreveport). The Brad is, of course, comfortable since it's made of steel with its only drawback being a bit heavier due to that same steel. Saturday's ride allowed me to get used to it again and stretch its legs. It was nice.
Anyways, there were parts of the ride where we were stroking along at 30+ mph, mostly in frantic attempts to keep the pack together when Mat, Patrick, Russ or Jason would put the pedal to the metal. I remember seeing 35 mph a number of times through my blurry vision! Then Jimi and I got off the front for a small distance going through a quick left-right series of turns. Then he dropped off and I found myself off the front by myself...totally unexpected. When I realized the pack wasn't chasing me very hard I decided to give it a go and pushed. After a half mile I couldn't see the guys (and gal...Lindsay was there) at all so I kept it up with only the lead deputy vehicle for company. I knew it wouldn't last long but I was going to have some fun. After about 3-4 miles the pack finally chased me down (I knew Mat wouldn't be able to stand having me that far down the road!) and I latched into the back, managing to hang on as they zoomed down the road.
The last nine weeks I trained solely for time trials and rarely were my rides over 30 miles in distance, so my long ride endurance was lacking. As we left the town of Blanchard, about 29 miles into the ride, after all that hard riding, I cratered and had to let the pack go. It was down to about nine riders at this point and within a couple of miles they were two minutes ahead of me. That was the last time I saw them and I spent the next twenty miles or so riding by myself at a gentle pace...I was getting in my saddle time now. With about ten miles to go a nice little group caught me and I settled in with them for the remainder of the ride. Mike, Mark, Jon, and I did most of the work dragging the rest of the pack in and the 62 miles was done in under three hours. It was a good ride but I was totally wracked from the earlier hard efforts and lost about six pounds...and I drank pretty often! Jonnene also did the longer distance and she came in with the bike club group about a half hour after I did. She was tired, too, but she was handling the post-ride exhaustion better than I was. I was down and out for most of the afternoon, slept a lot of it off while she was washing clothes, washing the dog, and other chores that I had no energy for.
We checked out a local Thai restaurant out on Youree Drive on Saturday night and it was great. I consider Jonnene the Thai expert and the place passed with her approval. We'll be back.
Sunday morning we drove down to Natchitoches, LA to watch some of our triathlete friends do the Meat Pie Triathlon. It was fun to be an observer to the race and cheer on the folks we knew. Sunrise Tri Club managed to grab up four medals in the various age groups. After brunch with Jamie, Bridget, and John, we headed down to the brother's house in Alexandria to drop off an old doghouse of ours (one of those domed igloo things) for his dogs to use. Nobody was there but I put it out in the backyard for the dogs to investigate.
After we got back home I made a quick trip to Mom's house to install a new curved shower curtain rod. The rest of the night was just prepping for the coming week...not much was on TV...just as well, hey?
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