Pedal Pusher: April 2011

Hey folks,

My apologies for not updating as frequently as usual during the past few weeks. Here's an extra long post to make up for the lack of cycling/food that you've been so patiently awaiting:

Three weekends ago, Tulane Cycling set up a tent at this year's Tour de Lis and got quite the positive response from the general public. We volunteered with the event's setup the day before, so we pretty much had dibs on any tent we wanted. The team set up shop at one of the tents in front of the stage, and lots of people came up to us asking about our team, its goals, and where to buy t-shirts and jerseys. We were pretty excited about the next week's conference championships at Texas Tech, so that's what we talked about while we shot the breeze with the locals. We also had flyers that directed people to our Tulane Cycling website, where there is information about our next kit order.

The Tour de Lis is a charity event, and it was very heartwarming to see such a great turnout by all the runners and cyclists in the region. One older woman came by our tent and talked to us about Tulane Cycling and the delicate balance between school and racing. The entire time I was thinking wow, this is a really nice lady and she has a lot of passion for this event. As she walked away we noticed a LIVESTRONG "I AM A SURVIVOR" tag on the back of her jersey. The game doesn't stop at survival; this lady was right there participating in the event with her husband. She's a real trooper.

Lots of people came up and asked about how to get a jersey.

Team photo

He has no idea of what to do with the fried Twinkie.

Trek Bikes had their lines of road and time trial bikes available for test rides!

A week later we were on the road to Lubbock, Texas, to pedal hard and represent Louisiana at Conference Championships. We saw some intense wild fires on the 16-hour drive there, and one team actually inquired as to whether the road race would be cancelled on Saturday morning because of the smoke. All of the races went on as scheduled, and nobody complained about the smoke, from what I heard. The road race went well, and it had a pretty fast downhill. I actually got up to 41.4 miles per hour on that downhill before seeing an ambulance at the bottom that was about to leave with a rider who crashed on the course. I slowed down a bit and continued through with caution. We later discovered through another cyclist that the rider who crashed was a high schooler participating in the weekend omnium. We hope he's doing okay with that broken collar bone.

That evening's crit went well even though the course was L-shaped. Yes, L-shaped. What is this, Formula 1? Anyways, the course layout grew on us as we raced and we came out of Saturday's races on top.

Sunday's team time trial was quite intense (probably my favorite race of the weekend, although it had a grueling 9 mile course). My time trial team consisted of four riders, but only two needed to cross the finish line before the final time would be taken. That meant one thing for me: I'd be riding off the front for as long as possible so my other teammates could carry on towards the finish. I did exactly that, and my teammates were impressed with a 26-27 mile per hour average for the first two miles, especially for someone who had just gone from Category D to Category C the previous day. The course contained the same downhill as the road race, and this time I kept my hands off the breaks to reach a maximum speed of 42.9 miles per hour. Sweet deal.

By the way, we won conference championships. This is quite an incredible accomplishment for a first-year team. The phone call from our university president was pretty exciting, but after hanging up we had to pack our bikes and get right back on the road towards home. 16 hours of bliss (also known as team bonding) would pass before we were to arrive back in New Orleans.

Smoke from the Texas wildfires

My first mesa (hadn't ever been to a desert)

My side of the room

I catted up to Category C for the race weekend.

After the road race

After the time trial's final climb (13% incline)

Allie got a conference award as well

There's the team's award, champions!

A good friend was in town after conference championships, and we were able to catch up over breakfast during the early part of the week. By the way, whoever kept everything bagels from me all these years should be reprimanded. They just so happen to be my new favorite breakfast food.

Easter Weekend was pretty relaxing. I was able to ride every day, and a friend and I dined at Ignatius Eatery to start the three days of university holiday. The restaurant had the best bread pudding I've ever tasted. It was better than a Cinnabon, without a doubt. Saturday involved a nice evening walk to Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro for dessert. It felt good to savor the Bananas Foster Cheesecake after that morning's training ride. Easter Sunday's ride went pretty well, and a teammate and I visited a friend at La Dolce Nola, a gelato place over in Metairie. They had Peeps flavored gelato in addition to the Cadbury Creme Egg flavor (I got the largest size available that wasn't a pint). Later that night, a friend of mine came over to visit and surprised me with an Easter box, complete with cookies, Fun Dip, and Tootsie Rolls. Can anybody say nostalgia?

Bananas Foster Cheesecake for me

A friend's Dulce de Leche & Praline Cheesecake

This was quite the Easter treat, to say the least.

You can see the bits of Cadbury Creme Egg in it!

A friend surprised me with an Easter box!

Tulane University's final exam week begins this Friday, so there will be a lot of studying from this end. Hopefully my professors aren't out to get us this year.

Until next time, folks.

So most of this week was pretty laid back since the team wasn't attending any races. There was a serious team training ride on Wednesday afternoon that consisted of a painful set of intervals. Fortunately, a friend made Mexican food on Thursday and had people over:

It was a pretty fun night right from the start.

You can't have tacos without ground beef!

(Okay, yes you can, but they're not as good.)

It suddenly got very quiet once the food was ready

(they must have liked it).

You can see the sunburned face I was sporting.

I joined a teammate for a 6:30am ride on Friday before stopping at La Madeleine, a place that treated us very well considering that a couple of sweaty dudes walked into their establishment in noisy cleats and helmets. In fact, they were so nice that they upgraded me to a super-sized coffee once they found out Tulane Cycling has a better record than the football team. Pretty cool, right?

I figured today would be a good day to do an easy levee loop (50 miles). Okay, keep that in mind: easy pace, as in not hard. So I loaded up the iPod with 2 hours worth of Deadmau5 tracks and began riding at about 6:30am, thinking I'd probably get the loop done in about 3 hours and 10 minutes (read: very slowly). About 20 minutes into the ride I got picked up by three riders. The one riding off the front the entire time was Tim of Herring Gas Cycling Team. This guy is like a metronome. He had us slowly creeping up to 27 mph as we approached the end of the levee. Right behind him was the rider I was drafting most of the way, Charlie of NOLA Lending Racing Team. I can't remember whether it was him who signaled for me to get on his wheel or if it was one of the Herring Gas Cycling Team (or NOLA Lending Racing Team) sponsors, Craig, who ended up dropping off the paceline. We picked up another rider (Mark) while we were on the way back from the mills. The guy looks like he's built to fight aliens with his bare hands (go watch Battle: Los Angeles, which was partially filmed in Baton Rouge, and you'll understand the level of badassery needed to acquire this appearance). These guys were pretty fast. Luckily, Charlie flatted out so I could take a breather (I guess it wasn't so lucky for him). I took the opportunity to wolf down half an energy bar while we waited for him to change his rear tube. I also snapped a few pictures:

The sun got pretty bright today.

View of the river from the levee.

Mark and Tim shooting the breeze while Charlie changed his flat.

Charlie, not too excited to be spending his morning changing a tube.

After getting home from that 50-miler, I quickly showered so I could go grocery shopping with a friend. There were energy gel type things on sale for $5.00 a case, so I capitalized on that opportunity as soon as I saw it. Upon getting home, I threw my kit back on for a 2pm fun ride with a teammate. We pretty much saw the entire city of New Orleans, from City Park to the Lakefront, over to the University of New Orleans and then to the French Quarter. We even rode home through Uptown, which was scenic (and bumpy) after stopping by a coffee shop on Frenchman Street. It was 32.85 miles total for that ride, so 82.85 for the day when it's all said and done. A spring sufferfest, to say the least.