Status Quo

It was a routine Wednesday training ride this morning, and I was happy to find that the wind has finally died down. Of course, that meant slightly warmer temperatures and a bit more humidity, but hey, I'll take it! I had a nice steady aerobic ride, largely at 21-22 mph, with a group of I guess about ten. A few of the guys seem to be recoverng from colds and have wisely been trying to stay off the front until they feel stronger, so there were really only about five riders in the rotation at the front.

The club has picked up another sponsor, I hear, and I'm really wondering how they are all going to fit on the jersey.

Keith is going to the annual LAMBRA meeting this weekend and will get us two additional race dates so that we can promote a 2-man Time Trial in the Spring and either a Criterium or Road Race in late Summer when the schedule is usually pretty thin. I'm thinking we can do these as fairly low-key events that won't stress us out too much but will be fun and will add some good racing to the calendar. I hear from Josie's e-mail today that someone has proposed more changes to the Masters LCCS points competition. This seems to come up every year. Personally I prefer to have fewer, rather than more, age categories unless we start seeing larger field sizes for the regular 35+ races. Of course one might argue that the sizes are small because the older masters aren't entering because they get blown away by the younger guys. Who knows? Masters Nationals is up in Utah again this year, which means that the combination of the high cost and high altitude and high hills will make it pretty difficult for those of us who live below sea level and rarely climb anything higher than an overpass.

The USCF has sent out a summary of rule changes. Most aren't particulary relevant to routine racing, but a couple may be. The rules now make pulling lapped riders in criteriums the default state, so that promoters have to say in their event announcements that they won't be pulling lapped riders. All riders who are pulled out after the mid-point of the race are still to be placed. This is guaranteed to cause confusion and makes it hard on the officials to calculate placings for pulled riders. Sometimes, depending on how the race progresses, pulled riders could end up with placings higher than finishing riders who are almost, but not quite, lapped. Not good. Of course, that can't apply to Stage Race criteriums, since everyone who doesn't quit needs to get a place and finish time. On the plus side, they have apparently increased the distances for Masters championship road races, which was badly needed for some age groups in order to keep everything from coming down to a huge pack sprint.