A f t e r m a t h

I swear, it's way harder to work a race than to race a race! The Tour de Louisiane went quite well this year, and we didn't have to dial 911 even once! By the time Mark dropped me and all of the club's race promoting stuff off at my house it was close to 6 p.m. on Sunday. In the aftermath of the event, my basement is a bit of a mess, but hopefully I'll get down there tonight to wash out the gatorade coolers and put everything back in its place.

Friday night registration went smoothly as usual and I guess we handed out about half of the race numbers. The Cat. 5 race was full, but one or two kind masters Cat. 5s switched to the masters race in order to make more room for the 5s, which was nice. In the end I think we went a few riders over the limit out of sheer pity for those who had travelled long distances.

It was about 3 a.m. Friday night when I was rudely awakened from my slumber at the Super8 by a clap of thunder that could have raised the dead. It was storming outside, which seems to be SOP for Friday before the Tour de La lately. By morning the rain had slackened to a light drizzle and as we started off the first few riders around 8:15 the skies were already starting to look better. The TT went fairly smoothly, although one rider (one of OURS, no less!) missed his start by maybe 10 seconds and another had some sort of mechanical, probably a pulled-over rear wheel, just after starting that cost him over 30 seconds. Starting over 180 riders at 30-second intervals does not leave much room for distraction. There is just enough time for me to give each rider a reminder about the course distance, the fact that the road is open to traffic, and the need to ride single-file on the way back. All-in-all the times seemed to be a little slow despite the absence of any significant wind. As soon as the last rider took off, I headed for the truck and fired up the computer. Mark and I got all of the rider information, start times and finish times entered by the time we had to leave for the road race, and I printed everything out in the truck as we made the 45-minute drive to the road course.

By the time we got to the RR course, it was starting to heat up and the rain was long gone, but the scattered clouds were keeping the temperatures from getting completely out of hand. The parking was especially tight this year. There was the usual organized chaos in the half-hour before the start when we're searching for last-minute corner marshals, lining up the lead motorcycles, giving instructions to the local police, and getting the follow cars and wheel trucks organized. Keith, Mark and Elliot handled the confusing like pros, though, and the first race started pretty much on time. I was really relieved that there were no major crashes. In fact the only one I know about was a couple of riders who went down in the Cat. 5 race. We had a whole bunch of new GMRS radios which worked out pretty well. We had very clear communications with most of the following vehicles when they were a couple of miles from the finish, and were able to relay that information to the downstream police car so he could block off the oncoming traffic for the sprints. The place-picking was difficult because all but the masters race ended in a big, charging field sprint. Shane had the video camera working, though, so we were able to get places for almost everybody later that night. I think we had all of the results pasted up in the hotel window by about 9 p.m., which is pretty good for this sort of thing.

Sunday's criteriums looked like a lot of fun. As usual, I spend much of the time squinting in front of a barely readable laptop screen working on the results. Everything would have gone very smoothly except for the unusual number of ties on GC. In stage races, the standard method of breaking ties on GC is by taking the sum of the individual stage placings and giving the better placing to the person with the lowest number. The problem with that, of course, it that you need to know where everyone placed in the middle of the pack. It took quite a while for Shane and Adam to resolve the seven tied riders that we had in the top 12 of the Cat. 1,2,3 race. You see, often you can't read each rider's number on the videotape, so you have to make inferences about who they are based on their team jerseys, bikes, wheels, etc. It is an imprecise methodology. Anyway, the delay wasn't really all that long, and most people were crammed into the Acme Oyster House where we do the awards ceremony, enjoying the a/c and beer and shrimp po-boys. Mike Lew had gotten flowers and champagne for the winners, and even brought along an absolutely beautiful podium girl to hand them out (a photo of whom I regret I didn't get). Afterward, a few of us hung around and had our traditional post-race lunch before heading back across the lake and into reality. I got the results up on the website around 6:30 or so and called it a day.

Everyone in the club worked hard on this event, and I think that the riders enjoyed it. From what I saw of the races, it looked like the Cat. 4s, Masters and Cat. 1,2,3s had particularly competitive races this year. And that's pretty much what it's all about.

Now I just need to fill out the post-event paperwork, add the USCF numbers to the resutls spreadsheet so I can reformat a copy for uploading to the USCF Results and Rankings database, correct all of the club names so that they match the official USCF club names, and of course update the LCCS rankings. I figure that'll take me three or four days, easy.