Workin' the Tour

So this morning I donned my traditional officiating hat and met the extraordinary NOBC Tour de La crew, along with our Chief Judge Shane, at the little gazebo in Abita Springs. Thanks to a good turnout for Friday night number pickup and pre-registration, race day registration went smoothly while Robin set up the start area and posted signs along the 3-mile time trial route. We got started a few minutes after 8 am, sending around 160 riders off at 30-second intervals. The only real problem was some construction going on down the road that produced a steady stream of big dump trucks. I had to hold a few riders for an extra 30 seconds so they wouldn't get too tangled up in the slow-moving trucks. I had the TT results wrapped up and printed out pretty quickly and I posted them at the road race course an hour or so before the 1 am start.

The road race always feels kind of chaotic and out of control. Thankfully we have some great club members who make things work relatively smoothly. A pretty small but dedicated group somehow gets five wheel cars lined up, coordinating with five moto refs, numerous police officers, radio communications, water and sports drinks, and even chilled watermelon. Robin spent a couple of hours getting the course ready, putting up signs, patching holes, sweeping corners, etc., and somehow we were ready to go by 1 pm. There was a pretty big pile-up near the end of the Cat. 5's first lap, but there were no other crashes this year. Instead, there were a lot of flats. We never did figure out why that was, but a couple of the follow cars said that they had five or six flats to deal with. Most of the groups made it to the end more or less intact this year. No big breaks were able to survive, although a small group did get off the front of the Cat. 1,2,3 group near the end. With a little tailwind along the finish stretch, we had to rely a lot on the video camera to sort things out. Shane did his usual great job of that and by the time we were finished cleaning up the area after the race he had finished all but the Cat. 5 results. I got most of those entered into the computer on the drive back to the hotel, after which Shane emailed me the Cat. 5 results. The preliminary results were up on the website by about 8 pm. They're not very pretty, but at least there's a chance some of the riders will be able to check them out tonight. Hope we didn't screw them up too badly.

Tomorrow it will be another early start to get things set up for the first criterium at 7:30.