Results and the Points

So Adam did a great job as Chief Ref. at last Saturday's 3-Man TT up in Baton Rouge despite a shortage of help. That meant, of course, that he couldn't even really start on the results until everyone had finished. Fortunately, Norman had provided a half-dozen bottles of wine for the finishers which, at least in my case, made the wait much more, shall we say, "palatable." I ended up spending much of the afternoon and evening posting results, checking USCF numbers against the USAC membership database to get the correct club/team affiliations for the LCCS scoring, reformatting the results to upload to the USA Cycling Results and Rankings database, etc. There were even a couple of errors that still had to be fixed with the Rouge-Roubaix results, now three weeks in the past. I guess I've probably spend a good ten hours on the Rouge results and so I don't really want to hear about any more problems. Ever since we got so good about posting race results to websites it seems a lot of riders feel they can split right after the race and then complain about their placings three days, or a week, later. I do try to be fair, but by then the results are on at least one website, they have been scored for the LCCS, and they have been uploaded to the USAC, so making any changes is a real headache. It's clear already that a few of the area clubs are already carefully combing through the weekly race results hunting for any extra LCCS points they might be able to scoop up. At the 3-man TT, one group wanted to have a guy start with one team early, drop off right away, go back to the finish line, and start with another team. Of course that meant he would have gotten points for riding on two teams when, for all practical purposes, he'd really only ridden on one. We'll have to add a special event rule to cover that next time. These folks don't miss a trick!!

Anyway, I was glad to hear from Shane the other day that LAMBRA has finally ordered the big race clock. It's a pretty big investment because we went with one that has the really big bright numbers (not the little LED numbers that are hard to read in the sunlight). It will be great for time trial starts and finishes, and will also be able to be placed in such a way that it will show up in finish line video as a backup for the judges.

Meanwhile, back in the Crescent City, we had a pretty fair group for the Easter Sunday Giro Ride, but for a few of us things kind of went south for a while when Jack flatted going up the Casino Bridge (stay away from those drain grates, guys!). Most of the group continued on, but a few of us waited. Eventually there were just four of us soft-pedaling down Hayne Blvd., looking back periodically for Jack and Robin and whoever else had stopped to assist. By the time we were approaching Bullard Ave. we still couldn't see anyone coming, so Brandon and I took a right turn there so we could take a little short-cut and make up a little time. Problem was, it was windy as all hell (we were really, really lucky with the wind on Saturday for the 3-man TT). So here I was again doing a time trial all the way down Bullard and Chef Highway. We started picking up stragglers, though, and that helped a lot. We were able to get back into the group after the turnaround, and soon the pace started ramping up as usual. I ended up getting a pretty decent workout, including a couple of good sprint efforts up the overpasses at the end, plus there was the added entertainment of watching Mike W., who had chosen this windy group ride to break out his fixed gear and disk. I guess he handled it pretty well under the circumstances, although the rest of the group was being careful to give his rear wheel a little extra latitude. Now I need to start resting up for the Tuesday Worlds on the Lakefront...