Acadiana

The work week was nearly over by the time I started to give serious consideration to what I would be doing on over the July 4th weekend. My first choice was to travel to the heart of Acadiana, Lafayette Louisiana, for the "La Vuelta de Acadiana" omnium. That option was not without its complications, however, since I was without a car, and The Daughter and a small horde of young gymnasts was due to arrive at the house on Friday prior to their Sunday morning departure back up the river to Iowa. Challenges, however, are what we all live for, aren't they? By Thursday evening I was pretty sure I'd be getting a ride to Lafayette with Vivian. She also offered to have Rick bring the new LAMBRA generator home from Freret Hardware so I wouldn't need to figure out a way to pick it up. So on Friday morning I borrowed our car from the neighbor and picked up the clock from the office where it had been delivered after being repaired. We planned to leave around 5:00 am to be at the race just before registration closed at 7:30. After a whole week of abbreviated training rides in the rain, I didn't know what to expect. Pre-registration for the masters was looking pretty thin, which I guess could be both good and bad. Personally I always prefer a nice big field, but of course my chances of winning back my entry fee are a whole lot higher with a smaller field.

This year the Vuelta had a new TT and Criterium courses, both of which were vast improvements on prior years. The RR would be contested on the same long flat and hot circuit through seemingly endless sugarcane fields. The TT course was rather unusual in that it used a relatively short section of road that included three U-turns. Damn, I sure had a struggle getting back up to speed after those U-turns. The first one, in fact, was a bit of a disaster for me because I inexplicably shifted the wrong way coming out of it, dumping it into the 12 and practically coming to a stop before I could shift back up four cogs to the one I'd intended to use. Sheesh! Anyway, thanks to having Rolan ahead of me to keep me motivated I still managed 5th in the small masters field. After that we got together with Donald D., hung out at the hotel for a while, and went over to the local Chili's where he got them to put the Tour de France TT on the television. Nice!

The masters criterium didn't start until 5:45 pm, so we missed the worst of the afternoon heat. In addition, there were some big clouds and thunderstorms in the area that offered a nice break from the sun, along with an occasional sprinkle during the earlier women's race. The course for this race was really technical, featuring 8 turns over its 0.8 mi. length. This was my kind of criterium course. The masters race was pretty fast with lots of action, but none of the breaks stuck for very long. With around 5 laps to go Tracy Martin got off the front and, since he hadn't ridden the TT and therefore was already behind on omnium points, the pack didn't respond right away. With about 3 laps to go the speed was starting to ramp up as riders were setting up for the finish and it was looking like he'd be soon be reeled in. I was up near the front as we flew into a double set of sharp right-hand turns when I heard a big crash somewhere behind me. I was already setting up for the next turn and couldn't even look back to see what happened. Things got kind of split up for a little while, but within half a lap I found myself in a group of three chasing Tracy. Someone wisely said, "Let's work together, OK?" to which I promptly agreed. I think if we'd had another lap or two (or a couple of sacrificial teammates!) we would have caught, but when we got the bell a couple of laps later the pace slowed a bit as riders started to think about the impending sprint for 2nd place. In the ensuing sprint I was happy to place 2nd in our group, giving me a 3rd place finish. That's when I found out that Jerry Simon was still lying on the corner with an apparent collarbone fracture. I rushed back over there to see how he was and find out where the ambulance was taking him. As they were loading him into the ambulance he told me to call Mignon who had already picked up his bike and was en route to the wrong hospital. A while later we learned that he hadn't broken the collarbone, but had instead suffered a fairly serious shoulder separation. It'll probably be some time next week before he finds out if there was any ligament damage in need of surgical repair. Thanks to Jerry and most of the rest of the masters throwing themselves to the ground, I moved up from 5th to 4th on the overall.

There was a big group on hand for the road race the next morning. I was kind of dreading this race for two reasons. The course is a dead-flat 16 mile circuit that offers no real opportunities for breakaways. It also features a long straight unprotected finish with sugarcane fields on both sides. You can see the finish from at least a mile and a half away, which usually means a long drawn-out drag race that favors the big powerful riders. Once our 64 mile race got underway I was surprised by how it was going. I think that the combination of heat, distance, lack of terrain, and defensive riding conspired to keep the pace remarkably slow most of the time. Practically the only relief came from one of the Texas riders who definitely won the most aggressive rider prize for the day. He attacked at least ten times, often in succession. The final time, on the last lap, he pulled a rider along with him and the gap grew to at least 45-60 seconds. I found myself spending more and more time on the front just trying to keep the speed within a respectable range. The pack finally started to respond, and once they hit the headwind section they were finally absorbed. By then I was down to my last few sips of water and it was apparent that some of the surviving riders were suffering because of the heat and resulting muscle cramps. For some reason my own legs were feeling pretty good. As usual, someone jumped a bit too early for the sprint and a small gap opened, but when that effort started to fade the rest of us closed and the real sprint fired off just before the 200 meter flag. I was pretty happy, and surprised, to finish 2nd in that one. A little while later when the (excellent, BTW) officiating crew posted the final results I was shocked to find that I'd tied on points for 1st overall and that the tie had been broken in my favor since Jed Darby, who had been leading, had somehow lost contact during the road race and missed out on a lot of points.


So now I'm at home getting ready to put in a few hours working on a slew of research proposals that we are collecting ahead of some probably new oil-spill related funding. The proposals have been coming in as a steady stream all weekend and all day today as well, so it's a challenge to sort though them all and get them categorized and organized in a manageable way. It's kind of fun too, and I'm really impressed to see so many of our faculty working over the holiday weekend on this.