Woundn't You Know It

This week seems to have flown by rather quickly for some reason. Almost every evening I've spent time fooling with the somewhat messed-up results from last weekend's Pensacola Cycling Classic. Although most of the Road Race and Time Trial results were solid, it seems like the five officials at the finish line of the Criterium just couldn't seem to get the lapped rider situation straight. Of course, it can get really confusing, especially with a big Cat. 5 field that tends to get spread all over the course within the first few laps. On the other hand, it sure would help if riders would hang around long enough to check the results after the race instead of sending angry emails two days later. It doesn't take a whole lot of racing experience to figure out that the officials are often doing a bit of a guessing game, especially towards the back of the field sprints. In any typical weekend stage race, my advice is to always get your own TT time, always count the number of riders ahead of you at the finish, and always, always check the results as soon as they are posted. Technically, protests about the order of finish must be made within 15 minutes of the announcement that they are posted. The only exception is for intermediate stages in stage races, in which case they are accepted up until the close of sign-in for the next stage. Anyway, suffice it to say that I re-did the Acrobat file at least four times this week and made numerous corrections to the data that I had already uploaded to the USAC R&R database. Almost all of the problems involved riders who were well out of the money. The only major exception was Donald Davis in the masters criterium where he was somehow listed initially as being a lap down. Once that was fixed it bumped me down to 13th place on GC, one place out of the money.

Anyway, aside from all of the results drama, I spent much of the last half of the week anticipating the Six Gap Century ride that I'll be doing on Sunday. I never feel quite up to this ride, of course, since it involves so much climbing, but it's a fun road trip and a fun challenge nonetheless. The past two years that I've done it, my biggest worry has been that it might be uncomfortably cold. This year, however, things are looking a little different. Although the weather on Saturday up in Dahlonega, Ga is supposed to be spectacular, wouldn't you know it, the weather on Sunday is looking to be wet. There's a solid 50% chance of rain from about dawn till dusk. As a result, a number of people who had been planning on going have already backed out. I don't really understand why. It's not going to be particularly cold - probably upper 60s. Granted, it's probable that the roads will be good and wet all day, which will mean taking it really easy on those long downhills where I usually hit speeds of 50+ mph, but that's what the brakes are for, right? As much as I love bombing down those hills, the fact that there's no prize at the end will make it easy to keep myself within the safety zone. I'm just about to go start packing my bag for this trip. I'm leaving around 7 am to pick up Mignon and perhaps Elizabeth. Steve will be driving up separately because of complications at home, and John Chauvin and John Maurin are meeting us up there somehow. In light of the weather situation, I'll be packing my toe-covers, arm-warmers, rain jacket, and maybe a few other items of that nature, and I'll be carrying at least two tubes and my trusty Silca minipump along with a few PowerBars. If it turns out to be raining the whole time I may actually stop at one or two of the rest stops this year. We'll see.....