The Blue Shirt

The Saturday Giro was remarkably civilized this week, probably because a number of the regulars were planning on doing the LAMBRA Team Time Trial Championship the next day.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was scheduled to officiate that one with Mark D. since it was fairly nearby.  That meant that I had no reason to conserve on Saturday and was therefore able to ride at the front now and again with reckless abandon.  Seriously, though, it was really quite a nice Giro Ride -- good and fast at times and otherwise respectably brisk.  The night before I had cleaned the bike, something I seem to do less and less frequently the more I ride.  It took some time for me to remove the sticky spots and streaks down around the bottom bracket where HammerGel-laced water had repeatedly dripped and dribbled over the previous week.  It reminded me why I don't usually like to put anything except water in my water bottles.  After the ride and back at home I charged up the LAMBRA clock, double-checked the registration and results spreadsheet, and staged all of the needed equipment in front of the basement door in anticipation of a 5:00 am departure.  Registration was set to open at 7 am down in Labadieville, LA where there is mostly just sugar cane and water, and 37% of the population claims French or French-Canadian heritage.

At 4:30 am the alarm went off and I slipped on The Blue Shirt for a day of official officiating.  Somehow I got the car loaded up and was on the road Sunday morning about five minutes ahead of schedule, and with the Garmin lady giving directions made my way across the Luling suspension bridge, coming down onto those long flat lonely highways that connect towns with names like Thibodeaux, Pierre Part, and Napoleonville.  The local club, appropriately named Bayou Country Cyclists, arrived in force just ahead of me, and within half an hour we were all set up for registration. This was the club's first race, which they were co-hosting with Tiger Cycling out of Baton Rouge, but since we had been working on the details for a few weeks, everything was working pretty well.  Of course there were the usual riders who had forgotten their licenses, or had, presumably, renewed their licenses online the night before, etc.  Anyway, things went quite smoothly since there were only 21 teams on hand.  Now that the Team Time Trials no longer count toward individual LCCS points, I think we need to combine some categories for these events to make it easier for clubs to put together their teams.  Something to think about for next year.  Results were done about one minute after the last team finished, so I just had to bring the laptop back to the registration area, print out the results, and hand out the medals.  The only problem was that, after spending about an hour in the sun, the laptop's mouse stopped working.  It's happened before when it got hot like that.  I think I need to be more careful about keeping the laptop, and myself, in the shade.  The course must have been pretty fast because the Herring team posted a 1:00:22 time for what was apparently a 29.4 mi. out-and-back course, which means they were rarely looking at anything under 30 mph the whole time.  A Cat. 4 team posted the next fastest time.  Perhaps some of those guys need to be thinking about upgrades.

This morning's ride was the usual early morning levee route.  I was up a little earlier than usual and today was the first time I put the headlight on the bike for the ride out to the levee.  I always find it kind of depressing when the days start getting shorter like this. The group was pretty big today and the pace was fast out to The Dip, but about half of the riders turned around there, or before, so after that the pace settled down into the 23-24 mph range for most of the remainder.