Hills and Hay Bales

Saturday was our annual LAMBRA business meeting during which we hash out the preliminary race calendar, proposals regarding the LCCS points series, amendments to Bylaws, etc.  This year there were a number of changes that were approved for 2012.  We finally formalized the composition of the LAMBRA Board, made some rather extensive changes to the way LCCS points are awarded and accumulated, etc. It all went pretty smoothly, and hopefully I'll find some time this evening to send out the preliminary calendar and bylaw changes and a summary of the LCCS changes (the language for which still needs to be finalized).  LAMBRA continues to make incremental steps in the right direction as the LCCS points format moves slightly more in the direction of rewarding race results rather than race attendance.  It should be interesting to see how it all works out.  Points totals will reflect each rider's top 5 races in each discipline (RR, TT/TTT, Crit).  Master 40+ races will be restricted to Cat. 1-4 only, points schedules will be extensively modified so that points awarded increase in relation to field size, etc.  I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to actually be able to track all of that without pulling my hair out after each race, but philosophically it's the right direction to go.  Since there was a cyclocross race near Jackson where the meeting had been, I had loaded my not-quite-a cyclocross bike into the car before leaving.  As it turned out, I'd forgotten things like gloves, tools and a few other minor items, but nothing that would stop me from riding.

Sunday morning I left the La Quinta early in search of coffee and found that the Starbucks on County Line Road that had been closed a few years ago was now a very nice Cups espresso shop, so I had a nice Americano for my ride out to the race location.  Unfortunately, the race location had been listed on the flyer as the intersection of two highways.  I spent a while driving up and down the roads there before finally spotting the race site.  I had wanted to get there early since I had the registration/results spreadsheet, and I wanted to help out with officiating the B race if needed (which it wasn't).  The temperature was in the 60s and the ground was dry, so that eliminated most of my worries.  Of course they were still setting up the course when I arrived, but eventually I pulled out the bike and rode a couple of laps of the course before the first race got underway.  This was going to be a fairly hard course, mainly because it was all through rather thick grass and almost all up and down, so basically there was almost no place to recover. 

Turnout for this race was quite small.  A lot of the cyclocross enthusiasm comes out of the Baton Rouge area, but a conflicting LSU football game the night before must have taken precedence for those guys.  One surprise that the course offered was the chance of getting a flat because of thorns.  The first race had, I think, three flats as a result, but luckily the organizers found the spot on the course where it was happening and removed most of the offending plants.

I started the A race with my usual cyclocross goal, which was to finish in one piece.  At the start, I was surprised to find myself suddenly in the lead, so against my better judgement I pushed the first couple of laps, which resulted in three of us opening a fairly significant gap.  This course was very much a roadie type of course, in that there was only one small barrier on the course and everything else was basically rideable, even though there were a lot of fairly steep climbs that would take you down to walking speed.  The one exception was a steep hill about two-thirds of the way around the course. I was able to ride this one for most of the race even though I was dramatically overgeared for it.  For all practical purposes, I spent all of the race in the lowest gear on the bike, which is a 44x27, I think.  By the end of the second lap the climbs were starting to wear on me and Jim and Randy went by pretty easily as I backed off a bit in order to ensure my own survival.  For a couple of the last laps I decided it would be easier to dismount and run up the steep hill rather than try to ride it in my overgeared and underpowered state.  I doubt I lost much time doing that, but it didn't matter anyway because by then there was nobody near me anyway.  Despite the small field, it was a lot of fun and exactly what I was looking for - a good hard 45 minute workout.