A Whole Week

Things have been pretty busy, cycling-wise, since last Friday.  Alas, I'm still hopelessly behind in a number of areas, not the least of which is training.  Last weekend the Tulane cycling team organized and promoted its first collegiate race, the Green Wave Cycling Classic, and just to make sure they jumped into the deep end, it was a stage race.  By all accounts it went off quite well.  Nobody went to the hospital and nobody went to jail.  For me it was a whole weekend off the bike, and just to twist the knife, I didn't ride on Friday either (I think it was raining in the morning). I was officiating along with Ricky Dunn who came in from Monroe.  As stage races go, this one was pretty easy on the officials.  The organizer (Landon vomSteeg, who also didn't get to race) had his support crew pretty well organized and everything went off pretty much on time.  The only problem was that half of the riders waited until about fifteen minutes before registration closed to register, so the road races had to be pushed back by half an hour.  Compounding the delay was the fact that collegiate riders seem to change category practically at random and the SCCCC insists on trying to give them "permanent" race numbers each season.  Of course a number of them forgot their numbers, or gave me the wrong number, or upgraded and had to get new numbers in a different sequence.  I never did get a list of assigned bib numbers and rider license numbers from the conference, just a big box of numbers delivered by one of the Texas teams about half an hour after registration opened.  Anyway, the road races up at Enon went pretty well, results were clean and straightforward, and we arrived at the evening Time Trial site with plenty of time to spare.  There were just a couple of minor errors in the RR results, so all was good.  The TT was interesting in that probably half of the riders had never been held for a TT start, and the guy holding them, Landon, had never held riders for a TT start.  Fortunately none of them fell, although there were a couple of close calls.  The only problem with the TT was that a few riders were late for their starts.  One of them would, in all likelihood, have turned in one of the best times.  I sat on the tailgate of the Volvo after the race and put in all of the times, so after driving back across the lake and having a bite to eat at home, the day's results were up on the website by 8:30 or so.  Sunday's criterium on Lakeshore Drive went well too.  The first problem, though, was that the parking lot that was supposed to serve as part of the course was basically covered in crawfish heads from somebody's party the night before.  We made a little course change that worked out fine.  By the time the racing started there was a pretty strong east wind blowing that helped break up the fields.  It made for some hard rides, but easy judging.  Anyway, I'd have to call the event a success.

So by Monday I was ready to get back on the bike, and went out for an early solo ride on the levee.  The rest of the week was going smoothly, unless you count a whole bunch of LAMBRA/USAC race permitting drama, until we had to cancel the Wednesday night worlds out on the lakefront because of rain.  Thursday morning it was still rainy and wet, but the radar looked like it might give me a little break so I went out to the levee in the dark on the rain bike to see how lucky I would get.  I wasn't optimistic enough to leave the rain jacket at home, though.  I made it out past River Ridge before the rain started again and I had to stop to put the jacket on.  By the time I was halfway back it was pouring rain and I could see lightning up ahead.  I have to say, though, that if you're going to be riding in the rain, full fenders and Goretex are the way to go!  I was pretty comfortable, although of course my feet started getting a little cold toward the end.  Friday morning was another wash-out with thunderstorms in the morning.  I left home late hoping the worst would pass because the dogs were scared. The little one basically shakes and pants whenever there's thunder.  A minute after I left home, in the car, the sky opened up again and for a while I wondered if Broadway might be too flooded for me to get to work.  No such luck, though.  It still wasn't over, though, and rained all day and night.  Around 2 am this morning was a huge storm with constant thunder and lightning that kept me up for pretty much the rest of the night.  The dogs were pacing around the bed and scared for hours on end.  Needless to say, I didn't get to ride this morning.

Thursday night I made a last-minute decision to go up to Tuscaloosa for the Tour de Tuscaloosa.  I haven't ridden that one in a few years and am not expecting much, but I figure it will be good training because both the road and criterium courses are pretty challenging.