Square One

The Sunday Giro

I rode out from the house into the quiet Saturday morning air.  With the streets still deserted I could hear the light "tick, tick, tick" of the computer's wheel sensor each time the magnet passed it. I felt like I was starting back at square-one, riding-wise. This would be, hopefully, my first full Giro Ride since I'd broken my collarbone on the last day of October. Even worse, I'd been off the bike for a full week attending first the USAC Local Associations conference in Colorado Springs, and then the NCURA annual conference in Washington D.C., finally returning home in the wee hours of Thursday morning.  It had been a long week, and even now I'm still playing catch-up.

Looking west near USAC headquarters in Colorado Springs

The LA conference had gone well.  USAC is working on a new insurance and officiating structure for track racing, which is long overdue.  There was, of course, a lot of discussion about doping.  USAC gets about 350 tests a year from USADA, but is trying to add some additional funding so they can do more.  Even so, the most efficient mechanism for catching dopers is the USADA hotline. They are looking closely at the Florida model for that, along with taking a more pro-active approach to information dissemination and working with promoters.  It still costs about $6,000 to do maybe ten tests at an event, so for many races it will be impossible without some sort of subsidy.  Shawn is working on a major revision (mostly structural) of the rulebook that will rearrange things in a more reasonable way, clarify some things that are fuzzy, and, interestingly, officially allow riders to race up a category in time trials. There was also a lot of discussion and analysis of the "new rider" experience.  Where they come from, why they start racing, why they don't renew their licenses, etc.  The top two reasons for not continuing to race:  Distance to races (85 mi. seems to be the key distance), and lack of appropriate categories.  They're working on a curriculum for racing skills clinics and will be offering a Skills Instructor certification for coaches.  There is also now the Race Director certification program where RDs can take the test online to get certified. Since each club gets one free RD license, they should all designate someone for that position.  We listened to the always terrifying discussion of insurance, the only bright light there being a new optional bicycle insurance program that they will be rolling out in 2013 through Markel.

From chilly Colorado I flew over to even chillier Washington for the annual NCURA conference and three solid days of sessions and nights of "networking" that included trying to keep track of the election returns in the midst of the party and, later, in our region's hospitality suite.  Being the Southeastern Region, we had two full bars going so we ended up with a lot of people from other regions.  Anyway, I was pretty wiped out by the time I got a standby seat to Chicago for a long wait for the last leg back home.  I lucked out on the standby seat, since my original flight ended up seriously delayed because of the big storm that came through in the northeast.

So, getting back to this weekend, I felt reasonably good on the Saturday Giro, although it was a little stressful trying to find that balance between staying in the draft while at the same time leaving a little more reaction space than usual between my wheel and the one ahead of me.  The group split on the way back down Chef, and I was kind of glad I ended up in the second group because that old competitive instinct would probably have found me taking more chances than I should have otherwise.  The collarbone is still a little ways from completely healed, but yesterday marked six weeks post-injury, so it wasn't too much of a distraction.  I spent the rest of the day standing behind a table in City Park where I'd been volunteered to sell beer tickets a the annual SPCA New Orleans on Tap beer festival.  I was handling the credit card purchases using an iPhone and Square, which I'm thinking we should get for the NOBC so we can take credit cards at events in the middle of nowhere.

Having survived Saturday, I decided to up the ante on Sunday and put in some extra make-up miles. The plan was to ride the Giro as conservatively as possible, ride back home to refuel, then ride out to the levee and head upriver to around Norco and hopefully meet the LSU riders who were doing their annual Baton Rouge to New Orleans 100+ mile ride, along with a couple of Tulane riders. It had been pretty windy on the Giro Ride, and by the time I got out to the levee around 10:30 there was a relentless gusty southeast wind blowing at 10-15 mph.  I knew the ride back would be long and hard, and I had no good idea of where the LSU ride was, so I rode at an easy sightseeing speed out past Ormond.  I'd figured that the earliest they could possibly get to the spillway was 11 am, and that noon was more likely. I rode around there for a little while and then stopped at the benches in front of Ormond plantation for quite a while to wait, hanging around there until 1:00 with no riders in sight.  By then I was getting pretty hungry and was starting to wonder if they had been seriously delayed.  I finally decided to head back alone in to the headwind.  All the way back I was in the 12-15 mph range.  I saw David and Celeste heading the other direction as I got nearer to town.  I think they were able to meet the group and ride in with those riders, but by then I was looking at over 100 miles on the computer and thinking obsessively about food, and specifically about the big bowl of leftover Halloween candy in the living room.  Tonight should be my final follow-up visit to the orthopedist!