Hot Times on the Tarmac

After a nice Saturday Giro that pretty much squeezed me dry of fluids, I spent much of the day in front of the television trying to rehydrate.  I was planning on driving up to Alexandria for the district Criterium Championships, and since I had to be there early in order to deliver the LAMBRA generator and race clock, along with the USAC championship medals, that meant a departure time on Sunday no later than 4:00 am.  So I spent some time down in the basement sorting out medals and pulling out everything I needed to bring with me:  sound system, generator, pop-up tent, NOBC flag, race clock (fully charged), my own race bag with jersey, shorts, etc., a clean bike with race wheels and spares all pumped up, and a little ice chest for some cold cokes that I knew I'd need.

Somehow I actually hit the road Sunday morning more or less on time, although I was certainly missing my morning cup of coffee.  Traffic was light, of course, so it was an easy drive, and I arrived at the LSU-Alexandria campus right on time and got started setting up the officials' tent and unloading stuff from the car.  I had raced on this course so long ago I could hardly remember the details.  I guess it was around 1985 or so the last time we used it, and I at least remembered that some of the turns were fairly tight, the road was bumpy in places, and there was a long straight drag to the finish line.  When I arrived, I could see that little had changed, but I never got a chance to go around the course since I was busy helping with setting up and judging for the first couple of races.  When the second one finished, I had barely enough time to run back to the car, pull on my shorts and jersey, and ride to the start line.  I didn't even have enough time to pin on my number.  In fact, I didn't even have time to pick it up in the first place.  I told Ricky, the Chief Referee, I would be the one without a number.  Since I'd electronically signed the USAC release form, at least I knew they were covered.

The Masters race, like most of the races that day, was rather sparsely attended.  It was a combination of things, I guess.  Although the location was somewhat closer than last year's race in Lake Charles, it was still a 3-hour drive from New Orleans. The race promoter had had some disagreements with a couple of local clubs over the past year or so, and perhaps there were some riders who didn't attend for reasons related to that.  And then there was the fact that it was now mid-summer and there was no avoiding the fact that it would be hot.  I think the biggest disappointment, albeit a totally predictable one, was that the decision to have a separate Cat. 1-2 race resulted in a virtual boycott by those riders since they knew that the best they could expect was a field of maybe ten.  The Herring team instead headed up to Alabama for the Southeastern Regional Series road race and criterium that had a Cat. 1-2 field of close to 90 riders.  As it turned out, our little Cat. 1-2 championship criterium had an embarrassing turnout of four, including me.

So the Masters race, despite its small field of only twelve, turned out to be a fairly interesting race.  Unfortunately, like a number of races this year, it was dominated by the Acadiana team that had four competent riders.  The result was fairly predictable, of course.  You can watch the entire thing on youtube.  Basically, an Acadiana rider attacked early and stayed out there for a few laps before being gradually reeled in by the one or two riders able and willing to be on the front.  Once he was caught the next Acadiana rider attacked.  I think John Dias sat on the front pulling the entire field along for at least five or six laps.  I was actually hoping we would not catch this rider very quickly since that would do nothing but guarantee another attack.  John was thinking the same thing, so that rider kind of lingered up there at about ten seconds for what seemed like forever.  I went up to give John a break a couple of times and was surprised at how bad I felt. It seemed like I just had no power at all.  Maybe it was the drive or the lack of sleep or the fact that I hadn't gotten a warmup or food.  Anyway, I ended up basically sucking wheels for most of the race.  Eventually that rider was caught, after which there was another hard attack to which Donald Davis, who had been uncharacteristically passive up to that point, responded.  That attack very nearly split the pack and I felt pretty lucky to be able to make contact half a lap later.  Then, with three laps to go another Acadiana rider launched and there just wasn't much of a response.  He ended up staying off the front for the win.  I wasn't feeling very aggressive and came around the last turn way too far back in the paceline, and then I ended up backing off in the last 50 meters when things got a little too close for comfort.  Later, I decided to make a donation to the promoter and enter the Cat. 1/2 race since there were only three other riders signed up, one of whom was John Dias who had also ridden the Masters race.  The others were Tracy Martin, his teammate, and Grady Hodge, a recent transplant to Shreveport from Austin.  Grady was already bummed out because of the turnout.  We started out with a few relatively sedate laps before John attacked hard.  I jumped for his wheel as we flew through a couple of the turns and when he looked back and saw me there I thought maybe he was ease up to try again later.  Instead he just put the hammer down a little harder and within a few seconds I was coming off of his wheel.  Not long after that Tracy attacked and bridged up to him.  I was hoping that Grady and I could work together and chase since they weren't going so fast that it catching was out of the question, so I was surprised when Grady attacked me about a lap later.  I stayed with him pretty easily, we worked together for another lap or so and then he just sat up in disgust, I think.  So I ended up riding the rest of the race at a nice steady pace and at least getting in a little workout. There was a pretty spectacular single-rider crash right at the finish line in the Cat. 4 race that I happened to get on my iPad since I was using it as a backup finish line camera.  I uploaded the clip to the NOBC Facebook page.

So I think that the experiment with having a separate Cat. 1-2 criterium no matter what was a dismal failure.  I think if the Cat. 1/2 riders had known that it would be a combined Cat. 1/2/3 race, more would have showed up.  I know that the Herring guys were not interested in making a three-hour drive to do a criterium with only a handful of riders, especially when there was full weekend of racing with big competitive fields that was five hours away.  There are 31 Cat. 1/2 riders in Louisiana and Mississippi combined, and of those I would say that only about 20 are actively racing right now, and of those 20, nine are on the Herring team and five or six race mainly masters races, so do the math.  There were only 11 in the Cat. 3 race.  The other experiment was having both an open Women's race and a separate Cat. 4 Women's race.  The open women's race had seven riders with the Cat. 4s in that race finishing 5th, 6th and 7th.  Later in the Cat. 4 women's race, those same three Cat. 4s finished in the same order in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, so the net result was basically the same except that three more women rode in the Cat. 4 women's race.  I suspect that all three of them would have ridden the open women's race if there hadn't been the separate Cat. 4 race, which would have made for a field of ten and basically the same results.  On the plus side, the Cat. 4 women got to win some money, although that could also have been done if it had been a single combined race.

Tuesday's levee ride seemed really fast on the way out, but much easier on the way back, and then today's ride was a nice steady Wednesday paceline at 22-23 mph.  Thinking I'll head out to the lakefront soon if it's not raining.

Smooth and Steady

For a few miles it actually felt cool this morning, and by "cool" I mean "not oppressively hot and humid."  It didn't last, of course.  There was the usual small group for the Friday ride today -- four in all -- and once we got up to 22-23 mph the pace just stayed there as riders took long pulls with a light wind at their backs.  The ride back was much the same, but toward the end the wind, which by then was more or less a headwind, really started to pick up.

This afternoon I went in for an eye exam, largely to talk about options for riding.  After explaining my desire to read my computer while at the same time be able to tell the difference between a pothole and a shadow, I was a little surprised that the recommendation was for multifocal contact lenses.  I guess it's worth a try.  I'm going in for a fitting in about a week. Personally, I'm giving it a 50/50 chance of success, but the other options aren't all that great either.  On the plus side, my vision hasn't gotten a whole lot worse over the last two years so I'll hold off on getting new glasses for a while.

The La./Ms. criterium championship is this Sunday and for some reason the pre-registration numbers are looking really weak even though the location is more centrally located than it's been in a few years.  I really don't understand why so many people are content to ride the weekend group rides rather than going to actual bike races.  It's almost like using the word "race" automatically discourages a bunch of people.  If it's a charity ride or gran fondo type of ride they all turn out and basically race anyway, albeit under considerably more hazardous conditions.  Anyway, I'll probably be driving up to Alexandria around 4 am or something since I have to bring some of the necessary equipment, in particular the race clock and generator, both of which seem to have somehow recovered from their near-death experiences in the rain at the Tour de Louisiane.

Unwanted Intervals

We had a great training race out on the lakefront Wednesday evening.  Sometimes the pace is just too brutal, and sometimes there aren't enough people there to make it fun, but yesterday's training race turned out to have just the right combination, at least for me.  For reasons I cannot even begin to explain, I was feeling pretty good after rushing down S. Claiborne Avenue during rush-hour traffic, risking my live through the Palmetto Gauntlet, and finally locking up the rear wheel when some ahole tried to take me out with an unannounced right turn.  After that I decided that I was probably going to be late for the start anyway, so I may as well back off a notch, enjoy the ride, and get to the lakefront alive.  So I met up with the group as they were on the second half of the first lap, around Franklin Avenue, where I made a very quick U-turn and sprinted to catch them.  For the next few laps there were a number of attacks, a couple of which were mine, that kept things interesting. 

It is probably no coincidence that I sometimes oversleep the morning after those two-ride days like yesterday.  This morning when I awoke, after falling back asleep when the alarm went off, it was already 6 am, which is when I am usually leaving the house.  Somehow I made it out to the levee in time to meet the group.  Once things got rolling the group settled into a consensus pace of around 24 mph.  Unfortunately, Howard was in the paceline on his time trial bike.  Every time he would come to the front he would up the pace to 28 or so, so every now and then we would have an unwanted interval, usually followed by a slow-down below the speed we had been going in the first place until things settled back down to the 24 mph pace. I did manage to try out my new Nikon Coolpix AW110 camera, although I do need to change some of the defaults and figure out what will work best for those photos taken while riding.  I don't really know yet if using the combined motion detection/ vibration detection is a good idea or if it will mess with image resolution enough to irritate me.  Anyway it's a fun new toy, compliments of The Daughter, and since it's waterproof and shock resistant I can dispense with the ziplock bags.

Mid-week Summer

It was anything but cool this morning as I rode out to meet the Wednesday ride group up on the levee.  I'd had to turn back early on Tuesday in order to comfortably make a morning meeting over at Gibson Hall, although by the time I dropped off of the group we'd already been dropped like a rock when a gap suddenly opened up a few bikes ahead of me.  It was just as well, I thought, as I peeled off my soaking wet jersey and stinky gloves.  Cycling gloves certainly do develop their own unique smell in the summer, don't they?  The morning meeting that disrupted my training ride was kind of a mixture of frustration and depression.  There were a couple of Google Fusion maps I wanted to show and discuss, but for some reason the data wasn't loading for one of them.  Together with the increasingly depressing federal and state funding situation and various other problematic issues, I can't say I left the meeting in much of a good mood.

We are in one of those "summer pattern" cycles right now, and around here that means it's around 80F in the morning, rising into the low-mid 90s during the day, with a 30% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Status quo for summer. Down in the basement at home I keep a fan running most of the time in order to keep things from getting moldy.  There are other sure signs of summer.  Last night I went downstairs to lube the chain on the bike and noticed a big cockroach strolling along a nylon bag I had on the floor.  I grabbed the bag and gave it a shake but didn't see the roach fall to the floor.  A moment later I felt him walking across the back of my neck. After a little impromptu break-dancing I got him off of me and onto the floor where he met his demise.  I spent a little time after that spraying bug spray in the basement.

Tour de La

It was warm and humid this morning, but there was actually a pretty good-sized group up on the levee for the Wednesday training ride. The Wednesday ride is really quite relaxing.  The speed generally stays in the 22-24 mph range, but everyone takes really long pulls.  Often I get in only one pull on the way out, which is around 11 miles, I think.  The whole time I was irritated with my sunglasses which had fogged up the minute I had slowed down at the start and never really cleared up.  Speaking of glasses, I finally broke down and made an appointment for the end of the week for an eye exam and especially to talk about my options for prescription riding glasses.  When Kenny wrote on Facebook the other day that he'd pinch-flatted both tires on a pothole that he thought was just a patch of sand, it reminded me that I'm liable to do the same, or worse. So I guess we'll see, literally and figuratively, how that goes.  I'm thinking bifocal sport glasses of some type that will sit high enough on my face that the top frame won't be in my line of sight. My Oakley M-frames are the only glasses I've ever had that really worked for that, and I don't know what the possibilities are for prescription glasses like those. The "district" championship criterium, aka LAMBRA criterium championship, is next Sunday up in Alexandria on a course at the university there that I last rode some time in the 80s.  I have been feeling pretty sluggish on the bike lately, so I'm planning on heading out to the lakefront this evening to see if we can do a little training race. I could use the intensity.  I have been fooling around with Google Fusion lately in order to create some maps for work, and took a few minutes this morning to make a quick interactive map that shows where the Tour de La pre-registered riders came from.

After the Tour

I'd rather be riding.

The 42nd annual Tour de Louisiane went pretty well.  Turnout was a little low, as I had expected, maybe 35 entries short of what I'd call a very good field.  The races, however, were all very competitive and generally had big enough fields to make for good racing.  A couple of days before the race, the weather forecast was looking great with nothing higher than a 30% chance of rain.  That all changed the day before the race when the Sunday forecast went up to about 80% depending on whose forecast you checked.  I was confident that the road races on Saturday morning, and probably the evening time trial, would be dry, but I was worried about the criterium.

The Road Races were pretty good.  That course can be pretty deceptive and usually is just enough to make a selection in many of the categories.  At then end of the first lap we were surprised to find that the Cat. 5 race turned in the fastest lap by about a minute.  Of course, that shelled a number of riders from that group.  After the races Ricky and I sat there under the tent and got all of the results and times entered, then we stopped at a McDonald's on the way back to Covington where I uploaded the preliminary results to the website.  We hung around there for a while, but when I saw the sky starting to darken I told Mark we'd better get over to the TT course early so we could get the tent set up.  When we arrived there we pulled it out of the trailer right away and got it set up just before a big thunderstorm came through.  There was enough lightning and thunder that if it had happened an hour later the time trial would definitely have been in jeopardy.  Fortunately it passed over and cleared up nicely by the time the first riders took off at 5:30.  We started plugging in the results on-site, but decided to finish up at Jason's house when the insect repellent started to wear off and we were attacked by deer flies.

So Sunday morning started out looking pretty bad.  I had just gotten up around 6 am when the phone rang.  It was the Covington police captain calling to see if we were going to cancel. Once again, we arrived just in time to get the tent set up before the sky opened up above us.  It was still about 45 minutes before the first race.  Unfortunately the big race clock got wet enough that it later freaked out, so we didn't have it for the races.  Even worse, the generator suddenly stopped and we couldn't get it started again. Clearly water had gotten into it somehow. The rain had eased up a bit and it was looking like we'd be able to have the races, but without power we would not have the finish line camera which was definitely going to present a bit of a problem.  Luckily there was an electrical outlet in front of a nearby building so we pulled out the 100' extension cord and were back in action.  The first couple of races were held in a light drizzle on very wet streets, resulting in a couple of crashes.  Things were just beginning to dry up a bit when the Masters race got underway, and by the time the Cat. 1/2/3 race started it was mostly dry.  I had been worried about the possibility of cars getting onto the course, since we were in the middle of downtown Covington and there would certainly be some cars that were trapped inside the course.  Sure enough, at one point the Cat. 1/2/3s came flying around the fastest corner on the course at around 30 mph to meet face-to-face with the front grill of a pickup truck.  Luckily they are all very experienced riders and although a couple of riders flatted when they had to hop the curb, they all handled it well.  They neutralized themselves and we stopped the race until the course was cleared.  Since it was still pretty early in their 60-minute criterium, it didn't cause a big problem. We got the final results done quickly, stopped for lunch at Buster's on the course, and headed home to unload the trailer and get the results up on the website.

So all-in-all it was a successful race unless you measure success in dollars because we lost over $4,000 on the event since we were lacking our usual stage sponsors this year.  On the plus side, the Covington folks were very happy and we are already on their calendar for last year with plans to do some expanded pre-race publicity and better course contol planning.  After the race a number of videos showed up on Facebook from riders in a few of the races.  I posted most of them to the LAMBRA Facebook page. 

On Monday the streets were wet so I decided to spend my usual riding time doing online post-event paperwork.  At this point I have the results up on the website, they have been uploaded to the USAC database, all of the post-event reports have been submitted, all of the wet race equipment has been dried out and stored (the clock seems to have survived after I disassembled it and left it in front of a fan overnight).  No word yet on the generator.  I still have to update the LAMBRA LCCS rankings.

So after four days of the bike I jumped back into the Tuesday levee ride, following that up with a Wednesday morning ride and the Wednesday evening training race at the lakefront.  By this morning I was feeling pretty dragged out.  The air was thick and humid, and I really had to force myself onto the bike where I struggled through the long Thursday ride. Unfortunately, it looks like my trusty Nikon Coolpix camera has died, so photos will probably be in short supply for a while.

Three Days to Go

After skipping my Monday ride to allow for a little recovery time, I was hoping to feel fresh on Tuesday morning. So I was disappointed to find that everything felt achy on the long Tuesday levee ride. I felt pretty lousy all day, so I guess perhaps it wasn't just the riding to blame. Whatever the reason, I blew off late night bike race work and hit the sack a little early.  The Tour de La is only three days away.  The race bibles are being printed and should be ready today.  We've touched base with all of the appropriate authorities for the three venues, volunteers are more or less lined up (there are never enough), we have a few motorefs coming for the larger groups, the results spreadsheets are done, etc., so there aren't too many last-minute emergency things to which to attend (yet).  I'm planning on buying a new printer tonight.  It's getting hard to find a simple printer, but I think Wal-Mart has the standard $35 HP printers. The ink cartridges cost about as much as the printer. Printers always seem to be a problem out in the field for some reason, and my old one just flat out died after the 2-Person Time Trial. 

I still need to go through all of the NOBC race stuff to sort it all out, organize the bib numbers, figure out how many and which types of batteries I need, charge the radios, and of course pick up some Turkey Bags in case of rain.  They are clear and large enough to handle a clipboard and your hand so you can write on dry paper in the rain.  The forecast is looking pretty good for Saturday and Sunday, but this time of year you can get a little thunderstorm at practically any time.

So this morning I felt a little better for the regular Wednesday ride.  One thing for sure:  It's starting to feel like summer around here, which means I get home from the morning ride pretty much soaked in sweat, even after relatively easy rides like today's. I stopped off at Zotz for a coffee after today's ride, sitting outside watching the Mississippi Kites soaring above and thinking about how they are one of the sure signs that it's summer.

Wind and Rain

A bunch of club members headed over to the Tour de Louisiane road course on Saturday to ride a few laps, sweep some corners, and have lunch in Covington.  As usual, I rode the first lap with a can of bright green road marking paint in my bottle cage stopping at each intersection to freshen up the arrows.  We regrouped at the end of that lap and then did one lap at a faster pace, regrouping again at the church.  For some reason the group got all split up after that.  I started out with a few of the guys, rolling easy and waiting or the rest to catch up, but as I looked back I could see nothing but empty asphalt, so after a couple of miles I dropped off and turned around, wondering where everyone was.  Finally a couple more riders appeared, but the road behind them was still empty, so we went ahead, not know if the others might have decided to turn back.  The front group was probably four or five minutes up the road, so we took a shortcut and as we emerged back onto the course met right up with them.  Perfect timing or random luck.  By then it was getting pretty hot and to me it felt like the first truly hot summer weekend day of the year.

So I went innocently out to meet the Giro Ride this morning, having neglected to check the radar since the forecast had been unremarkable and the sky looked find.  Arriving at Starbucks, though, Jeff said he thought we'd get wet.  Apparently the radar looked worse than ominous.  Well, when we hit Lakeshore Drive, we could see nothing but black clouds over the lake and people were already talking about where we might turn around.  From there it got worse really quickly.  I was thinking maybe we'd make it to the end of Hayne Blvd., but as we came over the Casino bridge we felt this shockingly cold downdraft and suddenly we were being buffeted by 30 mph crosswinds.  There were no dissenters when we turned around half a mile later to head back over the bridge.  By then the gusty winds were getting pretty scary, especially as we went over the bridges, but at least it was about 80% tailwind by then.  I took the shortest route back from Lakeshore Drive, stopping for a moment to chat at the off-road duathlon in progress at City Park, and arrived back home just as the big raindrops were starting to fall.