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.