Giro and the Park

 Stacked up at the start

 

Cool-down on the lakefront

Back to the lakefront along the bayou

 



 

City Park bike path

Through the Rain

The Katrina flood line at Starbucks

It was still too dark to see much of the sky when I hit the road this morning to meet the Giro Ride.  A balmy south wind made it feel easy, and ten minutes later as the sun came up over the bayou I could see the threatening clouds off to the southwest.  Sipping coffee at Starbucks I checked the radar, which didn't offer much in the way of hope.  Even so, a pretty good-sized group headed out, perhaps a few minutes late, with little real chance of staying dry.  By the time we were approaching Chef Highway it was starting to rain.  I wasn't planning on doing much work today. 

During the Wednesday training race (I think there were only four or five of us, so it was more like a hard training ride) we had come up behind three rather large guys on mountain bikes.  At the time we were about to go over the levee west of Elysian Fields.  We were going maybe 27 mph.  They were going maybe 10.  As we started around them, one rider suddenly swerved to the left.  We had to hit the brakes fairly hard, and in the process of yanking my bike around I must have pulled something in my left ribcage like an intercostal or something. It started to hurt in the way a side stitch hurts, and toward the end of the next lap I pulled up alongside John and told him I was going to back off and head home.  Well, it's still bothering me a bit when I have to exhale strongly, which for me happens a lot during a Giro Ride.  So I decided to latch onto Matt's wheel for the ride down Chef Highway.

There was a nice group rotating at the front, and with the little tailwind we had we were soon rolling along steadily in the 27-31 mph range.  Matt was on his TT bike, staying a couple of bike lengths behind the paceline, so riding his wheel was smooth and steady.  When we were a couple of miles before the turnaround the pace at the front surged and suddenly riders were dropping out of the paceline all over the place.  Matt was keeping the same pace, weaving through the droppage, but now a big gap had opened up so he amped up the pace another notch.  I dropped off of his wheel at about 32 mph, just before he closed the gap.  By the time we were on the way back the rain had passed over us, but the group seemed to have lost its motivation.  Then Jaden flatted.  He was riding tubulars and didn't have a spare, but luckily a couple of people in the group had cans of sealant.  It was messy, but it worked and he made it back with maybe 60 psi in his tire.

At the moment we're still holding out hope that we can pull off the track races this evening at 5:00.  If nothing new pops up, it looks like the worst of the rain should pass through Baton Rouge before that, but we're kind of playing it by ear for this one.

Water, Water, Everywhere

.....but for some, not a drop to drink.

I was up at my usual 5:45 am this morning, digging through my cycling kit drawer looking for something that matched when The Wife opened the bathroom door and said, "There's barely any water pressure."  I immediately thought of the extensive road work they are doing a couple of blocks away on Broadway Street and figured they had managed to take out a water main.  There was nothing I could do about that, so I headed off to the levee to meet the Tuesday morning group, getting caught by a rather long train in the process.  Luckily, Robert was busy trying to fix a flat and the group was still hanging around, even though the others who had caught the train and I were about five minutes late.  Finally we rolled out a good ten minutes later than usual.  The pace going out was fairly consistent today, mostly staying in the 24-27 mph range except when we slowed down when Robert broke a spoke, thinking he had flatted again.  I was feeling fairly good and was staying up in the rotation out to Ormond where Woody, who was probably watching the clock and figuring he'd be late for work, made a quick  U-turn and started back immediately. 

The group took a mile or so to re-form, which is typical, after which the pace very gradually started to improve.  Woody was probably a minute or so up the road by then.  We had picked up the Ormond Gang -- Steve, Roland and Pat -- and their relatively fresh legs were keeping the pace up.  After a few miles we must have been starting to close a bit on Woody, which only inspired the front of the group, now down to maybe five who were pulling through, to ramp it up another notch.  The Ormond guys were planning on turning around at the pump, so they each put in a couple of fast pulls as we neared that point, at which time we caught Woody.  The pace eased for a bit and then started ramping up again until we were near the bridge and had to hit the brakes for an oncoming pickup that got trapped on the bike path by some surveyors. It was a nice workout, and by the time I stopped at Zotz for an iced coffee I was soaked with sweat. 

The air this morning was thick and warm and sticky. As I was waiting for my coffee someone mentioned a water line break around Cohen Street, which was on my way home.  As I rode down the bike path on Carrollton I could see flashing yellow lights up ahead, and then I found the entire street completely flooded and blocked by Sewerage and Water Board trucks (old joke:  What's big and yellow and sleeps six?  A S&WB truck.)  I worked my way through some very badly flooded streets and stopped to talk with some of the workers there.  It was so bad that they couldn't yet move their equipment in and were waiting for other workers to shut off water valves all around the area.  The water main that broke is one of the largest ones that comes from the city's water treatment plant about half a mile away, so the rupture, which had apparently happened around 5:30 am, had been a virtual volcano.  The water lines in this part of the city are probably around 90 years old, so it is not all that uncommon for them to break, but explosive breaks in the really huge ones like this that cause major flooding are relatively unusual.  Down the street I could see on car that had partially fallen into the hole caused by the blowout, and all around me the water was flowing like whitewater.  It was *a lot* of water!  Fortunately, there was still a bit of water pressure at my house about an hour later (I waited that long for the pressure to come up to a level at which I might be able to at least shower off the road grit and grain dust), although my morning shower was extremely abbreviated.  

Luckily there was water pressure at work, but many areas of the city are still under a "boil water advisory," including our office and parts of the main campus.  Such is life in the old city.

Long Summer Week

There are usually only a handful of weeks each year during which I log over 300 miles.  Last week was one of those.  They aren't typically a result of extra motivation or some specific training plan, and in fact the extra mileage often comes with a cost, namely a decrease in quality.  Indeed, high-mileage weeks for me are usually simply the result of a run of good weather and one or two extra rides.  Last week started off in typical fashion with an easy Monday ride and moderately fast Tuesday ride up on the levee. 

Tuesday evening was one of Kenny's bandit time trials out at the lakefront, and this one was a 2-man version.  I had not been planning on riding it, but when I got home from work reasonably early I decided to ride out there to lend a hand and get in a few extra miles.  When I arrived I hadn't even put my foot down before Kenny asked me if I needed a partner.  I politely declined, but then a little while later Charlie asked if I'd ride it with him.  Since he was in full aero TT mode, I told him I'd do it but that I would not be much help since I was on a regular road bike and had already put in around 50 miles that day. All I could promise were a few brief pulls to give him a break, but it was still clear that it would essentially amount to an 10.4-mile individual time trial on Charlie's part. 

We started out into a headwind at a fairly conservative pace with an effort level that I think would have yielded 25-26 mph on a calm day, but with the headwind was giving us more like 23.  Fortunately, Charlie is tall and was providing ample shelter.  He pulled steadily for about two miles, then I took a brief pull up and over the Bayou St. John bridge before dropping back onto his wheel.  The return trip was considerably faster, more like 27 mph.  Again, I took only a few brief pulls.  We ended up with an average speed a touch over 25 mph which was respectable, I guess, under the circumstances, but not even in the same ballpark as Ben and Jaden who did a blazing 29 mph average speed to post a better time than even the Frank and Woody combo.  I rode home easy.  Wednesday's lakefront training race was rained out, and then on Friday, as I rode home from work, I hit some glass or something and slashed the sidewall of my front tire.  Fortunately I had a spare tube on hand, but since I was Friday and I was tired I considered for a while the option of just walking the rest of the way or riding the rim.  I really didn't want to have to mess with changing a very dirty tire.  I ended up doing it anyway, after hunting around for a discarded piece of cardboard for a boot.  The old retired Michelin Pro Race that I'd had on there for the past year somehow got me back thanks to the boot and the Mr. Tuffy, but this morning it went in the trash and was replaced by a well-worn Vredstein that I'd been saving for just such an occasion.

So the weekend finally arrived and I headed out to Starbucks to meet the Giro group. It turned out to be a pretty typical mid-summer Giro with some fast sections and some slow sections. After the turnaround the group was going really slowly, as often happens, and so I rolled off the front alone for a while to maybe provide a little motivation.  I was going only around 23 mph and fully expected the group to come streaming past around Highway 11, but apparently they were feeling particularly lazy and the only person who came up to me was Mike W, so we started a little 2-man rotation at a moderate 24 mph, again expecting a 30 mph group to come blasting past us at any moment.  As it turned out we were nearly all the way to the Goodyear sprint sign before Ben and a couple others flew past with the rest of the group still a bit behind.  That afternoon I had to drive over to Baton Rouge to officiate the second race of the summer track series.  I drove through a big thunderstorm around Laplace wondering if it was going to be a wash-out in Baton Rouge, but it turned out to be just a random storm.  Although it slowed things on the interstate down to 50 mph for a while, things in Baton Rouge remained dry and the races went smoothly.  I again brought my track bike with me, and Lance was able to use it for the races.  With no rain delays this time I arrived back home around 11 pm I guess, which made for a rather long day.

John Dias had send out an email about doing a northshore ride, and so I headed across the lake Sunday morning despite the possibility of getting into one of those scattered thunderstorms that were popping up randomly all over south Louisiana that morning.  He and a couple of the S3 guys were starting from Abita Springs in order to put in around 90 miles, so Adrian and I met them at the regular northshore ride start at the Lee Road school at 8:00.  We would be doing only 65 miles of their longer ride.  Surprisingly, there was nobody else to join us, so we had a 5-man group for the day's ride.  John was kind of pushing the pace and Newman was suffering a bit, while Adrian was attacking the hills.  It all made for a very nice training ride, despite a few stops along the way.

After we looped around the top of the course and started heading back south, we could see our future in the black clouds that were building up on the horizon.  I guess we were still about an hour from the school, heading west on 1072 when it started to rain. It never got particularly heavy, and stopped entirely after a while, although we spent a lot of time on wet roads after that.  I had not been particularly aggressive on this ride, and I think I was starting to feel the accumulated fatigue from six consecutive 250+ mile weeks.

This morning I went out to the levee for an easy recovery ride where I ran into Robin.  I did 26 miles at an average speed of about 16 mph.  The forecast for today still holds a good chance of rain, but after that the rest of the week is looking to be fairly dry and hot.  That's good because I will be getting around by bicycle this week a lot.  They are finally putting down new asphalt all up and down Broadway Street, and so a lot of it is going to be closed off this week. Driving a car to work would probably take more time than riding.  I'll have to go back to the optometrist this week and make a decision on the contact lenses.  I think I'll end up going with the single-vision option since they work so well for riding and are cheaper, even though reading a menu is going to be a problem.

Back to Track

The weekend was looking pretty good, weather-wise, on Saturday morning as I rode out to meet the Giro Ride. There was a pretty big group on hand since we seem to be in a bit of a road racing lull right now.  Of course, that meant that the Giro Ride would become a de facto substitute race.  Fortunately for those of us not planning on spending the whole time up at the front of the group, the wind direction allowed for adequate shelter for much, but not all, of the ride out to Venetian Isles.  It was by no means an easy Giro, but with such a large group it was not too hard to find a place to recover when necessary.  I was scheduled to officiate the first of a four-race track series over at the Baton Rouge velodrome that day, but since the races didn't start until 5 pm, there was no conflict with the morning training ride.  I had, literally, dusted off the track bike the night before thinking I might be able to squeeze in a few laps here and there, but I was really planning on bringing the track bike in case someone needed to borrow it.  As it turned out, young Lance Abshire fit quite nicely on it so I never did get a chance to ride.  For a 13-year old kid, Lance rides more like he's 18 and seemed to have no trouble at all dealing with the fixed gear in a pack, even attacking a couple of times in the Scratch Race.  Turnout at the track was pretty good, which is to say there were 19 registrants, making for a nice sized Cat. 4 field but only a 4-rider Cat. 1/2/3 group and 2-rider Women's group.  None of which was particularly unusual, although I would have hoped for a few more in the Cat. 1/2/3 race.  I had the LAMBRA finish line camera with me and this would be the first time I attempted to set it up and use it myself.  I knew it would struggle as the sun went down, but my main purpose for bringing it was to get a little experience with it.  As it turned out, it came in quite handy for a couple of the very close finishes, one of which had a separation of about 0.007 seconds.  The only thing I screwed up on was when I pulled the wrong rider in the Miss-and-Out.  Otherwise, things went pretty smoothly and I was glad I didn't have to judge any Points Races that night.  I got home around 11 pm or so, which is pretty good under the circumstances, and finally got to have some of the very non-traditional Gazpacho (V-8 Juice, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, bell pepper, tomato, cucumber, garlic, onion, all hand-chopped) that I'd thrown together right before I had left that afternoon.

So Sunday morning I was out at the Giro again, and it was basically a repeat of the day before, although perhaps a bit slower here and there.  I was feeling pretty good for both of the Giro Rides this week, ending my fifth 250+ mile week in a row. Fortunately we got some rain in the afternoon so I didn't feel too guilty about not finishing the painting on the front windows and instead spending the rest of the day eating everything in sight. On Friday I had gone back to the optometrist and after quite a bit of back-and-forth we decided to try some single-vision contacts instead of the multifocal ones I'd been using for riding the prior couple of weeks.  I found the new ones to be generally better for riding and much better for driving, the only problem being that close-up reading, not surprisingly, is a real struggle.  I find myself rather on the fence between the two options.  The multifocals are pretty good for riding and allow for a much better, albeit not perfect, view of the computer.  However the distance vision with those left something to be desired, especially when driving.  The single-vision lenses are much better for driving, which makes it much more convenient and comfortable when driving to a ride or race in the morning since I can put them in at home and just leave them in the rest of the day.  The only problem, of course, it that if I go with them I'll probably have to go get some low-power reading glasses to have on hand for any reading or computer work that might come up.  So basically it's going to be a compromise one way or the other unless we hit upon some other multifocal solution that will work.  One thing in favor of the single-vision solution is that they are significantly cheaper.  I am extremely reluctant to go the dual-vision route with a near vision contact in one eye and a far-vision contact in the other for fear it will mess up the depth perception and peripheral vision that I think is crucial for riding.  Decisions, decisions.

Missing the Breaks in Acadiana

The annual Vuelta d' Acadiana over in Lafayette was a well-organized event with a fairly good turnout this year.  For reasons I cannot quite wrap my head around, a number of the local New Orleans riders missed this one.  I ended up making the easy two-hour drive alone on Friday evening, which allowed me plenty of time to worry about the weather.  It was looking quite unlikely that we would completely escape the rain that was going to be randomly streaming in from the Gulf of Mexico all weekend, but it was also impossible to predict where, when and how heavily that rain might fall.  This time of year in southern Louisiana a 30% chance of rain is the status quo and it's considerably easier to predict where a hurricane will land than an afternoon shower.  Anyway, it was a smooth drive and after checking in to the hotel I went down the street and had a hamburger all alone at a nearby Chili's restaurant.  I had forgotten to bring my clip-on aero bars and posted something on FB about how I expected my TT to suck even worse than usual when I got a comment from Matt who offered to pick them up from my house early in the morning on his way over. 

Stage one on Saturday was a 4.something mile time trial. It started to rain the moment registration ended, as I was sitting on the concrete underneath the school's covered walkway fixing some bad formulas in the results spreadsheet so they could print out the start lists.  The rain was over pretty quickly, so by the time I started about half an hour later it was practically dry again. The rider ahead of me, Kevin Landry, pulled his wheel over at the start (TT bike with track dropouts and no set screws) and had to stop twice to get it tight enough.  He was just remounting his bike when I rolled past him at the start, right into a headwind/crosswind.  Pretty quickly I was looking at speeds in the 22-23 mph range, which was not exactly encouraging.  The return trip had some tailwind to it of course, and while I was seeing speeds in the 26-28 mph range, I knew for sure I was going two miles per hour slower than the real time trial riders.  That knowledge was reinforced when Kevin blew past me shortly after the turnaround.  All I can say about my TT was that I at least didn't do too much damage and didn't feel quite as terrible as usual. My time of 10:19 was a good 30 seconds off the pace I might have been able to manage if properly motivated, but nearly a minute slower than the fastest of the masters.  Situation normal.  I picked up a sandwich at Subway and retired to my hotel room for a while.

The criterium was Saturday afternoon directly across the street from the hotel.  I drove the car around to the parking lot on the other side and set up the NOBC tent, put out a few folding chairs, and got completely soaked when a thunderstorm came though and pelted us with rain for half an hour.  Once it stopped I mostly wandered around during the first few races taking pictures.  By then Mignon, Isaac, Sherri and James had arrived.  Terri had done the TT earlier and would also be doing the criterium.  Isaac's Junior's race unfortunately had only two people in it, so he basically rode it alone.  The women's race had a small but competitive field with seven or eight riders from Texas and elsewhere to spice up the action.  Sherri was skipping the criterium since she had never raced one before. A two-rider break went off the front early and was never seriously challenged. Mignon stayed with the pack but didn't really contest the sprint.

The masters race had a pretty good field of 22 or so and I was expecting it to be a fun race.  I was not disappointed, at least in that regard. I was much more interested in this race than I had been for the time trial and did a fair amount of work at and near the front.  There was an early break that was reeled in and then somehow four strong riders went off the front and I just basically missed the break.  I knew immediately we were in trouble. As often happens in smaller masters races, there were only a few riders seriously interested in trying to pull that one back (none of whom were from the Acadiana team since Alex was in the break). We did get some fairly consistent help in mounting a chase, but it was too little too late and after a few more laps the chase fizzled.  Somewhere along the line near the end of the race another rider got away.  At the time I thought we had caught him and would at least be sprinting for 5th place (stage prizes were 5-deep), but I was wrong so we ended up sprinting basically just for the exercise.  I ended up 2nd in that pack sprint, so 7th for the race.  Under the circumstances, I was OK with that, but I *really* hated missing that break.  The Cat. 4 race had a big field of 40-something riders and was fun to watch, but we didn't have anyone in it.  We did, however, have one rider in the 25-rider Cat. 5 race -- James Rollins.  I was glad to see him riding well, keeping himself in good pack position for most of the race, although I think he got caught up behind a crash on the last lap that sent one rider to the hospital with a broken collarbone.  That evening we got together with VJ and Judd for a nice dinner at the Blue Dog Cafe' near the hotel.

Sunday was the road race about half an hour north of town.  This was a longish course with a number of turns and nothing you could really call a hill.  Once again, we could see the rain coming as we prepared to start, and the first lap of the three-lap race was ridden pretty much entirely in the rain.  This was the first time I was wearing my new contact lenses in the rain and I was very reluctant to take off my clear-lens Oakleys since they were at least keeping the wheel spray out of my eyes.  Unfortunately, they were also completely fogging up and I was having some significant problems seeing where I was going.  Part-way through the second lap I finally had a chance to drop back where I could sit up, take the glasses off, and spray when with water.  That helped a lot, but what I then saw through my nice clear glasses was a 3-man break that included Donald Davis, Alex Habbit, and Jason Lewiss, already off the front.  The latter two had also been in the breakaway the afternoon before in the criterium.  Of course the Acadiana riders weren't going to do any chasing but the other riders didn't have teammates in the pack, so I thought we at least might have a chance of catching them.  I eventually worked my way to the front and found maybe three other riders willing to chase.  Once we got going I could see that we were at least not losing ground on the break which was hovering maybe 40 seconds up the road, but the occasional lull caused by Acadiana riders getting into the paceline, or just disorganization among the chasers, finally started to take its toll and the break started to disappear up the road.  The pace did eventually split what was left of the pack, and flat tires precipitated by the wet streets, along with a crash that I didn't even know about until later, thinned out the group as well, so by the time we were halfway through the last lap my group was down to maybe six riders. 

With the chase long abandoned and nobody in sight behind us, this group would be racing for 4th. By then Kevin was the only one showing any signs of aggressiveness, launching a number of hard but very brief attacks. With about a mile to go we continued straight to the finish, which was not on the loop, at the intersection where I crashed last year and broke a rib or two.  Just past that point we were directed into the left lane as there were some riders on the ground with race volunteers assisting.  That turned out to be a very serious injury to one of the women and she was later airlifted to the hospital with a concussion, punctured lung, broken ribs, broken collarbone, fractured scapula, etc.  (she seems to be recovering nicely at this writing but was still in the hospital on Tuesday).  Just after that and with the 1 km flag in sight, Kevin launched another attack and I went with him immediately.  I think that the other riders figured it was too early and that he would get pulled back before the sprint as had happened with his earlier attacks.  This time, though, he held on a little longer.  Suddenly he started to fade, but by then we were only maybe 250 meters from the finish and I knew there was still nobody on my wheel. As I pulled alongside I yelled "come on, you can win," but he didn't seem to have anything left at that point.  I sprinted the last 200 meters, finishing 4th, but Kevin was passed by one of the other riders before the finish.  So, although I was kicking myself once again for missing the break, I was glad to have at least gotten into the prizelist.

Back at the finish line I heard about a number of crashes.  It's odd, but there were a lot of crashes on that course last year as well.  Even the Cat. 1/2/3 race had had a big pile-up on a slick turn that took Frank and Kenny out of contention.  On the plus side, Ben Bradley had gotten into the break and finished a very impressive 2nd to the Puerto Rican rider from Dallas who had also won the criterium.  So I was fairly content with my racing, if not particularly thrilled with it, and overall the weather hadn't been nearly as bad as it might have been, so that was a plus for sure.  My time trial still sucked, and I was disappointed with myself for missing the two key breaks, but those things happen sometimes when you are not quite as attentive and responsive as you should be.

Saturday starts a series of track races that will continue for the next four weekends, and as usual I will be splitting my time between officiating and riding them.  I guess it's time to dust off the track bike!  Mark McMurry has been really focused on the track for the past few weeks and is, I think, planning on going to masters track nationals in Indianapolis around the end of the month. After that, most of the month of August will be LAMBRA championships, including Track, Team TT, Road (Category), Individual TT, and then Road Age-Graded.  This will be the first year we are having separate weekends for the skill-based and age-graded road championships.  The skill-based championship will also be the first stage of the Rocky Mount Omnium up in Shreveport.  Should be interesting to see if it generates better turnouts and competition.

Independence Day Giro

It was late Wednesday night and I could still detect no consensus on a July 4th group ride.  The leading options seemed to be the regular weekend Giro route and time, and a long levee ride also starting at 7 am.  Finally I sent an email out to the NOBC group saying that it sounded like it would be the Giro.  In reality, there had been little feedback, but I knew that filling the void with something that sounded like a decision would create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It did. 

I headed down a very quiet Carrollton Avenue toward Starbucks around 6:05 wondering how many riders would show up.  The rumor that it would be an easy ride because of the upcoming Vuelta d' Acadiana weekend was kind of funny to me.  Out of the entire Giro group there were maybe five riders who might actually be racing it.  It felt just a bit cooler than usual for this time of year, which is to say it was probably only 80F before sunrise.  By the time we rolled out at 7 am the group was about the size of a regular weekend Giro.  Fortunately the pace was in general a bit slower, because I really didn't want to do so much damage that I'd still be feeling it on Saturday.  Back when I was in my 30s and 40s I could ride hard on a Thursday and be fully recovered by Saturday morning.  Nowadays it's more a roll of the dice.  On the other hand, it now seems that if I haven't gotten in some significant exercise by 10:00 am I will have already started gaining weight!  It's kind of a Catch 22.

Anyway, it was a very nice Giro.  I spent some time sitting comfortably in the draft as the group rolled along at 25-28 mph, and generally stayed out of the wind.  We were in a long skinny paceline heading east on Chef Highway when there was a loud explosion up ahead.  Brian had recently put some new clinchers on his bike and the latex tube he had used on the front must have gotten pinched under the bead because it blew out in rather dramatic fashion, wrapping itself around his front axle between hub and fork end.  It was bad enough that we had to pull out my little Swiss Army Knife to cut the tube a number of times in order to unwrap it.  It was very lucky that it didn't lock up his front wheel, and that he didn't lose control when the tire came unseated from the carbon rim.  On the way back on Chef Highway Daniel flatted, so we got another little unplanned rest stop.  It was just the kind of ride I needed today.

So yesterday we (LAMBRA) sent our contract and payment in to USAC for the new RaceClean program.  For what it's worth, we were the first in the country to do so.  USAC and USADA had just, finally, come to agreement on the program and costs, the result of which was that it cost us quite a bit less than the $3,000 that we had originally allocated.  With USAC matching, the program promised to provide USADA drug testing at one LAMBRA event this year. Of course, we have no control over which event USADA chooses.  Should be interesting, but I really see it as a deterrent more than anything else.  USADA can always show up at any licensed rider's door or at any race anyway, but other than specifically targeted riders I would never expect to see them at any of our races otherwise.  It's still a lot of money for us to spend on something like this, so we'll see how it goes.  If it's well received and not too much of a burden on the event organizers we can then consider doing it again next year for one or two events.

Improvisation

One thing you generally don't want to have at a bike race is a lot of improvisation on the part of the organizers and officials.  Last weekend down in Houma, however, we had plenty.  I had expected the Independence Day Classic to be a fun event with a low to moderate turnout, and was happy to have an omnium only an hour's drive from home.  Pre-registrations for the event were pretty sparse, but for an omnium like this one with a smallish prizelist the weekend before a larger omnium in Lafayette I was neither surprised nor worried.  I figured a number of riders were planning to pick and chose which race or races to ride, and since the late fee was barely less than the online registration surcharge, there was little motivation for riders to pre-register.  Up until the evening before the race the weather forecast was looking pretty good -- a typical summer pattern with 10-30 percent chance of rain.  That all seemed to change Friday night when the 10:00 news was showing a line of storms heading down from the northwest.  Even so, it looked like it would all be over before morning, so when I left home around 6:30 am I didn't even check the radar. 

When I arrived, however, the first thing I was told was that there was some heavy rain coming our way.  Then I learned that instead of the eleven or twelve police and sherrif's officers who were supposed to be there, only four would be available.  The road races course that morning went down a fairly busy street in town and included various traffic signals and stop signs.  Then is started to rain pretty hard.  Between the police issues and the rain, the start was officially pushed back by at least thirty minutes.  There was a good enough Cat. 1/2/3 and Cat. 4 turnout on hand for the first wave of road races, and after being told that the course was secured they started those two races.  Shortly after the second group took off, the Cat. 1/2/3 field suddenly showed up at the finish line having decided amongst themselves (quite correctly it seems) that the course was too dangerous.  At one point they came to a traffic signal with a red light that was not monitored and the whole field had to slam on the brakes and stop.  The officials cancelled the race and stopped the Cat. 4s when they came through shortly thereafter.  Then they improvised a criterium in the big Civic Center parking lot where the road race had started.  By then most of the Cat. 1/2/3 riders had demanded refunds and gone home, so they held a Cat. 1/2/3/4 race and a Cat. 4/5 race.  Both were actually fairly good races and the ad hoc criterium course was a pretty nice 4-corner square that was maybe 0.8 km around.  I rode the Cat. 1/2/3/4 race where I got a good workout after Jaden went solo and eventually lapped the field.  I narrowly nipped Matt E. in the field sprint with a well-timed bike throw to take 2nd.  Hopefully I will eventually see a prize for that.  In the Cat. 4 race there was a crash in the final turn when a rider hit his brake and another rider was sent into the curb, resulting in an exploded carbon wheel, cracked helmet and some way over the top raised voices and finger-pointing.

The evening time trial had been planned for the same impossible course through town as the road race, so more improvisation was necessary in order to make that happen.  After the criterium the officials took a drive and found a nice community center parking lot for the start and a quite nice 7-mile out and back TT course a few miles farther down the road on which much of the TT had originally planned.  Now, I normally need a huge amount of motivation in order to do even a mediocre time trial, so as you can imagine in this case I went out at maybe 80% effort, getting caught by my 30-second man at the turnaround and then immediately by my one-minute man who went by so fast I didn't even recognize who it was.


On the plus side, I had gotten new multifocal contact lenses a couple of days before the race specifically for riding.  Having never used contact lenses before I was a little concerned about how they would work out for racing, especially after having to spend a good fifteen minutes putting the nearly invisible things on my eyes earlier that morning.  I may still need to make some adjustments in the prescription since my near and far vision is not a clear as I'd like it to be, but in general I was quite pleased that they were otherwise quite nice, didn't dry up and fall out, and worked fine with my trusty Oakley M-Frame sunglasses.

So Sunday morning there were more criteriums on the schedule, and once again there was some improvisation involved since the original course completely encircled a hotel, which was another extraordinarily bad idea.  I was hoping that a few riders would show up for the races, but after the debacle on Saturday I think a lot of them decided that the regular local group rides would be the more reliable option.  I was therefore not surprised that the fields were tiny.  I think that the Cat. 4 and Cat. 5 races at least had more than ten riders, but the Masters race had only four and there were no entrants at all for the Cat. 1/2/3 race.  It was too bad, really, because the course, which was the same on we'd used the previous day, was quite nice.  The Masters race had only four starters, two from Acadiana, Peter from Gulfport and me.  The handwriting was on the wall from the start, of course, as the two Acadiana riders took turns attacking. I was expecting it, so Peter and I didn't have too much trouble handling it. Early in the 45-minute race I was trying to leave one of them out there off the front as long as possible without letting the gap get too big to close.  That would at least minimize the number of attacks to which we'd have to respond.  Eventually, maybe ten laps from the end, Charles attacked taking me with him and splitting the group.  I figured I may as well go with it and started taking pulls.  Although Charles had to pull the whole last lap and a half, I kind of bungled the sprint when I panicked and tried to shift down one cog but got what felt like three in return. I should have attacked him before the last turn, obviously. So I came in second again, or in this case, mid-pack or third-to-last.  In the Cat. 4 race there was again controversy involving the same rider who had crashed the day before, so I'm not entirely sure what was going on there but it seems that his strong personality is rubbing some of the riders the wrong way and his reaction to that is getting out of line. 

As a result of all of the problems with this race I have resolved to write up a document containing some basic best practices that we can give to newer race promoters.  This race provided a number good examples of what not to do, including tiny free race numbers, gigantic safety pins, registration located too far from the start, courses with too much traffic and intersections, inadequate police to control the course, missing release forms, prizes "to be mailed out," etc.  Some of that could have been avoided if we at LAMBRA had taken the initiative to engage the promoter a little more and get some more detail about the planned courses and general organization.  What looked fine on paper turned out to be basically impossible in real life.