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.