Fast Week

Friday morning, heading west on the levee.

It's Friday afternoon and I'm realizing that I haven't put up a blog post in over a week.  Somehow this week just kind of flew by.  I shouldn't be too surprised.  There was a lot going on.  Last Sunday was our (LAMBRA's) first separate age-graded road championship race.  In order to ensure enough of a turnout for the promoting club to break even, we added a number of age groups that don't normally get their own championships.  For example, there was a 30+ Cat. 4/5 race, and a 19-29 race.  I went ahead and registered for my age-appropriate group, which sadly enough is now 60+.  Since we were racing together with the 55+ race, at least I knew there would be enough riders to make a race.  As a side note, I recently checked the pre-registration list for this weekend's Chappell Hill race in Texas.  They had over 100 riders pre-registered just from the city of Houston.  A one-day road race around here would be happy to have 100 riders from the entire states of Louisiana and Mississippi,  ...but I digress.

Definitely not the U-23 podium

So the 55+/60+ race near St. Francisville started with 13 riders, which was smaller than I'd hoped.  We were doing only 40-something miles and I can't say I was really up for the race (we had some people over to the house the night before for a birthday party, which resulted in a slight over-consumption of Merlot), but it's a nice and reasonably forgiving course and the Geaux Race guys usually put on a nice event with free food.  Besides, I had to bring the race clock. Our little race started out with Jorge cruising along on the front for what must have been the first three miles or so.  There were a few significant hills between there and the ten-mile point, and then a few more just after turning onto Jones Vaughn Creek road.  Otherwise it was flat to low rolling stuff, but mostly with a very nice road surface and a fair amount of shade.  Pretty soon Stanley Prutz started attacking the hills.  The first time caught me a little off-guard and I had kind of a hard time getting back up to him.  I decided that if he was going to start attacking every time I pulled off the front, then I was just going to have to make sure I was behind him whenever there was any significant climb coming up.  By the time we were half-way around the first 22-mile lap, the group was down to only five riders and I was afraid it was going to turn into a 20 mph scenic tour with a sprint at the end.  Fortunately, Jorge was willing to take on some of the pacemaking duties and as a result I think everyone decided it would be wise to work together.  Naturally, Stanley was still expected to attack every hill, which kept things interesting, but he was never able to shake the rest of the group until Butch dropped off just after we turned off of Hwy 10 about six or seven miles from the finish.  There were a couple more brief attacks along that stretch with Stanley making one particularly hard one shortly before the last turn, but everything came back together quickly.  After the last turn it was only a mile or so to the finish and Stanley attacked again on the first little uphill.  At that point, nobody was going to take the lead, so with I guess 800 meters to go he attacked again and just powered toward the finish line with me glued to his wheel.  Based on past experience, I knew I couldn't go until the 200 meter flag without blowing up, but as soon as we got there I jumped hard with Scott McManus on my wheel. I'm afraid I got kind of sloppy toward the end when I accidentally dumped it all the way down to the 11, but somehow I held Scott off.

This week my training rides have so far been kind of subdued.  There was a grant proposal due on Tuesday and various distractions on the home front, so I was more than happy to roll along in the group and enjoy the scenery.  Even so, there are a lot of things still on the calendar this year.  Next up is the Pensacola Classic, for which I have made no plans whatsoever and don't even know who else might be planning on going, then there's a conference in Destin the following weekend, and Six Gap at the end of the month.  In mid-October the first cyclocross race of the Delta States series is in New Orleans, for which I will probably be the default official (hopefully I can find another local official to help so I can ride too), followed by some local charity rides and more cyclocross.  In the midst of all of that will be the Tulane cycling team activities and rides and related logistics before the USA Cycling Local Associations conference the first weekend in November.