After last weekend's mudfest in New Orleans it was with much relief that I noted a weekend forecast consisting mostly of clear skies and fall-like weather. I was scheduled to officiate the cyclocross race over in Baton Rouge, and although I'd clamped the bike to the roof I wasn't really holding out a lot of hope that I'd get to race. The course at Highland Road park looked great. there was some good elevation change, some fast sections of grass and hard-packed trail, and of course a number of artificial barriers. The turnout was similar to the New Orleans race, which is to say it was excellent, and I was looking forward to keeping my feet dry and having as good a time as one can while officiating.
The races themselves went very well, although I can't really say the same for the results. The multiple-category race had riders being lapped very early, with a couple lapped more than once, and sorting that out took me a whole lot longer than I'd have liked. There was a little confusion with some riders who were sporting the wrong numbers since they were registered in more than one race, and so basically things started running late. The final race, for Cat. 1/2/3, had only six riders (we don't have many cyclocross riders around here above Cat. 4). The winner, William Sheftal, was the sole Cat. 2 in the field and basically rode away from the rest of the field immediately. Even so, it was obvious how much faster these guys were going than the Cat. 4s had been going earlier. The winner's lap times were all a bit under 5 minutes, which were at least a minute faster than the Cat. 4s had been going. He was so much smoother going over the barriers that there was simply no comparison with the rest of the field. Anyway, I don't think I got out of there until around 3:30.
Feeling a little mileage-deprived I went out to the Giro Ride on Sunday. It was still fairly chilly at 6 am, and I was glad I'd pulled on the arm-warmers before leaving. The ride itself was very nice. The pace stayed fast and steady for most of the ride, which was just what I was looking for. Afterward, Ben and I rode straight over to Tulane's Reily Center to meet a few of those riders, including The Daughter, who were leaving at 10:00. This was a nice easy ride through the park and along the still-closed Orleans Parish section of the levee bike path, and then all the way out to The Dip. That gave me a bit over 90 miles for the day, so I was feeling satisfied by the time I got home. I watched some TV while I sorted out the 1-day licenses from the prior day's race and updated the series standings. This morning I took those standings off the LAMBRA website, however, because the promoter was re-scoring everything in a fairly strange way that I just can't comprehend. Frankly, I think it's so convoluted and complicated that the riders are never going to understand it, and some of them will probably be pissed off when they see someone ahead of them on points who they never actually got to race against. I think I'm just going to have to let them handle the series points.
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