Head First

It was a long weekend, for which I am still paying a price.  It all started at 4:30 am on Saturday morning when I slipped out of bed to load up the car with officiating stuff and racing stuff in order to make it up to the cyclocross race north of Jackson, Mississippi in time to get registration set up.  For this race we would have a couple of additional officials, so I was confident I'd be able to race the masters race in order to break up the tedium of officiating.  These cyclocross races in which we allow lapped riders to remain can get pretty challenging to judge, even with fields of only fifteen riders.

I arrived at the course in plenty of time to get the finish line set up.  The DSGP crew had already staked out the course which featured some actual terrain and three artificial barriers, one of which was hidden immediately behind a big rolled hay bale.  As usual the Cat. 4/5 race was the biggest, and also the hardest to score with riders getting quickly scattered all around the course. Ricky, one of the other officals, raced in that one, so when he finished I handed him my messy score sheet and rushed off to my car to pin race numbers onto my vintage NOBC jersey.  It was still pretty cool, so I decided to wear a jersey that was age-appropriate to both the bike and myself.  I had enough time to ride the bike down to the port-o-let before riding back up to the start line where I positioned myself near the back so as to avoid interfering with anyone who was actually racing.  Having not ridden, or even seen, most of the course, I took it easy on the first lap.  Then, seeing a number of riders just a bit ahead of me I decided to see if I could catch them. That didn't last very long.  Coming down the first downhill I planted my front wheel firmly in a little diagonal gully which threw me and the bike off to the right.  I remember thinking that I might be able to save it just before I was slammed head-first to the ground.  That knocked the wind out of me and pretty much destroyed every muscle, ligament and tendon connecting my head to the rest of my body.  I am still hoping that nothing is broken.  It took me a couple of minutes to get up and although I considered just walking back to the finish line to DNF, I thought I may as well ride out the rest of the lap, albeit very carefully.  I ended up finishing, although of course I was lapped by the leaders.  Afterward I found that my helmet had cracked and I had bruise on the top of my forehead where I'd hit.  I still can't comfortably turn my head without some pain.  Anyway, we finished up officiating the rest of the races and I made the 3 hour drive back home thanks to a couple of Advil as I debated the wisdom of doing the planned 104 mile Varsity to Varsity ride the next morning.

Well, despite the neck and back damage, The Daughter and I convinced The Wife to come with us to Baton Rouge at 5:20 am the next morning so we wouldn't have to get a ride back to Baton Rouge to retrieve the car.  The Varsity to Varsity ride is a ride that the LSU team has been doing for a few years in which they ride from the Varsity Sports shop in Baton Rouge to the Varsity Sports shop in New Orleans.  It's long, but it's not a race, so they stop a few times along the way and there are lead and follow vehicles.  This would be The Daughter's first century ride, so I didn't want to miss it.  I popped a 12-hour Aleve before we left and hoped for the best.  As long as I wasn't moving my head around much it was fine, but looking back was next to impossible so I quickly decided to ride herd at the back of the 24-rider group and take a few photos along the way.  This was nice in that I had a draft, but it was a little scary in that I could see the somewhat unstable riding of a few of the newer riders.  I left a little extra space ahead of my front wheel.

The ride went remarkably smoothly.  The weather was nearly perfect, although there was a wind out of the east that seemed to get stronger as the ride went on.  Much of this ride follows River Road, so it passes a number of old plantation homes, sugar cane fields, grain elevators and oil refineries.  It's not exactly the most scenic ride around, but some section are pretty nice.  It's also dead flat, which was good because it would be the longest ride ever for a number of the riders.  This year there were a few Tulane Cycling riders in the group, and I think it was the first century ride for three of them.

It got to where I was really looking forward to the rest stops because the muscles in the back of my neck and upper back were screaming after an hour or two of steady riding.  The last rest stop was a mile or so before the Spillway which comes at around 76 miles. I could see that a few of the riders were starting to hurt, although The Daughter still looked like she was doing fine. 

After riding through the spillway the pace seemed to pick up a bit at the front and three of four riders came off the back.  I backed off to try and pick them up but I could see that the group was riding away from us and there was no way they would catch if it didn't slow down, so I rode ahead, worked through the group, and let the riders at the front know what was going on.  They eased up for a little while and I dropped back to pick up the stranded riders.  All but one of them made it back to the group before the pace started creeping up again, so I dropped back to the LSU rider who was off the back in order to see if I could pace her back up.  After a mile or so I discovered she wasn't on my wheel any more.  I would have realized this earlier but it hurt too much to look back.  So I dropped back and picked her up again, this time keeping a slower pace of around 12 mph. Her calves were cramping up, but I knew that the follow vehicle had gone ahead since we were now on the levee bike path.  She fell off again, so I picked her up and dropped the pace down another notch.  She was really hurting, but a couple of miles later we met the follow car at the "Little Dip" and she was rescued. 

By then the pack was long gone, at least five minutes ahead of me, so I had to ride the last twenty miles alone.  That was fine until I got onto the city streets and realized how tricky it was to ride in traffic without turning your head!  Anyway, I eventually found my way to Varsity Sports, had some pizza and a beer, and then The Daughter and I rode home.

I took some more drugs and went to be early with the full knowledge that I would not be riding on Monday.  Hopefully everything in my neck and back will improve by tomorrow.