Shadow Riding and Training Racing

Helping with the officiating at the TX State criterium

OK, so I'm a wee bit overextended right now and, therefore, way behind on blog posts.  It is just one of those ironies of life that when things start getting busy and interesting, documentation tends to go out the window.  Just ask any programmer.  So here's a quick attempt to get caught up.

Last weekend I traveled with some of the Tulane riders to San Marcos, in the republic of Texas, for the Texas State collegiate race weekend.  From the outset, the weather was not looking real promising.  I rushed around on Friday, having taken the day off from work, picking up rental vehicles and running errands so we could hit the road around 2:00 pm, which of course turned out to be more like 2:30 pm.  With a threat of rain along the 8-hour route we had a lot of stuff squeezed into the back seat of the quad-cab pickup truck.  I was one of them.  The somewhat tight quarters were offset slightly by the fact that Kenny drove most of the way.  We made good time and arrived at the hotel about half an hour outside of town at a reasonable hour.  The minivan with the rest of the team had departed a bit later, but still arrived before midnight.

The Saturday morning road races started from the back of a shopping mall parking lot with a short neutral section before hitting the 9-something mile race loop. We got there about an hour before the scheduled start, but they were still setting up the registration tent.  As usual there were no portable toilets, so we rode down to the nearby Starbucks where a number of the other riders were hanging out for coffee and bathrooms.  By the time the first group, the Cat. b/c Women, started it was foggy and misty and a light rain was falling.  It would be Danielle's first road race.  I let a little air out of her tires and warned her about a sharp downhill right turn I'd seen on the course map I'd made on Strava. I would later learn that there had indeed been a crash there and that Danielle had rolled over someone's arm without going down and ended up in a 3-rider break that went all the way to the finish.  Since she was the only C rider, she got first place in that one.

Kenny and I put on our Tulane jerseys and were allowed to shadow the Men's A race.  This was great since it meant we'd be able to get in 50+ miles at a reasonable effort level.  The roads were wet, but I could have sworn they had been vacuum cleaned.  I would normally have expected a lot of flats with the wet roads and drizzly rain we had, but in fact there were hardly any.  Ben attacked maybe four or five miles in the 60-mile race and got away cleanly with one other rider.  I was surprised that an MSU rider wasn't represented, and more surprised that there was not very much of a chase.  Kenny and I were watching from the back of the pack and it was kind of frustrating to ride like that, trying to suppress your normal race instincts to chase, block, attack, etc. Anyway, at some point after the break was out of sight a couple of lone riders took off in pursuit. One of them took about a minute out of the gap, but still finished about three minutes behind the break.  Unfortunately Ben got outsprinted at the end but he was pretty happy with 2nd place anyway. Ben S. finished 4th in the Men's C race.

Steep.  Very steep.

That afternoon was a 3 mile time trial that featured a brutal 1 km climb up the infamous Fulton Ranch Road. Directions and information were very sketchy, which is to say we didn't know where the start or finish were.  After driving the whole thing and finding nobody at the bottom of the hill we returned to what we thought was the finish.  There we found out that everyone had to park there and the riders had to ride down to the start.  Danielle's group was the first off and she arrived with about five minutes to spare.  The climb was steep enough that some riders ended up walking, but Danielle was riding 650c wheels and a triple chainring bike so she was able to spin up the whole way, passing a couple of riders en route to the finish.

I felt that we really lucked out on the weather because it never rained for the TT.  Ben B. smoked the TT finishing second and the other Ben was 3rd in the TT, just 3 seconds out of 2nd. The next day they had her placed last in the time trial.  Looking at the start and finish times that were, fortunately, posted it was obvious that the math (which had been done with a spreadsheet) was wrong and her time was four minutes off.  After correcting her time and those of a few others, she moved up to 1st in the Cat. C time trial.  Dinner that night was at a little Mexican place in town which was pretty nice if you like Mexican food, which I don't.

So Sunday there were criteriums around the town square in San Marcos.  It was a nice course with a good little downhill and climb each lap, made even more interesting by a strong headwind on the climb.  The sky was cloudy but the rain held off all morning, which was great.  As usual, the course was not too well controlled, which meant that quite a few cars wandered into the course or had been trapped inside it when the roads had been barricaded.  There were two officials at the start/finish and I was volunteered to get video with my iPad for the numerous points primes and finishes.  At one point I think we had four Tulane people helping at the finish line with bells, lap cards, cameras, etc.  Anyway, Danielle got a good start and made the initial break of, I think, four riders but got gapped off on the climb a couple of laps later and was eventually caught by the remainder of the pack so she finished 4th in the C race.  Ben went with a break in the A race and as usual worked his butt off, finishing 3rd.  It was kind of a long drive back, but again Kenny drove the whole way (rather than be squashed into the back seat), and we arrived home at the remarkably early hour of 10:30 or so.  It's Thursday now and of course we're still waiting to see the official results.  Situation normal.

Yesterday was our second Wednesday Whirls out on the lakefront and the warmer temperature and slack wind attracted probably the biggest group we've had in a few years.  I think someone counted 36 riders.  I'd ridden that morning and was running a little late so I drove out to the Elysian Fields traffic circle parking lot with just enough time to make the 6:00 pm start.  We were doing three laps of the 6-mile circuit, which was just perfect for this time of year.  If I'd ridden out and back it would have been getting dark about when I got home.  This way, I got to hang around the parking lot and talk with the other guys for a while before leaving.  The training race itself was nice and smooth for the first lap and then got pretty fast as usual for the remainder.  At one point I had been riding in the shelter of the big group for so long I was worried that I wasn't getting enough training out of the training race.  I did eventually work my way up to the front a couple of times to put in some efforts, and with a kilo to go was positioned well near the front, but someone ahead of us eased up and we got streamed by the middle of the field about 500 meters before the finish and I was pretty much trapped after that.  Anyway, it was exciting to see the training race get the kind of turnout we used to have ten years ago.  Tomorrow I'm heading over to Baton Rouge to officiate the LSU collegiate race with Ricky. I am not yet prepared for that and may end up staying  up late tonight in order to get the registration and results spreadsheets ready. The weather is a little questionable for the weekend, so the rain gear is definitely going to be making the trip.

So Little Time

Morning ride on the Lake Trail

Lots to write about, no time to do it.  Maybe tonight?  In the meantime, a link to some photos from last weekend's collegiate races in San Marcos, TX. 

Reffing Rouge Roubaix

Rouge-Roubaix is a race that began life as more of a wacko group ride, morphed into something that would have been called a Gran Fondo if anyone had been using that term back them, and eventually became an actual, official USAC race that still retains a lot of that original wacko group ride mentality.  This year's edition attracted around 300 riders across its five race categories and one Gran Fondo category.  While the original editions were known only to a handful of local riders, this year's race had representation from twenty-one states and nearly seventy USAC clubs.  Compared with some prior years, the 2014 edition offered nearly perfect weather and, from what I hear, some of the fastest, most hard-packed, dirt and rock sections ever. Although a huge sinkhole caused the route to be shortened to 102 miles about a week before race day, the winning time of 4:09 was damned impressive, a more typical winning time being in the 4:20s.

A flat on the Giro Ride

For the first time in a number of years I wasn't racing. With some still-lingering neck and back problems from my unfortunate October cyclocross experience, I thought it would be particularly unwise to subject my spine to the annual beating this year.  Instead, I helped with the officiating, and in particular with the scoring and timing and posting of results.  It was a very long day that started at 5 am.

Knowing I'd be officiating, and therefore off the bike, on Sunday, I was glad to be able to get in the Saturday Giro Ride before departing for Baton Rouge.  Although there is no race-day registration for this event, they do have a Saturday afternoon packet pickup and late registration session from 2-6 pm, and I wanted to be there in order to check off the riders who actually showed up (there are always a number of no-shows for this race), and also to deal with the riders who didn't have current licenses, were confused about the one-day licenses, etc.  That meant I had to be on the road by around noon, which worked out pretty well since I usually get back from the Giro Ride around 10:00 or so.

The P/1/2 staging for the start

So I made it through the Friday night packet pickup session with perhaps half of the riders checked off in my big Excel registration/results workbook.  Things on Sunday morning started at around 6 am, so I needed to be there around 5:30 to get set up.  As usual, it was a little hectic, and also as usual there were a few riders who showed up half an hour after registration closed (of course we found them their numbers and got them registered).  We got the Gran Fondo group rolling just four minutes late at 7:04.  Their 1-hour head-start on the Pro/1/2 race was still not sufficient to keep all but one rider from being caught and passed.  That lone rider must have know he was just a minute or so ahead of the race because he came blasting across the finish line like he'd won the World Championship.

Masters

At the finish line, I was calling numbers and times into my recorder whenever I could, but that was really just backup in case of camera and official failure.  In fact, the finish line camera software crashed about two minutes before the first riders finished because it didn't recover when the laptop went into sleep mode.  Luckily Ricky was able to get it all restarted in time. So in the three hours after we started the last group, we got the finish line and cameras and computers all set up and waited.  By the time the first riders were finishing I needed to pee.  There was no portable toilet and we were basically in a busy residential area of St. Francisville, so for the next four or five hours I tried not to think about that.  Fortunately, there was a lot to keep me occupied.  Once the first riders finish, there is pretty much a steady stream of finishers for the next three or four hours. Along the way, Lisa, who was the official handling medical issues, had to deal with a rider with a broken collarbone and another rider who had clearly suffered a concussion, and possibly a broken jaw, but nonetheless had finished the race and was refusing to go to the hospital, which is pretty typical of athletes with concussions.  Luckily he was eventually convinced to go by someone he was with, along with a call from his mother.

The results went relatively well, which is to say we were able to post the top 25 or so in each race pretty quickly so that the awards ceremonies could be done over at the Myrtles plantation, about three miles away.  I would print the first page of the results to a pdf file and then use a mobile hotspot to email them to the promoter.  It did take a long time to finish up the results.  Aside from the time it takes just to type in 250 or so times, Ricky had gotten a couple of pages out of order and as a result we ended up having to go through each and every finish to figure out what had gone wrong.  It was easily fixed, but cost us an extra half an hour.  By the time we folded up our tents at the finish line the race clock was reading something in excess of nine hours and there was still one Gran Fondo rider out on the course. One of the moto-refs had found him and he knew we were leaving, so we headed out and someone called in his finish time.  By then the post-race party was over and most of the riders  had headed home, so the officiating crew and the promoter got together at the local pizza place for an early dinner, but not before I made a bee line for the nearby McDonald's men's room.

There are lots of great stories, videos and photos popping up on Facebook and email lists from the race, and although it looks like it was a good one, I can't say I am terribly disappointed at not having been able to race it.  My neck is usually sore after that race anyway, so if I'd done it this time I'd probably still be in the hospital.  Aside from that, I can't say it's my favorite race.  Granted, it is a challenge, and there is a real sense of accomplishment once it's over, but this is a race for the big strong powerhouse riders who plow through the gravel climbs while the guys like me slide around and end  up walking.  Then again, there's always next year!  Results are on the LAMBRA website (and of course the USAC website), but nowadays if you want to see the photos and videos you'll have to check the Rouge-Roubaix Facebook page.  In particular, the video of the Masters riding the final dirt section is pretty good. Update:  Photos at http://inmotionphoto.smugmug.com/Sports/Rouge-Roubaix-2014/i-FzjL96x

Fat, Cold, Wet, Tuesday

Mardi Gras weekend itself was great.  The weather was nice and mild and we made a number of parades in addition to two good Giro Rides.  It being the first weekend of March, I had decided to put myself in the wind's way during the Giro Rides.  It's time to start adding some intensity to my riding, and the nice weather made that prospect ever so much more appealing.  That's not to say that I didn't miss the break on Saturday, however.  We were somewhere on Hayne Blvd. when Howard went to the front and, for reasons known only to himself and his psychiatrist, strung out the whole group.  A couple of the riders at the front followed up on that and before I knew it there was a big split and things were coming apart all around. Coming around the right-hand corner at the end of Hayne, there was a small break already hopelessly off the front, then a fairly large gap, and a bunch of people like me who had been caught off-guard.  I got together with a teammate and we did a couple miles of 2-man time trialing, finally catching the larger group just before the service road.  I was feeling pretty good, and once we got onto Chef Highway we got a very nice paceline going that lasted until some dumbass surged and then some other dumbass decided to try and jump across the gap that the first dumbass had created. We had been holding 25-26 mph and the gap to the break had not been growing, but once that happened the riders who were starting to struggle stopped pulling altogether and the whole paceline crumbled. People were already camped out along the Endymion parade route when I had ridden out to the Giro earlier in the morning and there were even more as we rode back home down Orleans Avenue.

Saturday afternoon we headed downtown to Tulane's Tidewater Building around 3 pm so we could park in the garage and wait for the Endymion parade that evening.  The weather was perfect, the crowd was thin, and the riders on the extravagant floats were throwing tons of stuff.  One of The Daughter's friends from Iowa was in town for a few days, and another from New Orleans was there, so everyone  had a great time.  We got back home around 10:30 or 11:00 pm, after which I went to sleep and The Daughter and her friends went back out to party until maybe 2:30 am. We had watched the Iris parade earlier that day and a couple of others the night before.

Sunday's Giro was similar to Saturday's and I again felt like I got in a good productive workout.  Shortly after arriving home from that one, I showered and changed and rode out to Apolline Restaurant to meet a few people from the club to watch the Thoth parade.  I locked the commuter bike to a little tree on the side street alongside a neighborhood bar. The parade was nice, but as usual it was running a little late and we were planning on visiting Mario at the hospital, so with a few floats still to come we decided to head over there.  Well, I walk around the corner and find that some dumbass has locked his bike to the same tree as mine, and in doing so has run his cable lock straight through the main triangle of my bike.  I asked around if anyone knew whose bike it was, and this rather drunk guy sitting on the stoop of the apartment behind the bar comes over, looks at the situation, and says, "No problem, I'll just pull up the tree."  The tree in question was obviously dead, and he had no problem pulling it right out of the ground, after which we just threaded it through the two locks to free the bikes.

Anyway, over at the hospital, Mario was sound asleep so I never got to talk to him, although after talking with his nurse we decided to go over to the nearby grocery store and get him some chocolate mousse since he is still restricted to non-choke-hazard food.  I had to leave, however, because there were plans to watch the Bacchus parade that evening and I was in charge of making dinner.  Bacchus turned out to be really, really crowded.  We arrived there, near Fat Harry's, just after the first couple of floats had gone by, and it didn't look like there was any way we would get past the wall of ladders, pop-up tents, chairs, and people in order to see much of the parade.  We walked up and down a bit until I saw a spot where we could get up closer, just behind some ladders where there was a small gap.  We stayed there a little while, and then as people moved or left we worked out way up to the front where we could see the parade and catch some beads.  That worked out great, but by then it was getting late and we were all suffering from parade fatigue.  We ended up heading back home as the temperature started to drop.  Monday was basically a recovery day as a cold front came through and it basically rained for most of the day.

Boatner Reily, 7 am, Audubon Park

Mardi Gras Morning:  Danielle and I headed out around 6:30 for Audubon Park to catch the Royal Run, an annual tradition hosted by Boatner Reily who was Rex back around 1982 and has been buying Rex T-shirts and king cake for everyone who shows up since then.  Somehow they always get the king and queen to stop by the race for the start at 7 am. Anyway, Tuesday morning was really, really cold, especially since we were not doing any real exercise, but at least it wasn't raining ... yet.

The plan this year, since The Wife was fighting a cold and wisely decided not to go out in the rain, was to ride down Esplanade to the French Quarter and make our way over to Bywater to catch the start of the Societé de Saint Anne marching club at 10:00.  Well, it was already raining by the time we left home with the temperature in the 40s.  I had my trusty rain jacket and goretex cap, wool gloves and socks, and a few layers of technical wear, but on my legs were just jeans so I was not expecting to stay comfortable very long.  We did find the marching club, but they were still rather disorganized when it started raining more heavily, so we decided to ride back to Faubourg Marigny, lock the bikes in front of DBA, and seek out hot coffee in the French Quarter.

By then, I was already pretty cold and wet, so we sat in CC's for a while drinking coffee with the unfortunate result that it felt even colder when we ventured back out into the rain. Although the crowd was still pretty thin thanks to the rain, cold and relatively early hour, there were still a lot of folks parading around Bourbon and Royal streets.

Looking at my watch I realized that we might be able to catch Rex along Canal Street, so we headed that way, arriving just in time to see the front of the parade make the turn on to Canal.  We jumped for beads and doubloons as they bounced off of umbrellas and heads and hands, and were able to see the whole parade. By then we were getting seriously cold since we'd been walking around in the cold rain for about three hours, so we made one more pass through the French Quarter before heading home.  Naturally we had a flat tire along Esplanade and had to stop and fix that with frozen hands, but eventually we found our way back to the house where there was a big pot of soup waiting for us.

So I didn't ride Monday, and didn't ride Tuesday, and it was still wet and cold on Wednesday so I didn't ride on Wednesday either.  I finally made it out on Thursday morning with a group of only four, and that ride was cut short because of flat tires.  I should be able to make the Giro on Saturday, after which I'll have to rush over to St. Francisville where I will be one of the officials this year for the annual Rouge-Roubaix race.  That means, of course, that I won't get to ride on Sunday either.  Mardi Gras photos are at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/108930640350384729358/MardiGras2014?authuser=0&feat=directlink