Last weekend was the Tulane Cycling team's last collegiate road trip for the spring season. Early in the week prior to the aptly named "Velo del Viento" in Wichita Falls, Texas, we were looking at nine. By Friday morning we were down to only six, of which only four were racing. Having lost a couple of our best Cat. A and B riders to, of all things, schoolwork and research projects, we knew it would be impossible to maintain our slim lead in the Division 2 conference team championship. We rolled out of New Orleans fairly late, as usual, thanks to some unanticipated errands that a couple of the riders decided to run after picking up the rental minivans. Four of us ended up hanging around our house for well over an hour waiting for them. Since it's a minimum ten-hour drive, that meant we wouldn't be arriving until way after midnight. The drive itself started out pretty smoothly, but then we got to Dallas. There were at least three possible routes through Dallas that would put us on the road up to Wichita Falls, but since it was already around 10:30 pm we decided to take the shortest, which went pretty much straight through the city. After all, there shouldn't be much traffic by then, right? Well, naturally there was some big accident and we ended up trapped on the interstate at a dead stop for at least half an hour. Anyway, we finally arrived after midnight and after downloading and forwarding release forms for the NOBC's Sunday 2-Person Time Trial (registration closed Friday night) I got in maybe five hours of sleep before we were up and headed for the road race course about half an hour away.
This part of Texas is, at least to my mind, just one step from desert. Everything is wind-swept dirt and rock with nothing but leafless four-foot high mesquite to break the relentless wind. As windy as it normally is around there, on this day it was even worse and I knew it was going to be a sufferfest for the riders. I had been volunteered to help with officiating and was assigned to follow the Cat. A race. We arrived to find the MSU coach, Charlie, running registration pretty much single-handedly at a tiny card table on the side of the road. It was too windy for an easy-up tent. The first event was the team time trial. In collegiate, that means anywhere from two to four riders per team. Naturally, everything was running half an hour late. There was no start list and in fact no record yet of who was on which team. Teams were to just show up at the start line. So I grabbed the megaphone and took on the role of Whip, getting the teams lined up according to category. That went pretty well, except that, of course, none of the Cat. A teams wanted to be first so they were all in hiding until finally one stepped up. Our only team was in the Women's Cat. C race, and they were pretty unprepared all-around so their time was nothing to write home about.
An hour or so later the road races started and so I jumped into the passenger seat of my assigned follow car, fortunately driven by someone who had done this before at Hotter n' Hell. As expected, the minute the 16-rider Cat. A field hit the crosswind section things started to unravel. They had 8 laps to do on this unprotected 9.4 mi. course, most of it battling 30 mph crosswinds. They were going fast, but a lot of damage was being done very early. By the end of the first lap 6 were already off the back. By then end of the second lap a break of 7 was off the front and the rest were just riding for the exercise. We were constantly passing riders off the back from other races, and mid-way through the 4th lap we passed the 4-rider Women Cat. B/C break. I was glad to see Danielle had made the break and figured she'd end up first or second in the C race. She had been sick all week and hadn't even been on the bike for six days. By then it was starting to get hot - hot and dry - and windy. Very, very windy. The A group was long out of sight of any of the other riders in their race and although they never slowed down a lot they were now riding smooth paceline with everyone sharing the work. It was pretty boring in the follow car. Then, at the start of Lap 6, the whole group stopped at someone's car, opened the trunk, and handed out drinks and food to everyone. on the next lap a rider flatted and the rest of the group eased up until he caught. Finally, halfway through the last lap there was some action when a rider attacked on the only significant hill, about four miles from the finish. Despite the fact that there were three MSU riders in the break, they all hesitated and let him establish a good fifteen or twenty second gap. It looked like he might actually make it to the finish, and finally one of the MSU guys went to the front and took a long fast pull that put a couple of riders in serious trouble. He pulled off and dropped off as his teammate took over the front and did the same thing. That rider finally blew up, but by then it was just one MSU rider and one other rider left. The finish line was only a mile away and the last MSU rider put his head down, dropped the other rider, and caught the solo break with about 500 meters to go - just enough time to sit in the draft and recover for a moment before winning the sprint.
When I check on how Danielle did I was shocked to learn that she hadn't finished. She had gotten overheated and/or dehydrated and had to drop off the back when her heart rate wouldn't come down below about 210, and then she was so out of it that she rode off the road into some gravel and went down. A follow car came by but she told them she was OK and would just ride in to the finish, but then she struggled with getting her chain back on and jammed it and ended up getting picked up by the next follow car. In the Men's B and Men's D races, both Tulane riders abandoned, so Jamie in the Women's C race was the only one to finish. It was a very disappointing day.
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| Back to regular riding... |
Sunday's criterium was on a nice course on the MSU campus where they actually have a big statue of bike racers. Danielle was pretty tired and beat up from Saturday but still finished 3rd, I think, in the C race (they were mixed with the B riders, so overall she finished 5th or 6th). I officiated along with three other officials for all of the races except the last, which was the A race. Anyway, although we packed up before the Cat. A race was over, by the time everyone was showered and fed it was around 2:30 pm. Fortunately, the drive back, other than one big rainstorm, was smooth and fast, so we were back in New Orleans by around 1 am. It was a long weekend during which I never got to ride a bike, although my bike did at least make the trip. I had been hoping to squeeze in a couple of laps around the road course, but there really wasn't enough time to make it worthwhile. It's Thursday and we still haven't seen actual final results of the race or, for that matter, of the conference points standings, which were a complete clusterF the last time I saw them, which was on Saturday.
So this week I have been trying to get back on track with training. A cold front and high winds haven't been making that easy, but I have at least been putting in a few miles. Yesterday I did a good solo morning ride and then rushed out to the lakefront after work for the training race, which was fun even though I was starting to feel rather tired. This morning I went out to the long levee ride with slightly sore legs. I felt OK, but not particularly good, especially on the way back into the wind. Tonight I have to rush out to Baton Rouge to help officiate the track race there.
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