Weather...or Not

You know, sometimes you start out on a nice fresh new week with a plan, only to have it squashed by Mother Nature and that little part of life that does not involve the bike.  This was one of those weeks.  After last weekend's rather disappointing race performance, followed by Monday's long but easy holiday ride, I was back to the routine on Tuesday morning for the long levee ride.  My legs still felt inexplicably tired with some lingering soreness that I could attribute only to age-related recovery sluggishness. This aging thing is really a PITA!  So anyway, that was one decent 35 mile training ride.  I was looking forward to Wednesday when I usually have a chance to ride in the morning and then follow it up in the evening with the training race.  Well, having seen the weather forecast the night before, I got up early Wednesday morning and checked the radar on my phone before getting out of bed.  There was a lot of very bad-looking rain just west of the city.  For some reason my phone wasn't loading the animated weather map, but since the weather here this time of year is almost always moving from southwest to northeast I guessed it would be raining by sunrise and went back to sleep.  Of course it didn't actually rain and I could certainly have ridden.  I should know better.  The rest of the day was threatening weather but the worst of it was just barely bypassing the city to the north, so I was thinking I'd be able to ride after work.  Naturally, it rained after work, so Wednesday was a loss.

I drowned my sorrows with a couple of glasses of $2.99 wine that night.  Thursday morning I got up early out of habit and was all ready to get dressed to go out and meet the Thursday levee ride when I remembered I had to take The Wife to the hospital for a 7:45 am appointment to have the staples removed from her hip surgery.  Naturally, the weather was nice that morning.  The staple removal went fine and she was cleared to return to work next week, so that was nice.  I was thinking maybe I'd get out for a few miles after work.  Nope.  It rained again shortly after I got home, so that made two days off the bike.  I finished off that bottle of wine instead.  So this morning I didn't check the radar and went out around 6:30 under a cloudy sky, determined to get in some mileage.  I felt like I'd been off the bike for two weeks as I rode down Carrollton Avenue toward the lake.  It wasn't until I was past Causeway on the lake bike path that I finally started to loosen up a little bit.  I guess the tailwind didn't hurt either.  I decided I was going to ride all the way out to the western edge of Kenner where the bike path basically ends.  Once I passed the Casino at Williams Blvd. I noticed that the asphalt was getting more and more wet from a recent rain shower, and a little while later I started feeling some light drizzle falling.  I made it out to the end, turned around and had just gotten going again when the rain got a little heavier, but I guess it wasn't moving to the east much because a couple of miles later it was relatively dry again.  Anyway, I was glad to get in a couple of hours on the bike even through that will be just a drop in the bucket of missed miles this week.

The Tour de Louisiane is coming up next week and the handful of club members who help put it together are now in the "oh shit" stage.  We have a meeting this afternoon to see what has fallen through the cracks.  As usual, very few have pre-registered yet, so I sent out some reminders this morning.  It seems that every year it gets more and more expensive to put on a reasonably safe event and harder and harder to break even.  There were a few years back in the late 70s and probably even into the early 80s when I put about $300 out of my own pocket into the race, prizes were all merchandise from the bike shop, and that was about it.  Now we're talking about an event that requires $10-12k in cash, minimum, with a field size only a little bit larger.  On the plus side, it's been great working with the town of Covington where the criterium will be held.  They have made a nice poster for the race that they will be putting up around town, and the police department, fire department and mayor's office are very supportive of the event.  We had to make a little change to the crit course that will shorten the sprint and require us to move the finish line down a bit, but I think it should still work out OK for the field sizes we will have.

Off Sunday, Monday Off

It was good long weekend for riding, although we're now starting to wish for just a little bit of rain around here.  The temperatures are working their way into summer, and lots of riders are schlepping two or three bottles on routine two-hour training rides already.  The 3-day Memorial Day weekend offered a couple of nice twists.  On Sunday there was the Feliciana Road Race, a nice nearby race on good roads with some decent terrain and even some partial shade.  Then on Monday was the now-traditional Memorial Day ride where we  visit the Chalmette Battlefield, Metairie Cemetery, and the WWII museum.

The Saturday Giro was kind of interesting.  A number of riders were planning on racing the next day, so I was expecting things to be a little subdued.  The ride out to Venetian Isles, however, was really not particularly subdued, averaging around 26 mph for the most part. The return trip turned out to be much more civilized and was in general slow enough for conversation, at least at the back. I wasn't feeling terrible, but on the other hand I wasn't feeling great either.  By the time I got home I was beginning to realize that summer is here.  The jersey was wet, the glasses coated in sweat, and my single large water bottle empty.

I was glad to see a couple of New Orleans expatriates who have been living in Texas, Colorado, and now West Virginia, which is one of those states I'd probably have trouble picking out on a map. Traci and Gary have been very active racers in road, mountain bike and cyclocross for a long time and I was glad to see that they were both obviously in good shape.  Neither was having any trouble with the faster sections of the ride, and as usual Traci seemed always to be in a good position near the front of the group.

So Sunday morning I was feeling kind of off as I drove up to the race in St. Francisville with Brian Baum, arriving a little later than planned.  Brian, who hadn't pre-registered, had to talk his way into the race since for some reason they didn't want to register any race-day riders that late.  Anyway, he did manage to get his bib number for the Masters race.  Our field was about typical for this year, which is to say the combined 40+/55+ had only twenty. The 66-mile, 3-lap race wasn't likely to be very easy, however, considering the riders who were on the starting line.  I hadn't been feeling too sharp and probably should have done an easy ride instead of the Giro on Saturday, but that didn't stop me from accidentally rolling off the front with a couple other riders practically from the start. With most of the horsepower still back in the pack, I knew we wouldn't last long and wasn't putting much effort into the break.  I figured it would be a nice smooth warm-up and might shake something loose when the chase started.  We were out there for seven or eight miles at around 24 mph before a line of riders flashed past at about 28 mph.  I had to make a pretty significant effort to get up to speed there.  There were some attacks and a counter took Brian Baum and Kevin Landry off the front.  I smiled.  This looked like a good deal for Brian since few of the riders in the race knew him (he loves to time trial and can motor along forever) and Kevin had five teammates in the pack who would definitely not be pulling. Jerry Simon, who had only one or two teammates who could help, would have to work pretty hard if he wanted to close the gap.  Unlike some of the races earlier this year there were a few other riders willing to pitch in for chasing duties. I was feeling like crap and was pulling through only when the pace was a little slower, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that there were enough strong riders in the pack to have a chance of catching without forcing teammate Mark McMurry or me to kill ourselves.

That little dot at the back?  That would be I.

Unfortunately, they had already given the duo up the road way too much rope.  I know I heard they had 90 seconds at some point, probably with about 25 miles to go, and thinking they weren't going to be caught. We were only halfway through the second lap and Jerry was already getting frustrated with having to do so much work at the front and having so many riders sitting in.  At one point the pack split and I had to put my head down and motor at 30 mph for a while to regain contact, unfortunately bringing most of the rest of the group with me because the first group kind of eased up as I caught.  By then I was on the ropes.  We were about mid-way through the last lap when we saw Brian up the road by himself and I knew the group would catch him.  I had no clue how far up Kevin was, but we never saw him and once we caught Brian everything started slowing down as everyone decided to race for second place.  Brian was starting to cramp up and I wasn't feeling too good myself.  The last few miles have a couple of significant climbs, the last of which tops out about 300 meters from the finish.  I usually have a lot of trouble with those 300 meters, even under ideal conditions, and conditions for me were already starting to deteriorate.  One thing at which I really suck is the matched sprint.  Accelerating from zero to 30 is just not something I am built for.  Unfortunately, the end of this race was starting to look like it would be a 12-person drag race.  Of course there was an attack as we hit the last hill which is about a kilometer from the finish, and I didn't really have a ton of trouble with that, but then it slowed down - a lot - before the next attack.  I was already too far back and when that went it seemed like I just went backwards.  I really don't know why I had so little power at that point, but I just had nothing and most of the group started the sprint.  I pretty much stopped pedaling with 200 meters to go and rolled across the finish line in like 10th place.  It was kind of disappointing.

We had Monday off, and when I got up with surprisingly sore quads I immediately thought to myself, "You have been spending way too much time sitting in the draft and way too little time sprinting and climbing."  It wasn't exactly a revelation.  I rode out to Starbucks to meet a group that would then be riding to the French Quarter to meet up for the Memorial Day ride.  For reasons that are beyond me they departed almost an hour before we were supposed to meet downtown, despite the fact that it's a ten-minute ride to get there, so I rode halfway there with my still-hot Americano in one hand.  We finally got rolling a bit after 8:00 after a history lesson by Kenny, with occasional commentary by a local street person who was drinking out of an almost empty half-gallon bottle of Smirnoff.

We made our way out to the Chalmette Battlefield, came back to town and then out to Metairie Cemetery, and then back downtown to the WWII museum.  There we gathered outside as a 93-year old Marine from New Orleans told us all about his experiences during the war.  This guy, who still runs 3 miles every morning and works at the museum, was a Pearl Harbor when it was attacked (and shot down a Zero), and spent the rest of the war at practically every single battle in the Pacific. In the middle of all of that he came home on leave, met a girl at a dance, married her the next day, and shipped out again.  Then, after the war, rather than going home he was sent to a few other places, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amazing guy. You would have guessed the guy was 65 years old, but whatever, he was one damned lucky soldier.  Later that evening I watched Pearl Harbor on TV.  Nice way to finish out Memorial Day weekend, even though it is only barely acknowledged as a holiday down here.

Long Days, Long Week

I am feeling pretty wiped out right now, but I'm not seeing any rest for the weary in the near future.  It all got busy last Thursday when The Wife and I showed up at Ochsner Hospital for 5:00 am, on her birthday, so she could have her hip replacement surgery.  I paid a bit over $2,000 to the hospital despite the fact that we have the most expensive insurance package that Tulane offers.  The surgery went really smoothly and surprisingly quickly.  I guess this sort of thing is pretty routine nowadays.  She was out of recovery and in a room on the 9th floor before noon, calling her office to check up on things there.  The original double room overlooked Jefferson Avenue to the north, which wasn't really worth opening the blinds for, but nobody else was there so it was fine, if a little cramped.  By Friday she was feeling quite good and hoping to go home, but they needed to get in some more PT and OT, so she didn't get out until Saturday morning.  She was in such good shape that I went out and did the Giro Ride on Saturday before heading over to the hospital.  I got there just as they were signing discharge paperwork.  I was surprised how little pain she was feeling and how easily she negotiated the fourteen steps up to the house. She was supposed to be under some restrictions as far as walking and bending were concerned, but by that afternoon she convinced me to drive her and her walker over to Barnes & Noble so she could look at Nooks.

Anyway, things were going pretty smoothly so on Sunday morning I went out and rode the Sunday Giro too.  That's not to say I had a lot of free time, however. Since last week I have of course had to pick up additional duties such as dog-walking and feeding, laundry service, meal preparation, grocery shopping, and nursing, some of which has been for our geriatric dog Cosmo for whom I have a veterinarian appointment this afternoon.  I am not entirely sure if he will be coming back from this one.

Tuesday Morning on the Levee.  The fog got worse as we went upriver.

Meanwhile, I missed a little race up in Alexandria last Sunday that was promoted by Ed who had just had an appeal hearing with USAC for some issues arising from his association with a club in Lafayette.  He is kind of an odd character, as are his races.  Anyway, I didn't lose any sleep over missing that race and was just glad that I had been able to get in a couple of good rides.  The rest of the week has been a series of long days.  I've been getting up at 5:30 every morning so I can deal with the dogs and stuff before riding, and I am really starting to miss that little bit of extra sack time.  Fortunately, I have been able to get in my usual morning rides.  I had planned on doing the lakefront training  race yesterday, but in the early afternoon The Wife called to tell me her leg has suddenly swollen up rather dramatically, so I rushed  home to make sure we weren't dealing with a DVT or something.  The doctor wasn't particularly concerned, so I eventually went back to the office, but then forgot completely about the training race until I left again around 5:45.  It would have been pretty tight anyway, so I guess it's just as well.  On Tuesday I met with the mayor's office folks and police department people about the Tour de Louisiane criterium that we'll be having there on June 8, which is sneaking up on me really quickly this year.  They wanted a change in the course to avoid going past a new hotel that will be having its first fully open weekend.  Then this morning they called and are worried about a popular brunch restaurant that is now on the altered route.  I've been holding off on finishing the Race Bible until I can make the new criterium map, so this is delaying things a bit.  I'm sure it will all work out fine, but until I know for sure which course we'll be using I can't make the map and I can't make a decision on where the finish line and officials will be.  Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see some action on the Tulane Cycling space renovation work that was held up by the student activities people, so that has cost us three weeks delay so far and may cost us an extra five thousand dollars for a card-swipe system.  I am hoping there is a cheaper way around this but at any rate I now have to come up with a Risk & Safety Management Plan and Access Policy document.

There's a nice road race up in St. Francisville this Sunday that I am planning on riding. I'm just training through this one, since my schedule has been kind of screwy lately, but it should be fun anyway and it's only a two-hour drive, which is really nice.  With so much going on I don't feel like I am in race shape at all, but as I see it, that's no reason not to race!

Season of Change

The more things change, the more they stay the same. May is always a complicated month.  We sent Danielle back off to Olympia for the summer on Saturday.  As usual, things didn't quite go as planned.  Some bad weather was moving across the south on Friday evening, and some time before midnight she got an alert that her early morning flight had been "delayed" and rescheduled for something like 8:30 am.  That meant she would miss her connecting flight, and no help was forthcoming on what to do about that. Ordinarily a long layover might not be too big of a problem, but in her case she was flying with two small dogs in a bag under the seat and the travel time to bladder size ratio was way too high for comfort.  With no satisfactory resolution coming from the telephone ticket agents, we loaded the car with the bike case, borrowed from Bob and unprofessionally packed by me, a huge overweight bag, the dogs, etc. and went to the airport in time for the 8:30 flight.  Luckily we got a good ticket agent who got her set up on a later flight, so we checked the bags and went to breakfast at Morning Call in City Park. The streets were wet and it had been raining a bit so I wasn't feeling too bad about missing my Saturday training ride.

With exams at Tulane ending, it's furniture season in the neighborhood.  Students departing for good leave their thrift store and Walmart furniture out on the curb all over the place. Some of it I'm sure finds its way into the hands of the next generation of students.  Anyway, the general feel of the neighborhood changes a little bit this time of year, which is good since it substitutes for the change of seasons that we don't really have around here.  I ended up not riding at all on Saturday, so I was glad to see a big group and much improved weather for the Giro Ride on Sunday.  I don't really know what it was, but that Giro seemed particularly hard to me.  Granted there were a few critical sections where I had to dig really deep to close a gap or stay on a wheel at 30+ mph, but overall it didn't seem like it should have felt quite as hard as it did.  Anyway, it was a good ride and I got home with slightly sore quads.  The house was much quieter without the two little dogs! Later in the day I ripped the old 1986 Race Across Louisiana video and got it started uploading to youtube, which at my home wifi upload speed probably took ten hours. It kind of needed to be there for posterity, although I have heard that it was blocked for some people because of the music.  Still seems to work for me, though.  So on Thursday The Wife is having hip replacement surgery.  That will probably keep me pretty busy through the weekend and well into next week, so I'll miss the road race this weekend.  Hopefully things will go smoothly enough that I'll be able to get out for the Giro or part of the Giro or something on the weekend.

Things are getting busy here at work now and after a really slow week I suddenly have a whole list of projects.  Funny how it always seems to work that way.  I'm hoping they will be able to start work on the Tulane Cycling space here at University Square soon.  It's been held up for two weeks by Club Sports for no particular good reason.  Very frustrating.  We have been working on this for over two years now and the pace has been absolutely glacial, even by university standards.

Tough Morning

Levee ride group waiting for everyone to arrive

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been up all night.  I'd been expecting a certain level of fatigue, but this seemed a bit more than that.  Wednesday I had gone out a little earlier than usual, thinking I might catch the WeMoRi somewhere along Wisner, but as it turned out I was a bit too early for that.  I headed down Robert E. Lee Blvd. to the west and picked up the bike path along the lake.  It was practically deserted, and with a nice little tailwind I ended up riding all the way out to the casino.  By the time I got back home I'd logged around 30 miles, a few miles more than I'd planned with some of it a little faster than I'd recommend, considering I was planning on riding the training race that evening.  Indeed, I rushed home from work and then out to the lakefront, catching the group right at the end of its warmup lap.  There was a pretty strong wind blowing from the southeast that was playing havoc with the paceline, such as it was.  Somewhere in the second half of the first lap I found myself near the back of an eschelon that was taking up both lanes and occasionally some of the oncoming lane.  I wasn't too comfortable with any of that, so I dropped off with plans to turn back early and catch the group as it was coming in the opposite direction.  That worked out OK, I guess.  Regardless, the combination of crosswind and fast pace made for a pretty hard ride, and by the time I got back to the house I guess I had 65 miles for the day.  The Wife was flying back from a meeting in New York and her flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:30, so I jumped into the shower thinking I had lots of time.  Then, when I checked the flight status, I saw that it was going to arrive about twenty minutes early, so I had to drop everything and rush out to the airport.  I was about five miles from there when she called to say they had landed, so by the time she had picked up her fifty pound suitcase I was already there.

So back to this morning.  My legs were a little sore, but more than that I just felt kind of run-down.  I didn't want to skip the long Thursday ride on the levee, especially since the forecast for Friday and Saturday was not looking particularly good, so I went out there anyway with a plan to stay in the draft as much as possible.  Although there was a pretty big group today, there was also a pretty strong wind.  It allowed for a fast pace on the way out, but the whole time I was just thinking how hard it was going to be on the way back.  Indeed, it was.  I have an early meeting tomorrow, and the forecast for the morning is calling for a 40-60% chance of rain, so I guess I'll have to play that by ear.

Flats and Flexibility

I was not surprised Monday morning to find my quads a little tired from last weekend.  Although my sprinting proved to be entirely ineffective as far as the finish order was concerned, it was apparently enough to do a little damage.  Clearly, I need to be doing more of this.  Anyway, I had already planned on an easy morning ride for Monday, and headed out toward the lakefront at 6:30.  I decided to take a left at Lakeshore Drive and ride to West End, with plans to then do a short circuit around City Park before returning home.  Somewhere along Filmore I felt the squishiness in my rear tire and contemplated my options.  It seemed like a slow leak, so I decided to see if I could make it over to the Starbucks on Harrison before it went completely flat. The lure of a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair to ease the task of fixing the flat was too much to resist. That all worked out nicely, and I ended up swapping out a few recovery ride miles for a nice recovery coffee break.  It was nice to have that kind of flexibility on this particular Monday morning.

Tuesday morning it was back to the routine as I rushed out to the levee to meet the 6:15 ride.  There was a pretty big turnout that included Luke who was in town from his new residence way out in the Utah territory.  Howard was there, seemingly locked into surge mode, but his pulls were fairly brief so everyone would just string out as he surged from the 24 mph consensus speed to around 27, and then it would slow down to about 22 before settling back to normal until his turn came around again.  At some point we picked up Mike W., and for reasons unknown I think he was having some kind of problem with, I guess, Howard on the ride back down the river where we picked up the two big guys.  Every time someone would pull off in front of him he would soft-pedal, which of course was causing some confusion and havoc for those farther back in the paceline. He said a few things to me as he came alongside that didn't really make sense to me - something about teaching them about teamwork of something.  I dunno, at least it was all pretty much a non-issue as far as the ride went except that it made the pace a bit more erratic than usual. Toward the end Howard and someone else kind of attacked, the rest of the group didn't respond, and Mike took off apparently in pursuit but eventually sat up before drifting back to the pack, only to launch his own sprint for a random sign post somewhere around the bridge.  I was feeling a little sluggish, but otherwise OK, all the while re-playing the weekend's races and coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I need to be doing considerably more intensity and considerably less eating of Easter candy.

Mississippi Gran Prix weekend

I rushed home from work early on Friday afternoon, threw some stuff into my bag, clamped the bike to the roof and took off to run a couple of errands before hitting the road for Brookhaven Mississippi for the annual Mississippi Gran Prix stage race.  A couple of minutes later I realized I'd forgotten my clip-on aero bars for the time trial and briefly considered the pointlessness of returning home for them.  I wasn't too far from home, though, so I backtracked to pick them up, and then suffered through school zones and early rush hour traffic before finally turning onto the relative calm of I-55 North.  It was only a 2-hour drive, and I wasn't racing until Saturday, but I wanted to help officiate the evening criterium for the Cat. 1/2/3 race and pick up my race numbers.  Surprisingly I arrived in plenty of time, enough in fact to run over to the local store and buy a broom to sweep a corner that looked a little sandy.  The race went off pretty well, and despite the darkness and incompatibility between the flicker rate of the lighting and the finish line camera, Ricky got everyone placed fairly quickly. Afterward I met up with a number of the club riders for a quick dinner at the little Italian place near the course.

Saturday morning Chris and I drove out to the road race course, about half an hour to the north. Although my back was feeling a lot better, I was still on Aleve, not really in shape, and going into this race with practically zero confidence.  This would be the first race of my 42nd or 43rd racing season and I was a little worried that my lower back would seize up the first time I tried to climb a hill.  I was also a little worried that I'd just flat out get dropped.  Basically, I was not feeling too sharp.  Fortunately, the race started out without too many fireworks and I soon realized that my back was not going to be that big of an issue.  In fact, I ended up spending a fair amount of time in the wind on the first lap of the three-lap 57-mile race.  Probably too much. A rider from the Acadiana team went off the front early and fortunately there were enough other riders to keep the other five Acadiana guys from controlling things too much.  The rest of us kept him hanging out there at about fifteen or thirty seconds for all of the first lap and much of the second lap until he was finally back in the smallish 17-rider field. A crash on the first lap had taken a couple of riders out of the mix.

About halfway around the loop on the second lap a gap opened up on a little climb when Mark and I were, frankly, way too far back.  Whoever was behind the gap never reacted and we hesitated for a moment thinking it might not be serious.  It was.  When they got to the top of the climb, one of them looked back, saw the gap, and someone up there put the hammer down. By the time we could do anything about it, it was really too late considering the fact that much of the group's horsepower was up the road in a 4-man break. Mark and I were practically the only ones without someone in the break, and neither of us would be able to motor across the rapidly expanding chasm. So now we were racing for 5th place, which didn't really do much for my already diminished level of enthusiasm.  With seven or eight miles to go the other Acadiana riders in our group started taking turns attacking.  I was already feeling pretty dead, so Mark had to cover almost all of them himself, which of course was their plan since he is a strong sprinter.  In the end, one of the Acadiana guys nipped Mark for 5th, while I struggled across the line in a disappointing 8th place.  I shouldn't really have been disappointed considering the circumstances, but, yeah, I kinda was.  I really had no sprint in my legs at all. We went over to Broma's Deli for lunch and then once I got the results and TT start list I uploaded those to the LAMBRA website.  That evening was the 3-mile TT that I've done a number of times before.  I was completely uninterested, however.  Given sufficient motivation I can usually scratch out a respectable TT even with the now commonplace TT bike and aero wheelset, but with four riders already uncatchable on GC and the knowledge that I'd probably lose time to three or four other riders in the TT, I just could not come up with a reason to suffer.  I would say I went out at about a 75% effort level, and even so I found myself wheezing for air within the first mile.  The combination of spring pollen and the exceptionally dry air were really playing havoc on my lungs.  When I got to the 1km to go mark I figured I may as well drop it down into a bigger gear and put in some effort.  The last 500 meters is uphill and I was too lazy to even shift to an appropriate gear, so I just trudged up it in a 53x13 or something.  It must have looked comical.  I think my cadence dropped to about 50.  Predictably, my time was 14th out of 15.  On the other hand, my legs and back felt fine!   The TT had almost been interrupted when some local redneck drove by and yelled at the officials about how it was a public road and we were blocking it off.  Naturally he called the sheriff's office and a little while later a deputy came by saying that they didn't know anything about the race.  The promoter, who was also warming up for his TT, explained that he had made all of the appropriate arrangements with the Sheriff, who had apparently forgotten to let the rest of his staff know about it. We had dinner at a local Chinese/Japanese place and then I waited for the CR to send me the official results which I got posted to the website around 10 pm.

The Sunday criterium is always fun for me because I like the course.  Mostly.  The one thing about this course that always kills me is the screaming fast downhill that comes right before a steep but short climb up to the finish.  For some reason I am always at my limit on the downhill whenever there is any pressure on at the front.  Anyway, Mark was in 5th place by a few seconds following the TT, with no hope of moving up since the break in the Road Race had put those four riders up by a good five minutes. As long as the guy behind him on GC didn't get any significant time bonuses, Mark would be safe.  Complicating things, however, was the fact that this race offers stage prizes in addition to GC prizes, and a decent placing for me would have at least salvaged something for the weekend.  For the most part, the race was not too fast.  A few of the riders were on the defense, I guess, so nothing was able to get very far.  There was a hot spot bonus at the mid-way point of this 60-minute race, which of course was what a number of riders were waiting for.  The bonuses ended up going to riders who had been in the RR break, so basically Mark was safe, but the sprint had strung things out considerably.  As the front group started to come back together I started telling them to keep the pace rolling because a few riders were off the back.  That effort got the front group down to 7 or 8 riders.  As we got closer to the final laps the tension increased and there were a couple of brief attacks that resulted in a little slow-down at the start of the last lap.  Then things started to bunch up on the back side a bit.  I was contemplating jumping just before the last turn that leads into the long downhill about 500m before the finish, but just as I got to the decision point for that Mark did exactly what I'd been thinking, attacking hard just to my right.  I was already to the right of most of the riders, although three or four were ahead of me to the left.  As soon as Mark jumped I soft-pedaled so that the rider to my left couldn't go with him.  The ones ahead of me, however, did react, although they were forced to kind of go the long way around the turn. I, of course, was immediately gapped as everyone hammered down the downhill at 38 mph.  I was absolutely going as hard as I could but wasn't making up much ground.  Mark got passed just before the finish and I rolled across in 6th place.  Surprisingly, that moved me up to 7th on GC.

So I came back home feeling a mixture of relief and frustration.  It hadn't been too bad of a race for me, and was in fact considerably better than I'd been expecting earlier in the week.  Even so, missing that break in the road race was really frustrating since I knew it was partly my own fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was also feeling kind of disappointed with the fact that I just didn't have any power in my legs for the sprints.  Sometimes, even though you fully expect things to go a certain way you're still a little disappointed when they actually do.

Our women's team was missing one of its riders because of an injury earlier in the week, and it looked like they had a pretty good race.  Mignon was only able to pull out a 10th place in the road race, which was a little surprising, but on the other hand Sherri hung in there for the criterium, which was her first.  Alison had a small crash in the road race and headed home after that, so they were really two riders short for the weekend.