Jack of All Trades, HarborMaster of None

Last Sunday was the Harbor Master Criterium. This was a first-year event held in New Orleans, mainly in the parking lot of the casino boat that used to be docked at the South Shore Marina.  I was to help officiate along with Ricky who came down from Monroe and Tim from River Ridge, but I was also hoping to jump into the Masters race so the day wouldn't be a total loss riding-wise.  The course was a tight, curvy, 0.6 mile affair, the details of which had remained somewhat of a mystery until a few days before the actual race day.  The Semi-Tough club had spent a lot of time on Saturday clearing away all of the sand and debris that had accumulated, as one would expect, on a parking lot that had been closed off for years.

My preparation for the actual race, and by that I mean my participation therein, not the officiating part, had been pretty bad.  On Sunday morning I loaded up the car with various officiating-type things - tent, generator, flags, banners, clipboards, computer, etc. - and then almost as an afterthought clamped the bike to the roof, threw shorts and jersey into my bag, and headed out to the lake.  The forecast was promising a hot day on the asphalt with only a slight chance of rain.  This was good since there were a couple of places on the course that involved riding over painted asphalt that had been part of the entrance to the old casino.  Pre-registration had been pretty slim, but I had a feeling that there would be a lot of race-day entries.  That often happens for a one-day race in a metro area with a minimal late-registration fee.  I was right, and over half of the day's entries came on race day.  Ricky and I hustled around setting up the finish line and registration computer, and pretty soon I was plugging entries into the laptop as fast as I could.

The early races went off pretty well, and I was glad to see that the tight, short course wasn't causing a lot of problems.  One of the women crashed and broke a collarbone, but I don't know the circumstances. Otherwise there were hardly any crashes of note unless you count Daniel who crashed in the last turn before the finish sprint because he inexplicably decided it would be a good time to fiddle with his computer.  He ended up walking across the finish line.

Racing a crit from the back is hard.

The Masters were up after the Women's race and since the latter was pretty easy to score I was able to head over to the car as soon as they were done to change and get the bike ready.  I even got to take maybe three warm-up laps around the course. Although it usually takes me half an hour before I feel truly warmed up nowadays, this was a good thing because the first few laps of the race were full gas.  It wasn't too long before a little break rode off the front, but by then I was already struggling near the ever-dwindling back of the pack, too busy closing gaps and sprinting out of every turn to worry about what was happening at the front.  Things settled down eventually for the middle part of the 40-minute race and I was finally able to recover a bit.  Another attack split the pack, so I ended up in I guess the third group with eight or nine riders already way up the road.  It was a good workout but I have to say that trying to be a Jack of All Trades, switching between officiating and racing and then back to officiating, doesn't really allow one to master either.  Still, it was better than nothing and the other two officials were more than capable of handling things without me.

The Cat. 1/2 race was pretty fast and interesting despite a small 12-rider field.  When it became obvious that a 3-rider break was going to lap the field, which by then had dwindled to maybe five or six, I asked out loud if the riders in the pack would be able to work with the riders in the break.  I knew the answer to that one, but wanted everyone to be thinking about that. A couple of laps later, when the two groups had merged, Stephen, who had been in the break yelled something about pack riders working for their teammates who had been in the break.  He didn't think they could.  Of course, they can.  The only restriction on that sort of thing involves riders who have been *dropped by the field,* and in this case those weren't riders who had been dropped by the field, they *were* the field.  Granted it was a very small field, but it was the biggest group on the road.  Anyway, it was all worked out and Stephen won anyway.  All-in-all they did a great job with the event.  The course was much better than I thought it would be, they had food trucks out there and beer and stuff like that, so everyone had a great time and we're hoping we'll be able to do this again next year.