Tour Course

Those clouds looked a lot worse than this photo would imply!

I was up early Saturday morning with plenty of time to get ready for the Saturday Giro Ride.  All suited-up, bike in hand, I opened the basement door just in time to see the rain start.  Another day off the bike looking out the window at wet streets. On Sunday we were planning a recon ride on the Tour de La road race loop.  After meeting at 6:30 or so we made the drive across the lake and up to cucumber corner.  I put a can of neon green marking paint in my bottle cage, force-fit an actual water bottle in the seat tube cage (small frames don't accommodate large water bottles very well) and we headed toward the road course up near Stoney Point.  We met the loop at its last turn where I was surprised to find that a number of the cracks and holes in the pavement had been marked with orange paint.  I remarked that there must have been a recent ride around there.  Since we started out on the final stretch of the race loop, the first thing we came to was the old 1 km mark.  I was glad to be able to actually find it and jumped off the bike to re-paint it.  We rolled past the start/finish and then again noticed that the corner had more orange paint.  I stopped to freshen up one of the arrows, but since this is Turn #1 and is about 100 meters from the start/finish it doesn't really need to be marked.  Four or five miles later, as we approached Turn #2, I could see Robin's truck parked at the corner and Robin standing there with a paint can!  I stopped to freshen one of the arrows, but since Robin was already going around the course marking everything I just stopped briefly at the key spots and freshened up one or two of the markings rather than all of them.  The course was in pretty good shape this year and didn't need any sweeping, although there were a few spots on the smaller roads where the asphalt was starting to crack up.  I stopped to mark the three or four spots where there was enough of an edge to maybe cause a pinch-flat.  Overall, though, the 16 mile loop is pretty smooth, partially shaded, and deceptively challenging.  I used up the last of the paint on the final turn, stashed the can where I could pick it up later, and we started our second lap.  While the first lap had been nice and easy since I was stopping every few miles, the second lap got faster after we all re-grouped at the start/finish.  I guess we did about a lap and a half at a pretty good pace, splitting the group a couple of times so that by the end there were just four of us left.  We mostly re-grouped at the last turn and rode down to the start/finish before coming to the consensus that one more lap wasn't going to happen.  Sixty miles on that course is usually quite sufficient, actually, if one or two laps are done at a significant effort level.  Although there are only a couple of hills that you might call "climbs," this course is all up and down, offering virtually no flat sections for recovery or gap-closing.  Any time there are a couple of guys pushing the pace, the course seems to suddenly go from easy to hard.  So anyway, between Robin and me we got the course very well marked for next Saturday's road races, and after a stop at Starbucks we headed for the Causeway.

Now normally, when I have bikes on the roof of the Volvo, I can go through the 7 ft height sensor fast enough to not trip it and I get charged only the regular $3 rather than the $6 intended for trucks.  This time, I again went through undetected and the screen showed $3.00 as usual.  Then the damned toll-taker manually changed it to $6.  Really?  Of course, sitting there blocking traffic in order to argue with a toll booth operator is a pointless exercise, but I am seriously contemplating a letter to Carlton Dufrechou at the Causeway Commission about this ridiculous extra toll for having fifty pounds of bicycles on the roof instead of inside the car.  I know it's been brought up before on a number of occasions but I had always assumed that the toll-takers weren't able to change the toll and had to collect whatever was indicated.  Now I know that isn't the case and if they wanted to, they could set a policy of allowing rooftop bicycles through at the regular automobile rate.

Knowing I'd be missing a whole weekend of riding because of officiating the Tour I did a slightly longer and harder ride on Monday than my usual recovery ride.  This morning we did the regular long levee ride under some impressive clouds, and I was happy to have made it back home well before any of the rain started.  On the way to work I dropped off the Tour de La Race Bibles for printing.  They end up costing almost $2 each for 175 of them, and that's including my staff discount at the Tulane FedEx/Kinko location.  Meanwhile, pre-registrations are just starting to trickle in.  Although I am certainly guilty of waiting until the last minute to register for races myself, it sure is stressful when you see only a couple dozen riders registered less than a week before the race.  The Tour is probably the best deal around since we absorb the whole online registration fee, but maybe I overestimate the general public's ability to figure that out.  We also forgo the usual T-shirts and water bottles, instead putting the money into police, portable toilets, officials and moto-refs, and prizes.  Crazy, I know.   So I was looking at the 1974 article from Competitive Cyclist about the Tour de Louisiana and thinking about the guys who ended up finishing in the top places.  It's amazing how many of them are still racing and/or involved in racing.  These were the top 5 that year.

1. Tom Officer:  Three podiums at this year's Masters Nationals.
2. John Howard:  Need I say more about John Howard?  He has his own Wikipedia page.  Cycling Hall of Fame, Olympics, Ironman, etc., etc.
3. Dell Blundell:  Recently started up the Dino Riders South facebook page.
4. Mike Neal:  Cycling Hall of Fame, Olympics, national coach.  
5. David Ware:  National Champion.