Age of the Dinosaurs, Rocky Mount and the TT Championships

The Saturday Giro

Things are busy around here lately. The LAMBRA race calendar for August is pretty full, mostly with championship races. The students started returning to the neighborhood around Tulane a couple of weeks ago, and Danielle arrived from Olympia last week. Most classes started today. I like this time of year when things are busy around the university area and there are lots of students and other folks out and about. It's been busy at work as well, so between work and LAMBRA and Tulane Cycling and racing and training there hasn't been a whole lot of spare energy.

So two weekends ago I headed up to Shreveport, or to be exact Bossier City, early on a Friday afternoon. It's a 5+ hour drive and I wanted to get to the bike shop in time to pick up race numbers so I wouldn't have to do that in the morning. Rocky Mount is one of my favorite races and this year they switched it from Omnium format to Stage Race format, but it wasn't quite that simple. You see, we were using the first stage, the road race, as the LAMBRA Road Championship. We had done that last year when it was an omnium. on the face of it, since the RR was the first stage, it shouldn't have presented a problem. As it turned out, however, there was some dissension in the ranks concerning the awarding of LCCS points. I had planned to just score the category races as omniums rather than stage races since some riders were planning on riding only the first stage because that was the road championship for the skill-based races/categories. After I scored the whole event that way and put it up on the web I got some feedback from riders who had decided to skip the event on the assumption that it would be scored as a stage race. Since only the top two stage races count toward the annual LCCS rankings, that was not an unreasonable decision for riders who had already had high placings in two stage races. So I ended up re-scoring the whole thing as a stage race and then also awarding road race points to those riders who had registered only for the road race.

Anyway, to get back to the racing, I was signed up for the 55+ race along with teammate Mark McMurry. Mark was getting dangerously close to the top of the 55+ LCCS ranking so although he often rides Cat. 1/2/3 or 40+, he had decided to race with the dinosaurs instead. The field was pretty small, which was not unexpected, and the road race started out pretty slow. The long 30 mile course has a couple of significant hills on it and so I wasn't too surprised when Shreveport rider and TT specialist Tim P attacked the first big one. I was right there on his wheel all the way up the hill and then, thinking the pack was right behind me, I made the crucial mistake of easing up over the top. By the time I realized  how big the gap was it was too late and he was gone and I was stuck in the middle. The unresponsive pack turned out to be the theme for the weekend. There was virtually no attempt to chase him down and soon he was out of sight with the pack meandering along at a slow speed with only an occasional and brief acceleration. With about ten miles left to go Mark put a little pressure on going up one of the hills, glanced back to see that he had a gap, and decided to go for it. I was sitting at the front and just tooled along at like 20 mph, amazed that nobody was attacking. There were a few little surges, but basically they were content to let me sit on the front at 20 mph while Mark rode off into the distance. So of course Tim won, Mark came second, and then the pack finally arrived 3+ minutes later. The generally uphill sprint was fun and I should have won it, but I inexplicably eased up just before the finish line, not realizing there was someone coming up fast on my left. I'm still kicking myself for that one.

Tulane Cycling Friday Coffee Ride

The 5 mi. TT was held a few hours later from the same location and featured a fast (40-45 mph - some hit 49) downhill followed by a hairpin turn, a mile or so of light fast tailwind, and then a rather brutal mile of climbing back up to the finish. I kind of screwed up by coming around a right-hand turn in a huge gear and deciding not to shift for the steep little uphill right after it. I totally bogged down coming over the top and had to ease up a bit to recover. Even so I wasn't too displeased with my effort, which of course dropped me down to like 5th on GC as usual. The next morning was the criterium which is on a pretty nice parking lot course around a small community college. I was prepared for a hard ride but it didn't really turn out that way. Tim, who had won both the road race and time trial, had dropped out - he doesn't like criteriums with a passion - so Mark was now in the lead on GC with a pretty decent gap. From the start I led out a moderately fast lap, after which Mark came through, saw an unexpected gap with me still sitting on the front, and took off. Again, there was virtually no chase as I sat on the front going slow and watching Mark ride away from us. At the rate we were going I knew he would lap us, and when I heard the motorcycle coming up from behind wondered what would happen next. Well, Mark just kind of blew past the group through the technical section of the course and so I jumped hard to catch his wheel along with a couple others. I was hoping to split the pack here, but half a lap later I glanced back and it was all back together so I just let Mark ride off the front again, not that he needed to. Again, they just let him go, and again I didn't win the pack sprint. Somehow, however, thanks to Tim dropping out and some time bonuses I ended up in 3rd place, so between the two of us we easily covered our hotel room, which constitutes a successful weekend any way you look at it.

So last week was fairly routine rides except that Danielle came along on a couple of them. The LAMBRA TT championship was on Sunday and I was officiating. Given my usual TT performances I wasn't too disappointed about not being able to ride this one, and was able to enjoy the Saturday Giro Ride without worrying about having tired legs for Sunday. The TT went pretty smoothly, and despite the hot and humid conditions Jaden set a new course/LAMBRA 40km record of 52:17, while Stephanie set a new women's record of 59:28. It must have been ten years since we've had a woman go significantly under an hour, so I was really happy to see that.

Reflecting on the TT results afterward, and looking at the times of some of the younger riders compared to those of the old guys who have been dominating many of the time trials for a long, long time, I thought to myself, "The age of the dinosaurs is drawing to a close."  It has been a long time coming, but I am truly glad to see these younger riders kicking ass. We had one casualty in the TT when Tim Doiron failed to notice some random recumbent rider who I guess had gotten on the TT course around the boat launch halfway back from the turnaround. He tried to swerve around at the last minute but caught the left side of the trike and went down hard putting a deep gash in his jaw and upper lip that required stitches. Later, after the TT championships, we had the Louisiana Senior Olympic Games time trial on the same course. I was a little worried about the older guys being out there for 40km on such a hot day. Two of them apparently turned around early, thinking they had gotten to the turnaround that was actually about five miles farther down the road. I have no idea how they got that wrong since over eighty riders ahead of them had gotten it right.