Falling Through Ice

It's been a long week of dark, dark morning rides, complicated this morning by strong winds blowing off of Lake Pontchartrain, but it was a different story last Sunday for the kick-off race of the Delta States Grand Prix cyclocross series up in Baton Rouge. I had kind of mixed feelings about officiating that one. While it would have been lots of fun to ride (notice I did not use the word "race")  the nice technical course at Baton Rouge's City Park, I was assigned to help officiate the race which provided a handy excuse for avoiding the hour of exertion. Sometimes I can do both, and indeed I brought the bike with me, but fortunately for the race, and unfortunately for me, the turnout was great which meant sorting out the results was very time-consuming. We even had a good turnout from the collegiate riders even though there wasn't a specific collegiate race.

The course had a nice gentle slope, a sand pit with a U-turn, and lots of very technical sections, so they had only one actual barrier since most people had to dismount and run numerous times each lap anyway. I jumped on the bike wearing my jeans and snuck in one lap while another official was trying to figure out how many times various riders had been lapped. The fast guys were doing laps of around 5:30, while regular riders were more in the 6 minute range and the laughing group at the back wearing costumes were probably doing more like ten minutes. Some races had people lapped four times within 45 minutes, and one of those had three separate races on the course concurrently, so things got really confusing really quickly and it took quite a while to sort out that one race. Hopefully we got it mostly right, but I wouldn't bet on 100% accuracy with that one. Meanwhile we took a shot at getting the date of the South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference CX championship moved since it had been scheduled for Dec. 21 when most of the Tulane riders would be home for the holidays, and in this case home means Illinois, California, etc. They suggested moving it up one week, but of course that put it in the middle of exams, so basically we won't be able to send many riders there. There's apparently a conference rule that you have to race the conference championship in order to be eligible for nationals, which is pretty ridiculous in this case. We have one new medical student who is a Cat. 1 / Cat. A cyclocross rider and really wants to be able to race nationals, so we'll have to see what we can do about that.

So Monday morning it was back to 5:45 am rides, mostly in the dark. The week was pretty routine Monday through Wednesday, except for a near-crash riding home on Tuesday when I stopped for a car and Big Rich didn't. Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly fast, but not excessively so, and with the warmer temperatures and low winds they were pretty manageable. On Wednesday I jumped into the WeMoRi as usual and immediately found myself in a small front group that was going pretty hard chasing somebody way off the front. It was totally disorganized, however. Fortunately, the hard part of the WeMoRi for me lasts only for about six or seven miles. So the first part of the week was pretty unremarkable.  Then there was today.....

I rushed out the door, already knowing I was late, to meet the 5:45 am group about a mile away. I guess I got there at 5:47 so I kept rolling, wondering how much ahead of me they were. I rounded the corner and could see blinking red lights in the distance, so I shifted up a gear and caught them a mile or so later. This was good since we were riding in to a strong northeast wind. A little cool front had come through last night and although the temperature had dropped to only 60 or so, we had a pretty strong wind to deal with. Out on Lakeshore Drive, heading east we had a quartering headwind that forced everyone into a long eschelon that left the last few riders basically without a draft. Then, when we picked up the tailwind the pace just kept ramping up and up. I'm really not all that comfortable going 30 mph in the dark with someone's super-bright red blinky light shining in my eyes. Somehow I survived and we mostly regrouped before hitting the lake trail bike path. Of course with the tail/cross wind the pace didn't stay slow for long and before long I was looking at the rider in front of me starting to blow up. Matt was already way off the front by himself and Woody seemed like he really wanted to try and reel him back in, so next thing I know it's just Woody, Ray and me. Ray took his turn at the front and when Woody came through the slight acceleration gapped him off. When Woody pulled off I stayed on the front just long enough to come around him, but even with such super-short pulls, I could only get back into his draft one more time before I was gapped off too.

The ride back into the wind was pretty brutal. There was a lot of crosswind component to it, so if a one bike-length gap opened up in front of you it took a huge effort to close it. Plus, with the crosswind, there was room for only four or five on the bike path the way we were escheloned, which predictably started popping riders off the back one by one. I kept thinking of Cavendish's quote, "When echelons form it's similar to falling through ice: you know you've got, like five seconds to rectify and get in the right position to save yourself or it's finished – it's over." I had to dig pretty deep to close a couple of gaps but managed to stay in the front group that dwindled to five by the time we got to the end. It was a much harder ride than I'd expected.

So on the bike front, it looks like Bianchi is sending me a replacement Sempre frame thanks to Marc at Bicycle World, so I can't really complain about that. I think I'll need a new bottom bracket and probably headset since they made a couple of changes there since mine was made. I guess I'll have been without the Bianchi for about two months, but it's still better than having to buy a new frame which I really couldn't afford to do right now.