Arkansas

It had been a very long time since I'd ridden in Arkansas - like maybe 35 years. I'd driven up there on a hot mid-summer Friday with a friend in my Triumph GT-6 with my arm hanging out the window and hot air blowing through the numerous gaps in the firewall. It was a stage race in Little Rock and it was a lot of fun, but that was then and this was now. This time I left in a rented minivan with 4 bikes, 4 people, 12 wheels, 4 bags and the various other stuff for two days of collegiate racing.

The flyer offered a chance for alumni to race, so I brought the Bianchi and the race wheels, mainly just to delay the inevitability of being dropped. We left in the morning, headed for Fayetteville, about ten hours away. The forecast looked a little scary. There had been a lot of snow and ice a couple of days before, and the forecast wasn't offering anything more than 32 degrees and clear skies for Saturday morning's time trial, which I had already decided to skip.

Well, as often happens at collegiate races the time trial started at least an hour late. It was a dual-conference race, and the first of the year for the Midwest, so despite the cold temperatures the turnout was higher than expected - around 180 - and since most of them had to get their "permanent" bib numbers, things took a lot longer than expected.  The morning TT was a 10 km uphill, and Kenny and I hung around the start line until all of the Tulane riders had started. The last rider was a little Junior on 24" wheels, wearing a jogging suit and running shoes. Kenny and I followed him most of the way up the hill offering encouragement and instruction on shifting. It turned out to be a lot more comfortable temperature-wise than I would have expected.

The afternoon road races were on a 20-mile loop preceded by a 7 mile out and back section. The course was mostly just rolling hills except for one section that featured a particularly steep 1.5 mile climb. So having talked myself into the Category B race, I started the 50-something mile Road Race along with the Cat. B Men and the Cat. A Women. After a brief neutral section, the Cat. A women, along with a couple of the men, rolled off the front.  I figured they must know something I didn't about the "big hill" but my objective was to get a good workout, not to win the race. It would be practically the first bit of hard riding I'd done in almost three weeks, so I didn't have anything to lose. After a while I decided to take off and see if I could bridge up to the lead group, which at that point had about a 30-40 second lead but didn't seem to be going very hard. After a couple of miles of moderate effort I made contact and took a couple of minutes to recover.

Soon enough the rest of the field came up from behind and a little while later, about 20 miles in to the race, we hit the hill. I immediately dropped it all the way into the 39x25, which was clearly insufficient, and when I started gasping for breath I backed off as the pack spun, apparently without much effort, up the hill. I came over the top figuring I'd be doing a long solo ride, but when I caught another dropped rider I decided to ride with him for a while. After a brief period of 2-man TT riding, a couple of riders came flying past on my left and I jumped to latch on to them. It turned out to be a couple of the women who I'd passed on the climb earlier and now they were flying, trying to bridge back up to the field. The guy I'd been with dropped off right away but the three of us started working together really well and after three miles or so we were back with the pack. Of course I got dropped on the hill again on the next lap, but after that I started feeling much better and had a really nice fast time trial of ten or twelve miles back to the finish. The team did pretty well with Ben missing out on the Cat. A win by a tire width after being in a 2-man break with a Cat. 1 semi pro rider from MSU.

Sunday's criteriums were on a nice course in an undeveloped little subdivision. The weather was significantly warmer, although it was overcast the whole day. I lined up with the Cat. B men for the 45 minute race with the idea of getting in a good workout. Well, they started out more slowly than I liked, so after a lap or two I launched a soft attack, rode a lap or so alone, and was then joined by a couple of others. We were caught a while later, and when the pace sagged again I attacked again, this time taking one rider with me. The two of us worked pretty well together, although I was struggling a bit on the headwind stretch. I think we got the gap out to about 40 seconds, but by then the pack had awakened. After a while a Nebraska rider bridged up to us, which would have been good except that he wouldn't work. That resulted in the other rider backing off too despite my reminders that we had only ten minutes left to go. So we got caught with I guess 5 laps remaining. On the last lap things started getting a little sketchy so I backed off since there was really no reason for me to be taking any chances.

After the race I was surprised to find out that along the way I'd won a prime consisting of a pair of tires.  Sweet! Danielle got 2nd in her race, but the big story was Ben, who ended up in a 2-man break with the same rider from the road race. Ben led the whole last lap as their pace slowed dramatically and I was thinking he was just going to get totally smoked when the other rider attacked, but instead Ben accelerated through the last turn and somehow made it all the way to the finish for the win.

The drive home was a long one thanks to non-stop rain for about six of the ten hours back to New Orleans. Fortunately it was mostly light rain so other than the stretch on state highways through Arkansas it wasn't too bad. We got back shortly before 2 am.