As I Watched It - Tour de Gulfport

"What the F*@#??" I'm pretty sure I said that out loud as I glanced down to see my left foot flailing in the air, suddenly unattached to the pedal. It was the start of the Tour de Gulfport criterium. I'd gotten in a decent enough warm-up, was adequately hydrated, and was fully expecting to be in the race rather than behind the race. For reasons I cannot even begin to guess, and although I am quite sure I heard my cleat clip into the pedal, the moment I stood up to accelerate, it pulled right out. I was incredulous, and hesitated for a moment thinking, "What just happened?" Well, I got clipped back in as riders streamed past and caught up to the tail end of the Masters pack fairly quickly. The problem was that they were going pretty fast.  Quite a bit faster, in fact, than the first lap of the Cat. 1/2/3 race into which I would jump later in the day. Even so, I was now kind of stuck on the wrong end of the criterium whip, braking into turns and sprinting out of them just to stay in contact. I think I just automatically switched into survival mode at that point as the actual race played out up ahead. 

So here's how it went:

From the word GO, Alex (Acadiana) takes off at full speed, stringing out the pack while I watch my left pedal spin around in the air. Woody is right up there and this continues at full gas until Keith (Acadiana) takes over for the third lap. Meanwhile I'm hanging onto the wrong end of the paceline for dear life. An Acadiana rider attacks and gets a good gap, then Tim, Donald and Woody or Tim start drilling it. A gap opens up behind the trio of Donald, Woody (Palmer) and Randy D (Acadiana).  Mark McMurry (Midsouth) tries to bridge up to them, then Brian B. (Peake) jumps.  Now there are three off the front working together, and the pace back in the pack sags since Acadiana and Palmer won't pull. Brian is on the front and attacks to up the pace. He eases up but nobody comes though and he takes the front again. He is getting practically no help and has been on the front for at least a full lap. Finally, someone comes through and we're on lap 8, all strung out, as the pace slows again with an Acadiana rider coasting at the front.  Brian pulls through again, and then Mike Lew attacks, lifting the pack's pace significantly. We can see the 3-rider break still not too far ahead.

Mike drills it for a full lap, then Brian comes through, and the gap is suddenly down to maybe then seconds.  Kevin from Acadiana jumps as Randy D. is getting dropped from the break. He bridges up quickly with little response from the pack, so the break pulls away again.  Brian is soon on the front again, then McMurry attacks, but the pack chases and he is soon pulled back. Brian is on the front yet again, and another rider attacks the pack but is pulled back quickly.  Mike Lew counter-attacks and gets a big gap with one other rider, but that too is eventually pulled back and the pace slows as we approach the 30-minute mark of the 45-minute race. The break is well out of sight by now.  There are more attacks by Mark McMurry, but he is brought back quickly and, for the first time in the race, I find my way to the front. Brian goes to the front again as McMurry attacks, then Mike Lew takes a shot at it, is pulled back, and Brian counter-attacks.  As he is pulled back, Mark McMcurry counters and gets a gap as the 5-to-go card goes up. The break is long goine and now Mark is up the road and things are starting to come apart in the pack.  Another rider attacks and gets a gap.  I've lost track of how many are actually off the front now.

With three to go Alex Habbit attacks, taking Butch Sims (Palmer) with him as the rest of the pack hesitates. The pack starts catching lapped riders in the turns and more little gaps open up. The pack is racing for 7th place, but I am finally starting to feel like I am in the race as I put in a big effort for the long drag race to the finish line, ending up in a disappointing 8th place, which is 3rd in the 55+ age group.

It was a strange race for me. Getting stuck at the back on the first lap really took the wind out of my sails, maybe more psychologically than physically. I should have just put it behind me and made the effort to get up to the front, but instead I pretty much just hung around near the back of the pack watching the show up ahead.

By the time the Cat. 1/2/3 race started it was getting really warm. My Garmin, which had been in the sun, started out showing 104F, and had dropped down to only 100 degrees 25 minutes later when I finally threw in the towel.  I probably shouldn't have entered the 1/2/3 race, but there was a decent sized field and I figured it would be cooler than standing around in the sun.  The 1/2/3 race actually started out fairly slowly, at least for the first couple of laps. After that it got faster as the attacks started to fly. I tried to shift to a higher gear and nothing happened. I finally looked down and realized I was still in the small chainring! Obviously I had not been taking this race seriously enough.  There was another attack and when the rider ahead of me blew up and opened a gap, I just wasn't willing to dig deeply enough to close it. We were probably only seven or eight laps into the race.  I backed off and cruised around for a few laps until the pack came by again, jumped onto the back for another lap and then called it a day.

The event itself was great.  The city was fully on board, so the course was well barricaded, there was a live band, etc. I hope they hold it again next year.

"The Tour"

We wrapped up the annual Tour de Louisiane around 2 pm on Sunday. Things went pretty well in general, which is to say we didn't send anyone to the hospital and nobody was arrested. By Tuesday of last week the Tour preparations were alerady starting to eat into my time significantly, and the extra task list was made a bit more burdensome by the fact that the head cold I'd had for the prior couple of weeks had spawned a bit of a sinus infection. Without getting in the graphic details, any time I start producing non-transparent mucus in significant quantities it's a sure bet I've got a bacterial infection going on. Fortunately we had a stash of ampicillin around, so by Saturday things were starting to clear up. There is a lot of heavy lifting involved in putting on a weekend stage race, most of which revolves around herding together volunteers for follow cars, corners, set-up and tear-down, plus keeping on top of the situation with the police details at each of the three venues, not to mention securing and collecting items for the goody bags, prime prizes, etc. I try to keep my main responsibilities both well-defined and limited. Prior to the race I handle the event permit, website, Facebook page, officiating arrangements, and to some extent communications with the city of Covington for the criterium venue. I also create the race bible, get a couple hundred copied, staple them up into booklet format, print out the pre-registered riders' waivers, organize the bib numbers and pins, make up the registration and results spreadsheets, help stuff goody bags, manage the Friday night registration and Saturday morning registration, and then officiate the races where I handle data entry and results when I'm not scoring the races themselves. After each race I make the results web page and upload it to the server and then send out notices via email, Facebook and Twitter. Other club members handle setting up the courses with signage, dealing with the police details on race day, coordinating the follow cars, making sure there is water and, for the road race, cold watermelon, setting up and tearing down the venues, handling the awards ceremonies, podiums, photography, corner monitors, portable toilets, etc. So this morning I feel, appropriately enough, like I worked all weekend.

The races went well. Based on the weather forecast, I had been fully expecting to be standing in water up to my ankles in torrential rain for most of the weekend. Somehow, the rain missed us at every venue.  It stormed all around us, but it seemed like each race was in a little bubble that lasted just long enough to get in and out with dry socks.  It was a great relief to be done with the road race without rain or ambulances. The road leading to the road race had been under heavy construction and at the last minute I had to change the race bible, adding an alternate route to bypass that section because the weekend before, some of it had been un-paved and the construction crew was caravaning people across the worst section. As it turned out, they had finished paving the last bit the day or so before the race, so luckily that wasn't an issue. I had been having visions of team cars stuck in the mud calling me frantically because they would be late for the race.

Turnout was reasonably good at around 150 riders. We could certainly use another thirty or forty to fill out some of the smaller fields, but 150 isn't a bad turnout compared to the last few years. I guess we will probably end up losing at least three or four thousand on the event, but some of that is because we do not skimp on police for the road race (I think we had nine officers for 4 or 5 hours this year), and of course it is equally expensive to shut down the criterium course in Covington. The racing turned out to be really good this year, and I was glad to see a good-sized Masters field after a couple of years of really small ones. Lots of photos have been showing up, and I've been trying to share them to the Tour de Louisiane Facebook Page.

I got back home around 3:30 on Sunday, posted all of the results, monitored the Facebook pages and email, corrected a couple of errors, re-posted the resutls, sent the registration numbers to the Chief Ref for the Post-event report, and finally hit the sack around 11:30.  I still need to update the LCCS points for both the 2-person time trial and the Tour de Louisiane, and clean  up and store away all of the NOBC race equipment that is presently scattered randomly all over my basement. Next weekend is the LAMBRA criterium championship over in Gulfport, so I am hoping to be racing that and helping with officiating when I can. We had some LAMBRA riders up at Tulsa Tough last weekend who turned in some impressive results.  Tomorrow the annual Race Across America starts, which is usually something I don't follow, but this year Brian Toone is taking a run at it, so I will be watching it a bit more closely thanks to their website.

Summer Cold

May 28 Morning Ride group     

For a while I refused to believe it. That scratchy throat feeling slowly poking its way into my consciousness on a Monday afternoon at work couldn't actually be a summer cold. I tried to ignore it, but by late evening there was just no getting around it. My throat was so sore it hurt to swallow, and after a rather sleepless night I'd already thrown in the towel by 6 am on Tuesday. As often happens with these things, I was feeling a little better after a cup of coffee and a little activity, so I decided not to reschedule my 10:30 eye doctor appointment. I was on my last pair of contacts and hadn't had a checkup in a couple of years. As it turned out, my vision was pretty much the same as last time, so I re-ordered a batch of lenses and walked out into the bright sunlight with full-dilated pupils.  Ouch. Luckily I had a pair of sunglasses in the car and made it home safely, but I was pretty much worthless the rest of the day. By Thursday it had moved down into my lungs, which I suppose wasn't helped by the fact that I went out and did the usual group rides on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Then again, maybe it would have done that anyway. It's always a tough call this time of year. I hate to lose more than one day of riding.

Anyway, last weekend was the annual NOBC 2-Person Time Trial, which I was officiating. I'd been a little worried the week before about having enough help for this one, but a bunch of people turned up a the last minute, so it was fine. There was some bad weather heading our way from Texas, but fortunately we had everything wrapped up well before any of it arrived. Frank Moak and Jaden Kifer turned in a course record time of 51:22 for the 40 km event this year. I cannot even imagine holding a 29-31 mph pace that long, even if I was just glued to someone else's wheel the whole time. I got back home and unloaded the car, and then an hour or so later they sky opened up.

Oak Street flooding, near Zotz

The rest of the evening featured some dramatic rain storm action.  I guess there were times when we got extended rainfall at a rate of 4" per hour or so, which is usually more than the city's pumps can handle.  That results in some street flooding in rather predictable locations, especially the underpasses. There was one cab driver who was on the news talking about having to abandon his taxi with his passenger when it stalled out under the Canal Blvd. underpass. A little while later the cab was completely submerged.

So on Wednesday morning the sore throat was a little better and I went out to meet the morning WeMoRi. My plan was to stay in the draft to limit the effort level as much as possible. I picked up the group around Marconi and Robert E. Lee and fortunately nobody was at the front really drilling it, so although the speed was in the 25-28 mph range it wasn't too hard to find a comfy wheel to follow. The next day I went out to the regular 5:45 am ride with pretty much the same plan. It was a little more difficult to limit my effort level for that ride, but I wasn't really feeling too bad. Even so, after I got home I could tell I was more tired from the ride than usual. Later that morning when I rolled the bike out the door to ride to work I found a chicken walking around in the middle of the street. I posed a photo on the neighborhood FB page but we haven't been able to find the owner yet. The neighbor says it's been hanging around for the past three or four days.

The Tour de Louisiane is only a week away now, so there are a few loose ends left to tie up. I had decided to use up some of the many leftover bib numbers I have from prior races this year, so didn't order any new ones. We used some for the 2-Person TT and discovered that some of the small numbers were apparently bio-degradable and when people tried to handle them they basically crumbled, so now I'll have to check all of the numbers I have set aside for the Tour to make sure they are OK. I hope they are, because it's too late to order new ones at this point. I finally got the new race bible posted to the website yesterday. There weren't really too many changes since last year except for sponsor logos, so that wasn't too difficult. Bob has been working on the criterium venue, so it should be interesting this year. On Sunday some of us will be heading up to the Tour road course to check it out, freshen  up the road markings, etc.  Otherwise, I think things are pretty much in place, so I'm just hoping the weather cooperates this year.