"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.