Rapides

At 4:15 am I headed up to Alexandria, LA for the Rapides Road Race on Saturday with fairly low expectations. Pre-registration numbers had been extremely low for this one-day, mid-July event.  The race distances were pretty low -- the Masters race, for which there were only two riders pre-registered, was only 43 miles, as was the Cat. 1/2 race for which, unsurprisingly, there were no pre-registrations at all. There was also no promise of prizes other than medals.  On the plus side, it was a nice course with a little terrain and I was feeling like I needed a little change of scenery.

So it turned out that no other masters showed up, so the two of us would be racing with the 6-rider Cat. 3/4 field. There were no Cat. 1/2 riders at all, which didn't surprise me much given the short race distance, long drive for most, expected small field size, and lack of cash prizes. 

Under the circumstances, I was fine with riding with the Cat. 3/4 race since I was already thinking of this as more of a training ride than a race. The Cat. 3/4 riders included four riders from Raising Canes Racing, one from Acadiana, and Jacob, a 15 year old rider from Lake Charles.

We started out at a moderate pace and within the first couple of miles Kevin Landry, the other masters rider, attacked.  There wasn't too much of an immediate response, other than the Canes riders confirming that it was a Masters rider and not a Cat. 3/4 rider. Even so, I think it did help keep the pace up.  After a little while we caught up to Kevin, and I was wondering if his teammate would counter-attack, but instead it settled down for a while until Kevin attacked again. Immediately, Ben told his teammates that he was a Master rider, so they didn't chase. He was slowly reeled back in, probably more because he wasn't really trying to stay away than because there was any sort of organized chase. The next time he attacked, the speed in the group didn't increase at all and after looking back a few times he eventually just rolled away down the road. Along the way we had lost at least one rider. There was a bit of a surge through the finish line at the start of the second lap but we spent quite a bit of time just riding a steady paceline on the flatter first half of the course. When we got to the hilly section, though, Jacob attacked a number of times, and by the time we were on the last lap it was down to just four in our group. I was pretty impressed with his confidence and aggressiveness and wondered why the Canes riders didn't try to counter-attack or just push the pace a bit harder.

The Cat. 3/4 podium

We were a bit more than halfway around the course on the last lap when he attacked again, and this time I was surprised when the gap wasn't closed right away. I had the impression that Ben was kind of waiting for his teammate. I was just riding wheels and taking moderate pulls, but otherwise trying not to interfere too much. I guess I was more curious about how it would play out than anything else.  I was a little surprised that the pace over the final five miles or so didn't get higher than it did. Ultimately Jacob stayed out there, finishing probably close to a minute ahead of us, and I just rolled in on Andrew's wheel.

After we finished I rolled down the road to the park shelter where everyone was parked and decided to go down to the boat launch to have a quick look at the lake. I made a bit U-turn and headed back up the hill, only to suddenly hear my front tire explode.  I hadn't even come to a stop when my rear tire did the same thing. I didn't remember rolling over anything, but somehow I had slashed both sidewalls. It was kind of weird. Anyway, by the time I got a copy of the results onto my flashdrive and we finished up the post-event report I was soaked with sweat. The car thermometer read between 99 and 101 all the way home.