Intermission

Back in the day, and I mean way back in the day, there was something called the "off-season." Sure, there were rumors of riders up in the northeast racing in the cold and mud, but for the most part they were entirely unconfirmed. By the end of October everyone was riding slower and shorter and spending time catching up on long-neglected chores, or studies, or bike maintenance. It was time to re-grease the bottom bracket and headset, patch the pile of flat tubulars, and pull out the long-sleeve wool jerseys and long tights.

Those days are gone.

What was once the off-season is now the scant one or two weeks between the last road race and the first cyclocross race.  Sometimes less.  So this weekend was, as close as I can tell, it. After a nice Friday coffee ride with some of the Tulane riders, I got up Saturday morning in the dark to ride out to the Giro Ride. If I'd been able to see the sky in the pre-dawn darkness I'd have seen nothing but clouds. The hurricane that had plowed into the west coast of Mexico was now an area of rain half the size of Texas inching its way toward Louisiana.  Things were not looking good for Sunday, so I had stuck a packet of HammerGel in my pocket with the idea of maybe putting in a few extra miles afterward.

The typical group was on hand for the 7 am roll-out under a dark, cloudy sky, and one of the guys, surveying the roster, remarked that it would probably be a fast ride.  But it wasn't. Not that it was exactly a casual pace, but it was definitely one of the smoothest, most steady rides of the year.  It seemed that almost everyone was on the same page. Indeed, I had the feeling that the weekend was a kind of intermission for everyone - a time to throttle back a bit between road and cyclocross seasons.  Now, I'm quite sure that most of the riders in attendance had no plans whatsoever of racing cyclocross, but it was just that all of the necessary cues had come together on the same weekend.  There were no nearby races, there were no nearby charity rides, it was the last and darkest weekend of daylight savings time, and it was cloudy and breezy.  For a change I made a few intentional efforts rather than merely attempting to respond to the efforts of the guys on the front.

So as the Giro was winding down along Lakeshore Drive I mentioned I was thinking about doing a few extra miles on the lake trail bike path. When everyone else turned off at Marconi, Ben, Jaden, Grayson and I continued on.  I was thinking we'd ride out to Kenner and turn around, but once we got out there we decided to do the ride around the back of the airport to the river bike path and come back into town that way. That particular route involves a couple of little quirks. One is the gate at the pumping station near I-10 which was closed. That required a bit of a detour in order to get past I-10.  The second thing about the route is that the road around the back of the airport, right at the end of the east-west runway, is gravel.  Fortunately it was in pretty good shape since we haven't had much rain around here in weeks.  Once we got to the river we checked out the levee bike path, but was still closed, so we rode down Jefferson Highway all the way in to Moss Street where we could finally get back on the bike path.  By that point I Grayson was starting to struggle a bit and I figured he was probably about to bonk, but since we only had about six or seven miles to go I didn't say anything.  Well, a little while later Jaden looked back and couldn't see Grayson.  We turned back and found him sitting on the side of the levee.  Jaden gave him something to eat and he told us he's just ride back in easy, so we cruised the last few miles.

Ready for 'Cross

Well, as predicted, it started raining around 3 am this morning and probably won't stop for the next day - or two. With 88 miles yesterday I decided to take a rest day today. Of course, that didn't involve actual "rest."  After a couple cups of coffee I ended up heading down to the basement to transform the Pennine from "rain bike" to "cyclocross bike."  It's a very retro version of a not-quite correct cyclocross bike, but for the kind of cyclocross riding I'm likely to do it will suffice.  First, I removed the fenders. Then I rescued the clincher cyclocross wheels from the corner where they've been all summer and put the on the bike. Since they are 700C and my regular wheels for that bike are old 27" I then had to readjust the brakes. Since I have an antique 5-speed freewheel on the cyclocross wheel that is something like a 15-27, I then had to remove the antique Simplex derailleur and replace it with an equally antique Suntour long-cage derailleur. That completed the transformation, such as it is.

Next, I finally decided to re-wire the light fixture in the hallway that has a bad socket that's been sputtering lately and trying to burn down the house, so I headed over to the hardware store in the rain to pick up three new light sockets so I could re-wire the whole thing, which of course involved a little creativity since they didn't have exactly the kind of socket I needed. That's about when I got the email that my bank account was overdrafted.  Turns out the last couple of deposits I'd made went into my savings account instead of my checking account.

In the middle of all of this, the damned swipe-card door lock on the Tulane cycling center isn't working AGAIN.  Since I'm the only one on this side of Lake Pontchartrain with the key, and since the lousy rainy weather had everyone wanting to put in some time on the WattBikes, there were a few text messages and emails going around and a couple of people coming over to pick up or return the key.  This whole thing with the door lock has been very frustrating.  Kind of like the situation I had with my AT&T Internet.  They are trying the same "fixes" over and over again and expecting a different result each time, which of course isn't happening.  Something's broken but I don't know enough about how the thing works to guess whether it's the lock itself, the wireless connection to the server, or the underlying data that the lock needs in order to know which ID cards are valid for that room.  I guess we're going to have to exhaust every other possibility, more than once, before actually replacing the lock or figuring out what the real problem is.

While You Were Riding

I hated to miss three days of riding, especially this time of year, but duty called. Arriving via shuttle with Andy Hollinger of Texas in Colorado Springs on Friday afternoon, with a clear blue sky and temperatures in the 60s, my first thought was, "I wish I had my bike."  Alas, I was travelling light and really wouldn't have any time to ride anyway.

In keeping with the "breath of fresh air" mentality currently driving things at USA Cycling since the arrival of the new CEO, this year's annual meeting of the Local Associations was combined with the Race Director's meeting and was held mostly at the Marriott hotel near USAC headquarters.  Although I do miss the years when we met at the USOC, I must admit that the amenities at the hotel certainly made for a very nice meeting. There had been meetings all day on Friday that were focused on Mountain Bike, which of course I missed, but at least I was there in time for the open bar and dinner at USAC headquarters that evening. I wish I could remember all of the names of the people I meet at these meetings.  Perhaps I should invest in a body camera? Anyway, we started out at 8 am Saturday for a full day of sessions, the first of which was an overview of new directions by the new CEO Derek Bouchard-Hall. One thing that really separates this particular CEO from his predecessors is that he has a legitimate road racing background (on top of an impressive business one) that includes everything from Cat. 5 to Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem and the 2000 Olympics. Notably, he commented during the meeting that all the time he was racing he was basically unaware of the army of people, mostly volunteers, that kept the whole U.S. bike racing thing going.

I have a lot of scribbled notes from the meeting, which I think was about the best one we've had yet. In no particular order, here are the things that I thought particularly significant:

Overall take-away:  There is presently a lot of enthusiasm and, dare I say, excitement at USAC. Nonetheless, USAC and in particular the Board will have to make some hard decisions about policies for 2016. Funding priorities will shift, probably gradually, a bit away from elite athletics and more toward membership. Despite claiming around 70,000 members, racing licenses are down 1-2%, events are down 3-5%, and the number of Racer-days is down about 20%.

Finances: USAC has been bleeding for the past couple of  years and will certainly not be able to reverse that trend during the 2016 year. The current annual run rate loss is around $1M. On the plus side, however, there is a very healthy reserve in place that will allow for a strong balance sheet, so dramatic cuts will not be necessary right now and there is some time to make changes aimed at increasing revenue and decreasing losses. A couple of the key points regarding budget and costs are:  (1) the attempt to make National Championships self-funding has clearly failed. The national championships lose about $700k annually. (2) The elite athletics program, which should be funded almost entirely through the USAC Development Foundation, the USOC, and other sources, lost $1.4 million. It will take some time to unwind some of that (i.e. contracts, houses in Italy and Belgium, etc.), but clearly the goal is to minimize the amount of membership revenue that is subsidizing the elite athletics programs. Even so, our successes internationally have been mainly in women's road racing and BMX, and we basically don't even try to compete in track. Unlike other countries, USAC doesn't get any government support for its national teams. (3) The membership programs (licenses, event permits, etc.) actually generates about $800k in "profit."

Policy Changes:  Derek is clearly very interested in expanding anti-doping, women's cycling, safety, and advocacy.  Those are all things that have generated a lot of feedback from the membership.

Organizational Changes: There will be a Membership Director position for which they are currently recruiting.  The entire IT system will be completely re-built with the help of an external consultant. They expect this to be substantially done by the end of 2016. There are real efforts to work more closely with organizations like USABMX and ATRA. Another goal is to make national championships self-funded within two years. As we've all seen, USAC is trying to increase its relevance to non-traditional events like fondos, charity rides, etc.

Possibilities:  Some things that might happen in 2016 include making the Race Director certification optional until it can be improved, reducing the cost of 1-day licenses or providing rebates to promoters for them (if it doesn't impact annual license sales too much), doubling anti-doping testing and removing the Local Association funding requirement.

Insurance: The take-home message here is that we have one of the best insurance advisors in the country (Willis Global Sports Services) working with USAC *for free* (he has strong personal connections to racing) to make sure we get the best coverage at the lowest cost and have solid risk management policies in place. USAC currently charges $3.60 per rider per day for races.  The actual cost works out to about $3.40. Bike racing averages 2.5 deaths per year at USAC events and the average claim that the insurance company pays is $635,000, with the largest $4.25 million.  Since 2004, USAC's cost for insurance has been around $6M, but the insurance companies have paid out more like $16 million. For the record, rider surcharges cover the general liability event coverage while license fees cover the excess medical rider accident coverage.

Marketing: This brief session was focused mainly on the really large races like Joe Martin and Cross-Reno so some of it just didn't apply to local events, but there were a few take-aways for me:  Partnering with a marketing firm as a sponsor can work well.  Holding a raffle with the sponsor's information printed on the back of the tickets can work. Making a big inforgraphic for an event can work. Expanding the podium to the top 5 or 7 riders is appreciated.

Local Association Agreements: USAC is relaxing much of the documentation requirements for the local associations. In the past we had to submit financial statements, tax returns, etc.  Now we will  just need to provide them upon request, going back three years.

Fees: As usual there was a ton of discussion about the various fees and also as usual there was little consensus.  Most people would like a lower 1-day license fee, especially if it would allow them to build it into the registration fee so that the Cat. 5s are paying the same entry fees as everyone else, even if the promoter is not making much per entry.

Race Director Certification: The requirement that people be certified Race Directors in order to get event permits has been pretty much a failure. USAC is looking for an advisory committee for the RD program.  Certification will probably not be required for 2016.

Tools:  Check out the UCI "Road Races Organizer's Guide."  It is very comprehensive and basically tells you how to run the Tour de France.  USAC will try to provide more demographic data for the Local Associations and promoters.

Women:  There was a short panel on women's racing that mostly covered some current successful programs like littlebellas.com and betibikebash.com.  The bottom line is that we need a woman to step up and take ownership of promoting women's racing.

Racing Rules:  Yeah, that wasn't covered at all. USAC just announced the new Technical Director, Chuck Hodge.  The Sport Committees are meeting this week in Colorado Springs, so I guess we won't hear anything solid about rule changes for a little while yet.

Rocktoberfesting

This morning's ride on the lakefront was pretty nice.

Rocktoberfest is a late-season local criterium that's been held off-and-on since 1999. It had been started by the Lakeshore Cycling Club, and later adopted by the NOBC after that club dissolved. Until this year, the last time it was held was 2009. So how is it that it happened in 2015?  Well, it all started with a call from Eric at Eastbank Cyclery. For a couple of years we'd been kicking around the idea of holding a criterium at The Esplanade, a shopping mall out on the western edge of the metro area, in the city of Kenner. This particular mall has a "ring road" around the parking lot, and has always looked like it would be a good place for a race. The mall itself had been struggling for at least a decade, and recently the city of Kenner, and the parish economic development group had kind of taken it on as a project. Eric knew some folks on the city council and gave me a call way back around March or April and I told him we could probably resurrect Rocktoberfest.

We had funny Octoberfest hats that wouldn't
stay on in the wind.

So next thing I know we're meeting with the mall and council member and JEDCO folks and as far as they're concerned it's a "go."  Of course, nobody is offering to put up any actual money, and although I'm not saying it out loud, I know from experience that an October race is unlikely to garner huge participation. I suggested a few things to make it more attractive to the local community, like having beer, music, perhaps a swap meet, etc., but also made it clear that I was not a festival promoter and could really handle only the bike race part. So months later I line up the USAC event permit, and then find out that we also need to get a permit from the city, and another from the mall, and special language for the insurance certificate, and two police officers, etc. We've also included a pretty big prizelist in hopes of drawing in some riders. The bottom line is that we need about $2,000 cash just to have any chance of breaking even. One of the club members somehow found us the sponsorship, and in fact put up half of it himself.  Meanwhile, as the event date is approaching I'm detecting some actual interest locally, so as long as the weather isn't miserable, I'm feeling OK about participation.

We ended up with around 70 entries, which was around what I'd expected. Really, though, there should have been more like 125 just from the local people.  Here we are putting on a safe criterium right in town with a low entry fee and large prizelist and I could probably name 25 people who "train" every day but didn't come out to race. I don't really get it. How many Giro Rides can you do?

Anyway, since we had Ricky and Mark officiating in addition to myself, I went ahead and rode the Masters race. Since I cut the toe pad or whatever that thing was that Bont had glued to the front of my shoes off, I clipped in without incident for a change. Despite the small field, the race was fairly fast.  Rob was launching attacks and then for some reason getting pulled back. Meanwhile, I was really liking the course.  It was an L-shaped course with a long sweeping stretch into the start/finish, marred only by a brisk north wind. Starting the last lap I was in a pretty good position but spent a little time in the wind before the last turn and when I hit the headwind I pretty much just sat up rather than start the 500-meter drag race to the line. Still had a lot of fun, though. There are some photos here.

The event went off smoothly, so other than the kind of low turnout, it was quite successful.  If we can find someone who can put on a little festival inside the course next year we could really have something. Especially if there's beer.

Back at home I'd been suffering for months with increasingly flaky internet service, and the week before the race it had gotten completely out of hand. Over the course of the past two months I think I'd had six service calls.  AT&T was very responsive every time, but the technicians were having a hard time wrapping their collective heads around what I kept telling them, which was that there was a problem somewhere outside with the line. Before the last service visit on Tuesday they had replaced the modem three times, replaced the wire from the modem to the wall jack, replaced the wall jack, replaced the wire from the wall jack to the NID (in our case, conveniently located in the basement), replaced the wire from the NID to the pole outside the house, and replaced the connection box on the wire next to the pole. Every time, they would take a shot at replacing something else, then plug into the NID and announce "it's not the modem, it's a line problem."  Anyway, on Tuesday the same guy showed up who had spent a few hours with us on earlier visits.  First, he replaced the modem again (we now have the top of the line modem, BTW) then sat there running diagnostics and shaking his  head. Finally he said that he was going to get them to switch us over to an entirely different wire pair because the one we were on must be defective.  No kidding??  A couple of hours later I got a call saying they had made the switch and the modem looked like it was working fine.  I went home that evening cautiously optimistic. Indeed, the internet connection has been solid as a rock for the past two days, so I am starting to feel a lot better about the whole thing.  I really didn't want to have to switch everything over to Cox but I was about at the end of my rope.  The entire experience had started to feel more like a science experiment, however, and I just couldn't let it drop without finding out the answers.

Once Again to Dahlonega

Last weekend was our annual road trip up to Dahlonega for the Six Gap Century.  This year I went up with four of the Tulane riders, and with two minivans everyone had lots of space for a change. After meeting up at 6:30 am at the Tulane Cycling Center, we hit the road a bit after 7 am.

I was driving up with Charlotte.  Ben S., Andrew and Quentin were in the other van.  Almost immediately I lost track of the other van, only to find out later that they had decided to stop and get coffee and gas without telling us. We thought we'd stop for lunch at Firehouse Subs around Auburn, and although we did, we got stuck in football game traffic so we told the other van, which was a good fifteen minutes behind us, not to try. Anyway, we finally regrouped up in Dahlonega where we registered and watched the last half of the Cat. 1/2 Women's race. There was a 3-person break until one of them crashed right next to us coming out of the circle, leaving a 2-up sprint between Debbie Milne, who is 46 this year, and Megan Heath, who is a 16 year old rider with Frazier. This time age and treachery failed to win out over youth and skill, but it was close! So after watching the first part of the Pro/1/2 race (Michael Mcbrien of Team LaS'port took 2nd) we filled up on Mexican food at Pueblos and headed back south to our hotel about half an hour away.

After a particularly bad night's sleep we were up pretty early with the goal of getting to the parking lot an hour ahead of time. Unfortunately we ended up leaving a little late and by the time we got there the main lot was full, but we found a nice spot along the little road leading to the football stadium (for future reference, there's a bathroom there!). Preparations were a bit rushed, and as I discovered about an hour later I failed to put the bottle of HammerGel I'd prepared into my pocket.  Luckily I had already put two gel packs in there as backup, so at least I had something.

We rolled down close to the front of the rapidly growing crowd where we found Steve and Pat, and waited for the start.  There had been a light mist falling all night and the roads were all fairly wet and the sky cloudy, but at least it wasn't actually raining. I had my arm-warmers on to take the chill off of the first hour or so.  The start this year was pretty conservative all the way to the first Gap, which isn't actually one of the "Six." As usual, that one was fairly steady and I was pleased to find that all seven of us were still basically together. Andrew rolled off the front on the first of the main climbs (I think), and Pat rolled off the back, but the rest of us stayed more or less together all the way to the top of Hogpen.

This was the first time I've ridden this with a heart rate monitor, and I actually found it to be helpful.  Go figure. On the first long climb I found that my comfort zone was right around 88% of max. I was OK up to about 91% for short periods, but 88%, which is around 165 bpm, felt very sustainable, so I decided to make that my limit. This proved to be effective at keeping me out of the red, and as a result there were only a couple of times when my speed dropped down close to Garmin auto-pause territory. Granted, the arbitrary limit probably cost me a few minutes, but in general I felt considerably more comfortable and controlled on the climbs than usual. I ended up with an average heart rate for the whole ride of 150 and a max of 174, so kept it under control and really never pushed it to the limit.

So I had been considering stopping at one of the rest stops to re-stock on calories, but as I came over the top of Unicoi or Hogpen there was someone holding out half of a banana, so I grabbed it and stuck it into my pocket before the road plunged downward.  The downhills were mostly wet this year, and between that, a couple of slower riders ahead of me, and a car on the Wolfpen descent, my downhill speeds were definitely slower than usual, maxing out at only 48 mph.

Climbing - slid all the way back on the saddle

The Hogpen climb was notable especially for the fact that we rode up into the mountain mist (aka clouds) about halfway up, which was pretty cool.  Amazingly, everyone was pretty much still together at Hogpen, where Ben and Quentin stopped for refreshments, but I kept on going. I think Steve was already a minute or two ahead of me by then. He always does those long climbs a couple of minutes faster than I. Ben broke a spoke near the top of Wolfpen Gap and ended up having to get a ride in the sag wagon from there. After Wolfpen I was pretty much on my own and definitely feeling the miles and climbing. I stopped briefly at one of the rest stops where I filled a bottle with Coke (it was delicious) and picked up a little Payday bar in case I bonked. My quads were tired, but most of all, though, my neck was killing me from the downhills. My back was relatively good despite all of the seated climbing I was doing, and I have to credit my Bont shoes for keeping my right foot more comfortable than it's ever been on this ride.

Post-ride pasta and salad at the school cafeteria

As usual, I latched onto a couple of guys who came past me on the last ten mile stretch.  We traded pulls for a few miles, and then with maybe four miles to go a larger group came by, so we stayed with them to the finish. I ended up with an official time of 6:11:39, which was significantly slower than usual (ride time was about 6:10), which was 79th overall and 11th in the 55+ age group. Andrew ended up finishing at 5:56:01, placing him 53rd overall and 9th in his age group. Quentin came in at 6:28:47, at 106th place.  Steve's time is still missing from the results, but he should have been a few minutes ahead of me. Charlotte rode the shorter 5-Gap ride, finishing in 4:51:45, which was 23rd overall, 7th in her age group.

The ride back was the usual drag, with light rain all the way from Montgomery home. The drive was helped by caffeine and the fact that the rental van had satellite radio, but hindered by a drawn-out search in Mobile for a gas station that would take the university's fleet gas card, and then by some significant rain all along I-10 from Mobile. It was a pretty good trip, however, and by Tuesday most of the soreness had worn off and I was back to the regular training routine.