Back to LaPlace

It was a whole week out and I was already starting to feel stressed about the LAMBRA Time Trial Championship. No doubt I wouldn't have felt stressed had I been planning on actually racing. Instead, I'd be officiating and race directing. Things really started to get complicated on Monday when after I dropped Danielle off at the airport and then learned I had to make an unplanned little trip to Houston for a couple of days of meetings about  and upcoming DOE proposal for a "Modular Chemical Process Intensification Institute for Clean Energy Manufacturing." Candy was already in Atlanta at a meeting until Wednesday. So I made some quick airline and hotel reservations that had me leaving for the airport around 4:15 am on Wednesday in order to arrive in time to make the start of the workshop around 8 am. The meeting went fine, and I was back home early Wednesday evening, but it all really cut into the time I would otherwise have had to get things together for the time trial over in LaPlace on Sunday.  I had some new caution signs to pick up on Thursday, and my brother and sister in law were coming in on Friday. Online registration was set to end Friday night. Before I left work on Friday I printed out release forms for everyone who had already registered, but with another five hours of registration time left I knew there would be more. That evening my brother and his wife, came over, I drank a fair bit of wine, and periodically checked the online registration numbers. By the time registration closed around midnight we had around 108 riders. After everyone went to sleep, I was up until around 2 am seeding riders based on their USAC time trial ranking points, setting up the results workbooks, assigning bib numbers, etc.

A few hours later it was time to head out to the Giro Ride. The weather was nice and there was a good group, so it was a pretty good ride, but as soon as I got home I started sorting out release forms and stapling bib numbers to them, being careful to avoid missing any or getting them out of order. Once bib numbers were assigned, I then had to re-sort the forms with numbers into alpha order within categories so that it would be easy to find each rider's form at registration on Sunday. I think it was probably 1 pm before I finally peeled off my riding clothes and took a shower. Before it got dark I loaded the podium and tent into the car to save some time the next morning, and then grilled steak and chicken for dinner. Finally I got all of the stuff down in the basement staged for loading into the car early Sunday morning.

Arriving at the race venue around 6 am on Sunday I was relieved to find a number of volunteers already there. With a nice breeze blowing and unseasonably tolerable temperatures, it was quite pleasant for those of us working the race. For the riders, however, there were 12.5 miles of significant headwind waiting for them. With 108 riders and a couple of time gaps for the 10 km and 20 km riders, was starting riders for about two hours straight before I could switch to working on the results.  That all went fairly smoothly, even though we had a few illegible numbers on the results sheet and had to radio out to the finish line to confirm them from the backup sheets. Anyway, the TT was a success by all accounts and the club definitely came out ahead on it financially, which is good because we probably won't for the Tour de Louisiane stage race a week and a half from now.

Once I got home I spent another hour or two publishing results to the website and finishing the post-event report. By then all of the sleep deprivation from the prior week was really starting to catch up with me. I think I went to sleep around 8:30 that night.

Next weekend I'm planning on racing the Feliciana Road Race over around St. Francisville and then the next weekend is the Tour de Louisiane.  If I can just make it through that weekend, the rest of the season should be easy! Bob and Roberta and Mignon and Fred have been pretty busy making logistical arrangements for the Tour. It's really a ton of work to make sure all of the arrangements are made for three different venues over two days - police, volunteers, hay bales, portable toilets, meetings with the city, permits, sponsors, banners, goody bags, etc., etc.  Having three NOBC-promoted events in quick succession this year has definitely been a little stressful.