Rain Complications

The weather's been kind of crazy all over the place, it seems. I was watching the live video of the Charlotte criterium Saturday night. This is a huge event, culminating with a $15k women's race followed by a $15k men's Pro race.  It was raining for most of the women's race but they made it through without problems. The men's race was another story. They were only ten or fifteen minutes into it when the rain started coming down in biblical proportions. It was pretty bad, but these were pros and they were handling it until the officials decided to stop the race. I can think of a lot of reasons for that, but for a big race with the big teams and all, I was a little surprised. I figured they would re-start the race once the rain let up, but the rain didn't really let up much and they ended up cancelling it. Wow. No prizes and no points for teams that must have spent tons of money to get there. I wonder if the promoters had event cancellation insurance and if that influenced the decision.

Anyway, this morning I saw the video of the huge pile-up at the Red Hook criterium that happened when one of the lead motos stalled just past the start.  Of course, the fact that this race is essentially designed to ensure the maximum number of crashes didn't help. I mean, having a big field doing a criterium on the street on track bikes is just asking for disaster. The event(s) is hugely popular, but personally, as a bike race, I think it's kind of stupid in the same way I think professional wrestling is kind of stupid.

So I ended up not going to the collegiate race in College Station since they had enough drivers and I really didn't want to miss another weekend of riding. In a way it's good that I didn't go because I think I would have gone a little crazy when the sheriff showed up at the circuit race and shut it down Saturday morning.  I guess proper arrangements hadn't been made or something.  As it was, they were really lucky that the rainstorms missed them both days for the most part.  The SCCCC road season was pretty screwy this year with the Arkansas criteriums being cancelled because the course wasn't secured, and then the MSU criteirums being cancelled because of rain, and then the Texas A&M circuit race being cancelled (all except the Cat. A). With only four races this year, the Tulane race was the only one where all three races happened, and so far it's the only one for which results have been posted. Anyway, Adrian won the Cat. B season overall, and Hannah won the Women's C overall, but I guess the relatively low participation at races this year keep them from winning the Division 2 championship.

Here in New Orleans we kind of lucked out both Saturday and Sunday mornings. I got in two pretty good Giro Rides, got back home, and watched it rain the rest of the day.  Both days. Major rain.