Renaissance

Last weekend there was a new race, The Race at Renaissance, up in Jackson, Mississippi. It's been a long time since there's been a race with such a large prizelist within easy driving distance, and although I was planning on racing the Masters race, I was really more concerned that we didn't screw up the officiating too much. With $5k in the Saturday time trial and then $15k in the Sunday criteriums, I knew that it would pull in a few teams and privateers even though it was a first-year race that showed up on the calendar a little late to make it into the official plans for many.

After work on Friday I waited out a big thunderstorm before hitting the road for the 3-hour drive, and so didn't arrive until nearly 10:30 pm. On the plus side, I had free lodging with one of the other officials at the Hyatt. Both the Time Trial and Criterium were staged at the Renaissance shopping center north of Jackson in Ridgeland. This was the heart of suburban living - fountains, landscaped traffic circles, women's clothing stores, chain restaurants, etc. Anyway, I was registered for just the Masters criterium, which was only 30 minutes, and was more preoccupied with the officiating side of it, so I was mentally out of it before it started.

The organizers, Nunchuck Bunnies, and their sponsors really pulled out all the stops for this event, even though pre-registrations were really low. For a race with this kind of prizelist, you would think there would be more than the 223 registrations they had for the weekend. For some of those Cat. 1s and Cat. 2s who did make the trip, however, it would be a rather spectacular payday.

Sitting on the back of the breakaway after being lapped.  I could do this all day!

Saturday I worked the time trial.  The organizers had built a start ramp that was, as they typically are, a little scary. A few riders opted to start on the road. The Cat. 5s were particularly interesting, and we nearly lost a couple over the edge. With some big gaps between categories, we were able to keep up with the results pretty well, even while the race was still in progress. Things went pretty smoothly and on time, with the only complication being that they were doing the podium presentations way on the other side of the shopping center. Afterward, I went back to the hotel and posted results to the LAMBRA website, then wandered off to lunch. Mike, Ricky and I then did a nice 30 mile ride on the Natchez Trace around 2 pm that featured enough rain for a good soaking and a whole lot more traffic than I had expected. Right as we headed off to dinner I got an email from one of the women questioning some of the TT times.  After much investigation, which had to wait until after dinner, we discovered that two of the TT finish times had gotten swapped. One of the women who had been listed in like 5th was actually 2nd and the other was dropped down to like 7th. This was, of course, many hours after results had been posted at the race, awards had been made, podium photos taken, etc. I was rather surprised that neither of the riders involved had noticed their times were off by something like twenty seconds. Although I corrected the results on the website, it was way too late to do anything about the prizes. Moral of the story:  Check the freaking results and say something if something looks wrong.

Scott and Emile sprint it out for the win as I watch from behind.

Sunday morning the races started at 6:30 am. Yeah. At least the start/finish was within walking distance of the hotel. The organizers couldn't secure the venue, which went right through the middle of the outdoor shopping center, past noon, so they had seven criteriums squeezed into the morning. We somehow got everything off right on time, although the registration data was a little sketchy.  For most of the races we had riders on the line who weren't on our start lists, and the number sequences were kind of all over the place since riders who had registered in more than one criterium were given only one number. The masters race was one of the earlier ones, and the races prior to it were fairly small, so I ran off to get in a little warmup for about half an hour. Unfortunately my heart wasn't really in it and I lined up near the back completely devoid of self-confidence about this race. Naturally, the first few laps were really fast. I don't know exactly how fast because I haven't uploaded the Garmin data yet. About half of the course was on those concrete bricks that they like to use in places like this. It wasn't like cobbles or anything, but it definitely sucked a little power out of your legs. Anyway, I pretty quickly found myself near the back of a long line, having to stand up out of the corners. Soon enough a gap opened up a couple of riders ahead of me and since my head was elsewhere I didn't react quickly. Matt, who had been behind me, came around and I got on his wheel for a while but ended up off the back with Peter Stephens pretty soon thereafter. We cruised around the course a couple mph slower than the pack until I could see a small break about to catch us. A lap or two later Emile Abraham and Scott Kuppersmith came by and I latched onto them pretty easily.  There were only maybe five or six laps to go, and of course I wasn't allowed to do any work in the break, so I had an extremely enjoyable ride following them to the finish.  As a bonus, I got into a few nice photos that someone took. At the finish I saw the medics attending to someone just before the finish line. It turned out to be Alex Habbit who had been in the break and had crashed pretty heavily just before Peter and I had been caught. I turned around right after finishing to check on him, and a minute later found my front wheel was flat. Glad that hadn't happened on the last lap.

The rest of the morning was more officiating. The Pro/1/2/3 criterium looked to be pretty fast with a number of rider dropping out, one crash, and eventually a big split. As Ben Spain described it this morning, the pack was pretty neatly split with all of the usual LAMBRA riders except Jaden in the second group. The race results were pretty telling.  You had to go down to 12th place to find the first rider who wasn't Cat. 1.  Everyone in the lead break of eight was Cat. 1. The first Cat. 3 was Ben at 16th.

So it turned out to be a really nice event. A ton of riders rode two criteriums on Sunday. One was Debbie Milne who won the Women's 40+ race and then the Women's Cat. 1/2/3 race, and picked up a number of $300 and $400 primes that are pretty rare in Women's racing (the event was organized by a women's team, so they had around $5k in the women's races). I'm sure Debbie took home at least $1k, probably significantly more. I can't think of anyone more deserving, though. She's been racing all over the country this year with Flamingo Racing/Stradalli, including some impressive wins and a national championship. I'm pretty sure some of her teammates are as old as her son.

With all of the criteriums having gone off spot on time, we were all done and packed up by about 1:00 or 1:30. We never had a drop of rain for any of the races, but on the way back home I drove through a couple of pretty intense thunderstorms along I-55. Even so, I was back home before 4:30, leaving time before dinner to post results to the LAMBRA site. Just need to complete the post-event report, report of occurrence from the crash in the masters race, and update the LCCS results.  Next up are the team time trial champinships and criterium down around Thibodaux, LA.