Restless at Rouge-Roubaix

Splitting off from the Giro before things got fast.

According to my loosely formulated recovery plan I dutifully headed out to Starbucks on Saturday morning to meet the Giro Ride for the first time in five weeks. The clavicle has, I assume, been healing at a reasonably normal rate and for the most part has not been painful while on the bike. I can't say the same for removing T-shirts or lifting the front wheel over bumps, or taking out the garbage, but whatever, it's about where I would expect it to be. So the plan was to have a cup of coffee, ride out with the Giro along Lakeshore Drive where the pace is conversational, and then turn around at Seabrook and head back home to prepare for a drive up to St. Francisville where I was scheduled to be Chief Judge for Rouge-Roubaix on Sunday.  Packed pick-up and late registration started at noon, so by 10:15 or so I was on the road with Danielle who was going to be helping with registration, manning the first feed zone, and then helping with scoring back at the finish line.

It started raining about halfway there, then stopped for a while as we got settled in at the St. Francisville Town Hall for our six-hour registration shift.  That all went pretty smoothly as riders, officials and volunteers filtered in, signed waivers, picked up their fancy fabric numbers, etc. By the end of the evening we had given out packets to all but 45 or 50 riders, which would make Sunday morning a little less intense. The organizers had gotten us rooms practically across the street at the St. Francisville Inn, a nice little bed and breakfast in the middle of town, directly in front of the start line. By the time we ate dinner it was starting to rain again, and I could hear rain all through the night as well.  Fortunately, by the time we headed out on Sunday morning for the 5:45 am packet pickup the rain had pretty much ended, but it was getting rather windy and cold.  I, for one, was glad I wasn't riding. We closed up registration on time and after fishing a piece of broken plastic from inside my little printer we headed over to the start line with start sheets and radios.  I tracked down the lead and follow car drivers and motorefs and got them all to download Zello if they hadn't already, since that was going to be our main "race radio" for the next seven hours or so.  By the time we started the first group, the Pro/1/2s, I was shivering from the cold.  I wouldn't warm up for another three or four hours.

A dirt section without mud

A few minutes after we started the Masters we heard there had been a pile-up even before they were out of the neutral section.  An ambulance had to be called for a rider with what turned out to be a broken hip, and as a result the Cat. 4s had to stop and wait for it to clear.  I'm not sure if the Cat. 5s and Women had to wait as well - the groups were starting at ten minute intervals. Anyway, once all of the groups and lead cars and follow cars and motorefs were gone I gathered up the computer and printer and headed for the finish line where the other two officials and I set up the tent and cameras and clock and computers and everything. As usual, there were church services going on across from the finish line and we had to wait that to end and the parked cars to move from the finish stretch.  In the meantime, we were getting great updates from the follow cars over our Zello channel which went a long way toward reducing the stress of not knowing if a bunch of riders was going to unexpectedly appear coming over the hill 200 meters from the finish line. The riders had been confronted with a sticky, muddy first dirt section rather than the usual loose gravel, and unlike previous years that first section proved to be one of the most decisive of the entire race. Many riders had to stop to clear the packed mud out from between their forks and tires when they came to grinding halts.  Others just powered through and sometimes ripped the derailleurs off their bikes.

Winner of the Pro/1/2 race

The finishes went pretty smoothly, or at least as smoothly as can be expected when five groups get scattered over about fifty miles of the countryside and ten minute gaps between groups start to become pointless. It gets very difficult to assemble results when riders are constantly coming across the line for, literally, three hours and you're trying to sort them out by class and category so you can at least post the top results for the podium ceremonies.  I think we did a pretty decent job with that - certainly better than in the past when the awards were being given out about a mile away from the finish line.  Anyway, it was a long day and a long drive home and the collarbone was a little achy by the end.

After skipping Monday morning (overslept) I went out this morning to meet the regular group on the Lakefront for what would be my first quasi-training ride in five weeks. It was particularly dark and rather cold and very windy but I knew it was now or never.  Fortunately the pace never got really fast, so my biggest concern was dealing with the crosswind eschelons and worrying about hitting something in the dark. A number of riders turned back at the end of Lakeshore Drive, so the group going out to Kenner was only five or six, which was good because that gave everyone a bit of a draft for the long head/crosswind outbound leg.  I arrived back home feeling OK but obviously a little tired. I guess it will be a few weeks before I am back in some kind of shape and not worrying so much about another crash.