Bugged Out in Brookhaven

Coming over the top of the climb in my
usual spot - probably the hot spot lap

The weather forecast was looking pretty dismal on Friday afternoon when I hit the road for Brookhaven, MS and the resurrected Mississippi Gran Prix stage race. Just in case the 50-90% chances of rain weren't enough disincentive, there were other complications. Candy had a conference in California, so I'd need to find someone to keep the dog alive until Monday. On the plus side, Christian had already reserved a room so at least I'd have a place to sleep Saturday night. Since I was going to be officiating the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium on Friday night, however, I needed to get to Brookhaven around 5 pm. Also, I had the generator, race clock, and radios that would be needed for the weekend. Although I was sure the Friday evening criterium would be over well before any rain showed up, I was already resigned to racing in the rain on Saturday and Sunday, and can't say I was much looking forward to that.

The Friday night crit went pretty well. The officials, including me, were staying at a guest house in back of someone's home near town, so we all headed over there to finish up and post the results. Considering the 50+ rider field and difficult camera lighting situation for a race finishing after dark, the results were pretty good, which is to say that there were only a few riders for whom we had no actual finish placings. I slept on a little couch that night, and we were up early the next morning to drive up to the road race course north of Brookhaven where I switched, at least temporarily, from official mode to bike racer mode. The masters field had only fifteen riders in it, but I wasn't expecting to be finishing ahead of most of them in this 60 mile road race. It's not the right way to be thinking when starting a race, obviously, but I was feeling kind of mentally and physically drained already. I'd ridden the road course a few times in prior years, so I knew there were a couple of significant uphill stretches on the back side. In my pessimism, I was fully expecting to get dropped on one of them. Well, that didn't take long to happen. On the first lap I was sitting at the back of the field as we started up one of the long climbs. The pace didn't seem very fast, so I wasn't really paying much attention since it was still early in the race. We were about halfway up when I finally got a look at the front of the group and realized there was already this big gap that had split the field right in half. It was kind of strange because back where I was there didn't seem to have been any acceleration at all. It was like someone on the middle of the paceline just let the gap open without even trying to stay with the riders ahead. Anyway, by the time we came over the top the gap was way too large to close alone. I ended up with three other riders - Rick, Brett, and VJ. VJ would take long pulls as usual, and we were working together fairly well, but nobody seemed willing to make the extra effort needed to catch, and for a long time we could see the front group about a minute up the road. Somewhere along the way we rode through a little rain shower, but it wasn't too bad and half of the course never saw any rain at all. I was feeling OK most of the time, but by then we were just riding in to finish. A few miles from the finish Brett took a hard pull that I guess is where we lost VJ, so we ended up with just three of us. At 200 meters Rick jumped and I started to go to stay with him, but didn't have any motivation to come around. By the time the TT was scheduled to start the weather was looking a lot worse. I arrived at the TT location in the rain with thunder rumbling in the distance. I really didn't even want to get on the bike. I rode the time trial with no motivation at all, just to finish so I could race the next day.

Saturday night I stayed at the local Comfort Inn with Christian and Rachel, arriving pretty late since I was helping with results and then went to eat at a local Mexican place with the other officials.

Nice shot (not mine) of the climb with the
200 meter flag in the background

The rain was supposed to be even worse on Sunday, and when I arrived at the circuit race course I had no reason to doubt that. It was raining and there was thunder and lightning all over the place. I  helped get the finish line set up as the riders for the first race started showing up. The officials postponed the first race for about twenty minutes so that most of the rain and lightning could move through. The Cat 4/5 women and Juniors raced pretty much in the rain, but by the time the next race started the sky was clear and the sun was starting to heat thing up a lot. The Masters race was mostly pretty slow. It was a 24 mile race on a 6 mile circuit that included a mile or two of really rough old asphalt bordering on gravel. Naturally, that was where someone would attack on every lap. At the end of the lap was a long uphill that, for some reason, we rode up at a smooth tempo except for the points hot spot on the second lap. On the last lap everything was still together until Butch launched just before the rough section. I was right there and went with him, but burned my last few matches to do so. When he eased up one of his teammates counter-attacked and next thing I knew I was off the back. I could see that the group had split.  I backed down a bit to recover and once I got off of the rough section I could see that the group had come back together and slowed down considerably. Wes, in the follow car, came around me and I got a little draft off of his van for a couple of minutes. When I re-joined the group it was going about 18 mph with the finish just about 2 k up the road. I was a little tired from the solo chase, so when the sprint started at the base of the climb I just rode tempo up to the top. It wasn't like I was in contention for anything. Even so, I felt like it was a good weekend for me and I was glad I'd gone. My race fitness has been really slow to come back, in no small part due to the fact that I haven't been doing much in the way of intensity on my training rides. Still, there were some times when I felt like I was going better than I had at the last race, so I guess that's some kind of progress.

I changed back into regular clothes and helped with the officiating a bit for the next couple of races.   That's when I started noticing the itchy insect bites on my neck. I could feel three bumps in a row and knew immediately what it probably was.  Bedbugs. I'd been bitten by bedbugs a few years earlier, also at a hotel in Brookhaven.  Amazingly, it never rained again. The Cat. 1/2/3 race looked fairly animated and thanks to the long uphill the results were pretty straightforward despite the fact that Ricky was having trouble with one of the finish line cameras. I stuck around for the Cat. 1/2/3 awards, and even got a small prize for my lackluster GC placing in the Masters race.  By the time I was on the road for home the bites on my neck were all swollen and itchy and I could feel more bites around my eye and on one  hand and arm. That all got pretty uncomfortable by evening despite copious amounts of hydrocortisone cream. I had planned on riding but was so uncomfortable I just made some coffee instead. I took some Benadryl this morning, but things are still pretty itchy and swollen so I'm about to take some more. I assume the groggy spacey feeling is from the Benadryl.