Outnumbered

Nice photo of the rest of the masters field coming over "the hill" after the breaks were up the road.

Road racing is often a numbers game. Unless you're one of the pack supermen who can ride away from everyone at will, success often depends on the help of your teammates, or, lacking same, a loose and temporary and sometimes unreliable confederation of otherwise outnumbered riders. The effect of the numbers game is greatly magnified when the field size is small. Yesterday, the field was small.

Masters start, Alex launches

Sunday was the LAMBRA road championship up in Flora, Mississippi where it, thankfully, wasn't raining or flooding or hurricaning. I drove up late Saturday afternoon since I unexpectedly had access to the car because Candy's weekend conference in Baton Rouge had been cancelled because of Hurricane Harvey. I'd be helping out with officiating for the 8 am wave of races, and then riding the Masters race at 10:30. Arriving at the start early on Sunday Townsend and I got things set up for registration as Ricky and Mike A. started setting up the cameras and Mike M., Robert L. and numerous volunteers got the course signage, flags, etc. set up. They sky was overcast and it was humid, but the wind was light, the chance of significant rain low, and the temperature reasonable, at least for August in Mississippi. After getting the first three races done, I changed into my riding clothes, strapped on the helmet and did about one mile of warmup before going to the start line. Things were already not looking too favorable. Cspire had three riders; Acadiana had five. Between them, they comprised half the field. Steve Johnson and I represented NOBC. I think everyone else was essentially without teamates. The course was a bit over 11 miles and we'd be doing five laps, finishing with a fast flat stretch right after a slight downhill section. To complicate things a bit, the 40+ and 55+ groups were combined, and about half the field was 55+. In situations like that you never know who is going to chase who and who is going to block for whom.

Woody & Alex

From the gun, Alex (Acadiana) attacked and of course opened a big gap by the time most riders were clipped in. I figured if he could stay out there for 57 miles solo he deserved a gold medal. Once the pack got rolling you could tell that Alex wasn't pulling away very much, so I wasn't too concerned about it. Of course, none of the Acadiana guys would do anything but soft-pedal at the front, but there were enough others occasionally rolling through to keep the gap from growing. We were at least halfway through the first lap when suddenly Woody went flying out of the group on the right. Alex was only maybe 30 seconds up the road, so definitely within range for someone like Woody. I was stuck over on the left up against the centerline. Well of course at this point both the Acadiana guys and the Cspire guys, who were on the front at the time, stopped pedaling. I knew that if Woody got together with Alex they would probably be able to stay away, given the blockade potential. For the next couple of laps there were enough occasional efforts getting through to the front to keep the duo in sight, but in-between the blocking would slow the group down into the teens so the gap was slowly expanding. There were probably only three people willing to do any work at this point, so not enough to sustain the steady speeds that would be needed to bring them back.

I guess we were on about the third lap, about 35 miles into the race, when someone at the front made the dastardly decision to attack the friggin' feed zone, which is about the lowest thing you can do in a road race. I was toward the back going about 18 mph at the time, trying to stay as far away from people grasping for slippery bottled water as I could when I looked up and saw the attack and said under my breath "What the F*^k!" Three riders at the front quickly opened a gap. The group was immediately all strung out and I had to make a big effort just to make contact with the back of what was left of it. I caught my breath, complained to Steve, and made my way to the front to try and get a chase going. Fortunately there were a few others who were willing to take a pull or two, and after a pretty big effort with Steve, me, Peter, and even Rick we rolled up to the back of the break, but many matches had been burned in the process. Just before we caught I said to Peter, who was in front of the chase, something like, "get ready to go!" No sooner had the words gotten out of my mouth, Kevin (Acadiana) and Michael (Cspire) launched the entirely predictable counter-attack to which the rest of us who weren't on one of those teams couldn't really mount much of a response since we were still gassed from chasing while those guys sat on. This is where having a couple of teammates in reserve would have saved the day. Without any reinforcements (I think we'd dropped a few riders at that point), it was a little while before we could really get going again, but the chase was again sporadic thanks to blocking by the remaining Acadiana and Cspire riders. Even so, at one point, with me offering some verbal "encouragement," we got to within maybe ten seconds of the duo, but when I pulled off the front, exhausted, for someone to come through, all I heard was the sound of freewheels. There are two things you never, ever want to hear when you pull off the front of a paceline.  One is the sound of someone shifting to a larger gear.  The other is the sound of freewheeling.  At that point Steve said we may as well just save our legs for the finish.

Kevin & Mike

The next lap was rather painfully boring and pretty slow as the Acadiana guys sat on the front and I tried to recover a bit from the earlier efforts, and nobody else was interested in racing. I guess I should mention that Steve and I didn't really, you know, technically, have any good reason to be chasing the four guys who were off the front since they were all in the 40+ age group, but you know I always have a problem riding like that. Finally, when we got about half-way around on the final lap, things started to pick up a bit. Butch (Acadiana), who is 55+, launched a few attacks on the rolling hills hoping to dislodge some people (especially me, I suppose) before the sprint. While I didn't have any problem staying with him, and in retrospect would have been wise to have counter-attacked in hopes of splitting what was left of the pack, I was not feeling confident about the sprint at all. I knew it was going to be a high-speed drag race from the final curve, which is not exactly my forte. As things started ramping up for the sprint, Steve let me take Butch's wheel. We came around the final slightly downhill curve at 31 mph with me glued to Butch, which is pretty much where I remained as he and Peter sprinted for the line at a final speed of about 38 mph. I think I was in the 11 by the time we rounded the curve 175 meters from the line, which was of absolutely no help whatsoever as I never made up another inch on Butch.

The sprint for 5th, or 1st, depending on your age - Butch is out of the frame on the right ahead of me.

Anyway, I ended up 2nd in the extremely old men category, but a somewhat disappointing 7th among the regular old men.

NOBC 4s in control

Meanwhile, the NOBC Cat. 4 team of Christian Fontaine, Branden Morvant, Adam Layburn, Andrew Do, and Travis Berger made an excellent team effort that got Branden within a hair's width of the win in a tight sprint against Will Buquoi. At 22 riders, that was the largest field of the day, which might ordinarily seem pretty bad, but considering that the race was pulled together on pretty short notice, and was the week that classes were starting at a lot of universities, and there was a hurricane tearing up Houston and possibly heading toward Louisiana, it wasn't too bad. Total turnout was 73, with predictably very low turnouts for Cat. 5s and Women. Surprisingly, there were seven Juniors, so there's hope!

The event itself went off quite well and was a lot of fun, thanks in no small part to the folks like Robert Lee, Townsend Myers, Mike MacGown, Scott Kuppersmith (who won the Cat. 1-2 race), our officials Ricky Dunn, Mike Abshire, motorefs Ian and Dean, and a whole lot of volunteers that Mike MacGown somehow rounded up from the local clubs. The course, while certainly not the most difficult we've had for this event, seemed to get good marks from the riders. It's just hilly enough to offer some opportunities for the stronger riders, but easy enough that newer riders shouldn't be intimidated.

Photos mostly by Kirk Giessinger.