Forced Break and Government Affairs

Monday morning I decided to sleep a little later and skip my usual morning ride. After the long drive back from Auburn and some follow-up uploading of photos and such, I hadn't gotten to bed until late. The weather was looking to be fine the rest of the week, so I thought there'd be no harm in skipping another day. Well, that was a bit of a mistake I guess. The sore throat started to make itself obvious around noon on Monday and by evening I knew I was in for a few days, at least, of head cold symptoms. I ventured out Tuesday morning anyway, but played it safe and turned back after only ten miles. Things kind of went downhill during the day yesterday, so I skipped this morning as well since there's really no way to ride the WeMoRi without aspirating whatever virulent slime might be dripping down the back of your throat, or for that matter, the throats of the two riders ahead of you as well. So this morning I'm in a restless contemplative mode and was glad to see the announcement in Tulane News about one of our researchers getting an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award.

With all of the often well-deserved government-bashing that dominates the daily news, not to mention the incessant but questionable din of pseudo-news on Facebook and Twitter, it was particularly nice to see something good happening. NIH is one of the few federal agencies that the current administration didn't mess with very much. It's still led by Francis Collins, a real-live MD-PhD research scientist. Although the President's budget annually proposes a stagnant budget for NIH, Congress, yes, that same body of lawmakers who haven't managed to actually approve an actual Appropriations Bill since they threw their only real bargaining chip, the much-maligned Earmark, out the window, keeps nudging their budget upward bit by bit anyway. Meanwhile, up in Bethesda, there are actual federal employees who actually care about actual biomedical research, and some of those actual federal employees actually do understand how university-based scientific research works. One new thing they came up with recently was the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award. It's kind of a leap of faith for a government entity to do this kind of thing where they intentionally back away from micro-management. It's right in line with the "hire good people, give them what they need, and leave them the hell alone" philosophy that I have always supported. The OIA awards are "intended to allow investigators the opportunity to take greater risks, be more adventurous in their lines of inquiry, or take the time to develop new techniques."  How about that? Here we are with the current administration doing its best to kill off support for graduate education, turn universities into trade schools, and generally make it harder for people to even go to college at all, and down in the trenches of the National Institutes of Health there is still the wisdom to give $6 million to an established researcher with a great track record, and basically say, "Here's a pile of money. We trust you to use it wisely, do great things, and make our country, and maybe even the world, better."  Imaging that.

With that, I'll go back to work where I will no doubt read about more and more federal insanity, and hope this head cold resolves itself before I have to drive up to the University of Arkansas this weekend for another collegiate race.

Up in Auburn

It was great to see such large fields at a collegiate race.

Last weekend was another road trip, this one to the Auburn University Cycling Weekend race up in, of course, Auburn AL. There were just two Tulane riders for this one, since it was outside of Tulane's conference (so no points on the line), but the goal for the weekend wasn't really to score any points. Instead, the goal was for these two guys to accumulate some good experience in larger fields and at the same time tally up some mass-start finishes to count toward future upgrades. Since this event offered both collegiate and non-collegiate races, each of them could race twice each day. Dustin and I could also race our category, or in my case age-group, races. The weather leading up to the race weekend was looking pretty bad for Sunday, but not so bad for Saturday. Since it's so early in the season (for me) I was planning on racing the 35+/45+ road race on Saturday but was not at all committed to racing the criterium on Sunday that I figured would be wet.

A nice climb right after the start.

The drive up to Auburn went really smoothly, even with the constant added stress of worrying about (a) not exceeding the speed limit and (b) not getting run over from behind because of not exceeding the speed limit, and (c) not getting killed while passing people who were going slower than the speed limit by getting into the left lane and not exceeding the speed limit (by much). Anyway, compared to a lot of the drives we make to the South-Central Conference races, this little 6-hour jaunt was a piece of cake. I was fully expecting to drive home through blinding rainstorms in the middle of the night, however.

The event was being run by TopView Sports, a professional events management company, which meant we had to pay an extra $10 for timing chip rental. On the plus side, the races went off on time and most of the results were correct, and I was glad to see Stuart Lamp serving as Chief Referee. Elliott and Gavin both rode well in both their collegiate and category races and I think gained a lot of great experience. Gavin elected to also ride the afternoon Time Trial that consisted of a full lap of the 8-mile course. Knowing how easy it is to screw up time trial results, especially when relying so heavily on timing chips, I took the precaution of timing him myself. When the TT results were posted the next morning, he told me that his posted time was almost 30 seconds slower than what I'd gotten. Sigh....  I went over to the big red officials' trailer motor-home thing and asked them to check it out since I had absolutely no doubt it was wrong. Fortunately, one of the officials had been doing a manual backup and could confirm the error. They had been starting riders about ten feet before the single timing mat so that when they rolled over it the first time their start times would be recorded and then when they rolled over it a second time their finish times would be recorded. Unfortunately, when Gavin picked up his bike to shift it to a different gear while waiting to start, it must have gotten too close to the mat and tripped the sensor and started his clock early.

Safely tucked into the masters pack

The Masters race had a decent sized field of 20 or 25, which was pretty good for an early season low-key road race like that. The course was moderately hilly with a couple of short but significant climbs along the 8-mile course. My race was only 5 laps or 40 miles, which was shorter than I'd have liked, but then again I was rather worried I'd get dropped like a rock if there were a bunch of attacks on the hills. After a nice easy climb up the first hill, just past the start line, there were a few rather hard attacks that strung things out. I was just trying to stay on wheels and wasn't even paying attention to whatever kind of battle might be going on up at the front. I think it was before the start of the second lap that one rider finally got away and the pace settled down a bit. Too few people willing to chase, I guess. As we got close to the final lap things started heating up again with a few tentative attacks here and there. I was surprised that there hadn't been a big attack each time we climbed the 1-km hill on the back side of the course, but on the last lap someone launched near the top, bringing another rider with him. There wasn't a big response from the field. I guess most of them, like me, were suffering from early-season insecurity. I had already started trying to stay closer to the front, and in retrospect could probably have gone with that attack. Whether I'd have been able to stay with them is another question altogether.

Found GW a the criterium

So it was looking like a pack sprint for, I think, 4th place, and as we got into the final few miles I concentrated on maintaining a good position near the front. There was a right-hand turn a little less than a kilometer before the finish, and we had access to the left lane for the final 200 meters. With the wind coming from the right, I positioned myself on the left side of the group, coming around the last turn a bit farther back than I'd have liked. As soon as we cleared the turn someone jumped, which was good for me. As riders started to fade, I found myself on a solid wheel up against the center line approaching the 200 meter mark. I could tell that the rider in front of me was going to jump hard at 200 meters, and when he did, I was on him like white on rice, easily coming around well before the line. I think I was 2nd or 3rd in the pack sprint (never saw overall results, just the 35+ and 45+ placings) and ended up 3rd in the 45+ race. I was happy with how I felt and in fact a little surprised that I felt as competitive as I did. A little while later I was down by the start/finish and heard them calling my name for the podium, which was up on a hill across the road. I grabbed my bike and climbed up the wash-out / path, and when I went to lean the bike on a nearby tree slashed the hell out of my shin on a piece of rebar they were using as a stake to hold up the backdrop. After the obligatory photo I looked down to see blood dripping down my leg onto my sock and went off to find the first-aid kit I'd thoughtfully remembered to bring along.

The women got thoroughly doused during their criterium.

Sunday's weather was better than predicted, which isn't saying much since the prediction was for nothing but rain. As it turned out, the first race, Gavin's, went off entirely without rain, although the street was wet anyway. At one point I heard someone say hello and turned around to find good ol' GW Wenzel who is famous in the cycling community for always wearing his cowboy hat, boots, and Auburn shorts at bike races. I should have expected to see him there since he's a researcher at the Vet school there. The course was a long rectangle with a nice little uphill toward the finish and a back stretch on a brick road alongside the railroad track. There was a 12-inch concrete apron between the bricks and the curb, and every lap it was just a long string of riders lined up on that narrow little strip avoiding the bumpy bricks. The tricky part was coming down a short downhill to a right turn onto the relatively slippery bricks. There were a few crashes there, including Elliott who went down in his category race just after free laps ended. I'm sure he would have had a very high placing if that hadn't happened. Anyway, the guys learned a lot about riding criteriums on wet roads with larger fields. Dustin and I both passed on racing the criterium. It had started to rain during the women's race(s) and we knew the field sizes for the non-collegiate races would be pretty thin (there were 6 for the masters race). Also, it would have kept us in Auburn another couple of hours, so it wasn't really worth it considering the long drive home. Amazingly, there was practically no rain on the drive home. I was shocked. I'd been dreading a long drive in the dark in pouring rain for days, so it was just wonderful to have dry roads and light traffic for the drive home. I think we got back around 9 pm or so, which was really nice compared to the midnight arrival times we usually see for some of the Texas races. More photos are at HERE. 

Aggieland Road Trip

Last weekend I went with the Tulane riders, of which there were only four, over to the Texas A&M "Tunis Roubaix" collegiate omnium. Although the only legitimate reason I had to go was to do the 13+ hours of driving, I was actually looking forward to the trip and hoping to get in a few miles on Saturday while the road races were going on. All week prior to the race the weather forecast had been looking pretty dismal. It wasn't until Friday that things started to change and the rain chances got bumped down from 90% to more like 50%. Still, I was fully expecting to spend most of Saturday and Sunday in the rain. We had a couple of Tulane motor pool minivans lined up and they wanted to get to College Station at a reasonable hour, so I decided to take Friday off from work so we could pick up the vans at 11 am and one of them, mine, could get an early start. After a quick ride Friday morning I stuffed enough riding gear into my bulging race bag to handle anything from 40° and raining to 70° and sunny. The forecast seemed to be changing hourly and there was just no telling what we'd actually see for the weekend.

After loading up the minivan with three people, bikes, tent, wheels and luggage we headed out before noon and right away Waze re-routed us north of Houston for some reason. I guess the combination of ongoing road construction and probably a major accident made what would normally be a 15 minute longer route the better option. So we left I-10 around Beaumont and spent a lot of time on smaller state and county highways with stoplights and constantly shifting speed limits.

On the subject of speed limits, I should mention that the Tulane motor pool vans now have GPS and cameras recording and reporting everything, including speeding, so I was trying not to stray much above the speed limit the whole time. The whole trip I had that feeling you get when you're getting dropped and watching the pack stream past you but you just can't keep up. To say it was stressful would be an understatement. On the plus side, we lucked into a practically new Toyota Sienna that had a number of features I wasn't expecting to find in a motor pool minivan (they are actually from Enterprise car rental under some sort of special arrangement). This one had a rear camera, numerous USB ports, Lane Departure Alert, and Dynamic Radar Cruise Control. Once on the interstate you could basically take your hands off the wheel and if it drifted too far to one side or the other of the lane, it would automatically steer itself back to the middle. Meanwhile, if were on cruise control and started to roll up on the car ahead of you, it would automatically slow down to maintain a safe distance. It was strange to have a car making its own decisions like that, but I could certainly see how it would be helpful for really late night driving when you're tired and maybe not quite as alert as usual. Anyway, other than the long detour, the drive went fine and both vans arrived in time for dinner.

Saturday morning the weather was way better than I'd expected. There was virtually no chance of rain until evening, winds were light to moderate, and the morning temperature was above 50°. Dustin and I decided to start behind the Cat. A race, which was the first one of the day. The Cat. Bs would be starting ten minutes later, with the Cs and Ds not starting until the first two races had finished. There was a short stretch of "gravel" for the start that was maybe 0.8 miles and was by no means actual gravel except for a section right in front of the parking area. Otherwise it was well packed down dirt with a few little washboard sections. No problem at all, really. I had decided to bring my old Orbea, both because I didn't want the Bianchi to get banged up in the van and because it had some wider "gravel-king" tires on it. Since I wasn't technically in the race and was supposed to stay at the back, I had my usual heavy seat bag with a couple of tubes, along with my daytime-visible tail light. Compared to the Bianchi in race mode, the bike felt like a truck, especially when I'd get out of the saddle to accelerate.

Photo by Brooks Bixler

As soon as we got out of the "neutral" gravel section the attacks started. It was really hard hanging on at the back where the accordion was in full effect with the pace constantly surging from 25 to 35 mph. When we made a right turn into a crosswind and the front of the group attacked again I decided it was time to let them go rather than ride in the oncoming traffic lane to get a draft. This was probably only about 7 miles into the race. A little while later I came up on another rider who had been shelled from the group, so we rode together for a lap of so until the Category B group caught us. At that point I went to the back of the Bs and followed them for a couple more laps, which was way, way easier than it had been with the As. With a lap or two left to go I felt my front tire going soft and just made it around to the start/finish area where dropped off the back of the B group and stopped to fix it. While I was there the Cat. A break came by, followed by a 4-man chase group. With the flat fixed, I took a shortcut to the feed zone and just as I arrived I saw the 4-man chase group coming, so I jumped onto the back of that group for most of a lap. That was by far the most fun part of the day. They were taking pretty smooth pulls and it was super easy to just shift over the wheel of each riders as he dropped back. Well, they were going fast enough, and the B group slowly enough, that we caught the B group, at which point I let them go and once again went to the back of the Bs, following them until they finished.

After those races finished I lined up again with Dustin behind the Category C group when they started. This time I brought my camera so I could take some photos (we had two riders in that race, and one in the A race and another in the D race). That was fun but significantly slower, and when they had one lap left to go I dropped off, rode across the loop to the feed zone and then back to the finish to watch the sprints. Jerry won the pack sprint for 3rd with Elliott finishing 10th. Gavin, who was in his first ever road race in the D race, finished 4th out of 35 in his road race. I ended up with like 80 miles, some of it hard, so I was feeling pretty satisfied.

That evening for the TT it started getting colder and a steady mist started falling, making the streets wet. They shortened the Cat. A and B Time Trial from 20 km to 10 km. As usual, full road race results weren't available and there was no start list. Dustin and I tried to keep the riders lined up more or less in number order, with moderate success. By the time that was done we were pretty wet and cold.

Sunday morning was more mist and fog and wet roads. I was a little surprised, since I thought the rainy stuff would be gone by then, but no such luck. Fortunately the on-campus course was all pretty good concrete, so there were only a couple of crashes, one of which was Elliott, who nonetheless took 3rd after establishing the race's winning breakaway in the first few laps. In the C race Jerry and Gavin worked well together with Gavin instigating the winning break and finishing 3rd and Jerry taking 2nd in the pack sprint for 5th. Grayson raced really well in the A races but kind of blew up toward the end. In the criterium he was in the winning break for a while, but the other riders basically kept attacking until they dropped him a few laps before the finish.

All-in-all, it was a good weekend. Now I just have to decided if I want to make the 8-hour trip to Auburn next weekend where I can get my butt kicked some more.

Red Dirt

There was a big group for the Saturday Giro.

It was another week of interrupted training, which is pretty much normal this time of year. I always say that February is actually my worst winter month, and I'm usually right about that. After a decent enough start to the week, Friday morning arrived wet and nasty and I decided it would be a good day to skip my morning ride and set my sights on Saturday instead. By the time I was ready to go to work things looked better, so the commute downtown was fine. There were to be complications, however.

Yes, Woody still rides bikes.

Danielle had left with the car the day before for Natchitoches, LA to help Shannon who would be doing the Red Dirt Ultra 100 mile trail run that started at 6 am on Saturday. We were scheduled to go up there ourselves, mostly as moral support, on Saturday after my 11 am LAMBRA meeting. That meant I needed to rent a car. So I left work a little after 4 on Friday and rode down Tulane Avenue to the Enterprise car rental place to pick up a Nissan Rogue. I threw the bike in the back and rushed home, grabbed Danielle's two dogs, threw them into the car, and headed down to Tchoupitoulas Street to drop them off at Canine Connection where they would be staying until we got back. My timing was looking pretty good, but then I ran into parade preparations at Nashville where various marching bands and other assorted parade components were staging. For a minute I was afraid they had already closed Tchoupitoulas, but fortunately they hadn't and I was able to make it to the doggie country club before they closed at 6 pm.  On the way out I had to wait for some horseback riders to go by. Yeah, it's getting to be Mardi Gras time in New Orleans. Saturday was going to be kind of tight, but I was determined to get in the full Giro Ride prior to the LAMBRA meeting prior to hitting the road for the 4 hour drive to Natchitoches.

This is what the trail looked like Sunday morning -
after the rain had stopped - and there was light.

The forecast for Saturday, whether in New Orleans or Natchitoches, was not looking too good, especially for people running through the woods in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with significantly degraded cognitive and motor skills. On the plus side, we had a great turnout for the Giro Ride. It wasn't very cold or terribly windy, and the whole entire group managed a few solid paceline rotations on Chef Highway before descending into chaos prior to the turnaround. The local riders are just now starting to think about getting back in shape before the spring races start, I think. The speeds never got out of hand or anything, but it was still probably the quickest Giro we've done this year. That was a good thing because it got me back home with enough time to jump in the shower and get something to eat before driving over to the Tulane Cycling headquarters for the annual LAMBRA meeting. The meeting itself went fine. It's really just a good time for everyone involved to exchange ideas and information about the upcoming year. Some ideas will actually come to fruition, some won't, but as long as we all keep heading in the same direction I guess it's fine. The LAMBRA Crit championship is still pretty much up in the air. One suggestion was to see if LAMBRA itself could promote it in Natchez. Another option would be downtown Jackson, MS. The fall-back plan would be do designate the Harbor Master crit in New Orleans as the championship. The Road championship is also a little bit up in the air as well, at least as far as the date is concerned. I think the consensus is that we should try to have it on the course we used last year in Flora, MS., so that's good. I think some decisions still have to be made about the date of the Mississippi Gran Prix stage race and then which other weekend will work for the Flora venue. We'll see. So anyway, I ran out of the meeting and rushed home where I threw some warm clothes into a bag and we somehow hit the road around 2 pm or so. By then it was starting to rain, and it would stay that way until some time Sunday morning.

Danielle helping Shannon immediately after finishing
as the timer chases her down to record her bib number and time.

The Red Dirt Ultra is held in the Kisatchie National Forest, near Natchitoches. The start is so far in the middle of nowhere that even in 2017 you can't get a reliable cellphone signal. That also means that Google Maps has some difficulty figuring out where you are once you get close. Fortunately we had the written directions with us, because by the time we exited the interstate it was dark and we were on lonely wet forest roads that we weren't familiar with at all. Amazingly we found our way to the parking area without any problems, and stepped out of the car into rain-soaked mud. Danielle had a pop-up tent set up but it took us a little while to find her.

Stream crossing near the finish

Shannon was expected to show up in a few hours for the, I think, 70 mile checkpoint, so we hung around in the cold rain. Every now and then you'd see a headlamp bouncing through the woods toward us and someone would yell, "runner!" Some were just finishing the shorter 100k run or even the 50k run.  Others had been planning to do the full 100 miles but quit. Their rationale was the same. It was too wet and slippery and they didn't want to get injured. By then I was giving Shannon about a 60% chance of finishing since she's injured knees and ankles and feet numerous times in the past and there was really no way to run on that trail in the dark without crashing a few times. Finally we spotted two headlamps coming our way through the trees. It was Shannon and another female runner. Shannon was, of course, absolutely soaking wet and, as expected, had fallen a few times already. She sat down and Danielle helped her change to dry shoes and socks and clothing as she tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to eat the rice and chicken she'd prepared. By the time she was ready to start going again she was shivering pretty badly. The woman she's been running with took off a bit before her with a Pacer, which was allowed for the last part of the run. A few minutes later Shannon disappeared into the darkness. Candy and I drove up to Natchitoches to get a little sleep at the hotel. We were up again at 5:00 to head back to the finish. By then it was chilly and very foggy, but at least the actual rain had stopped.

Checkpoint before the final 31-mile loop - cold and wet

It would still be a few hours before Shannon would finish. She had planned to mostly walk the stretch from the last mid-loop checkpoint to the finish, and by then it was clear that should would easily make the cut-off of 32 hours. Her optimistic goal had been 24 hours, although with the trail conditions that goal had pretty much gone out the window by the time she started the last loop. As the sun came up somewhere behind the solid cloud cover we decided to walk down the trail a bit. It was much, much warmer than it had been the night before, and by then we were expecting to see Shannon fairly soon. The trail was a combination of rocks, white sand, grey clay, and red clay/dirt, punctuated by the occasional shallow stream crossing. I couldn't imagine actually running on most of it, although we walked only a mile or so. As I was walking one of the finishing runners came by. He told me he'd been holding off someone behind him for hours. There wasn't anyone behind him. He'd been hallucinating, which isn't particularly uncommon after 25 hour of running. Anyway, not too long after that Shannon came sprinting out of the forest finishing at 25:58:49, which was pretty impressive, and yeah, there were still a number of people behind her. I doubt she'll be walking normally for a few days to a week. It all made me happy I'm not a runner!

The drive back home was nice and smooth and dry - way better than the drive up there had been. By the time we got home I was pretty tired. I guess it was mostly just the lack of sleep and long drive.

The Week Before

The Saturday Giro, what there was of it, tip-toeing across the slippery steel atop the Seabrook drawbridge

Running a bit behind, writing-wise, but since nothing interesting has happened this week, yet, I'll write instead about last week. It was the best of weeks. It was the worst of weeks. I swear, I've spent more time riding alone lately than I remember doing in a long time. Of course, I don't remember what I had for breakfast, so perhaps it hasn't been all that bad. As is typical this time of year, the weather has been all over the freaking place. Monday in the 60s, Tuesday in the 40s, Thursday almost 30s, Saturday wet, Sunday windy. On Tuesday I was rather disappointed to find just a couple of riders for the morning levee ride. It was chilly, and a little windy, but when the others decided to turn back early, I pushed on anyway. Thursday, perhaps feeling bad about having turned early on Tuesday, they soldiered on for the full distance. But distance is one thing, effort another, and lately the latter's been in rather short supply. Then on Saturday the streets were wet but the temperature was warm which resulted in a really low turnout for the Giro. Just a handful of us did the full ride, and of course I got home wet and dirty and had to hose the bike down, but I was glad I'd ridden.

Small turnout for what turned out to be a really good ride

On Sunday I'd planned a 75-mile ride on the northshore for the Winter Training Ride series. First, though, was a long slow drive across the Causeway under fog restrictions, which means single lane, no passing, and 45 mph unless, as was the case, you get stuck behind someone going 35 most of the way. Up north of Covington it was pretty chilly and damp, and the turnout was predictably much lower than the prior week had been, but we ended up with a really nice ride all the way up to the Mississippi line that took in a few new roads. Of course I flatted somewhere out there as we were trying to figure out which way to turn at an intersection none of us had seen before. On the plus side, I did a fair amount of work on this ride and felt like I got a good early-season workout. It turned out to be the first week since November that I got to ride every day, and the mileage total came in at just under 300, so not a bad week.

This week hasn't really been much to write about except that Tuesday the temperature was in the 30s and it was super windy and of course nobody showed up except me. With my speed often dipping down into the mid-teens I turned around early, logging only 28 miles but glad to get home to hot coffee before my toes started to freeze.

This coming weekend should be interesting. I've got at Tulane meeting tonight, then the Friday coffee ride in the morning, after which I'll be picking up a rental car because Danielle has the Volvo up in Natchitoches where she'll be supporting Shannon who is doing the Red Dirt Ultra trail run. I have a LAMBRA meeting after the Saturday Giro, and then we'll be driving up there to witness the carnage as the runners try to finish the final lap of the 100 mile run. There will be rain, but at least the temperatures should be mostly in the 50s.