Acadiana Action

Early in the race, coming into the u-turn

Last weekend's Vuelta d' Acadiana criterium over in Lafayette went well. This event has morphed over the years from a traditional 2-day stage race to just a road race and criterium to, this year, just a criterium. I always like the road race, so I was a little disappointed that it couldn't happen this year, but it was still worth the 2.5 hour drive for the criterium. The crit course and I have a kind of love-hate relationship. On the plus side, it features a left-hand U-turn followed by a right-hand corner and moderate uphill to the next left. I really like that part because the U-turn keeps the speeds down a bit and requires some skills that I apparently have. Coming out of the U-turn requires some acceleration and it immediately followed by a little climb, both of which tend to benefit the smaller guys a bit. On the minus side, the other half of the course can get pretty fast, which means gaps open up, and the finish straight after the last turn is just a tad longer than I can usually handle well. The end result is that a small break usually gets away without me, and then I struggle to finish in the top 3 or 4 in the pack sprint.

I drove up early since I had most of the necessary LAMBRA equipment in my basement, arriving with plenty of time to help set up. The first race wasn't until 11:15 am, so I didn't even have to get up early. The first race, which was a combined Women/Junior race, also didn't happen. I don't really know why, but only one Junior and one Woman showed up for that one. Go figure. Granted, there was a lot going on that weekend, including a big mountain bike race in Brookhaven, a festival in New Orleans, and some rather early summer temperatures.

As the Cat. 5 race started to wind down, I went over to the car to get my act together for the 1:00 pm Master-40 race. I was expecting this race to be pretty fast and wasn't getting my hopes up, but at least I was feeling like I was in reasonable shape for it considering it would be my first real race of the year. Like most of the races lately, turnout was a little below what wheelsuckers like me would prefer, but I knew I'd get a workout anyway. As I'd been expecting, the race started out with a bunch of attacks and counter-attacks. My teammate Jim Booth was up near the front and put in a ton of work closing down a bunch of the resulting gaps, but with the smallish field I knew that eventually we'd run out of workhorses up there and something would get away. We were probably about half way into the race when two, and then three riders opened a gap. At the time I was practically at the back and so I don't really know exactly how it all transpired, but as we approached the U-turn, I saw the trio already on the other side and heard Woody yell across the neutral ground to his teammate Frank, "go! I knew that would be the race, and it was. Jim and a couple others made an effort for a few laps, but the gap went out really quickly and most of the rest of the bunch seemed uninterested in chasing. Even so, I was surprised that the break didn't but more distance on the pack by the end.

So with four or five laps to go I started pushing my way into what looked like a 3-man Acadiana leadout that was forming up near the front. With two laps to go I was hovering around 3rd wheel, about where I wanted to be, and was looking forward the the pack sprint since I hadn't actually done on in a long time. So we're coming up to the U-turn just after the start of the bell lap and I'm in a good position behind two or three of the Acadiana guys, expecting things to explode right after the turn. Just as we enter the U-turn the rider in front of me suddenly slows down dramatically. As I found out later, his chain had skipped. Anyway, I had to touch the brakes and it put me on the outside, which is where I really didn't want to be at that point. By the time I took the long way around and got going again two riders, I think, had gone past me and there was already big gap to three riders. I pushed it up the hill, but kind of blew up, ending up a few wheels back. So I think the situation with half a lap to go was that there was the original 3-man break with Bronson, Frank and Todd from Texas way up the road sprinting it out for the top places, then Woody, Kevin and I think Alex with a solid gap on the rest of us. That was a really disappointing development and I was already losing my motivation since it was clear we'd be sprinting for, at best, 6th place. Anyway, I dove through the last turn, hitting a bump that launched my rear wheel a foot or two, and stood on the pedals. Right before the finish I eased up a bit and one or two of the guys went past me. On the plus side, when I looked at my Garmin data later that evening I was kind of pleased to see that my heart rate had hit 187, which is about as high as it's ever gotten in the past couple of years since I've been using a heart rate monitor. So, other than the U-turn complication on the last lap I felt like I had an OK race. If things had gone a little differently on the last lap I think I would have placed a little better, but as they say, "live by the sprint, die by the sprint."  

The pack sprint showing the gap that happened on the last lap - we're so far back we're not even in focus!

The rest of the races went pretty well, although I wisely decided not to enter the 1/2/3 race. That one was been pretty fast and thanks to that and the heat there were a number of surprising DNFs. They had a fixed gear criterium and also an unknown distance criterium after the Cat. 1/2/3 race, so by the time we tore everything down and I grabbed something to eat and hit the road it was after 7 pm. Thankfully Waze rerouted me around major traffic jam just outside of Baton Rouge, so I got home around 9:30, I think. I'd forgotten to take the results file with me, so I stayed up until 10:30 or so until Ricky emailed it to me after he got home to Monroe. It was almost midnight before I finally got to bed.

The weather toward the end of next week is already looking rather uncertain. There's a little disturbance in the Gulf that will be bringing a higher than normal chance of rain all week and through the weekend. Next weekend's race is the Feliciana Road Race over in St. Francisville that I'll be riding. A little rain won't be much of a problem for that one, and the chances of rain will probably be lower there than in New Orleans anyway.