Tour de La Number 47

Start of the Cat 1/2/3 Tour de La Criterium, June 10

Well, the dust has about settled on this year's iteration of the Tour de Louisiane stage race and by all accounts things went pretty well. The volunteer list kind of came down to the wire as usual, and there were the typical loose ends to tie up the week before the race, but in all it was definitely a success. We had 127 entries this year, which was just slightly more than last year. Still a long way from the 200+ we had around 2009, but my sense is that turnouts have kind of bottomed out in the last year or two and are starting a very slow rebound.

So around Monday before the Tour I realized that I didn't know who had made the police arrangements for the Time Trial. Turned out nobody had! Fortunately, Fred Schroeder was able to get that in place quickly, which was a relief. On Sunday before the race I got Candy to make the copies of the race bible, and then spent an hour or so assembling and stapling. As usual, most of then pre-registrations didn't start coming in until the last couple of days, so it wasn't until Friday that I felt like entry fees would at least cover the prizelist. I had decided to take Friday off from work, so that gave me a lot of time to print out the waivers, organized numbers, and ultimately load everything into the car for the trip across the Causeway. We decided not to do the Friday night registration this year since turnout for that has been pretty low in recent years. I guess we don't get as many riders from far away as we used to, so a lot of the riders are driving in on Saturday morning or arriving late Friday night. Anyway, I didn't head across the Causeway until around 6:30 pm. We had made arrangements for a couple of double rooms at the Holiday Inn Express for the officials, but when I arrived they didn't have any reservations. After a few phone calls the guy who Mignon had made the arrangements with appeared and realized he had never actually booked the rooms. All their double rooms were booked by then, so we ended up with three single rooms, which actually worked out fine since only two of the motorefs needed rooms on Friday night, and only one on Saturday night and Ricky was driving directly to the start on Saturday morning. The road races went really smoothly with only one minor single-rider crash that I know of. We got the results sorted out at the hotel, printed out the TT start sheets and Road Race results, and before I knew it, it was time to head over to the Lakeshore High School to get ready for the 5:30 pm Time Trials. Robin was already there and had already put up the signage, so once the police arrived we set up the start tents, put out the traffic cones, and got things started right on time. The TT results looked good, so after I got back to the hotel I got those posted pretty quickly and the other two officials and I walked over to Copeland's for dinner. It had been a long and hot day, but I was glad it hadn't rained and that nobody had to call 911.

I was up again at 5 am for the Covington criterium, having allowed a little extra time to put up the new USAC snowfence and to give Robin, Fred, and the other volunteers time to put out the bales of wood chippings that we were using instead of hay bales, which were apparently both expensive and in short supply this year. As usual, there were a few cars parked on the course, so things were held up between the first race (just the juniors, so small) and second race while a tow truck removed a couple of cars that had been strategically parked on the outside of corners, including the final one. The rest of the criterium went fine until it was time to line  up the Cat. 1/2/3s. At that point the sun was still out and everything looked good unless you checked the radar. There was a big thunderstorm brewing and heading our way. We started the 1/2/3s right on time, and as the clock ticked down from the 1 hour mark we were keeping one eye on the weather. By the mid-point of their race you could see the big dark clouds approaching. It looked like the worst of it would pass just north of town, but it didn't look like we would escape the rain. Sure enough, with maybe ten or twelve laps left the thunder and lightning and rain started. Once the street got wet, someone over-cooked a corner, slipped on a paint stripe, and took out a bunch of riders. At that point it was pouring down rain and riders started coming into the pit from all directions. There had been a 2-rider break with 10 seconds on the field, but now the field was shattered. With all of the thunder and lightning and confusion we made a quick call to stop the race and re-start ten minutes later when the worst of it would be past. So we called everyone back to the line with 5 laps to go, started the breakaway, and then started the field. A number of riders at that point were content to take it easy and just finish upright, but at any rate we got things finished in a light drizzle, posted the results in a hurry having forgotten that one rider had previously lapped the field, re-posted the correct results, and got the podium ceremonies done. Then we stuffed a ton of wet tents, banners, snowfence and equipment into the car for the drive home where I threw the snowfence and flags and tent tops into the dryer and set everything else out to dry in the basement with the fan blowing on them. Then I posted the final results to the website and sent them to Robert to upload to USAC.

I was still feeling kind of dragged out for the next couple of days, mostly from sleep deprivation I guess, but eventually got back into the routine over the next week or so, riding just the Giro Rides on the weekend and the usual training rides during the week. This afternoon is the first of the Wednesday evening races on Lakeshore Drive, so I'm going to try and get out of here a few minutes early so I can set up the finish camera and help with scoring before jumping into the 1/2/3 race myself. This morning's WeMoRi was uncharacteristically easy, so I guess a few of those regulars are planning on doing the evening race. Then this weekend I am heading up to Tupelo to officiate/race/deliver equipment, for which I have not yet made any arrangements. Registrations for that are frighteningly low right now, so I hope things pick up soon!