The Race of Truth

Off to get the start line set up

The truth is, putting on a race, even a relatively basic one like a time trial, can be a lot of work depending on just how OCD you are. Last Sunday was the LAMBRA Time Trial Championship. On the face of it, putting on a time trial seems pretty straightforward. Line them up, write down the time when the started, write down the time when they finished, and subtract. Simple. Of course, reality is never quite that simple, at least nowadays when riders expect porta potties, police, start times, and correct results. I can remember when Candy and I would put on the whole Spring time trial series down across from Belle Chasse. On Saturday we'd swing by the bike shop and pick up a few trinkets to give as prizes. Sunday morning we'd jump into the MG or Triumph and drive over to the Scarsdale ferry landing with a clipboard, a stopwatch, and a pencil. The twenty or so riders would sign in, and if we were lucky we'd send a volunteer 12.5 miles down the river road to the Carlisle Sign with a traffic cone. After the finish we'd do the math in our heads. We'd take a sheet of paper with the results back home and then, maybe, in a few weeks or months, there was a chance they would be included in a newsletter that would be typed up on a typewriter and mailed out to club members. Things are a little different now. This year we had around 90 riders, which was similar to last year. They were all required to pre-register so that I could make up a start list, grouping age and skill categories together and seeding riders within them according to USAC time trial ranking points, which most riders probably don't even know exist. In order to do that, I print out all of the waivers from the online registration system. Then I download the list of registered riders and sort them according to class and category. From that I build a spreadsheet with groups organized by distance, age, and category. This year I used a rather complicated Excel formula/format so that I wouldn't have to input the colons when typing in the times. That turned out to be rather complicated and required a whole new formula to do the time calculations and rankings. Once I had all of the riders listed, I sub-sorted each group according to USAC ranking time. Then I assigned sequential bib numbers. Then I went through the stack of paper waiver forms and wrote the assigned bib number for each rider on his or her form. Then I went back through those forms and stapled the appropriate bib numbers to them. Then I sorted the waiver/bib numbers by last name. The whole process took at least four hours and was not without complications. For example, a number of riders, all from outside of LAMBRA, had registered for more than one class or category. In some states they allow this, so you do one ride and that time counts for all of the classes and categories your are eligible for. We don't do that. Unless you have chip timing, it delays the results tremendously and also would be rather difficult to deal with. Anyway, I had to contact those riders, find out which single class or category they wanted to enter, issue refunds for the duplicate entries, etc.

So on race day, I picked up Gavin at 5:45 or so, arriving at the TT location around 6:30. As our handful of volunteers started to arrive we got things set up at the registration location, and then at the start line, and then at the finish line, all of which were in separate places. They we tallied up our volunteers and of course didn't have quite enough to do things the way we wanted to. Luckily we were able to convince a few people to help out. With three different turn-arounds to marshal, and riders finishing well before most of the others had started, we need quite a few volunteers. At least three at the start, at least three or four at the finish, at least three at the turnarounds, and at least one at the registration desk to get waivers signed and numbers handed out. Somehow we managed it. I started all of the riders, then rushed back to the registration desk with the first batch of finish times. I think I made two typos that were of course noticed and corrected, but otherwise the results went smoothly. On the other hand, awarding medals was somewhat confusing since we skip over the non-LAMBRA riders to identify the top three LAMBRA riders in each class/category, but then we also duplicate medals for any non-LAMBRA riders who finish in the top three of their races. Luckily we had enough medals left over from last year because USAC didn't ship out the 2019 medals until Monday. I'm expecting them to arrive today.

Tulane riders Gavin, Kaitlyn, and Julia heading to Nationals in Augusta

So anyway, it was a long day, but there were some bright spots. For one, it didn't rain. That always complicates everything and lowers turnout. For another, despite a significant north wind, we had a new LAMBRA and course record of 51:12 set by Peter Reed. In all, there were 20 riders who went under an hour for the 40 km time trial that day. Also notable was that we had six 70+riders. Gavin Blair, one of the Tulane riders, posted a 58:40 in Merckx mode (no aero bars or disk wheels).

Gavin, Kaitlyn, and Julia took off for Augusta this morning with Dustin and Joey for Collegiate Road Nationals. I'm hoping they fare well. The road course up there is the same one on an Army base that I rode when I went to Masters Nationals way, way back in, for me at least, friction-shifting days. I would have placed very well in the road race had my chain not jammed between the freewheel and dropout when I made the final shift to start my sprint. I've never been quite that frustrated in my life. On the plus side, I placed 5th in the criterium there which I remember as being fairly technical and very fast and animated.