Weekend at the Oval

The group at the velodrome last Sunday. Should be some nice photos from Leadingham Photography soon.

Last weekend we had the annual LAMBRA track championship at the Baton Rouge Velodrome. As usual, this was a very low-key affair, made even lower by the lackluster 10-rider turnout, which was inexplicably lower than most of the weeknight series races. Even more inexplicable was the fact that of those ten (well technically 11 since two raced only one day each), only two were from Baton Rouge. The weather was great, the races were fun, and things went smoothly thanks to Dustin and Will and the guy from BREC whose name I have of course already forgotten. I was there missing a weekend of riding in order to be the official, which is just as time-consuming if there are forty riders or ten. Saturday morning I was up at 5:45 and left home a bit before 6:30 am after loading a table, the finish camera, and various other officiating items into the car. I also threw the track bike on top of it all so I could ride around in little ovals in-between the morning and afternoon sessions. I guess I got back home that night around 9 or 9:30. Fortunately, Sunday had only a morning session, so I was back in New Orleans a lot sooner. It was a shame that the turnout was so low, but there's hope. We met with a couple of people from BREC who help manage the park there and they were fairly encouraging about the possibility of setting up an MOU with the Baton Rouge Velodrome Association (once we get it re-instated with the Louisiana Secretary of State since nobody sent in the required annual reports for the past couple of  years). Technically, if you charge an entry fee for anything at the park, and it's not something that is being run by BREC itself, there's a big rental fee you're supposed to pay, not that anyone has ever collected a fee for any of the track events we've put on for the past 35 years or so. We are hopeful we can work out an MOU where the events are BREC events that the Velodrome Association puts on under USAC event permits. Where the money goes isn't really an issue as long as the USAC insurance and permit fees, and maybe even the officials, get paid. Should be interesting.

Pre-dawn Fall rides are sometimes lonely

So Monday morning I headed out the door earlier than usual for a Monday, which is to say before 6 am, in the dark, because a cold front was headed our way and it was supposed to be raining all day. That worked out OK and I got in a nice enough solo ride, basically before the sun came up. It did indeed rain most of the day. The front came through overnight leaving us with a windy and somewhat cooler morning today, if you call 65F cool. I was running a bit late in the morning and rushed over to the levee for the 6 am ride only to find it deserted. I guess the 15 mph wind scared everyone away?  I had a pretty nice ride anyway, and the wind wasn't much of a problem since I was going mostly 19 mph and the wind was mostly crosswind. One thing about these early morning rides a few weeks before we set our clocks back is that we get to see some nice sunrises. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be 58 or 59 degrees at WeMoRi time, so it may perhaps be the first time this fall I'll indulge in a base layer and actual arm-warmers. There are cyclocross races up in Jackson/Ridgeland this weekend. Hopefully Ricky has enough help lined up for those and I can stay in town and actually ride my bike a bit. At work I'm in 'hurry up and wait' mode, fully expecting a fire drill, mostly on my part, for the last week of the month in order to get a capital outlay request ready before Nov. 1.

The next USAC Local Associations conference call has been postponed twice, so I assume USAC hasn't quite finished working out what their plan for the Local Associations is going to be for next year. I'm expecting there will be some drama there, although for LAMBRA it probably won't be as critical as it might be for some larger associations that have larger budgets. We're just now starting to collect 2020 race dates for the planning calendar, and some events have already submitted their USAC 2020 event permit requests, although none of those have been approved yet because USAC hasn't finalized the fee structure. USAC has a new president/CEO this year, so things could change. Over in Covington where we do the Tour de Louisiane's criterium, there's a new Mayor, so hopefully we won't run into any problems holding the race there in June. Right now we're (as in the NOBC) planning on doing the NOLA Motorsports Park race again, plus the Tour de La. We could do the Time Trial as well but I don't want to "claim" that event if someone else really, really wants to promote it. At the moment, we don't know where the LAMBRA championship events will be - road, time trial, criterium, cyclocross, track, time trial, team time trial. Hopefully we can get some of that worked out over the next month or so in order to put at least a preliminary calendar out there.