Didn't Suck - Tour de La COVID Edition

Getting the 1/2/3s lined up for the start

The twice-postponed, shortened, Tour de Louisiane finally happened last Saturday. Afterward, someone posted, "Had a great time today..  Thanks Randy and the rest of NOBC and LAMBRA for working so hard on this.  Finally something in 2020 didn't suck." That comment really kind of captures what I, and likely a lot of the riders, was thinking. It was a shame that we couldn't put on the whole stage race, but with things being as they are it would have been difficult, possibly impossible, and I think participation would have been even lower than it was. As it was, this was only the second official USAC race in LAMBRA this year, and the only mass-start road event. In the months before the race I had been thinking that if we had 60 riders I'd be happy. 

Cat. 4/5s on the line

As it turned out we had 97 with a Cat. 4/5 field of 42. Even better, the weather finally cooperated with us. A little front came through Friday evening, and by Saturday morning the rain was over and the skies starting to clear. From my perspective, though, there were some things that felt quite different from my usual Tour de La weekend. I'd driven over to the northshore late Friday after packing up the car with race equipment. Mignon and Pat had stopped by earlier to pick up things that I couldn't fit into the Volvo - water coolers, boxes of trophies, traffic cones, caution and directional signs, etc. It's kind of amazing how much stuff we use nowadays to put on a "simple" road race. I can remember putting on some of the early Tour road races with just what I could carry in the GT-6. There were a couple of traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, and things like that, but no podium, tent, computers, cameras, tripods, generators, extension cords, signs, race clocks, or even trophies.

Despite the quiet night at the hotel in Covington/Mandeville, I didn't sleep very well Friday night and was up a little early, so I headed over to the Starbucks, picked up coffee and a scone, and headed for Stoney Point. Usually for the Tour it's around dawn when I leave, but this was October rather than June and it was dark. Really dark. A little leftover mist fell onto the windshield here and there, and although some of the back roads would still be wet, I knew the rain was gone. In order to minimize contact, especially with sharing pens and shuffling paper, we were relying on the online waivers this year. We had also required pre-registration, so Mignon handled number pick-up pretty much on her own. Usually we have three or four people handling registration as I'm frantically entering rider information into the computer. That gave me time to set up the USAC banners along the finish stretch as Ricky got the cameras and everything set up at the finish line. It was all relatively low-stress. Before I knew it, it was 8:50 and time to call the Cat. 1/2/3s to the line. I delivered my usual instructions and cautions about the cracks on the bridges and the broken-up asphalt on the back side of the course, and sent them off right on time. Since we were doing just the road race this year, we would not need to get finish times for everyone, with made judging even easier. We'd also shortened the Cat. 1/2/3 race by one 16-mile lap, so everyone would be doing 4 laps except the Women/Junior group that was doing 3. As I'd expected, the Cat. 1/2/3s lapped the Women, who had started 25 minutes after them, so while they are usually the last group to finish, this year they were they were the first.

Old guys on the podium

Judging was pretty easy this year. Most of the groups had broken up a little bit, with breakaways in all but the Cat. 4/5s, so we really only needed to go to the cameras (we had two linescan cameras and one GoPro running) for that pack sprint. Otherwise it was easy to place riders by eye. 

After the race we had a bunch of awards to give out. Each race had an overall prizelist plus a 3-deep bonus for the secondary categories (like the Cat. 3s in the Cat. 1/2/3 race and the Cat. 4s in the Cat. 4/5 race). Then on top of that, the race was doubling as the LAMBRA Road Championship, so there were 3-deep medals for the various classes and categories as well. It was a little confusing, of course.

Hurricane Zeta expected on Wednesday

I was very happy that there had not been any crashes in the large Cat. 4/5 field. In fact, the only crash all day was one of the riders in the Cat. 1/2/3 break who just caught the edge of the road and went down. I think he still finished, though. In the Master's race, Frank Moak rolled off the front and held off for I think a lap or so to finish solo. Lisa and Julia, the only Cat. 1/2/3s in the Women's race, broke away and finished well ahead of the small chase group. In all, I was really happy with how everything went, and I think the riders were also really happy to finally have an actual race where they could see each other at least once this season. I kind of wish more of them had donned their face masks after the races, but I really had no time or desire to be policing that.

So we wrapped up the awards, tore down all of the finish line stuff, loaded up the cars, and I was back on the road home by 2:20 or so. I have to admit I kind of missed the excitement of having to post and print out the Road Race results and then rush over to set up the Time Trial course for the evening TT stage, and then post those results, have a quick dinner with the other officials, and get ready for the Sunday criteriums in Covington. On the other hand, it was quite a relief to have everything wrapped up and to be back home before 4:00 p.m. 

Next year will the Tour's 50th anniversary, having never missed a year. There are not many races in the U.S. that could ever say that. You might have thought that the Katrina year would have been the biggest risk of breaking the continuity, but in fact this year easily presented the greatest threat. Will we be able to put on the full stage race in 2021? Nobody's making any promises yet, but I'm expecting we will.

Something missing.....

Meanwhile, after having to postpone our original early October date, there's another hurricane heading straight for us. This will be the 6th hurricane this year for which we have been in the "cone." Fortunately, it's late in the season so the intensity will probably be relatively low - Category 1 at the worst I think. Yesterday morning my front derailleur broke. The outer carbon-fiber plate had finally just worn through after upward of 80,000 miles. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. I knew it was close to wearing through for the past year or so. I ended up ordering a replacement from England. It's the model after the 2011-14 version that I have and so the pull won't be quite the same, but front derailleurs aren't really indexed like rear derailleurs, so hopefully it will work fine. Finding an actual replacement for the Super Record one that I had was practically impossible without paying for it as if it was some kind of rare antique.