Participation

This was really just a survival medal.

Last weekend was the Brandon Grand Prix up in Brandon, Mississippi. The Criterium and Road Race also served as the LAMBRA Criterium and Road championships. Robert Lee and co-conspirators had pulled these races together fairly quickly, mainly to ensure that we actually had championships this year. Thanks to the extremely cooperative city they had secured use of a part of the big Brandon Amphitheater and Ballpark complex, for free, for the criterium. The road races would be held nearby, starting from another big soccer complex, also for free. Naturally, a couple of weeks before the event, Hurricane Ida plowed into southern Louisiana and into Mississippi affecting many of the race's potential participants in one way or the other. By the time race weekend was upon us some people were still dealing with damages to their homes or those of family, while others were just getting back from a long evacuation as they awaited power to be restored in their neighborhoods. Thus, it was no surprise that turnout was pretty light. I signed up the Thursday prior after making sure it would be OK to take the car for the weekend. Having not really raced in nearly two years I would be going into these races fully expecting to be dropped. Still, I was looking forward to however much race-level intensity I could get before pulling the plug.

OTB

Saturday's crit course was pretty interesting. It started in a parking lot, exited onto a roadway, continued slightly downhill through some big gates, and then had a right turn and very short but very steep little climb back into the parking lot. The climb was really only about 5 pedal strokes long, but generally required a hard out-of-the-saddle effort. The right turn before it was really the only sharp turn on the course. As expected, the masters criterium started pretty fast. I was hanging in there pretty well, but after four or so laps every time I looked at the computer my heart rate was up around 180 which is a good 15-20 bpm higher than it should have been, even at that effort level. After a few more laps of that I decided maybe it would be wise to ease up a bit, so I dropped off the back and continued until I was lapped, which was pretty quick since it was a really short course. I jumped back into the group and had no further trouble at all. That evening I checked into the inappropriately named Quality Inn a few miles away off of I-20, set up a workbook for the next day's road races, sent that off to Robert, and went off to find food.

Sunday's road race was just a few miles from where I was. I arrived early for the 8 am start of the first wave, which I wasn't in, and spent probably twenty minutes trying to figure out where to park. Although my race didn't start until 10:30, I was on the bike probably by 7:15 and rode about a mile down the road to where Ricky was setting up the start/finish. The races would have a neutral roll-out from the soccer field parking area to the start/finish. I rode out along the initial part of the lollipop-shaped course to see just how bad the "big" climb was. It was fairly short but toward the end was around 10%. I figured I'd better just go to the small ring for that, but was already thinking I'd get dropped if anyone decided to put the pressure on there. I ended up hanging around at the start/finish with Ricky and Rolando for quite a while before riding back to the parking area as the time for the second wave approached. While I was there Robert got a call from Ricky that there had been a crash in the finish of one of the Women's races and that they'd need medical support, so Robert rushed off with one of the police officers who called for an EMT or something, leaving me to guard the cash box at the registration table. Eventually that was all resolved and the crash victim was off for a precautionary CAT scan due to the broken helmet (she turned out to be OK) and shortly thereafter we got our road race underway. Things started out at a pretty moderate pace, but of course everyone knew about "the hill" that was about six miles into the route prior to the "loop" section. My legs were sore from the prior day's efforts, but I didn't really realize just how sore until we started up the climb. I was most of the way up when I just thought to myself, "I really don't want to be hurting this much today" and let them go. So that turned out pretty much as I'd expected. Still, I wasn't too crazy about the idea of riding the remaining 50 miles alone. Luckily, I came upon Trace who had dropped his chain and was stopped on the side of the road. I convinced him to come along, so that was great. A few miles later we were caught by three of the Juniors who were just flying. We kind of latched onto them, being careful not to interfere with their race. They were going surprisingly fast (they had to do only one loop while we had three) but of course sitting on the back of their paceline was pretty easy. Eventually one of them was dropped but he soldiered on and ended up finishing third. We continued on for our remaining two laps. We were about halfway through our last lap when Trace said he was pretty toasted. We'd been taking long pulls - mine were about two miles - and were both a little worse for wear by then. I was on the front taking a pull and at the end flicked my elbow and pulled over for Trace to come through, only to discover he was no longer there. Looking back I could see he was way, way back, so I just continued on since by then there were probably only ten or twelve miles left to go anyway. 

Tired old men

Back at the car I changed out of my sweaty salt-encrusted kit and started to pack things up a bit when I heard someone at the registration table calling me. I thought there might be some question about results or something and walked over there to discover that by virtue of simply finishing I'd been 3rd in the 55+ age group so there was a podium picture to be taken. I hope Keith doesn't fine me for not having my team kit on for that! I hung around for quite a while after that as Robert and Ricky started packing up the race stuff since I'd be taking some of it back with me. A number of us actually ended up having a little tailgate LAMBRA meeting about next season. That was around when I realized I had bedbug bites on my arm and probably also on my forehead thanks to the low-quality Quality Inn. That's about the third time I've gotten bedbug bites at a Mississippi hotel, although to be fair I usually stay at the cheaper ones if I go to a race alone. Guess I'll be itching for a few more days.

So although participation last weekend was significantly lower than it might have been, there was some good competition anyway and I think everyone was thankful that we'd managed to pull off a race weekend considering the combination of pandemic and hurricane issues. I think also that it's hard for riders to commit to a race when it's been so long since they've actually raced. We're hoping we can get things back on track for next season and will probably try to get a tentative calendar together in early October. In the meantime there are a few cyclocross events and other rides, like Six Gap and Tour da Parish on the calendar. I guess I need to make a decision about Six Gap pretty quickly now.