Forked

The weekend seemed a little longer than usual this time. After a nice Friendly Friday ride on the lakefront, I wrapped up work early so I could head up to Hattiesburg for the Farm to Fork criterium that evening and ride the following day. I was holding out just a little bit of hope that I might be able to jump into the masters criterium, the second of three races that started at 6:30 pm. 

Packet pickup was the entire second floor of a local bank building, and with a criterium, ride, and foot races on tap there was lots of activity. The day before I'd received a copy of the pre-registration list, and knew that things were going to be a little more complicated than usual. The list was basically just a list of names indicating which race the riders were registered for. I immediately noticed a couple of problems. There were no USAC license numbers, gender wasn't indicated (there were prizes for both men and women), and I could see that there were people registered for the Master 35+ race who I knew were not old enough. In fact, one was 16. I'd emailed the promoter about it and so at packet pickup they were writing in license numbers on a printout of the registered riders (scratching through the bib numbers of those who showed up!). As I was leaving, I heard them tell someone that numbers should go on the right. I headed over to the start finish, arriving at exactly the same time as Ricky and Cole, the other officials. The race crew had already set up a low stage for the officials -- on the left side of the course -- along with one of those big generator powered lighting units. As I was getting the computer and printer set up for results, I noticed riders starting to warm up on the course, and of course they had their numbers on the wrong side. I stood out in the road for a while yelling, "numbers go on the left," which should have been obvious to experienced racers since that's where the officials were. Meanwhile one of the event staff was trying to contact the riders who had registered in the wrong race(s). Neither of us was particularly successful. We should have held up the start and made everyone re-pin their numbers where we could see them, but inexplicably we didn't. The first race went off fairly smoothly except, of course, for the unidentifiable riders, which made it particularly difficult to keep track of the multiple lapped riders. 

Friendly Friday

By the time the second race started it was getting dark. This race was an open-category masters race combined with elite women. As a result of the registration system not enforcing age or category restrictions, there were a couple of under-35 men, and a Cat. 5 women. This wasn't the world championships or anything so we didn't worry about it, although it could have become an issue when it was time to hand out the 3-deep prizes. 

Finish of the B race. One readable number, one semi-readable number, three unreadable numbers.

I spent this entire race at the laptop trying to straighten out the start lists and plug in license numbers that I was trying to read from an image sent as an email attachment on my tablet. By the time I had all of that straightened out, the second race had already started, so I started scoring the laps along with Cole and Ricky. We had two finish cameras set up that were working OK under the circumstances (darkness and lighting flicker rate issues typical of night races), but the big problem was the number of riders whose bib numbers we, and the cameras, could not see. This race had a wide range of skill levels, so despite the course being a bit over one kilometer, riders were being lapped all over the place and things at the judging stand were getting very messy. By the end we were reasonably confident about the first five or six places, but it wasn't until Tuesday that the rest of the places were assigned, some a bit tentatively, and thanks in no small part to some crowdsourcing of placings. Fortunately, the Cat. 1/2/3 race had a small field and despite the fact that half of them had numbers we couldn't see, it wasn't too hard to get those results right. I hadn't eaten a thing since about 4:30 when I finally headed for my hotel room around 10:30, reluctantly stopping at McDonalds along the way.

Past and Future all in one photo.

Saturday there was a 60+ mile ride that I knew was going to get fast. In fact, the average speed was a hair over 24 mph. There was initially a pretty big front group, but after forty miles or so we started losing riders, ultimately ending up with around 20. Then, maybe ten miles before the end, the group split for reasons unknown, and of course I was on the wrong end of that split. I figured we'd just roll in as the second group, but the gap just hovered at around 45 seconds, I guess. After turning onto the Longleaf Trace, it looked like the front group eased up, at which point some of the second group started to chase in earnest, finally closing the gap just before the end. Anyway, it was fun, and kind of a hard ride, even though I had mostly kept my nose out of the wind.

So Sunday Lisa had planned this ride starting on St. Claude right before the bridge and heading out to the newly paved 40 arpent canal bike path, and then down to Hopedale. That meant 81 miles for me, and as if my somewhat sore legs weren't bad enough, there was a brutal 18-23 mph headwind all the way down there. I immediately knew I wouldn't be taking any pulls, and wouldn't be contesting the two planned KOM segments either. The first planned fast segment was about 5 miles straight into the wind, so I didn't even try to stay with the group. When I came up to Steve, he got onto my wheel and I took a long pull and a nice moderate speed, only to pull off and discover he was MIA. I later learned that right after he'd gotten onto my wheel, all the stuff fell out of his saddle bag, so he stopped for a long while to collect it all. That was the last we saw of him. As it turned out, he had continued on but turned around at the bridge crossing before Hopedale. Then, on the way back, it looks like we passed him when he stopped at a gas station or something. Anyway, at the next intersection the group waited for me and then Dave, who said he thought Steve must had turned around (he hadn't), so we continued on. There were about a dozen riders, so although staying in the draft into that gusty headwind was no walk in the park, it was at least manageable even in my suboptimal state, and we made it to the end of the road where we stopped at a store that was a converted cargo container set about 20 feet above the ground, or water, which were basically the same. 

Tuesday morning Dawn Patrol ride. 

With the way the road curved, I knew that there would be a strong crosswind for the first few miles back before we'd feel the tailwind. Unfortunately, the way back started with a 10-mile KOM segment. I knew that starting at the back there would be zero draft, so Devin and I were never really with the group once it started. Eventually we saw riders getting dropped from the group ahead, first Mike, then Charles and someone else, and we got pretty close at the bridge crossing, but we didn't catch them before the next re-grouping. After that, I thought the pace would settle down a bit, but when we hit the highway with that 20+ mph tailwind, things quickly got out of hand. I dropped off when I saw the computer registering 36 mph, and again found myself with Devin and Mike and Charles. After that it was just the bike path and a commute back. Actually, I enjoyed the ride, and felt like it was a good time of year for a couple of back to back hard rides. It wasn't until a few days later that I learned that Dave, who had been on the ride, had suffered a heart attack a day or two afterward while at the gym. He was apparently scheduled for heart bypass surgery the following week.