Tour de La Weekend

Small field, but no lack of talent

Leading up to this year's Tour de La we had more complications and changes than we've had for at least a decade. Problems with the original road race venue led to a postponement from the beginning of June to the end of June. In the interim we secured a new venue (actually one that we'd used before for a couple of Collegiate races) and decided to run the time trial immediately after the road races from the same location, which greatly simplified things on Saturday. I think the road course at Lee Road was significantly better in many respects than the old one at Stoney Point. The road surface is dramatically better, and traffic around the start/finish is practically non-existent. All we really needed were riders. We didn't get many of those, however. I guess the heat was one factor, and perhaps there is just a general pervasive fear of entering an actual competition nowadays. Regardless, we pushed ahead, knowing that participation would be far below the years when we had over 200 riders. Of course, that knowledge has driven a gradual reduction in the prizelist that was once around $6k and is now down to around $2k, which is also around the total net revenue from entry fees. There's another $3-4k in costs to put on the event, much of which was made up by sponsorship from Bike Law and Palmer, and some other donations from individuals. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it is just as much work and expense to put on a race for 200 riders as it is for 50.

Mike was there! His derailleur
cable slipped in the RR.

One nice surprise came a couple of days before the event when Howard emailed me to say that the speed bumps on the criterium course had been removed for the race. I was pretty impressed that he was able to make that happen. On Friday I downloaded the final pre-registration data, assigned numbers, set up the registration and results workbook, charged batteries, and went down to the basement to stage all of the stuff I'd need to cram into my car. Since we didn't need the big P/A system for the Road Race or Time Trial, I was able to leave that and the generator at home. For power we'd be relying on just a couple of Jackery power banks. Those would just have to run the radio, laptops, camera, and printer, for which they would have more than enough in reserve. As usual I drove over to the Hampton Inn in Mandeville Friday afternoon to shorten the Saturday morning drive, and was able to have dinner with Mignon and Mark that evening, which was a nice stress-reducer. I knew we would be short-handed this year since a couple of our usual people couldn't be there.

LAMBRA Cat. 1-2 Road Champions

Saturday morning I got up a little after 5 am, picked up coffee at Starbucks, and made the 45 minute drive up to the road course. I stopped at the intersection of 1072 and Lee Road, and spent about 30 minutes sweeping rocks and sand from the inside of that turn, and then put  up a few caution signs and a directional sign for the riders. Once at the Oak Grove church I put up some more signage and started unloading the car. Mignon, Boyd, and Ty arrived to help, and a bit later the two officials, Ricky and Cole. Once the riders started arriving we realized that the bib number set that I had for the masters race was missing a lot of numbers. I had assumed it was an untouched sequence, but apparently not. Fortunately we had lots of extra numbers, so although I had to change a bunch of numbers on my results spreadsheet, it wasn't a huge problem. This year we were running the women with the masters, and were weren't even offering a Junior race, so that meant there would be only three groups on the road, and we'd need only three follow cars, which was good because that's all we had anyway. Mary J from S'port was the only woman to show up, so I guess it was good that we had planned on combining the two groups. We go the police officers assigned to the various intersections and were ready to go right on time.

Masters Road Race

The races themselves went smoothly and without any crashes, but the heat definitely took its toll on some of the riders, even though most were doing only 51 miles, with the 1/2/3/4s doing one 17-mile lap more than that. The only issue was a loose dog, or maybe more than one dog, somewhere between the turn onto Lee Road that the spot where Choctaw road split off. One of the riders got bitten on his ankle. I didn't get the whole story, but Ricky filed a Report of Occurrence just in case, and I think one of the police officers went over there to have a talk with the owner. Usually, dogs will keep their distance from a big group, but none of this year's groups was big enough. The road races were also serving as the LAMBRA road championships, so we had a podium on hand to award the USAC medals. That's always a little complicated when you have people from other states in the race.

Masters Criterium Start

So we wrapped  up the road races and time trials by about 2:30 or so and headed back across the lake. Ricky and Cole were staying at my house, so we went out to dinner after I got the results posted, which didn't take very long.

Cat 1/2/3/4 Criterium

Sunday morning I was up early again to load up the car, this time adding the P/A system and generator, to head over to Torres Park in Chalmette, about half an hour's drive from home. I drove a lap around the course and discovered a water leak in the big parking lot. It was running right across the path we planned to use for the race, so we had to make a little change that, I think, was actually better than the original route through that section. Once again, it was hot, but fortunately there are lots of big oak trees, and we had tons of Coke products on  hand, thanks to Carter Lusk who works with the distributor in Mississippi. They were a sponsor of the Natchez Classic and he had offered to help us out for the Tour. He ended up driving down from McComb and dropping off a bunch of stuff at Mignon's place a few days before the race. Ty then loaded up his truck with a couple of ice chests. Even with it as hot as it was, we still didn't go through everything Carter had brought, so we gave away 12 packs of drinks to the winners. Anyway, nobody crashed and nobody was arrested, so the criterium went well despite the small field sizes. We need to remember to send a notice to the two or three houses that are on the back side of the course next year. We could also use about a hundred more traffic cones for the route through the parking lot.

By the time the criterium was over I was getting  pretty hot and tired. Ty, Mignon, and I took our time tearing everything down and loading it back into the car. Then, of course, I had to unload everything. It's all still sitting in the basement, and I haven't had the energy yet to re-organize it all. Also, the weekend took its toll on my back, as usual.

There are a bunch of photos on the NOBC Facebook Group page, and a nice on-bike video from the 1/2/3/4 criterium.