Head First

It was a long weekend, for which I am still paying a price.  It all started at 4:30 am on Saturday morning when I slipped out of bed to load up the car with officiating stuff and racing stuff in order to make it up to the cyclocross race north of Jackson, Mississippi in time to get registration set up.  For this race we would have a couple of additional officials, so I was confident I'd be able to race the masters race in order to break up the tedium of officiating.  These cyclocross races in which we allow lapped riders to remain can get pretty challenging to judge, even with fields of only fifteen riders.

I arrived at the course in plenty of time to get the finish line set up.  The DSGP crew had already staked out the course which featured some actual terrain and three artificial barriers, one of which was hidden immediately behind a big rolled hay bale.  As usual the Cat. 4/5 race was the biggest, and also the hardest to score with riders getting quickly scattered all around the course. Ricky, one of the other officals, raced in that one, so when he finished I handed him my messy score sheet and rushed off to my car to pin race numbers onto my vintage NOBC jersey.  It was still pretty cool, so I decided to wear a jersey that was age-appropriate to both the bike and myself.  I had enough time to ride the bike down to the port-o-let before riding back up to the start line where I positioned myself near the back so as to avoid interfering with anyone who was actually racing.  Having not ridden, or even seen, most of the course, I took it easy on the first lap.  Then, seeing a number of riders just a bit ahead of me I decided to see if I could catch them. That didn't last very long.  Coming down the first downhill I planted my front wheel firmly in a little diagonal gully which threw me and the bike off to the right.  I remember thinking that I might be able to save it just before I was slammed head-first to the ground.  That knocked the wind out of me and pretty much destroyed every muscle, ligament and tendon connecting my head to the rest of my body.  I am still hoping that nothing is broken.  It took me a couple of minutes to get up and although I considered just walking back to the finish line to DNF, I thought I may as well ride out the rest of the lap, albeit very carefully.  I ended up finishing, although of course I was lapped by the leaders.  Afterward I found that my helmet had cracked and I had bruise on the top of my forehead where I'd hit.  I still can't comfortably turn my head without some pain.  Anyway, we finished up officiating the rest of the races and I made the 3 hour drive back home thanks to a couple of Advil as I debated the wisdom of doing the planned 104 mile Varsity to Varsity ride the next morning.

Well, despite the neck and back damage, The Daughter and I convinced The Wife to come with us to Baton Rouge at 5:20 am the next morning so we wouldn't have to get a ride back to Baton Rouge to retrieve the car.  The Varsity to Varsity ride is a ride that the LSU team has been doing for a few years in which they ride from the Varsity Sports shop in Baton Rouge to the Varsity Sports shop in New Orleans.  It's long, but it's not a race, so they stop a few times along the way and there are lead and follow vehicles.  This would be The Daughter's first century ride, so I didn't want to miss it.  I popped a 12-hour Aleve before we left and hoped for the best.  As long as I wasn't moving my head around much it was fine, but looking back was next to impossible so I quickly decided to ride herd at the back of the 24-rider group and take a few photos along the way.  This was nice in that I had a draft, but it was a little scary in that I could see the somewhat unstable riding of a few of the newer riders.  I left a little extra space ahead of my front wheel.

The ride went remarkably smoothly.  The weather was nearly perfect, although there was a wind out of the east that seemed to get stronger as the ride went on.  Much of this ride follows River Road, so it passes a number of old plantation homes, sugar cane fields, grain elevators and oil refineries.  It's not exactly the most scenic ride around, but some section are pretty nice.  It's also dead flat, which was good because it would be the longest ride ever for a number of the riders.  This year there were a few Tulane Cycling riders in the group, and I think it was the first century ride for three of them.

It got to where I was really looking forward to the rest stops because the muscles in the back of my neck and upper back were screaming after an hour or two of steady riding.  The last rest stop was a mile or so before the Spillway which comes at around 76 miles. I could see that a few of the riders were starting to hurt, although The Daughter still looked like she was doing fine. 

After riding through the spillway the pace seemed to pick up a bit at the front and three of four riders came off the back.  I backed off to try and pick them up but I could see that the group was riding away from us and there was no way they would catch if it didn't slow down, so I rode ahead, worked through the group, and let the riders at the front know what was going on.  They eased up for a little while and I dropped back to pick up the stranded riders.  All but one of them made it back to the group before the pace started creeping up again, so I dropped back to the LSU rider who was off the back in order to see if I could pace her back up.  After a mile or so I discovered she wasn't on my wheel any more.  I would have realized this earlier but it hurt too much to look back.  So I dropped back and picked her up again, this time keeping a slower pace of around 12 mph. Her calves were cramping up, but I knew that the follow vehicle had gone ahead since we were now on the levee bike path.  She fell off again, so I picked her up and dropped the pace down another notch.  She was really hurting, but a couple of miles later we met the follow car at the "Little Dip" and she was rescued. 

By then the pack was long gone, at least five minutes ahead of me, so I had to ride the last twenty miles alone.  That was fine until I got onto the city streets and realized how tricky it was to ride in traffic without turning your head!  Anyway, I eventually found my way to Varsity Sports, had some pizza and a beer, and then The Daughter and I rode home.

I took some more drugs and went to be early with the full knowledge that I would not be riding on Monday.  Hopefully everything in my neck and back will improve by tomorrow.

Wind and Cold

I wasn't expecting to see many people out riding this morning. A cold front had come through before dawn, leaving behind wet streets, a strong gusty north wind, and falling temperatures. I went out a little late with The Daughter, knowing we'd be doing battle with the wind but glad that the temperature hadn't yet started to really drop. Although the levee bike path was relatively quiet, there were still a number of riders out there, mostly solo or with one or two others.  By tomorrow morning it should be down to 50F or so with a 12-15 mph wind.  I know that doesn't seem so bad to some, but it will be about the closest thing we've had to winter yet this Fall.  I think the cool weather will stick around at least through Saturday, which should make the upcoming cyclocross race up in Jackson, MS feel more like a real cyclocross race with early morning temperatures in the 40s.  The next day we'll be joining the LSU team for their annual ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that works out to a bit over 100 miles, but that should be done at a fairly easy pace with a number of stops along the way.  By Wednesday of next week the job site on the levee bike path nearest the Huey P. Long bridge will be closing down a section of the path until some time in 2015.  That will mean a detour of maybe a quarter mile on River Road, which wouldn't be too bad if River Road had a shoulder, or a good road surface, and if that section didn't happen to be right where all of the traffic and trucks turn off of Jefferson Highway onto River Road.  I have already suggested to the contractor and the levee district police that perhaps a few "watch for cyclists" signs or something like that would be a good idea.  No response from either to my email however.  The morning group should be able to take over the lane when needed, but it's going to be dicey for the solo riders, especially once the days get shorter and we're back in the dark. I'm not sure if riding down Carrollton Avenue will seem like a good alternative or not, but depending on how things go it may turn out to be a reasonable option one or two days a week.

So Much

Last Friday I headed off to Colorado Springs for the annual USAC Local Associations Summit.  For some reason my flight went through Denver this time instead of Dallas, which was something I probably should have thought about a little bit ahead of time.  The trip there went fine, but it was a long enough layover in Denver waiting for the 30-minute flight from there to COS that I had plenty of time to realize I probably could have just rented a car in Denver, driven to Colorado Springs, arrived earlier, and likely paid considerably less.  If I'd gotten together with a few other people going to the same meeting and we had shared a rental car it would have been even cheaper.  Oh well.

The "LA" conference is usually pretty packed with information flowing both ways, which is to say that the Local Association representatives usually have a lot to say about the topics that are covered, and the USAC staff have a lot to tell us about plans and changes in the world of competitive cycling.  So much information.  This year was no different, and although we didn't get our usual preview of proposed changes to the racing rules, we certainly filled that gap with discussion about the move to a single racing license, fee increases, discount programs, etc.  There were also the usual rather frightening sessions about insurance and risk management.  On the plus side, we get to meet all of those people we work with via email and telephone all year and have an opportunity to pick the brains of those in other Local Associations who are dealing with similar issues.  The only complication is the rather large difference in perspective and priority between the really big Local Associations and the smaller ones like ours.  The LAs like us all struggle to find enough officials and promoters to put together a reasonable racing season without everyone going too far into the red, largely depending on volunteers and never having quite enough of them or even riders themselves.  The large LAs have issues involving professional race timing companies and promoters with huge budgets and hundreds of participants per race. In that world there is always some friction between the promoters who are being told they have to hire a whole bunch of officials and the officials who actually compete with each other to get assigned to those big events for which they are paid in full.  In our world we have officials who routinely serve at discounted rates or as volunteers, judges who aren't actually officials, registrars who are volunteers from the local clubs, and promoters who are thrilled if there are over 100 entrants and the race breaks even.  Anyway, I am expecting some unhappiness about the jump in license fees from the riders who never cross disciplines, and from the promoters who have to collect an additional $5 from the one-day license riders.  As an example, if you are putting on a weekend event like a stage race or omnium you will be collecting from each 1-day license rider $30 in license fees plus $6 in insurance surcharges (neither of which you get to keep), which works out to $36.  Since the Cat. 5s cannot receive any prizes of value (i.e. cash), just how much of an entry fee over and above those $36 can you charge them without it looking totally out of line with the entry fees for the other classes.  Of course we'd love to see them all buy the $70 annual licenses, but if they don't think they will do more than five or six races some of them will just cut down on racing rather than get annuals.  The event permit fees are finally getting re-worked so that the big jump that used to happen when an even had one race with $2k or more in prizes will go away.  However that means that the smaller races that were getting away with relatively trivial permit fees of $25-50 are probably going to see their fees double.  Realistically it still won't be much more than a drop in the bucket compared to the other costs of putting on anything beyond a local parking lot criterium, but it will still seem like a money grab to some.

So for the first time in years I didn't have an overlapping conference in Washington D.C. and didn't need to rush off to the airport on Sunday morning before the LA Summit actually ended.  Even so, I did need a ride to the airport, so I was there about three hours before my little hop over to Denver.  Again, I was thinking, "I should have rented a car," especially after seeing five or six other people from the meeting who were also waiting for flights to Denver.  Anyway, I finally get on the little plane and am seated amidst an excitable group of high school synchronized swim team members (I could actually smell the chlorine when they sat down) and we make an uneventful flight at about 10,000 feet to Denver that wasn't really worth bothering to put the gear up on the airplane.  Now the excitement started because my arrival time in Denver was also my boarding time for my connecting flight.  Fortunately I knew they were both leaving from the same concourse, albeit about a mile apart, and we arrived a few minutes early.  I hustled down the long concourse and got to the gate a few minutes after the rest of the passengers had boarded, took my seat and kicked back for the long flight back to NOLA.  Or so I thought.  So we're sitting there and nothing's happening when finally the pilot comes on the speaker and says there's an electrical problem that they need to have checked out and it would probably just take five minutes or so.  An hour later we're still at the gate.  Finally it looks like the problem is solved so the pull back from the gate and then the pilot comes on again to tell us there is another problem and they need to run through some diagnostics with the mechanic to see if they can fix it without going back to the gate.  I knew we were in trouble when he said they were going to have to shut everything down and "reboot the plane."  That never works for my computer, so I wasn't giving it much hope.  Of course it didn't work and we had to get towed back to the gate where everybody had to exit the plane and hang around in the airport for another half hour or so.  Finally, three hours late, we took off.  That meant that rather than getting home at 9:30 or so, it was more like 1 am.  Long day.

This morning I went out for the long Tuesday levee ride and when I opened the door I knew the turnout would be slim.  There was a strong gusty wind blowing out of the southeast and the sky was overcast.  I think we started out with seven or eight riders with a pretty strong tailwind.  Somewhere out around Kenner, though, the group split when all but the front two had to slow down to work through some pedestrians in both lanes. I took a pull into what was at the time mostly a crosswind, and then Woody came past and ramped it up to close the gap.  Nobody was able to go with him under the circumstances, however, so the rest of us just formed up a nice little paceline and watched the three riders ahead slowly pull away.  Big Richard and I turned around at The Dip, knowing it would be a long slog into the wind all the way back, but most of the rest continued on.  We met up with Donald, so we had a nice 3-rider group to share the work, which was substantial.  The wind occasionally dropped our speed down to 16-17 mph despite a pretty significant effort.  We had averaged over 25 mph on the way out.

End of Dark

The wind's been shifting back around to the south lately, lifting the morning temperatures well out of arm-warmer range, at least until the next front arrives Halloween night.  Since I'll be departing for Mountain Time on Friday, I'll be off the bike for three days.  I hate that, but it will actually be a shorter lapse than usual.  For the past few years the USAC Local Associations conference has come immediately before the NCURA conference in D.C., and as a result it was usually five or six days before I saw the bike again.  This year the D.C. conference has been moved to August, so at least my losses will be limited.

Sunrise around here is currently at 7:12 am, so even the relatively late 6:40 am ride is starting in the dark.  Fortunately, however, this week will be the last of the dark rides for a little while.  For me, tomorrow will be my last.  By the time I'm back we will have moved our clocks backward and on Monday the sun will rise at 7:12.  For a few weeks the lights can come off the bike, but the reprieve won't last long as the days continue to shorten.  By November 30 sunrise will be back to 6:38, and by Christmas we'll already be a few miles down the road before the sun peeks over the horizon. To further complicate matters, the levee construction work that started earlier this month will, on some undetermined date, close off critical parts of the bike path and we'll all be looking for alternate morning ride solutions.  The infamous WeMoRi (Wednesday Morning Ride) around City Park and Lakeshore Drive starts at the insane hour of 5:45 am and I don't know that I will often be desperate enough to get up at 5 am in order to get to the start. One group is already pushing for another morning ride around City Park at around 6 am on Tuesdays.  Personally, I'm thinking that 6:30 would be more reasonable, especially if most of the ride was on Lakeshore Drive rather than a battle with stop lights and early commuter traffic on Wisner and Marconi.  It'll be bad enough just getting home from such a ride at 7:45 or so on Carrollton Avenue, so I can't say I'm looking forward to it.  There was a time, however, before the levee bike path was completed, that I routinely rode out to the lakefront on Carrollton to do my training ride on Lakeshore Drive, so I may be back to that some time in the next month or so.  We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm at least glad that there's no race or other big ride that I'll be missing next weekend (although it would be a great weekend for a long ride on the northshore).  The following weekend will be the cyclocross race up in Jackson on Saturday, followed by a 100 mi. collegiate ride with LSU from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, assuming of course I survive the cyclocross.

This morning's levee ride had a group of around ten, I guess.  There was a moderate breeze out of the southeast that didn't present too much of a problem and provided a bit of a tailwind for much of the outgoing part.  Tomorrow we're having our annual Halloween open house, so if you are in the neighborhood any time before 10:30 or so, stop by for a drink and something to eat.

A Bit of Fall Weather

After last weekend's mudfest in New Orleans it was with much relief that I noted a weekend forecast consisting mostly of clear skies and fall-like weather.  I was scheduled to officiate the cyclocross race over in Baton Rouge, and although I'd clamped the bike to the roof I wasn't really  holding out a lot of hope that I'd get to race.  The course at Highland Road park looked great.  there was some good elevation change, some fast sections of grass and hard-packed trail, and of course a number of artificial barriers.  The turnout was similar to the New Orleans race, which is to say it was excellent, and I was looking forward to keeping my feet dry and having as good a time as one can while officiating.

The races themselves went very well, although I can't really say the same for the results.  The multiple-category race had riders being lapped very early, with a couple lapped more than once, and sorting that out took me a whole lot longer than I'd have liked.  There was a little confusion with some riders who were sporting the wrong numbers since they were registered in more than one race, and so basically things started running late. The final race, for Cat. 1/2/3, had only six riders (we don't have many cyclocross riders around here above Cat. 4). The winner, William Sheftal, was the sole Cat. 2 in the field and basically rode away from the rest of the field immediately.  Even so, it was obvious how much faster these guys were going than the Cat. 4s had been going earlier.  The winner's lap times were all a bit under 5 minutes, which were at least a minute faster than the Cat. 4s had been going.  He was so much smoother going over the barriers that there was simply no comparison with the rest of the field.  Anyway, I don't think I got out of there until around 3:30.


Feeling a little mileage-deprived I went out to the Giro Ride on Sunday.  It was still fairly chilly at 6 am, and I was glad I'd pulled on the arm-warmers before leaving.  The ride itself was very nice.  The pace stayed fast and steady for most of the ride, which was just what I was looking for. Afterward, Ben and I rode straight over to Tulane's Reily Center to meet a few of those riders, including The Daughter, who were leaving at 10:00.  This was a nice easy ride through the park and along the still-closed Orleans Parish section of the levee bike path, and then all the way out to The Dip.  That gave me a bit over 90 miles for the day, so I was feeling satisfied by the time I got home.  I watched some TV while I sorted out the 1-day licenses from the prior day's race and updated the series standings.  This morning I took those standings off the LAMBRA website, however, because the promoter was re-scoring everything in a fairly strange way that I just can't comprehend.  Frankly, I think it's so convoluted and complicated that the riders are never going to understand it, and some of them will probably be pissed off when they see someone ahead of them on points who they never actually got to race against.  I think I'm just going to have to let them handle the series points.

Fleece and Film

I guess this morning was the coolest we've yet had this Fall, which isn't really saying much since it didn't even merit knee-warmers. I knew I'd be chilly anyway, so I dug out my long-sleeve jersey with the fleecy lining. Riding out to the levee felt downright cold, however, and I was kind of wishing I'd pulled on some knee-warmers.  Of course once the pace got going I warmed up considerably, but I never felt really warm.  After the turnaround the pace stayed relatively slow, which eventually made me feel even colder as the sweat started to evaporate.  I guess I should get used to it though.  It's that time of year.

After the ride Brian, Danielle and I pulled up to Zotz for a coffee break and noticed that there were No Parking signs all up and down the street there.  A film crew was just getting things set up for something. There was a black hearse parked on the block that was obviously for the film, along with a cluster of people getting things set up. This happens fairly often on Oak Street. There was another film crew on Carrollton as we rode home, and they've been filming 22 Jump Street on campus for a few weeks now. 

Gumbo Mud and Westbank Giro

I awoke before dawn on Saturday and waited to lift my head off the pillow until a car went by.  I listened intently for the sound of tires on wet pavement, but to my surprise it sounded dry.  I looked out the window and could see that it had not rained.  My first thought was, "This is bad!"  It wasn't that I was looking forward to a rainy day of cyclocross races.  The forecast earlier had been calling for rain overnight that would be tapering off by mid-morning.  With the first of the DSGP cyclocross races scheduled to start at 10:00 am, I was hoping that the cool front would have come through by then. Immediately I pulled up the radar map and what I saw made me jump out of bed and pull on some pants.  The rain was literally a few minutes away.  I ran downstairs and, as quickly as I could, loaded up the car with the race equipment I'd need to officiate - two pop-up tents, generator, race clock, clock stand, flag, banners, table, chairs, and two bins full of clipboards, stopwatches and other miscellaneous stuff.  As I slammed the Volvo's rear door closed the rain started.

When I arrived at the cyclocross venue in City Park, about an hour and a half before start time, the crew was about halfway through putting up the stakes and tape to mark off the course.  I found a couple of the race volunteers and gave them a quick lesson on race registration since the registration would be located quite a distance from the start and I knew I couldn't be there.  I rushed over the the start location and got the tent set up and gear unloaded in a light rain.  The Daughter arrived and helped get things set up as riders started to filter in.  Considering the weather I'd been expecting maybe 30 riders, which would have been an excellent turnout.  As it turned out, the actual number was more like 50, and with a number of them riding multiple races the number of actual entries was nearly 70.  Amazing.  The rain went back and forth from drizzle to outright rain a number of times during the first few hours and the course went from soft and muddy to rutted gumbo mud, especially after the first race.

The first race was the biggest with 34 riders on the line for the Cat. 4/5 race.  Many were racing on 1-day licenses and thanks to some deplorable penmanship we were just guessing on a number of their names.  Bob M. had arrived to help officiate and despite the rain we got the first race started less than fifteen minutes late.  The course times during practice sessions a few days earlier had been running in the seven to seven and a half minute range and indeed the first riders in this race came through at under 8 minutes, so we figured their 30-minute race would be about 4 laps.  Big mistake.  The speeds slowed to a crawl as the course got churned up and bikes became loaded down with mud and grass, so they ended up riding for more like 44 minutes (55 for those off the back).  It was a challenge keeping track of lapped riders but otherwise it was fun. At some point a spectator asked permission to plug a blender into the generator to make frozen daiquiris or something.  There was also free beer on hand, some of which found its way into somewhat illegal handups. 

The other races went pretty well and the rain eventually stopped, although we were falling behind schedule pretty significantly because of some difficulties with scoring resulting from the registration problems plus the extra time needed for riders who were off the back to plod in to the finish.  I felt sorry for the riders on over-geared narrow-tire singlespeeds!  The promoter had not been able to print out the pre-registered riders' entry forms, nor the blank release forms, because of printer problems the night before.  I had a few release forms on hand and we had lots of the multipart 1-day forms, so they used those.  That resulted in a number of riders for whom we didn't have license numbers since the 1-day forms don't have a space for those.  Then, when riders decided to ride additional races, there were some problems with race numbers not being swapped out or noted, but all-in-all it wasn't too bad.  At the finish line I had my own set of problems, not the least of which were the red ants that kept climbing up my left sock and stinging me on the ankle.  My tape recorder must have gotten wet and that was what I was using to record finish times.  Granted, finish times weren't essential, but it's nice to have them.  Luckily The Daughter had been standing next to me and was writing down the times as I called them out into the recorder.  I'd brought my own bike, holding out some hope of being able to ride the masters race, but there just wasn't enough time for me to do that comfortably.  Besides, it looked like a swamp out there by that time and I had my doubts about the fun to suffering ratio.  It wasn't until after 3 pm that I got home and unloaded the car.  The event was unquestionably a huge success and has set the cyclocross event bar quite a bit higher than it's ever been before in this neck of the woods.  The next race is this coming weekend in Baton Rouge.

Sunday there was the annual Tour de Jefferson, which is supposed to be a nice fun 50-mile charity ride over on the Westbank.  Over the past few years, however, it has evolved into the "Westbank Giro" because most of the regular Giro riders participate and it turns into a pretty fast ride.  This year I went over with The Daughter for whom this would be the longest ride of the year.  I told her how I though it would go and advised her to start at the front with me and the rest of the Giro crowd, expect it to be fast, and hang with the front group for the first eight miles until we got off of the levee.  I figured that by then the speed would have shed the more casual (aka dangerous) riders and she could find herself a nice group going at a more moderate pace.  The lead group split off a little bit before that point after a particularly fast surge, but that was OK.  So for me the rest of the ride out to the turnaround was pretty nice.  I mostly hung out toward the back of the lead group, which numbered about 20, I guess, occasionally closing gaps and responding to surges, but mostly drafting and enjoying the scenery.  The return trip was similar, and I was actually a little disappointed that nobody attacked the climb up the bridge.  Our group averaged 24.5 mph for the 48 miles.  When I got back to the start I stopped for a few minutes and then rode backwards on the course for a couple of miles until I found The Daughter safely tucked into a small group.  Her legs were pretty much toast but she was hanging in there pretty well.  After stuffing myself with jambalaya, red beans and rice, and chicken wings, we headed home where I failed to do much of anything productive for the rest of the day.

Weather Watch

"Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."  I couldn't help but remember that phrase on this morning's ride as we turned back to the east.  At the time, the wind was still out of the southeast or maybe southwest, but things were definitely changing. At any rate, I was glad there was no rain on the radar map.  The Thursday long levee ride was fairly sedate today with riders taking longish pulls at moderate speeds.  I was fine with that.  It's early afternoon now and the wind has already shifted to the NNW at 9 mph and will no doubt swing fully around to the north later today.  I don't really understand what's going on with the weather right now, but the hourly forecast is calling for a nice day on Friday and then rain chances increasing after midnight on Friday all the way up to 70% at 6 am Saturday.  Then the chance of rain drops quickly to only 20% at 10 am., which is when the cyclocross races start.  That's cutting it pretty close, and really it's still a little too far out to be counting on the hourly forecast like that.  One thing seems certain.  Between now and then it's going to rain, and that means that some parts of the course are going to be wet and muddy and slippery.  Those are conditions that some in the cyclocross world truly embrace.  I am not one of them, although I'm sure I will find some fun riding out there anyway. With apologies to Mark Twain, one might advise, "Get a cyclocross bike. You will not regret it, if you live." 

What I'm most concerned about is actually getting the race finish and judging area set up without getting all of the equipment and myself soaked.  We will be basically out in the middle of a very low-lying grassy field, so I would greatly appreciate it if the rain would just come and go before sunrise.  For now, though, I will be including plastic tarps, plastic bags, umbrellas, rain gear, and extra socks and shoes on the "stuff to bring" list.

The Next Front

Wednesday morning seemed noticeably darker than Monday had.  Perhaps it was just that I'd been awakened around 5 am by the garbage truck outside my window trying unsuccessfully to negotiate the turn onto Neron Place after entering Pine St., as always, from the wrong direction.  They eventually gave up and headed back onto S. Claiborne, but not without ten minutes of back-up beeping and yelling back and forth.  On the plus side, no side-view mirrors were damaged in the process.  So I go down to the basement and put the bike on the ground only to find the rear tire flat as a pancake.  I quickly swapped it out for my race wheel and headed out to the levee.  It was still a bit cool but definitely more humid than it had been the last few days.  The wind had shifted around to the southeast, I guess.  There was a pretty good group this morning and thanks to the slight tailwind and moderate pace, the ride out to the turnaround was pretty smooth.  With a clear sky I was able to turn off the headlight by the time we were halfway out.  Today there were enough people in the paceline, and they were taking long enough pulls, that my turn never actually came up all the way out to the parish line.

We had a bit of a headwind on the way back, but the pace was fairly slow so it didn't really matter much.  It's late afternoon now and the clouds have started to move in ahead of a very slow-moving cool front that I think will drift through tomorrow. That should bring a shift of wind direction to the north and probably a bit of rain. The Friday forecast seems to be fine, but for Saturday they're presently predicting a 60% chance of rain.  The cool front won't be particularly cold, so by mid-morning on Saturday I guess it will be in the low 70s, which will be great unless, of course, it's also raining.  The cyclocross races in City Park start around 10 am, which means I'll be out there by 8:30 or so, and although it might be fun to do the course in the rain and mud, standing there wet all day officiating is not something I'm looking forward to. Fortunately, there's still plenty of time for the forecast to change.  The plan is to officiate the first race at 10:00, race the second one at 11:00, and the officiate the ones at 12:15 and 1:45 with Bob M. standing in as the official for the 11:00 one.  Luckily, if the weather is really lousy I can always claim I'm needed as an official and save myself from falling into puddles of mud. Actually, it should be fun as long as the weather doesn't get too miserable, and really, this is New Orleans where miserable October weather conditions would resemble a nice summer day in Belgium.  There was a nice article about the race in Cyclocross Magazine (which I didn't actually know existed until this morning).

Cross to Bear

The Giro heads out past the Lakeshore Drive floodgate.

The weekend's weather was nice and although I have been fairly unmotivated to push myself, I did manage to make both Giro Rides plus a little stroll through the City Park cyclocross course.  Turnout for the Giro was strangely low last weekend.  Perhaps it was just that there is so much going on around here this time of year.  As D and I rode to the Giro on Saturday we passed the big field in City Park where the Seafood Festival was set up.  Down along Harrison there was a big music stage also set up near Marconi.  Elsewhere, there were at least two other festival type things going on, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but the weather was so nice that  you would think more people would have made the effort to get in a ride.  Anyway, that's not to say that the groups were too small, just that they were smaller than usual.  On the plus side, the pace was also more steady.  I'd even go so far as to say that Sunday's Giro was pleasant.

Well, the first race of the Delta States Grand Prix cyclocross series is this Saturday over in City Park and the local Facebook groups are all atwitter about it.  Hardly anyone around here has enough relevant experience with cyclocross to be able to offer valid comments, but of course that isn't stopping anyone.  For me, it's just a fun change of pace where I'm more focused on riding around in the dirt and grass without falling too much than on actually being competitive.  However, a bunch of the local riders have recently acquired actual cyclocross bikes of one flavor or another and many are trying to cram in as much experience on them as possible.  It's basically like trying to get in shape for cyclocross all in one week.  I'll be officiating except for the race in which I'll hopefully be riding, and it's looking like turnout will be pretty strong.  By strong, I mean there will probably be at least thirty riders.  Considering that we haven't had a cyclocross season around here since 2011, and even then the turnout was pretty low, that's actually quite encouraging. Of course, everyone has a different opinion about the course.  The group that's been helping put on the race has actually put in a huge, huge amount of work creating a cyclocross course basically from scratch in an area of the park that was once part of the golf course but has been basically abandoned for at least the past seven or eight years.

I went out and rode it on Sunday after the Giro after having tried it out briefly a few days prior to that. (Kenny posted some video of the course on youtube.) This time I had the tire pressure down to about 50 psi, which I think helped. I might even be able to go a little lower.  Interestingly, I found a pair of not very knobby cyclocross tubulars at home and could make up a wheelset from some old 5- speed wheels I have hanging around but it almost doesn't seem worth the effort. Almost all of the course feels really, really bumpy, and a lot of it plows through some rather thick grass, so there is almost no place where you feel like you can get up any significant speed.  If you wanted to be competitive on this course you'd have to keep the power on practically the whole time.  It's also basically flat as a pancake, so to make up for that there are a lot of very tight turns, some sand that was no doubt once part of the golf course's sand traps, and a couple of spots that could be really wet and muddy if there's any rain.  I'm hoping we don't have any head-on collisions along a couple of stretches where there is basically two-way traffic. Although it's a challenging course, I can't really say it's a fun one.  Personally, I like the courses with some nice sweeping downhills, hard-packed roads or trails, and maybe an uphill run-up somewhere.  I'm not particularly good at those things, but they do make a course more interesting.  On the plus side, though, it won't be cold and there will probably be some actual spectators to see me stumble over the barriers and impale my crotch on the Pennine's vintage Concur saddle which is probably the newest component on the whole bike.  I really need to lower that thing a bit.  Anyway, it should be a fun event one way or the other.  The next day, on Sunday, there's the annual Tour of Jefferson across the river, so I might go ride that if I don't break anything on Saturday.

Uncontrolled Variables

The cool mornings are still with us for the time being. The weather for yesterday's Wednesday morning levee ride was nearly perfect and it was looking like it would be a nice ride until the crash.  As the group approached one of the access roads a car turned onto it off of River Road at full speed and it was anybody's guess whether he would slow down in time.  I was near the back and yelled "Car!" as the riders in front hit the brakes. Whenever that happens it's hard to know if the guys in front are just slowing down a little bit or braking hard. In this case it was the latter.  Brian was somewhere in the middle and was caught off-guard, crossing wheels with someone in front of him and going down.  He didn't seem to be hurt too badly and did the rest of the ride with us, but even though his shorts didn't tear, he reportedly had a nice bit of road rash under there.

So I went out in the dark this morning expecting similar conditions to the day before.  I was therefore surprised to find the levee covered in a fairly thick fog. Once the pace got going and the fog got thicker things started getting pretty sketchy, especially toward the back.  You couldn't see the pedestrians or other bikes until the last minute, which resulted in a lot of panic braking toward the end of the paceline.  After the third time someone hit the brakes in front of me I sat up and dropped out of the paceline.  There were just too many uncontrolled variables for comfort.  I waited for Jeff and Mignon who had done the same a bit earlier and we had a nice steady ride all the way out to the Luling bridge where we turned back with the group.  The ride back was much nicer since the fog had mostly lifted by then.

Coffee Season

For the second morning in a row it felt like Fall.  Around here that means the morning temperature was, however briefly, in the 60s.  The cold front that came through late on Sunday left us with a windy and cool Monday morning.  Aside from the wind, it was great riding weather, but the levee was predictably deserted.  I think we saw three other bikes between uptown and Kenner.  This morning was similar, perhaps a bit cooler and a bit less windy.  The 6:15 ride now starts essentially in the dark, but there were a lot of riders on hand today and I guess the group numbered at least a dozen.  With the road season over you would think that the Tuesday ride's intensity level would drop down a notch.  Indeed, that's clearly what most of the riders were hoping for.  Most, but not all.  A couple of riders kept pushing the pace, but most of the rest were unwilling to go with the surges, so a couple would ride off the front, get frustrated that nobody was following, and then drop back again.  While I would have been happy to stay in the rotation taking pulls at, say, 24 mph, after the first time I was essentially attacked after taking a pull I decided I'd drop to the back and let them have their party at the front.  Naturally, once we turned around and it was more headwind than tailwind the pace calmed down a bit.

The whole time I was thinking about a cup of hot coffee.  There's something about cold weather that turns my thoughts to caffeine, and the Fall-like weather certainly made it seem like coffee season.  I'm not what you'd call a big-time coffee drinker.  I typically have a cup of coffee in the morning, mainly for medicinal purposes, but that's usually it for the day.  Even so, it always seems so much more satisfying when it's cooler outside. I'm sure we are still a long way from consistently cool weather, but one thing about riding early in the morning is that you feel the changing seasons a lot earlier and more intimately than those who don't step outside until the sun is up.  The other thing that cool weather reminds me of is Cyclocross.  This morning as we were nearing the end of the ride I saw Ben riding his cyclocross bike in the grassy field that used to be the PHI heliport.

Falls and Weather

It was supposed to be a wash-out at the very least, a hurricane at the very most.  By mid-week the media were in a full-blown hurricane frenzy.  The radar didn't really look that impressive, but the storm tracks were consistently predicting landfall close enough to New Orleans to be a problem.  By the end of the week races were cancelled and the annual MS Tour was up in the air. I hadn't yet missed a day of riding, although one of those had been fairly damp, but the weekend was not looking promising. 

I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of car tires on wet asphalt. Looking out the window at the dark streets I could at least see that is wasn't actually raining, so I checked the radar.  Surprisingly, it looked fine, so I kitted up and headed over to Starbucks to see who else would show up for the Giro Ride.  Although the turnout was pretty low, it was still good enough and we rolled out just a bit late.

As we cruised down Lakeshore Drive someone suddenly said, "Look!"  Off to our right a bald eagle was flying right alongside us, but by the time I could get my camera out of my pocket he had perched on one of the struggling live oaks that the levee board keeps trying to grow along a brackish lake.  I got a rather poor shot, but at least I got a shot of the first eagle of the fall season.  They seem to disappear during the summer, so I always look forward to seeing them again in the fall.  Somewhere along Lakeshore Drive a rider on a triathlon bike latched onto the back of the group. 

We rode over the Seabrook bridge, climbed the Casino bridge, and were descending onto Hayne Blvd when I heard people calling out behind me.  Looking back I could see a rider on the ground who wasn't moving and I immediately knew what had happened.  It was the guy on the tri bike.  He had dropped his front wheel into the slot between one of the drain grates and the concrete and gone down basically on his head and shoulder.  By the time I got back there he was sitting up.  He was slightly disoriented and it looked like he might need some stitches around his eye socket but it didn't look like anything was broken.  We called for an ambulance and waited until it arrived.  In the meantime he got in touch with someone.  Surprisingly, the ambulance loaded both him and his bike into the ambulance and they headed off to the ER.  It didn't take too long after we got started for the pace to ramp up and despite the small group we had a reasonably fast Giro Ride.  The weather the rest of the day was not particularly bad, and it was looking like the storm was stalled down in the gulf and disintegrating.

So Sunday morning the weather was quite nice. I had been expecting a lot of wind, but in fact it was nearly calm as I rode out to the Sunday Giro.  Turnout was even smaller than it had been on Saturday. I had been expecting an easy ride.  A number of the riders were planning on riding out to Slidell, but even so the pace got pretty fast on the way out.  Once the rest of us turned around the ride back was fairly easy.

The old Pennine is almost ready for cyclocross season now.  I took off the fenders, put on the cyclocross wheels, swapped out the Look pedals for the spd pedals, and just need to replace the headset which is so pitted that it barely turns.

Six Gaps and Single Digits

My annual end-of-season pilgrimage to the 6 Gap Century up in Dahlonega, GA was a little different this year.  A few days before our Saturday departure we had seven or eight Tulane riders signed up, so Kenny and I put together a second fork-mount bike holder gizmo to fit into the second of two extended cab pickup trucks that I had reserved for the trip.  When properly organized with turned handlebars, we could put five bikes in each truck bed.  As often happens, though, by the time we actually rolled out around 7:30 on Saturday we were down to five Tulane riders plus Kenny and myself.  The 8-hour drive was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Dahlonega around 5:30, which allowed time to pick up our packets before they shut down at 6:00.  Kenny made a snap decision to enter the Cat. 1/2 criterium that started at 6:30, and by the time we finished watching the Women race (Debbie Milne won) and got the trucks relocated to a prime parking spot near the course we were in a dead run to get him and his bike together in time for the start.  With no warmup at all, and starting at the back of the field, the odds were against him. Before he could get settled in there was a big attack at around the third lap and he and a number of other riders were gapped off for good.  Anyway, it was fun watching the races.  We picked up some pizza right on the course and then drove back down toward Dawsonville to check into our Super8 smoking-allowed rooms.  Actually, aside from the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the hotel was quite nice and we convinced the manager to get breakfast ready early so we could get something to eat before driving back to Dahlonega.  Although the start time for the 104 mile ride ("it's not a race") was 7:30, I knew we had to get there before 6:30 in order to get a good parking spot in the school parking lot.  Fortunately everyone in our group was up and out the door right on time so we got some great parking spots about half an hour before there was even a glow in the eastern sky.  The temperature was in the mid-50s, so I decided to wear two jerseys and arm-warmers even though I knew I'd be warm by the time the ride ended.

We lined up near the start about 20 minutes before the start, but within two minutes of the start there were probably 200 riders in front of me and I'd already lost track of Kenny, David and Ben.  The early pace was pretty fast and well before the first real climb there was a big split up ahead of me.  A number of us ended up kind of in-between that big group and whatever was behind us.

I was riding with a low gear of 39x25 this year, since I'd never gotten around to buying a new 11-speed cassette with a 27 or 28.  I knew I'd be paying for that later, but the first couple of climbs actually felt pretty good.  The first "Gap" climb starts at around 22 miles and things quickly got quiet as riders settled into the effort.  I felt nice and controlled at around 9-11 mph for this climb, spending most of my time in the 23 instead of the 25.  Jorge was climbing a bit faster than I, but for the first few Gaps I'd catch up with him on the downhills.

The long Hogpen climb starts at around 54 miles and by then I was really starting to feel the miles.  My calves had been very sore for the past few days (I have no idea what I did to make them that way) and so I was doing a lot of toes-down climbing.  Even so, by the time I was halfway up Hogpen my lower back was killing me from all of the seated climbing.  At one point during that climb my speed dropped below 4 mph, but at least my Garmin never auto-paused!  The downhill from Hogpen is one of the faster ones, and for a change I didn't have any interference by cars this year.  Depending on whether you believe Strava or Garmin, my downhill speed maxed out at either 49 mph or 53 mph.  Either way, it was fun.  The Wolfpen climb was about as painful as Hogpen, again with my speed dropping down into the low single digits.  Yeah, it was painful.  I had lost Jorge on the Hogpen climb which he did maybe ten minutes faster than I.  Fortunately I didn't spend too much time riding alone this year.  After Hogpen, I was playing a kind of reverse leapfrog, latching onto small groups of two or four as they came by, hanging on for a few miles, and then dropping off.

The last downhill is actually one of my favorites.  It's fast and long at 8 or 9 miles in length, and although it isn't as steep as some of the others, it's nice and steady.  This year I came down that section with one other rider who was also a good descender, so that made it a lot of fun.  At the bottom of that downhill there are around ten miles left to go as you come around a very, very sharp downhill U-turn onto a road through a farm.  There are always course monitors there yelling at everyone to slow down.  As we came around that bend we had to hit the brakes to avoid an ambulance that was dealing with someone who had gone off the road and down into a little ravine.  As we got rolling again the other riders looked at his computer and said he thought we could get in at under six hours if we pushed it a bit.  I hadn't been really thinking about that but I figured if I had someone to work with, why not?  Well a mile or two later he pulled off and as I went past him to take my pull I heard him say something like, "Damn!"  The next time I looked back he was a long way back.  I eased up for a while but he wasn't coming, so I guess he had some kind of mechanical issue.  Well, now I was all focused on that 6 hour mark and doing the math in my head I was still very unsure about whether I could make it or not.  The long rollers along that stretch made it difficult to estimate your average speed. When my computer read 100 miles, I figured that I might be able to make it, but then, about two miles later, there was a sign on the side of the road that said 100 miles.  By then I'd caught a group of three riders and could hear them discussing the same thing.  If we still had four miles to go there was no way we could get there in under six hours, so everyone eased up.  A moment later we came to an intersection and quickly realized we were only half a mile or so from the school.  The sign had been wrong.  We picked up the pace again and sprinted into the school to finish at 5:59:00.

It was a really long ride back and we didn't arrive at campus until nearly 1 am Monday morning.  By the time I dropped Kenny off and unloaded, it was 2 am before I hit the sack.  I was out the door by 6:30 for an easy spin on the levee.  Legs were pretty sore!  On the plus side, everyone in our group had a good ride, even though Ben, who had gone out with the lead group, had gotten leg cramps around Hogpen and had to stop for a while to work them out.  I think is actual riding time was probably still substantially shorter than mine.  The winners finished nearly an hour ahead of me, setting a new course record of 4:57.  Wow.

The Wednesday Protocol

The morning shadows are getting longer and longer on the levee rides lately

So late last night or early this morning the Pensacola Cycling Classic posted the still-preliminary results of the stage race that was about ten days ago.  They're giving people until midnight to protest those results, after which they will finally be laid to rest.  It won't be over for me, however, because I will still need to get the spreadsheet with license numbers and GC times so I can use that to essentially build a whole new workbook that pulls in the actual correct rider names, club names, ages and categories that I need in order to re-score the combined races to award points for our LCCS rankings. Since I'll be leaving Saturday morning for 6-Gap up in Dahlonega, I'm guessing I might not be able to do that until next week.  I could probably do it the hard way using the pdf files that they have posted, some of which lack license numbers that I would have to look up, but at this point I may as well wait.  It looks like many of the club names they posted came from BikeReg, so they are not consistent with the official USAC club names that I need for the team points ranking.  Some riders, like Tim Reagan and Mark McMurry, are for some reason listed as unattached.  Anyway, it will be at least a couple of hours' work to get the final LCCS rankings out.

I guess I'll call the shop (Bicycle World in this case) some time today to get an update on the Bianchi's bottom bracket.  Hopefully they will be able to get the necessary parts in time so I can ride it this weekend.

There was a pretty good sized group on hand for the Wednesday levee ride this morning.  This ride has evolved to be a good ride for the riders who aren't up to the 25-28 mph pace of the Tuesday and Thursday rides, but are more comfortable with a 20-23 mph pace. Some time ago, this ride would stay right around 20 mph but it seems that the consensus pace has started to creep upward in recent months.  The Wednesday protocol nowadays calls for smooth paceline, long pulls, and a reasonably steady speed of 22 mph plus or minus one mph.  Of course there are always a couple of people who violate the protocol and push it a little higher, but in general it has been pretty consistent.  As a result, we see a number of the Tulane riders on this ride.

So the annual pilgrimage up to Dahlonega is coming up next weekend for the Six Gap Century.  I'll be going with the Tulane group this year, staying down the road in Dawsonville and driving up in a couple of rental extended cab pickup trucks, which is a bit of an experiment I guess.  Yesterday I talked the folks at Enterprise car rental into letting me pick up the trucks on Friday evening instead of Saturday morning because they don't open until 9 am on Saturday.  That would make it nearly impossible for us to get to Dahlonega in time to pick up packets that evening (they close at 6:00 and we lose an hour to the eastern time zone), so being able to pickup the trucks early will allow us to leave earlier, around 7:30 or 8:00 rather than 9:30 or 10:00.  It depends a little bit on whether the car rental folks can get the trucks to their Carrollton location on Friday evening, but I'm sure we can work something out there.  Assuming my Bianchi will be back in action by then, I'll be riding with a low gear of 39x25 this year since I never got around to getting a new cassette with a 27 for the 11-speed group, mainly because they cost a lot and I'll be paying for the bottom bracket work already.  That means I'll probably be standing up a lot more on the steeper climbs, most of which are in the 7-10% range.  I've done it with a 25 before, so I should survive.  Right now it looks like it's going to be pretty chilly in the morning up there.  It looks like the low will be in the mid-50s and the high in the mid-70s.  That's two-jersey weather with arm-warmers for me normally, although knowing how much it will warm up on the climbs starting about ten miles in, I might just decide to be cold for the first hour or two.  At least the chance of rain seems to be minimal. I didn't finish last year because of the freak crash and resulting broken collarbone, but even when I'm moderately motivated, a 6-hour finish time is about the best I can hope for.  Who knows, maybe I'll just decide to enjoy the views and gorge myself on free food at the rest stops this year!

Still Waiting

Yes, we're still waiting for the final results from the Pensacola Cycling Classic that was held the weekend before last.  I don't know what to say.  After seeing the results, or lack thereof, from the Saturday races I had made a point to video the finishes of the 35+, Cat. 3 and Cat. 1/2 criteriums on Sunday.  I ended up sending the official and chip timing company the placings from those videos.  I can't imagine what could take this long, but I can only surmise that they are piecing together results based on rider feedback because they just don't actually have good results themselves.

So on Thursday I brought the Bianchi over to the shop so they could track down and install the correct bottom bracket bearings (it's a BB30 bottom bracket) and hopefully get it going again in time for next weekend's excursion to Dahlonega for the annual Six Gap Century. I had noticed a noise coming from the BB on the Wednesday ride and when I spun it without the chain it felt really bad.  When I pulled it that night, the bottom bracket looked like something that had been salvaged from an old shipwreck.  It was full of rusty, gritty gunk.  I cleaned it out the best I could and forced some fresh grease in there hoping I could make it serviceable for another few weeks, but it was too far gone.  Since I was scheduled to drive to Florida on Friday, I knew I'd never be able to get the parts and do the replacement myself in time for six gap.  Thus, for the second time in my entire life, I brought a bike to a bike shop.  One thing that surprised me was that the only way water could have gotten into the bottom bracket shell was right through the bearings.  There is no opening into any of the frame tubes.  Man, the compromises they make in the name of lightness. I guess I'm going to have to pull this thing every few months and make sure there is a lot of grease on everything unless going through bottom bracket bearings once a year is the new standard.  It was, actually, a very wet racing season this year, so I'm sure that had something to do with it, but these new bikes are really not designed to handle some of the things that the old bikes handled easily.

Anyway, the weekend in SanDestin was pretty much a washout.  The Daughter and I did get out on Sunday morning for 25 miles or so before heading home, but otherwise it was a pretty wet weekend and the bikes spent a fair amount of time on the car roof going 70 mph in the rain. 

Waiting on GC

Last weekend was the 4th annual Pensacola Cycling Classic.  Although the road season was already beginning to wind down, I just couldn't help but register once again for this race.  Like last year, they had a separate 50+/60+ class, and since it was the end of the season I went ahead and registered in my age-appropriate group despite the fact that the prizelist there was meager and my chances of winning back any significant portion of my travel expenses slim.  To trim the cost down a bit I took Donald Davis up on his offer to bunk at his house in Pensacola, and to make the drive less boring I picked up Graeme on Friday afternoon en route to Interstate 10 East.

Mark had a very good race in the 40+ group

We arrived with plenty of time to pick up packets down in Pensacola Beach and then backtrack a bit to Donald's house where there was pasta and sauce waiting.  Donald's daughter arrived shortly thereafter, straight from the hospital after having a new baby.  That's around when Donald mentioned that they weren't awarding any bonus points for the stage race.  I hadn't read the entire race bible yet, but that kind of surprised me.  It certainly handed the good time trialists a big advantage while kind of slapping the sprinters in the face. There were, at least, stage prizes, but for my antique age group they were pretty small, so I went into the 50-mile road race with its long flat drag race to the finish line with even less optimism than usual.  The 2-lap race had some low rolling hills and one particularly long one, but did not present enough difficulty to split things up unless the racing got very aggressive, which it didn't.  The first lap featured a rather embarrassing amount of wheel-sucking aside from a handful of riders, myself included, who tried to keep the pace up.  At one point I had rolled off the front when I heard a rider yelling "Go, go, go!" behind me.  He had obviously just attacked the field and was hoping to take me along.  Without looking around I jumped to my feet and caught his wheel nicely as he came past.  We worked together for a while at what I thought was a pretty good pace but somebody back there eventually put the hammer down and towed the whole field up to us. 

Graeme went solo for a few laps

It wasn't until halfway through the second lap before it started to feel like a race, and by then I was feeling the effects of all my time at the front.  A totally expected attack on the long climb almost put me out of the race as a gap opened toward the top and I struggled to get going on the long false flat that followed.  Fortunately a couple of other riders came by and we worked together for about a mile, finally catching the rest of the field that had inexplicably eased up.  By then I was starting to feel a couple of leg muscles starting to cramp.  With three or four miles to go one of the stronger riders planted himself on the front and basically towed the whole field nonstop.  I was sitting right on his wheel expecting an attack that never really came, but with a couple of kilometers to go I dropped back because I was fully expecting my leg to cramp up if I tried to sprint.  It was probably a mistake.  Anyway, the sprint started really early and everything got strung out, with me still afraid to stand up and sprint.  Then I found Stanley's wheel and tucked in behind him as he just motored along, passing a bunch of rider who had blown up because of the early sprint.  I think I was around 6th. Apparently I was also the 2nd 60+ rider.

Robert in the Cat. 1/2/3 race

The 3-mile TT on the beach was scheduled for 3:30, which was probably less than an hour after the last of the women's road races would have finished about thirty miles away, so I was fully expecting a very late start list, if any.  It was after 3:00 when a couple of officials showed up, one of which had a clipboard with the start list.  He never posted it.  He just stood there near the start and every rider had to come up to him and ask when his start time was. I got in a little warmup and, as luck would have it, the rider ahead of me didn't show, so I would have even less motivation than usual, which isn't much.  The wind turned out to be mostly crosswind and didn't seem to matter much, so I rolled up to 25-26 mph and thought to myself, "This is good enough," and just cruised along at a pretty steady speed with a little kick at the end.  Very, very late that night some badly formatted results straight from some chip-timing software were posted and I saw that while it was good enough for 1st in the 60+ age group, it was nearly a minute slower than the best 50+ time.  Situation normal.  We were using disposable chips stuck to our helmets this year and they were having problems with the system, so there was a fair amount of confusion with missed riders and questionable times.  We never saw any posting of GC standings, and still haven't (it's Tuesday afternoon as I write this).  The chip timing company they used had never done a stage race and the officials seemed to be unable or unwilling to put together meaningful results postings.

So the old guys' criterium in downtown Pensacola started at 7 am.  Yes, 7 am.  I needed a nightlight in the portable toilet, but at least it was still fairly cool when we started.  There were still no GC results, and with no bonus points on the line and small stage prizes (I still don't know if we were all racing for the same stage prizes or if they were just giving those to the 50+ riders) the only strategy would be a break. However, a 30-minute criterium doesn't offer much opportunity for that.  On the second lap there was a strong attack that took us up to 30 mph, and a few laps later I found myself off the front with a couple of other riders.  I figured I may as well work with it and see what happened since we had a pretty good gap.  Eventually the US Military rider went to the front of the pack and towed everyone up to us, but the pace remained fairly fast with a few extremely fast laps here and there.  I was surprised we didn't drop more riders.  The US Military rider launched a hard attack with maybe five laps to go, but there were still too many fresh legs for him to stay away and it came back together.  Then the same rider who had stayed at the front at the end of the road race went to the front of the criterium where he stayed.  Nobody would come around him and, once again, I found myself on his wheel for the final laps. Just after the bell he jumped hard and I thought to myself, "This is perfect!"  It was essentially a final lap leadout with me second wheel.  What could go wrong?  That last lap averaged 29.5 mph.  Well, between the second-to-last corner and the last corner he suddenly eased up and looked back!  Yikes.  He looked back!  Immediately three riders jumped, two on the right and one on the left.  By the time I could get around him we were at the last turn and I was 4th, which is where I stayed to the finish.  Respectable, but a little disappointing under the circumstances.  Anyway, I won the 60+, which felt almost embarrassing.  It was the first time I have raced in such an ancient age group.  I would love to know where I placed overall in the combined 50+/60+ race, and eventually, assuming I finally get the actual results in the correct format, I will have to filter out the 50-54 riders and re-score the GC for the LAMBRA LCCS rankings.  That will no doubt drop me down to 2nd place for the year since Scott McManus would have had a better GC time than I thanks to my abysmal TT time, which is OK since he has been racing really well this year. 

In Town

Haven't left town for a whole week.  Maybe in a month or so I'll be able to do that again.  I decided long ago to skip the Chappell Hill weekend over in Texas.  It's actually part of the LCCS as kind of a "race exchange" thing that the promoter of the Vuelta d' Acadiana worked out.  That race counts toward the Texas Cup points, this one counts toward LCCS points.  The idea is to increase turnout, although I suspect that the Vuelta got the better part of that deal.  Anyway, a number of the local riders did make the trip, which meant that the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides were relatively civilized.  Of course they both had their fast sections, but with the horsepower level a bit lower than normal they didn't last quite as long as usual and didn't get quite as fast as usual.

The Daughter's U-Box finally arrived on Saturday, a month after it had been picked up in Olympia.  Inside was her scooter, two bikes, and about a hundred shoes as far as I can tell.  We had a Tulane city ride set up for 10:30 on Sunday, so after the Sunday Giro I had just enough time to eat something, change into a fresh jersey, and ride over to Tulane with The Daughter.  This was the "welcome ride" for the fall semester and I was pleased to find that we had around fifteen people show up for it.  It was a nice day - a little breezy and quite warm - but we were planning on riding neither long nor hard.  After all, there was a Saints game starting at noon at the Superdome.  That was one reason we didn't ride down to the Quarter like we usually do for these rides.  Instead we headed out to the lakefront and stopped at the Morning Call in City Park on the way back.

This morning I went out for a recovery ride with The Daughter, meeting up with Ben and David on the levee for an hour of steady 20 mph cruising.  My legs were feeling a little stiff, which I attributed to the prior week's mileage.  Although few of those miles were very hard, I had somehow accumulated over 300 of them.

Next weekend is the Pensacola stage race, for which I have not yet made any arrangements.  Then the next weekend will be a quick trip to Sandestin where The Wife has a conference.  The weekend after that will be Six Gap.  Following that there will be just a couple of weeks before the first cyclocross race.

I have been trying to follow the tweets from Dale Stetina's family, hoping he is able to recover from the terrible crash he suffered. Considering the fact that they had found a brain stem injury and had him in an induced coma for a few days, I guess he's doing OK.  Yesterday they said he had developed "Some fluid build up in lungs & GI infection."  On the plus side I surmise that he knows where he is, responds to commands, and is not paralyzed.  Dale and his brother Wayne are in that same set of USAC license numbers as mine - a block in alphabetical order in the middle of the larger database that resulted from some re-numbering that happened in the 80s.

Fast Week

Friday morning, heading west on the levee.

It's Friday afternoon and I'm realizing that I haven't put up a blog post in over a week.  Somehow this week just kind of flew by.  I shouldn't be too surprised.  There was a lot going on.  Last Sunday was our (LAMBRA's) first separate age-graded road championship race.  In order to ensure enough of a turnout for the promoting club to break even, we added a number of age groups that don't normally get their own championships.  For example, there was a 30+ Cat. 4/5 race, and a 19-29 race.  I went ahead and registered for my age-appropriate group, which sadly enough is now 60+.  Since we were racing together with the 55+ race, at least I knew there would be enough riders to make a race.  As a side note, I recently checked the pre-registration list for this weekend's Chappell Hill race in Texas.  They had over 100 riders pre-registered just from the city of Houston.  A one-day road race around here would be happy to have 100 riders from the entire states of Louisiana and Mississippi,  ...but I digress.

Definitely not the U-23 podium

So the 55+/60+ race near St. Francisville started with 13 riders, which was smaller than I'd hoped.  We were doing only 40-something miles and I can't say I was really up for the race (we had some people over to the house the night before for a birthday party, which resulted in a slight over-consumption of Merlot), but it's a nice and reasonably forgiving course and the Geaux Race guys usually put on a nice event with free food.  Besides, I had to bring the race clock. Our little race started out with Jorge cruising along on the front for what must have been the first three miles or so.  There were a few significant hills between there and the ten-mile point, and then a few more just after turning onto Jones Vaughn Creek road.  Otherwise it was flat to low rolling stuff, but mostly with a very nice road surface and a fair amount of shade.  Pretty soon Stanley Prutz started attacking the hills.  The first time caught me a little off-guard and I had kind of a hard time getting back up to him.  I decided that if he was going to start attacking every time I pulled off the front, then I was just going to have to make sure I was behind him whenever there was any significant climb coming up.  By the time we were half-way around the first 22-mile lap, the group was down to only five riders and I was afraid it was going to turn into a 20 mph scenic tour with a sprint at the end.  Fortunately, Jorge was willing to take on some of the pacemaking duties and as a result I think everyone decided it would be wise to work together.  Naturally, Stanley was still expected to attack every hill, which kept things interesting, but he was never able to shake the rest of the group until Butch dropped off just after we turned off of Hwy 10 about six or seven miles from the finish.  There were a couple more brief attacks along that stretch with Stanley making one particularly hard one shortly before the last turn, but everything came back together quickly.  After the last turn it was only a mile or so to the finish and Stanley attacked again on the first little uphill.  At that point, nobody was going to take the lead, so with I guess 800 meters to go he attacked again and just powered toward the finish line with me glued to his wheel.  Based on past experience, I knew I couldn't go until the 200 meter flag without blowing up, but as soon as we got there I jumped hard with Scott McManus on my wheel. I'm afraid I got kind of sloppy toward the end when I accidentally dumped it all the way down to the 11, but somehow I held Scott off.

This week my training rides have so far been kind of subdued.  There was a grant proposal due on Tuesday and various distractions on the home front, so I was more than happy to roll along in the group and enjoy the scenery.  Even so, there are a lot of things still on the calendar this year.  Next up is the Pensacola Classic, for which I have made no plans whatsoever and don't even know who else might be planning on going, then there's a conference in Destin the following weekend, and Six Gap at the end of the month.  In mid-October the first cyclocross race of the Delta States series is in New Orleans, for which I will probably be the default official (hopefully I can find another local official to help so I can ride too), followed by some local charity rides and more cyclocross.  In the midst of all of that will be the Tulane cycling team activities and rides and related logistics before the USA Cycling Local Associations conference the first weekend in November.