Back to the Levee

Took a ride out to the Spillway on Saturday     

Since a lack of  Team Time Trial teammates, together with the necessity of my presence at said Team Time Trial, caused me to miss riding on Saturday morning altogether, I set my sights on the afternoon.

Near Moss Rd. - all clear

Fortunately, the weather around here has been pretty spectacular lately, and Saturday afternoon was sunny and dry and not particularly hot. Rather than trying to survive mid-day weekend traffic I decided to see what the river levee bike path had to offer.  I'd been out there the Monday before and found the barricade at Moss Road down but with heavy equipment still at work nearby, so we'd turned back. The levee work should be nearing completion around now, and as far as I can tell it's what I'd call "substantially complete," which is to say the bike path is fine except in a few places, although there's obviously more work to do around the edges, so to speak.

Dirt and ongoing work around
River Ridge

Out around Moss Road where there has been a barricade, fence and signage for the past year or more, it's now open.  There were no signs at all on Saturday, nor any indication that the bike path was closed, although the center stripe is missing and there are still some bulldozers working on the sides of the levee in a few places. I rode on through unimpeded.  There were a number of places where the path is covered with dirt, and a couple of little spots where it seems there's no asphalt at all. It's not at a point where I'd be comfortable doing a group ride at fast speeds, especially in the dark, but otherwise it was pretty nice.

Williams Blvd. - Kind of Clear

The area around the Florida Street pipes is a mess and is obviously serving as a major access point for heavy equipment, much of which was parked there.  It was necessary to pick my way through the tractors and mud and rocks, but fortunately it was dry and not much of a problem.

At Williams Blvd, where there had been more fences and barricades, I again found the path to be open, although the barricades were sitting there alongside the path. From here to the Jefferson Parish line where the levee-raising project ended there were a number of spots where the edges of the new bike path had already kind of caved in under the weight of cars, trucks, or other heavy equipment.  This was bad enough to be dangerous to a cyclist, especially in the dark. Riding alone during the day, however, made it easy to avoid the problem areas.

Some sections of missing asphalt

Farther down the bike path and up the river the big grain elevator has been building a huge new conveyor over the levee.  There they have put up this little narrow slightly elevated access lane with "walk your bike" signs.  It looks pretty permanent. I don't know if it is or not. At any rate, it's really only wide enough for one bike.

From there I rode all the way out to the Spillway.  The only thing I noticed was that much of the bike path in Jefferson Parish and above seems to have eroding edges where I assume the grass has degraded the asphalt. Effectively, the path is about a foot narrower than it used to be.

Grain elevator

They announced that they would start working on the Lakefront "levee lift" project some time this month, starting with Phase 1 from the western end of the bike path to Williams Blvd.  I guess that should take a couple of months at least, so it shouldn't affect the rest of the lakefront bike path, which is the part that the group ride uses.  Hopefully the river levee path will be back to normal before Phase II starts on the lakefront. One can hope.

Some broken up sections of new asphalt

More broken new asphalt

Rider Down

Brian Guerrero

The weekend before my recent unfortunate incident with the asphalt one of our area riders, Brian Guerrero, was on a group ride up in Alabama when there was a crash and he was hit by a passing vehicle. When I crashed last week I was lucky enough to walk away with minor injuries, and although VJ is still on injured reserve with reportedly cracked vertebrae, he will no doubt be back on the bike soon. Brian was not so lucky. While I don't know all the details, I do know that his injuries were very severe and included major head trauma. Eric Heyl of Eastbank Cyclery immediately set up a Gofundme site, knowing that even with the best possible outcome there would be major costs for his family. That was quickly followed up by the Herring Gas Cycling Foundation, which had been set up a couple of years ago for just such a purpose, donating its funds as well. I learned this morning that he passed away. Brian was a well-liked member of the Green Team Bayou Country Cyclists club and was a regular on group rides and mountain bike races. Although I didn't know Brian very well, I'm sure I rode with him on a number of occasions. This morning on the news they were showing the video of a hit-and-run on Magazine Street involving a cyclist who luckily escaped with fairly minor injuries. This was someone who was just riding to work, in the bike lane, when she was hit from behind by a car.

It seems I see something like this almost on a daily basis nowadays.  Perhaps it's because there are just that many more cyclists on the roads, or because the news of these incidents travels so far and wide thanks to the internet. Whatever the reason, whenever we go out for a ride now we always have, somewhere in the back of our minds, the knowledge that we just might not make it back home.  I am always reminded at such times of a conversation I had as a child with my father. After learning to fly in the Army right around the end of WWII, he maintained his pilot's license and would sometimes take us out to Lakefront Airport for little trips over the lake, out over the Chandelier Islands, to Baton Rouge, or any number of little airstrips scattered around Louisiana and Mississippi. I remember asking him why he flew airplanes if they were so dangerous (no doubt that idea came from my mother who was never very fond of flying).  He just looked over at me and said, "Sometimes the enjoyment you get out of something is worth the risk."

No doubt Brian was well aware of the risk. That particular crash might have normally resulted in little more than scraped skin and bruises like the ones I received a week ago, had there not been a vehicle going by at just the wrong time. I've been involved in lots of crashes in group rides and races out on the road, and it's been just a matter of luck that a car or truck hasn't been involved in them. Last Sunday, for example, I was careening down unfamiliar roads in Georgia at speeds in the 50 mph range, held to the pavement by tiny patches of rubber pulling me around sweeping downhill curves on open roads. I was focused on the issues on hand, choosing lines through the turns, regulating speed, anticipating the next braking point, dealing with other riders and the occasional car. That was fun and satisfying, and required sufficient concentration that there was no room left for fearing the possible but unlikely things that could always go terribly wrong. I'm not going to stop riding on the road because even though the odds may have shifted a little bit in recent years, I still think they're largely in my favor, and as my dad would have said, "worth the risk."

Six Gap Nine

Early on Saturday I headed up to Dahlonega, Ga. with six Tulane riders and Dustin for the annual Six Gap Century. I was still feeling pretty beat-up from the crash on Tuesday with bandages all over my right elbow and knee, that long scrape on my back, a sore neck, and various bruises in seemingly random places. On the plus side, the weather was looking like it would be warm and sunny. Being right at the end of September, this ride has offered up all sorts of weather conditions over the nine years I've been doing it. This year was the warmest yet, but under the circumstances I wasn't complaining.

The 9-hour drive went pretty smoothly except for the gas shortage in Georgia that caused us to try a second gas station. With premium gas apparently non-existent, the Volvo would have to make do with a tank of regular. This year we were right on schedule and despite getting stuck in traffic going through Atlanta arrived at packet pick-up at around 5:30. They had moved up the criteriums by at least an hour, so when we arrived the Cat. 1/2/3 race was already in progress. I stopped for a minute to chat with Debbie Milne who was launching her "Supra" line of nutritional food bars, which were pretty good. She had just finished winning the Women's race and would win the Women's KOM the next day. We headed over to Pueblo's for dinner and then made the drive over to Gainesville where the hotel was. In order to get to the parking lot in time the next morning we planned on getting up at 5 am, which I knew was not going to fool my internal clock that was still on Central time. To make matters worse, I didn't get a lot of sleep because of some sort of nasal congestion.  I must be allergic to something that was in the air around there.

Pueblo's in Dahlonega

Anyway, everyone was remarkably, surprisingly, on time and so we had time to stop at the local Starbucks before heading off to find a parking space at the school.  That worked out quite well too, and we easily got a couple of parking spots in the middle of the huge parking lot. There were four of us in the Volvo and another four in a rented minivan for this trip. Ben Bradley had been kind of training for this ride since medical school responsibilities had been interfering with his racing this year, so he was anxious to get down to the starting line early.  I stationed myself just behind the "6-hour" line with Quentin, Cameron, Ben S., and Jerry, and where I also found Adrian and Steve J.

Looking pretty good post-ride

The start was the usual minor chaos, but somehow most of us stayed pretty close together for the first ten or fifteen miles. Ben, Dustin and Sven were up ahead, and I never really saw them once we started. I was happy to find that my left hand wasn't bothering me as much as I'd feared. The right knee was a little uncomfortable, and I knew my neck would eventually be an issue, but in general I felt pretty good. Even so, given the prior week's events, my plan was basically to cause myself as little additional pain as possible. That meant climbing at a relatively easy, steady pace without necessarily trying to keep up with everyone else. I was probably climbing about 1-2 mph slower than normal, which was unfortunate since normal for me is still pretty slow. However, the plan was indeed keeping me largely within my comfort zone, which for me seemed to be around 85-88% of maximum heart rate or in the  vicinity of 160-162 bpm. There were a couple of brief jumps into the 90% range, but they were few and far between. This strategy, while certainly not conducive to impressive climbing speed or finishing time, was successful in keeping me more or less out of the red for the duration. 

Age and ride times - how sad!

This year there was fresh new asphalt on the Hogpen descent, which was a vast improvement over prior years, and although I got stuck behind a couple of cars on the downhills, they were fun as usual. Strava showed a max speed of 55.5 mph, but mostly I was looking at speeds more in the area of 45 mph. The climbs of course were a different matter altogether. For those I spend a huge amount of time in the 4-7 mph range, quite a bit slower than I'd have liked, but I really wasn't in the mood to push it much harder than that on the steep sections. At one point I shifted to the small ring and something kind of jammed up in the drive train and I stopped to see what had happened.  I never figured it out, though.  I think perhaps the chain had gotten jammed up against the anti-chain drop thing or something.  I was afraid that something had either broken or was about to break, since I was still a little paranoid about the bike because of the crash earlier in the week. Anyway, after checking it all out for a minute or two, I got going again without incident.

Damn, statistically significant (F-test p-value: 0.0118)!

The day started out in the mid-60s and ended in the low 90s, so toward the end it was starting to feel kind of hot.  After the last long descent, I finally looked at my ride time and realized how far behind I was actually running. With ten miles to go I didn't need to do much math to know there was no way I'd be finishing near the six hour mark, which I generally consider as my goal.  Of course, this year I'd intentionally thrown that goal out the window from the start, so it wasn't a surprise. Thanks to day's strategy, my legs were actually feeling remarkably good, so the last ten miles that are usually pretty painful were a lot more enjoyable this year.  This is the section of the ride where I'm always passing a ton of riders who did the shorter 5-gap ride and are, in some cases, moving really slowly.  Anyway, I finished up with an official time of 6:13:22, which I guess was OK under the circumstances.  Ben B. just killed the course and finished with the 5th fastest time at 5:21:17 which was pretty impressive. On the long ride back home I started wondering just how many times I'd ridden Six Gap, and how my results have changed, so I went back through the old blog and found a pretty significant correlation between age and finishing time. Sad but true.

Timing the Crash to Perfection

VJ hit pretty hard

Tuesday started out as usual. I met up with the regulars, a couple of whom were MIA, at 5:45 am and we rolled out to the lakefront.  This time of year is always seems to get noticeably darker from one morning to the next.  The night before I had carefully installed some nice fresh handlebar tape with a little more cushioning than what I'd been using for the past few months. I was looking forward to Six Gap next weekend and figured it might make those six hours on the bike a little more enjoyable. Yeah, I know it was just psychological, but sometimes that's all I've got to work with.

The groups all came together along Lakeshore Drive as we approached the Bayou St. John bridge, and soon we were a long line of blinky lights as the pace started to pick up a bit. As it has been for the past year or two or three the right lane was barricaded off at the London Avenue Canal to create a safe lane for the trucks entering and leaving the pumping station construction site. The pace eased up as everyone moved over to the left lane over the canal. I was somewhere around the middle, pedaling serenely along, escheloned a bit to the right against the moderate north wind, planning on staying in the draft until I got really warmed up.

The block of concrete

After the bridge the front of the group swung over to the right to get out of the left lane, I think maybe in-between some of the traffic cones marking the cordoned off truck lane to the right, and as usual the rest of the group followed. I remember thinking we were getting back into the right lane a little earlier than usual, but we were going only 20-22 mph and it didn't seem like a problem. The next thing I knew it felt like I'd hit a brick wall and was sliding along the concrete with VJ, who had been behind me.

As the friction between my skin and the road ground me to a halt, I sat up and thought, "What the hell just happened?" I took a moment to assess the damage.  I'd hit pretty hard and bumped my head just a bit, but nothing seemed to be broken.  Just to the left of me was VJ, was still flat on the ground. I looked back and immediately saw the culprit. A big rectangular block of concrete was lying in the middle of the right lane. It looked like a section of rectangular concrete curb about the size of two large bricks. I'd never even seen it. I think that the riders toward the front  had come back into the right lane beyond the chunk of concrete and hadn't even seen it so nobody called it out, but with the crosswind coming from the left, the rest of the paceline, along with myself, must have been moving into that lane just a bit earlier, with each rider going a tad farther to the right than the rider ahead of him. Obviously my timing had been perfect and I'd just nailed the thing without even seeing it, and then VJ had crashed into me as I was going down, or more likely, over. I guess I must have done a solid block with my left hand before flipping over onto my back. VJ had taken the brunt of it on his head, however, and was a little concussed. We dragged ourselves and bikes to the curb as one of the contractor's pickup trucks that had been on it's way to the worksite stopped behind us.

Tire Track or Road Rash?

VJ finally recovered enough to sit on the curb, but then had a very brief seizure or just fainted, at which point we called 911. It could have been worse. I lost a lot of skin from my right knee, left shin (probably from the bike), and right elbow, along with a few other random minor cuts that included my lower lip and left  hand. I must have really jammed my left hand because the heel of my hand and wrist are still pretty painful when I put weight on them. Luckily, none of the road rash was very deep. Meg was on the ride and she met VJ at University Medical Center's ER where he got some X-rays and perhaps a CAT scan. From what I heard he may have cracked something in his lumbar region, but seemed to be in pretty good spirits a couple of hours later.

That afternoon I had to get checked out in one of Tulane's new 12-passenger vans so I could drive them for the cycling club when needed. I was surprised and disappointed to find that they not only expect people to drive no faster than 60 mph on the interstate, but have also installed GPS tracking so they can enforce that.  I consider driving 60 mph on rural interstate to be extremely more dangerous than driving at the speed limit, which is 70 in most places, but 75 in some areas of Louisiana and Texas. Also, of course, that means over an hour more time on the road for most of the team's road trips, meaning even later arrival times. It seems that the long-awaited passenger vans for Club Sports are not going to be very useful.

Broken 3T Handlebar

Last night I pulled the fork out of the Bianchi to make sure the steerer looked OK, which it did. The crash broke my handlebar, so I was planning on using the road handlebar currently on my track bike until I can get a new one. Then I discovered that the shifter clamp bolt on the right lever was stripped and seized.  I ended up having to drill it out.  Luckily, I have an old Campi shifter from which I can salvage a replacement bolt (although it won't be Ti or Al or whatever the one on the Super Record one was).  The shifters are about at the end of their useful lives, and the new versions aren't very compatible with the older derailleurs, so sooner than later I'll be in for new shifters and derailleurs that I can't really afford.

This morning I went out on the Orbea to assess the damage.  I was happy to find that the legs felt fine and the scraped up knee and elbow didn't seem to be problems at all.  The left  hand, however, was pretty painful over the bumps. At present my plan is to take it easy riding the rest of the week in order to give the hand as much time to heal up as possible. It's not like I'll get in better shape for climbing Hogpen Gap between now and Sunday anyway. I know one thing for sure, though.  While I had earlier been contemplating putting some serious effort into the Six Gap ride this year, plans have changed! I'll just have to play it by ear and see how I feel by Sunday, but I'm thinking a sub-6-hour time is going to be pretty much out of the question.  I'm also thinking of bringing a bottle of Advil with me.

September Lull

Tulane Cycling Friday ride

While I kind of hated to miss last weekend's Pensacola Stage Race yet again, I guess I had some semi-valid reasons. Since we didn't get back from Destin until Tuesday, I would have had to basically turn right back around and drive back to Florida, likely leaving the rest of the family without a car for the weekend unless I found a ride. Then of course there was the cost issue. It's not that the $70 (plus service fee, plus the $10 rental of a chip, plus gas, plus two hotel nights, was particularly unusual. It was more that we'd just spent a long weekend in vacation mode and there were other expenses looming on the horizon this month, one of which being the annual Six Gap (it's not a race) Century.

So on Friday I did the usual Coffee Ride with some of the Tulane riders and set my sights on the Giro Ride for Saturday.  Friday afternoon was a little complicated since we, as in the Tulane team represented in this case by me, were selling the big trailer that the club got a couple of years ago and never, not even once, used. Will, from 4D Fitness, was buying it, and met me to go take care of the title transfer.  Thankfully we had gotten hold of the title without too much trouble, so all of that went pretty smoothly. Then we went back to University Square where the trailer had been parked for over a year.

Right off the bat we discovered that we couldn't raise the trailer nose high enough to latch it onto the hitch on Will's big truck.  Fortunately, he found a couple of chunks of concrete lying around and MacGyvered it using a car jack. Then we discovered that the side door was locked.  I had no recollection of where the keys might be, however, and then just to make things more difficult the power at my office was out.  So using a tiny little LED flashlight in my dark office I hunted unsuccessfully for keys.  A couple of days later I researched old emails from 2012 and discovered that apparently I'd never actually had those keys, which at least explained why I couldn't find them. Unfortunately, nobody else seems to know where they are either. My guess is we'll have to replace the whole door latch.

The guy from Switzerland, appropriately named Sven,
on the Independence ride.

Soooo anyway, the Saturday Giro was pretty normal - maybe a little bit easier than usual since a few of the regular riders were in Pensacola.  Late that afternoon I decided that I really needed to do a ride that wasn't flat since Six Gap was coming up, so I went ahead and joined the small group that was planning on riding out of Independence, about an hour away. Theoretically this was a Tulane ride, but really it was a Dustin ride. The only actual Tulane people were an exchange student from Switzerland riding one of the team's loaner bikes and me. Three of us drove up there in my car, arriving quite a bit later than the planned 7 am roll-out, a fact about which I did not feel guilty in the least. I mean, really.  7 am when you know people are going to have to meet up and then drive at least an hour?  At least it was still relatively cool when we finally got on the road around 7:30.  The ride itself was pretty nice since there were only five of us and the pace was fairly controlled. They guy from Switzerland didn't have any trouble, and with only five people there weren't any of the big-group complications like having to wait for riders lagging behind or having to chase down riders who want to go faster. We ended up with 65 miles and an average speed of 19.2, so moderate distance and moderate speed with about 1,900 feet of easy climbing. All of that was followed by a visit to Pontchatoula on the way home for Mexican since the Bar-b-que place in Independence was closed. I felt pretty good for the ride and was glad I'd made the drive instead of doing another Giro Ride.

Monday morning there was some rain around.

Monday morning I decided to do an easy ride on the river levee to check out the progress on the bike path. Basically, I didn't see any.  The barricade at Moss Road had been torn down again, but just up the road from there I could see a big backhoe working along the batture. I took that as a good sign since cleaning up the batture should be one of the last things to do for the contractor, other than putting down the centerline stripe on the bike path, which still isn't there.

This morning it was a little breezy for the Tuesday ride. I rolled out the house an hour before sunrise to meet the group at Fontainbleau and it felt almost cool for a minute or two as we rode into a moderate east northeast wind. By the time everyone came together on Lakeshore Drive there were, I guess, 25 riders. Up at the front things must have started coming apart on the way back with the tailwind because right away I could see a couple of riders pretty far down the road. As has been happening lately, VJ, who I think had been up there with the lead group maybe 20 seconds ahead, kept pushing the pace a bit after West End, and considering that the group had gotten pretty strung out toward the end of the Lakeshore Drive stretch it wasn't until we were past Causeway that things kind of came back together, except maybe they didn't because next thing I knew Matt and Brian were off the front again, which precipitated a half-hearted chase, which precipitated a split in the group that, of course, I was behind.  After contemplating the odds for a moment I finally went around and made a big effort to bridge, getting within about five seconds as I maxed out around 32 mph with Max on my wheel. I motioned him to go, and he was able to close that last little bit as I eased up and waited for the rest of what was left of the group. A little while later Max came back.

After the turnaround I looked up and realized that most of the group had turned around early and was already pretty far up the road. We were riding into a headwind and holding anything over 23 mph was a bit of a struggle, so a few of us who had been abandoned got together and plodded away, very gradually closing the gap an inch at a time. It wasn't until around the Suburban canal that we finally made contact again.

Destin

Destin Harbor. East pass and the Gulf of Mexico to the right. Town of Destin to the left.

Destin, Florida has been a popular vacation destination for New Orleanians for generations. I was so young when I first visited that I don't remember it, but suffice it to say that we probably arrived in something like a 1959 Pontiac when the interstate system was still a gleam in Eisenhower's eye. Back then it was indeed a "sleepy fishing village," on the outskirts of which were a couple of small motels and the Silver Beach cottages. The outskirts at the time were barely half a mile from the edge of town, which itself was basically a one mile stretch along US 98 overlooking the well-protected Destin harbor on one side and Choctawatchee Bay to the north. We would return there many times over the succeeding years, sometimes in the middle of summer, but more often around Easter vacation time. By the time I finished high school there were a couple more hotels, including a modern-looking Holiday Inn, but beyond that to the east were miles and miles of untouched sand dunes and pristine beaches with the finest, whitest sand you will ever find on planet earth. As a result, I have been terribly disappointed with virtually every other beach I've ever visited. After high school graduation a few friends and I drove to Destin towing my "ski boat" with I think a 40 hp outboard and spend three or four days water skiing in the deserted eastern end of the harbor. Soon thereafter the entire area was discovered by developers, originally from Dallas, and things started to change. A little later the Hilton operation bought a huge tract of land in the adjacent county to the east, co-opted the name of the city, and established the "Sandestin" resort.

There was rain.

Today most of the dunes around the city are long gone, replaced by high-rise condominiums and the shell road down by the harbor is basically a carnival boardwalk. Thus, my trips to Destin are always a little bittersweet. This trip, in fact, wasn't really to Destin itself but to the Tops'l resort just to the east of the Hilton. At nearly ten miles from Destin itself, it represents the eastern edge of "development."  Fortunately the old 4-mile Village remains mostly intact as a buffer and residential community nestled among the high dunes to the east, providing the only glympse of how things used to be closer to Destin before the bulldozers moved in.

Sand beaches do not get better than this.

Anyway, despite a less than encouraging weather forecast I clamped the old Orbea to the roof of the car and we headed east on Friday for a little vacation. My penance for this particular luxury would be missing the age-graded road championships in St. Francisville, so I was determined to get in a few miles while I was there, even if it meant riding in the rain. This is not really the greatest place to ride a bike.  Highway 98 is to be avoided at all costs, and Old 98 is narrow and full of vacationers and hotel and restaurant staff. Over the years I've worked out a reasonably safe approach to riding when I'm there.  The key thing, of course, is to hit the road early - somewhere in the 6:30 -7:00 am timeframe - before the tourists start looking for donuts and coffee. There's a mile or so along 98 in a narrow bike lane before crossing over to "old 98" which of course was highway 98 before the built the 4-lane "new 98" mainly to service the Hilton.

Beach people

New 98 is now a practically unbroken six or seven miles of chain restaurants and retail operations, including a big outlet mall. Fortunately a few of the restaurants aren't bad. When the created the New 98, they closed off a section of the old highway to create a little park, which was probably just an excuse to make it impossible to take the old more scenic highway instead of the new one. For cyclists that means you can take old 98 most of the way to Destin, but then must cross over new 98. For a few years, I had to ride a couple of miles on the new highway, but now the retail developments alongside the highway have their own little winding service road, complete with the required traffic circles, speed bumps, and faux-brick pedestrian crosswalks. On the plus side, it's not too bad of a ride and makes it easy to get into Destin proper. Once in Destin, I do a couple of out-and-back type laps along the bay side of town where, thankfully, things have not really changed all that much.  There are a number of modern homes along Indian Bayou Road, and a couple of real mansions on Bayou Road, but a lot of the older houses are the little cinder-block type houses that were always there and that remind me of the kinds of houses that military personnel retired into. Indeed, there are a lot of retired military in Destin thanks to its proximity to Eglin AFP and Hurlbert Field.

Looking west toward Destin

So bright and early Saturday morning I headed out for Destin, eventually logging around 50 miles. The rest of the day was rainy and I just hung around the very nice condo suite while the girls "went to the grocery" which ultimately took them about five hours since there were so many retail outlets to explore.  I was extremely thankful I'd decided not to go with them.  Sunday morning started out looking pretty nice, but I was only five or six miles out when the first little rain shower came through. Somewhere in Destin that turned into a pretty significant thunderstorm.  I was of course drenched and riding through semi-flooded streets, but the temperature was still warm and I had my rear blinky light, so I did pretty much the same ride I'd done the day before. The rest of that day was fairly rainy, of course, but not too bad. We went into Grayton Beach for dinner at the old restaurant there where the food was mediocre at best, the service inexperienced, and the prices painfully high. Oh well.

Danielle and Shannon

Finally on Monday the weather was a little better. I pulled on my still-wet shoes and did another repeat of the 50-mile ride I'd done the previous two days. The only notable riding incident was a rather embarrassing fall I took right in front of the condo when I was heading out one morning. As I clipped in with my right foot, my left foot slipped on the brightly painted concrete and I fell like a sack of rocks right on my lower back, still clipped into the pedal.  Unfortunately for me this happened right in front of a family that was loading up a car. They thought I'd killed myself, of course.  My only thought was to smile, say I was OK, and get the heck out of there as quickly as possible. My back still hurts. Anyway, the rest of Monday was fairly sunny and windy, so I spent much of it hiding under an umbrella on the beach.  It was a little too rough and full of seaweed to make swimming very appealing, and years and years of bad experience have taught me it's not worth getting sunburned on a three-day vacation.

So it was a pretty nice break over Labor Day weekend, and I was pretty good about avoiding the non-essential work emails. Naturally that means I'll be pretty swamped for the next few days while I attempt to catch up.

Missing Races

A bright red sky on a Friday morning. Good thing I wasn't going sailing.

Tomorrow I'm heading east, in the general direction of Hurricane Hermine for a little family vacation at the beach, which I assume will be festooned with red flags for a day or two. I'll be missing the LAMBRA age-graded road race in St. Francisville on Sunday.  I hate missing that race since it's a relatively short two-hour drive from home and is on a really nice course and it usually nicely organized by the local club. Of course I'll be bringing my bike to the beach, and am planning on slipping out early in the mornings to battle the wind and traffic. Hopefully I'll be able to get in some reasonable training rides. The hurricane should be well inland by the time we arrive, and most of the rain should be in the northeast quadrant anyway, so I'm not expecting much trouble getting out on the bike. The added benefit of riding early in the morning when at the beach is that I get to miss at least one overeating opportunity, otherwise known as breakfast.

Hermine became a hurricane about half an hour ago.

The past couple of weeks have been pretty routine - lots of group rides. There were a couple of pretty magnificent sunrises last week.  It's that time of year when sunrise starts to coincide with the time we are out on Lakeshore Drive. It's also the time of year when the stars are still out as I leave home in the morning. I always have trouble getting out of bed when it's still dark outside.

Last Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual. It was kind of windy that morning, even more so this morning, and I'd hit the road a few minutes early, so I met the group just east of the Bayou St. John bridge after circling around a few times.  They had been riding into a headwind on the way out, so I guess they were running a couple of minutes behind schedule. It felt like a pretty hard ride to me for some reason. Being near the back of the group makes it extra hard because things always string out a lot on a couple of the turns, which basically means it's a full-on sprint for half a kilometer in order to regain contact, and a draft.

WeMoRi Cool-down on the lakefront

On Tuesday we were hammering down Lakeshore Drive heading west shortly before Elysian Fields when one of the guys in front of me unexpectedly and suddenly slowed down. A couple of us had to make evasive maneuvers to avoid hitting him. I assumed he'd flatted.  Later that day Matt called to tell me that Keith had actually started to have a seizure and had to stop.  Fortunately, someone stopped with him. Apparently he hadn't had any such issues in years, so it was kind of a surprise, but from past experience he could feel it starting and was able to stop safely.

This afternoon is the annual Tulane Activities Expo, which is basically an opportunity for the team to sign up some new recruits. We did a little Facebook campaign, and for my $30 investment got a reach of 1,943 people with a targeted promotion. No telling if that will actually result in more team members, but I figured it was worth a try anyway.

A smallish Sunday Giro Ride group heads out from Starbucks

So next up for me will be the race weekend in Thibodaux with a team time trial followed by a criterium. That will be the last LAMBRA road event for the season, I think.  I'll probably skip the Pensacola stage race again this year, mainly because it's the next weekend after my trip to Florida and also because of the added expense coming on the heels of a family vacation. I'm still planning on doing Six Gap, and maybe some of our track championships, and there are a few other possibilities out there before the cyclocross races start up at the end of October. Meanwhile, we're all just keeping our fingers crossed that the next storm coming over from Africa doesn't turn into a hurricane event for us.  We don't need any of that.

Podium for All

Podium photos can be deceiving!

Yesterday I came in last, or third, depending on your perspective. Likewise, Scott, who lapped me once, and very nearly twice, on a 5+ mile road course, came in third to last, or first.

Saturday afternoon I made my way up to Natchez State Park for the LAMBRA "skill-based" road championship. Pre-registrations had been pretty low, so despite my complete lack of confidence I signed up for the Cat. 1/2 race to at least make sure the field size would merit the Cat. 2 riders the minimum number of upgrade points. Since there were only 5 pre-registered, there had already been some discussion about combining the Cat. 1/2s with the Cat. 3s.  I was hoping that would happen, since it offered at least a chance I'd have someone to ride with once I was, inevitably, dropped on the climbs. We hadn't used this course in a few years since the Natchez Bicycle Club, which isn't really a racing club, stopped promoting the championships there. For the past few years we'd kind of pressed other races into being the championship, with the result that we had separate skill-based and age-graded races on different dates. While the two events are still separate, when the Omnium whose first road race we'd been using for the championship said they'd prefer not to do that, we twisted some arms to get a club from Baton Rouge to host the race on the Natchez course. Anyway, I got up to Natchez well before dark and met with the Race Director and volunteers. As usual, a number of volunteers had backed out and they were pretty short-handed, which simplified the decision to combine the Cat. 1/2s with the Cat. 3s.

The best things about this course are that it's nearly devoid of traffic, the speed limit is 15 mph, there only one significant intersection, and it has enough hills and technical sections to present opportunities for breakaways and, as in my case, attrition. The worst thing about the course was that the road surface had deteriorated significantly since we'd last used it.  There were some big potholes and a couple of short sections that were basically gravel.  One road that we use for this loop is normally closed off with a gate and is used so infrequently that there's grass growing up from the cracks. Those cracks were a lot bigger than they had been a few years earlier, too.

So we got to the start a couple of hours early to get everything set up since we were expecting some rain.  It was super humid, and by the time the finish line was ready to go I was soaked with sweat. My race started half an hour later, so I jumped in the car and got into my racing kit, pulled out the bike and did the short and mostly ineffective warmup typical for a longish road race. Since we'd combined the two groups, we had a nice sized field of 20 on the line for the start.  Not exactly a good turnout, but a lot better than facing 73 miles with a 5-rider field. I was going into the race fully expecting to be dropped as soon as they got serious about racing.  I was figuring we'd get two to four laps in before that happened.

I was wrong.

When I saw Scott Kuppersmith launch the first attack of the day, I looked down at my computer.  We hadn't gone four miles yet. I, along with a bunch of people near the back, had to dig kind of deep just to stay in contact as the speed stayed pretty high for most of that lap.  This was particularly bothersome on the stretch of tree-shaded road with all the potholes. It's bad enough being in a fast group trying to avoid potholes you don't see until the last moment. It's worse being short and at the back like that. As we started the second lap the pace slowed and the group bunched up a bit coming in to the section with the steepest climbs. I thought that was a good opportunity to roll to the front so that when someone attacked, which I expected would happen, I'd have a few wheels to drop back on.  So I rolled off the front on the long climb, and pushed it a bit on the one after that, and was surprised not to see the group flying past.  I eased up a bit and discovered a rider who was visiting from Colorado had come with me and there was a significant gap.  Poor guy thought I might be a good breakaway companion. I told him I was a little too old to be doing that sort of thing, but that if there was a separation when we were caught and Scott was in it, he should definitely go with it. "Scott won't quit on you," I said.  So he pulled for a while until we were caught, which happened shortly before the fun downhill and right turn. Well, within a mile or two there was another attack and I think Scott and Nick (the Colorado guy) started to roll off the front.  Meanwhile, a few riders, including myself, were busy getting dropped off the back on the rollers. This was like 10 miles into the race.  Things kind of came back together toward the end of that lap, but the attacks at the front seemed to keep coming. By the time we were halfway through that lap I was dropped for good, along with a few other guys.  For a while I got together with Adrian and Peter, but we lost Peter pretty quickly.  Adrian rolled up to me and asked if I was going to keep trying and I told him I was in it for a good training ride, but had no delusions beyond that.  A little while he dropped off too, so there I was, twenty miles into a 73 mile race. Meanwhile up at the front Scott and Nick were away being chased by a small group of Jaden, Patton, Jeremy, Ben H., and Jon.  The rest of the group was kind of disintegrating in to ones and twos. Eventually, Scott and Nick would stay away to take the gold medals in the Cat. 1/2 and Cat 3 races respectively.  The chase group would get whittled down to just three, of which only Jaden was Cat. 1/2. All of the other Cat. 1/2s dropped out.  So with maybe four laps to go, as I'm riding past the start/finish, Daniel, who was supposed to be in the race ahead of me, was yelling "You're in third place!"  It was, of course, more of a joke than anything since I'd already been lapped by the two lead groups. Somewhere in there it poured down rain for a lap or so, which certainly helped keep the heat down. Anyway, I had a pretty good workout with some good climbing, which I badly needed. In fact, I was a little surprised that I didn't really feel all that bad on the climbs. If the race hadn't started out so hard and we'd gotten a few laps in before the sparks started to fly, I might have been motivated to make more of an effort to stay in the race. On the last lap I was about 500 meters from the finish line when something punctured my rear tire, so I rode in on a flat.  How appropriate.

After my race ended, they were short one follow car for the 3-rider women's race, so I jumped into the car, still wearing my full, soaking wet, kit, to drive around in circles for a while.  Toward the end of that race the Chief Referee flagged me down and said they were going to cut short both the Women's race and Cat. 4 race that were in progress because of an approaching thunderstorm.  Although they got rained on pretty well, the real downpour didn't happen until after they were all finished, so that kind of worked out.  I didn't get out of there until around 5 pm or later, and still had to drive down through Baton Rouge to check on Candy's parents' property that they've been trying to sell for like ten years.  It was clear it had flooded the long-abandoned and vandalized house, but otherwise there wasn't much to see.  Driving back from Baton Rouge to New Orleans I had planned on stopping at Starbucks, but both of the ones on my route were closed because of the flooding. Then, on the elevated interstate leading into LaPlace, everything came to a halt. I was stuck in that for nearly an hour as they cleared what looked like a multiple vehicle crash, so I didn't get home until around 9:30.  My feet were still wet and I was pretty hungry. By the time I'd unloaded the car and gotten something to eat and posted results it was around 11:30.  When I finally took off my wet socks, the same ones I'd raced in, they smelled so bad I brought them down to the basement to dry out with the wet tent and flag and shoes.  Long day.

More Rain and Wet Roads

Red and Yellow Radar Images - a familiar sight lately     

Down here in New Orleans we've been extremely lucky over the past few days.  The torrential rains that have caused catastrophic flooding throughout much of south and central Louisiana have only dealt us passing blows, all easily handled by the city's pumping system.  So while life goes on relatively normally here, fifty or sixty miles in any direction between north and west brings you to varying levels of devastation.  There are some areas that have received rain totals over just a few days in excess of two feet.  Yes, FEET.  Pretty much every little river and creek overflowed, and flooded entire cities like Denham Springs, just outside of Baton Rouge, for example. Although we're still planning on having our category based road championship up in Natchez on Sunday, I'm sure there will be a number of regular riders who won't be able to make it, mainly because their houses and/or cars have been flooded.

I've probably ridden in the rain and/or on wet roads nearly every day lately, and this morning was no exception.  As I stepped out the door at 5:40 this morning I looked up at the sky and was pleased to see stars. The radar was clear, so it looked like we'd at least avoid riding in actual rain for a change. I jumped on the bike, which I haven't even bothered to clean for the past couple of days, and met the group for the ride out to the lakefront. We met up with the usual group, I guess twenty or so riders, and headed off for the lap of Lakeshore Drive.  As usual the pace gradually picked up, but never got too out of hand. We were probably in the 26-27 mph range coming back from the Seabrook loop.

Changing flats and watching for cars on Lakeshore Drive  

As we approached the levee near Elysian Fields I was sitting comfortably on a wheel near the front, escheloned a bit to the right up against the curb. As we started up the little uphill over the levee the rider ahead of me eased up, trapping me between his rear wheel and the curb. At first I didn't think much about it, but then he started slowing down even more.  Riders started streaming past on the left. Just as I extricated myself from the situation and was ready to catch back onto the tail end of the paceline I heard someone yell "Flat!"  So that explained it.  A small group up at the front never heard, or at least never stopped, but most everyone else turned around.

Thus began one of the longest tire changes in history.  Mid-way through the first tire change, another rider in the group discovered his tire had gone flat too.  I guess we were there for about fifteen minutes.  Eventually we got going again, at which point I started thinking seriously about whether I wanted to continue out onto the lakefront bike path, which I knew was going to be full of runoff water from the levee, or just call it a day.  I decided on the former, as did most of the group.  So for about half of that out-and-back on the bike path everyone except the lead rider was treated to a steady stream of wheel-spray in the eyes.  So . much . fun.

A mile or so from Causeway, on the way back, Jason flatted just before the Suburban Canal bridge. Nobody stopped, as we were already running fifteen minutes late, so I turned back and waited for him so he wouldn't get left out there alone.  With the roads so wet the chances of getting a second flat are pretty high. So I finally got back home nearly half an hour later than usual, which wasn't really a problem, and soaking wet, which wasn't really anything different than the past few days, despite the clear sunny sky.  By early afternoon, though, it was raining again.  Of course.

Small Ring Reconnaissance in the Rain

The spillway, 25 miles upriver from home. The road on the other side was open, so no flooding there.   

The decision came early Friday morning.  The weekend's races would be cancelled because of the continuing heavy rain and flooding in southern Louisiana. I posted the news to FB and updated the LAMBRA website while the Race Director sent out an email to the various groups. It was the right decision. Although New Orleans itself somehow missed the worst of it, it wasn't by much.  North of the lake the rivers were already overflowing and flooding roadways and houses. Over the course of the day the flooding just got worse and worse, affecting everything from Covington to Baton Rouge. I-55 was completely closed because of flooding for a while.

Northshore Flooding

Here in New Orleans, though, it was mostly just steady light to moderate rain. I went to sleep Friday night wondering if we'd get away with the Giro Ride in the morning.  Around 4 am I got my answer as a rainstorm came by of sufficient intensity to wake me up. By 6 am the rain had essentially stopped, but with the roads soaking wet and the forecast in considerable doubt, I didn't think it was be worth getting out of bed. Instead, I set my sights on mid-morning and a ride on the river levee. I knew the weather would be gradually improving, so the only constraint for my solo ride would be getting back home in time to watch the women's team pursuit at 2 pm.

Wet roads, but minimal rain

I rolled out from the house around 10:30, by which time the roads were damp but not terribly wet, and headed for the river levee.  I was planning on riding all the way out to the Spillway, and I figured I'd use the ride to do some reconnaissance on the bike path status.  The latest guesstimate from the Corps of Engineers is calling for completion some time in October, which is a long way away from the original date that was supposed to be last April or May.

By the time I got to the bike path there was already a very light kind of misty rain falling. It wasn't quite enough to soak my socks or anything, and the temperature was probably in the upper 70s, so I figured I'd be fine for the duration.

The Green Pipes.  No hint of replacing the bike path here, so you have to battle it out with the trucks on River Road.

The first obstacle on what used to be an unbroken 25 mile bike path and is now more like an obstacle course is the "green pipes" obstacle. This is where Jefferson Parish put pipes over the levee for stormwater drainage.  There is absolutely no hint of any effort to construct a bike path around the pipes.  Instead, you have to ride down to River Road and then back up on the other side, crossing traffic, of course, each time.

Same old, same old. Not even worth
taking a new photo.

The next obstacle is the closure just past Moss Lane in River Ridge. The bike path has been closed here for at least a year now, way, way past multiple projected opening dates.  Here, you have to ride down the grass to Moss and from there to Jefferson Highway. The bike path is closed from there all the way to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish, so you're stuck on Jefferson Highway for a long time.  There's a shoulder for most of it, but the mile or so past Williams Blvd. is 2-lane highway with no shoulder, so it can be a little uncomfortable if there's any significant traffic.

So this was new. Permanent or Temporary??

Once past that road closure you get a few good miles until you hit one of the grain elevators where they are building something over the levee and have made a little kind of sidewalk width path through there.  At least you can stay on the bike for that one.

From there it's a more or less clear shot all the way to the spillway, with just the pre-existing bypasses underneath pipes and stuff for the various petrochemical plants along the river there.

So, despite the wetness and obstacles, I got in a nice easy solo ride of 50 miles or so without a flat, which under the circumstances seemed pretty good.  I got home, gave the bike a quick hose down, slapped a little lube onto the chain, and went upstairs with just enough time to take a shower and catch the live video from Rio.

Heading downriver at the Jefferson Parish line. Still closed.

I was sorry to see that the US women couldn't pull off the win in the team pursuit, but I guess they're not too disappointed to walk away with the silver medals.

Here in New Orleans the rain seems to have stopped for now, but the forecast for the next ten days can be summed up pretty simply as "Scattered thunderstorms, 60-80% chance of rain every single day."  I'm guessing the rain bike may get a little road time next week.

Rain and Racing and Riding

I'm going to get wet on the way home...

The university just sent out an email advising us to "take precautions to protect equipment and files in offices and labs," which seems like a little bit of over-reaction to the rain that's on the way. This always happens the first time anything resembling a tropical storm show up during hurricane season. Still, it's not looking too good for riding tomorrow or Friday with chances of rain in the 80-90% range. Then again, this time of year you never know.

I've been feeling kind of lazy since the last race, which generally translates into falling back into what passes for my routine of early morning group rides. There's not really much to report there. As usual, the default rides had me cranking out around 250 miles last week, 90% of it consisting of drafting behind the biggest guy I can find. There were a few rides where we got pretty wet from unexpected little pop-up thunderstorms, which is pretty normal here this time of year. The most notable of those was the WeMoRi a week ago on Wednesday.  I had headed out for the lake a few minutes early, having checked the radar and coming to the conclusion that we'd be done before any rain arrived to spoil the fun. On the way out to the lakefront I ran into Will, and we ride the rest of the way together, turning onto Lakeshore Drive just as there was enough light in the sky to see the threatening clouds. We got only a couple of miles before, all of a sudden, the temperature dropped almost instantaneously from 84 to 77. Seconds later the wind picked up dramatically and great big raindrops started falling. It was still pretty dark because of the clouds, and we saw a couple of people coming toward us before we made a quick u-turn ourselves.  Most of the WeMoRi was then somewhere behind us, having already been enveloped by the torrential rain from which we were now, quite hopelessly, running. Well, needless to say, we were almost blown off our bikes and completely soaked before even getting off of Lakeshore Drive as we made a mad dash for home. The rain eased  up for a bit as I got closer to uptown, then, just as Charlotte, who had been with the WeMoRi earlier, caught up with me, the sky opened up again.

The weekday morning ride heading back from Kenner on the bike path.

The weekend Giro Rides were pretty normal, with some really fast stuff and a fair amount of more moderate stuff, so nothing really to report there. This week has been consumed with watching the Olympics.  Both the men's and women's road races were pretty spectacular. Although some would say that the course was too dangerous because of the downhill section and cobblestones and painfully steep climb and windy coastal stretch, I don't really agree with that. To me it looked like one of the most worthy courses I've seen in a while that would favor none but the most well-rounded of riders. If it hadn't been wet and leading riders hadn't been taking some significant risks I think things would have turned out much differently.  Basically, two Olympic medals were lost in the men's race because of the crash in the rain, leaving a solo rider too far from the finish. The women's race was similar with another guaranteed gold medal lost, but with the added excitement of USA's Mara Abbott, who had splintered the group on the big climb, unexpectedly having to go solo after her breakaway companion, who had already put half a minute on her by taking risks on the slippery downhill, crashed very badly on a curve. Even though Mara would have probably had to time trial the final 10k or so to the finish, she probably wouldn't have been caught since the next group of three on the road had two teammates of the rider who crashed. Of course, when they saw their lead rider was out (both literally and figuratively), the chase was on and the three-rider group was in team time trial mode all the way to the 200 meter mark, which about where they came past Mara who was just completely. That's about the worst 4th place scenario I can possibly imagine - getting caught within 150 meters of the finish of the Olympic road race.

The Giro Ride cool-down along Lakeshore Drive.

I don't know what the USA team's plans were for that race, but Mara basically dropped two of her teammates on the big climb, setting up a 2-rider break with a rider who she had no realistic chance of beating if it came down to a sprint. That may have been the way it would have worked out if the roads had been dry, but the instant they hit the downhill Annemiek van Vleuten started putting daylight between them as Mara descended the wet roads way more cautiously. Perhaps if she'd taken just a tiny bit more risk here and there on the downhill the chasing riders wouldn't have gotten close enough soon enough to claim the entire podium for themselves. Once they could see her on the final kilometer they knew they could catch if they worked together, and knowing that they'd all be on the podium if they did probably ensured they would cooperate until the very end, which they did.

On the plus side, 42 year old Kristen Armstrong just won the Women's time trial by a mere five seconds.  Overall, the cycling races have been a hundred times more exciting than any Olympics I've ever seen before.

Renaissance

Last weekend there was a new race, The Race at Renaissance, up in Jackson, Mississippi. It's been a long time since there's been a race with such a large prizelist within easy driving distance, and although I was planning on racing the Masters race, I was really more concerned that we didn't screw up the officiating too much. With $5k in the Saturday time trial and then $15k in the Sunday criteriums, I knew that it would pull in a few teams and privateers even though it was a first-year race that showed up on the calendar a little late to make it into the official plans for many.

After work on Friday I waited out a big thunderstorm before hitting the road for the 3-hour drive, and so didn't arrive until nearly 10:30 pm. On the plus side, I had free lodging with one of the other officials at the Hyatt. Both the Time Trial and Criterium were staged at the Renaissance shopping center north of Jackson in Ridgeland. This was the heart of suburban living - fountains, landscaped traffic circles, women's clothing stores, chain restaurants, etc. Anyway, I was registered for just the Masters criterium, which was only 30 minutes, and was more preoccupied with the officiating side of it, so I was mentally out of it before it started.

The organizers, Nunchuck Bunnies, and their sponsors really pulled out all the stops for this event, even though pre-registrations were really low. For a race with this kind of prizelist, you would think there would be more than the 223 registrations they had for the weekend. For some of those Cat. 1s and Cat. 2s who did make the trip, however, it would be a rather spectacular payday.

Sitting on the back of the breakaway after being lapped.  I could do this all day!

Saturday I worked the time trial.  The organizers had built a start ramp that was, as they typically are, a little scary. A few riders opted to start on the road. The Cat. 5s were particularly interesting, and we nearly lost a couple over the edge. With some big gaps between categories, we were able to keep up with the results pretty well, even while the race was still in progress. Things went pretty smoothly and on time, with the only complication being that they were doing the podium presentations way on the other side of the shopping center. Afterward, I went back to the hotel and posted results to the LAMBRA website, then wandered off to lunch. Mike, Ricky and I then did a nice 30 mile ride on the Natchez Trace around 2 pm that featured enough rain for a good soaking and a whole lot more traffic than I had expected. Right as we headed off to dinner I got an email from one of the women questioning some of the TT times.  After much investigation, which had to wait until after dinner, we discovered that two of the TT finish times had gotten swapped. One of the women who had been listed in like 5th was actually 2nd and the other was dropped down to like 7th. This was, of course, many hours after results had been posted at the race, awards had been made, podium photos taken, etc. I was rather surprised that neither of the riders involved had noticed their times were off by something like twenty seconds. Although I corrected the results on the website, it was way too late to do anything about the prizes. Moral of the story:  Check the freaking results and say something if something looks wrong.

Scott and Emile sprint it out for the win as I watch from behind.

Sunday morning the races started at 6:30 am. Yeah. At least the start/finish was within walking distance of the hotel. The organizers couldn't secure the venue, which went right through the middle of the outdoor shopping center, past noon, so they had seven criteriums squeezed into the morning. We somehow got everything off right on time, although the registration data was a little sketchy.  For most of the races we had riders on the line who weren't on our start lists, and the number sequences were kind of all over the place since riders who had registered in more than one criterium were given only one number. The masters race was one of the earlier ones, and the races prior to it were fairly small, so I ran off to get in a little warmup for about half an hour. Unfortunately my heart wasn't really in it and I lined up near the back completely devoid of self-confidence about this race. Naturally, the first few laps were really fast. I don't know exactly how fast because I haven't uploaded the Garmin data yet. About half of the course was on those concrete bricks that they like to use in places like this. It wasn't like cobbles or anything, but it definitely sucked a little power out of your legs. Anyway, I pretty quickly found myself near the back of a long line, having to stand up out of the corners. Soon enough a gap opened up a couple of riders ahead of me and since my head was elsewhere I didn't react quickly. Matt, who had been behind me, came around and I got on his wheel for a while but ended up off the back with Peter Stephens pretty soon thereafter. We cruised around the course a couple mph slower than the pack until I could see a small break about to catch us. A lap or two later Emile Abraham and Scott Kuppersmith came by and I latched onto them pretty easily.  There were only maybe five or six laps to go, and of course I wasn't allowed to do any work in the break, so I had an extremely enjoyable ride following them to the finish.  As a bonus, I got into a few nice photos that someone took. At the finish I saw the medics attending to someone just before the finish line. It turned out to be Alex Habbit who had been in the break and had crashed pretty heavily just before Peter and I had been caught. I turned around right after finishing to check on him, and a minute later found my front wheel was flat. Glad that hadn't happened on the last lap.

The rest of the morning was more officiating. The Pro/1/2/3 criterium looked to be pretty fast with a number of rider dropping out, one crash, and eventually a big split. As Ben Spain described it this morning, the pack was pretty neatly split with all of the usual LAMBRA riders except Jaden in the second group. The race results were pretty telling.  You had to go down to 12th place to find the first rider who wasn't Cat. 1.  Everyone in the lead break of eight was Cat. 1. The first Cat. 3 was Ben at 16th.

So it turned out to be a really nice event. A ton of riders rode two criteriums on Sunday. One was Debbie Milne who won the Women's 40+ race and then the Women's Cat. 1/2/3 race, and picked up a number of $300 and $400 primes that are pretty rare in Women's racing (the event was organized by a women's team, so they had around $5k in the women's races). I'm sure Debbie took home at least $1k, probably significantly more. I can't think of anyone more deserving, though. She's been racing all over the country this year with Flamingo Racing/Stradalli, including some impressive wins and a national championship. I'm pretty sure some of her teammates are as old as her son.

With all of the criteriums having gone off spot on time, we were all done and packed up by about 1:00 or 1:30. We never had a drop of rain for any of the races, but on the way back home I drove through a couple of pretty intense thunderstorms along I-55. Even so, I was back home before 4:30, leaving time before dinner to post results to the LAMBRA site. Just need to complete the post-event report, report of occurrence from the crash in the masters race, and update the LCCS results.  Next up are the team time trial champinships and criterium down around Thibodaux, LA.