No-Man's Land

no-man's-land: noun [ C usually sing ] /ˈnoʊ ˌmænz ˌlænd/  Disputed ground between the front lines or trenches of two opposing armies.

The really old geezers from the master's race

Ten miles into Sunday's 60 mile road race I lifted my head and looked up the road. Nothing. I looked behind me for the main pack.  Also nothing. Ahead, one of the motorefs had stopped on the shoulder. As I passed he shouted, "Two minutes to the break, two minutes to the field."  Ahh, I thought, the very definition of No-man's Land to a cyclist.

It had all started at the first turn, barely two miles from the start of the Feliciana Road Race Master's race. We'd been warned at the start that slightly downhill the turn was sketchy with rough asphalt and gravel. So naturally that's where Kevin Landry decided to launch the race's first attack. The pack, understandably, hesitated to react as he rode off the front and one rider took off in pursuit. The front riders were unconcerned and/or blocking, but a few riders behind them apparently didn't share their complacency. Soon I saw Rick way over in the left oncoming traffic lane passing the entire group. I thought, "Well that's clearly a penalty." The moto-ref thought so too and he was barely to the front of the field before I heard the engine rev up behind him, relegating him to a little time-out at the back of the pack. Kevin soon rode off into the distance as the pack just cruised. A minute later, a little attack went and two or three more, including Rick and Butch, separated themselves from the field. All of the teams, at least those with more than two riders like mine, seemed to be represented and the pace lagged even more except when VJ would move to the front and up the pace for a while.

Afraid that someone would see such a thing on Strava, I took a little dig, hoping to draw out a few riders and do a little damage control. That succeeded only in leaving me out there alone. I figured I was in this more for the training than whatever glory there might be in placing well in the old geezer category, so I just pushed on at a moderate speed. The field, of course, knew the same thing that I knew, which was that there was absolutely no chance of me time-trialing the next fifty-five miles faster than the field. After making the turn off of Highway 10, there were a few places where I could see the second break up ahead. I think that at one point I probably had the gap down to around 45-60 seconds, but they they seemed to just pull away. Not too long after that I couldn't see the break, but could definitely see the pack coming up behind me. Time to throw in the towel. I eased up for a mile or so and slotted back into the front half of the pack. I figured that, at best, we'd end up sprinting for 5th place or something. At worst, there'd be another attack, the field would split, and I'd get dropped like a rock. Somewhere along the way my teammate Adrian to a flat.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the swollen Mississippi

Surprisingly, we went up the "big" hills at the end of the second lap pretty smoothly. If there was an attack, it was a little anemic and didn't shed many, if any, riders. I think it was somewhere on the second lap that we started picking up casualties from the earlier breaks. It was also when a big thunderstorm moved over us and drenched us with pelting rain.  I still figured we'd  not be seeing Kevin and whoever he'd taken with him until after the finish. As more and more riders started showing up from the earlier breaks, the pace started ramping up. I think it was when Butch came back to the pack that the C-Spire team decided it was time to go to the front. As we started the last lap the sections that we'd done at 23 mph were now being done closer to 25 mph. When we turned onto Hwy 10, I was behind Bronson, one of Kevin's teammates, and heard him tell Alex, another of his teammates, his tire was going flat. They both stopped, hoping to be able to pace themselves back to the pack after the wheel change. It was particularly bad timing, though, because once we turned off of Hwy 10 and hit the smooth, mostly uphill, Hwy 421, the C-spire team could smell blood and most of them went to the front. Now the average speed was staying in the 25 mph range and we were closing in on the remaining escapees. I guess we were only five miles from the finish when Frank Moak took a last long pull to finally reel in Kevin, obviously with the idea of setting Woody up for the pack sprint. As he dropped back, I heard him say something to the effect of, "Well, my work is done for the day." As Kevin merged into the group, I could see him looking back for his teammates, Bronson and Alex, who he no doubt had been hoping were having an easy time sitting at the back while he'd been off the front. I told him they'd stopped because of a flat. His only remaining teammate was Troy, who was now very focused on staying near the front. With just a few miles remaining, I was surprised that the pace seemed to be slacking. We came down one hill to find the race crew dragging a fallen tree off the road, forcing us to go around in the oncoming lane. Good thing they were on top of it!  I heard later that the breakaway in one of the races ahead of us had to dismount and climb over it!

Fishing right off the levee

By that point, I'd been just following wheels for twenty miles and wasn't feeling too bad. Since it was looking like it would come down to a big pack sprint, I figured I may as well take a shot at it and started working to stay up near the front. There are two or three significant climbs within the final three miles on this circuit, and I never seem to know exactly which one I'm on, but regardless, I was fully expecting a brutal attack to come on one of them. Surprisingly, that didn't happen. We passed the 1 km to go sign all bunched up. I found myself just behind Woody, who had Troy right alongside him. I figured I'd just try to stay there until the fireworks started, so I waited, and waited, and waited. 500 meters came and went and I was still waiting. Normally, this would have been a setup for disaster. I was kind of boxed in behind Woody, who I knew had been sick for the past week, and we were now going slow enough to entice someone to launch a fly-by attack that I would definitely not be able to cover, much less come around, before the finish.

Wildlife on the river

We went up the last little incline and still nobody jumped. Finally we hit the 200 meter flag going about 22 mph when Woody jumped and the sprint was finally on. With Troy and Woody battling it out ahead, I went to Woody's left, dropped down another cog or two, and stood on the pedals. I was surprised nobody came around me. So I ended up finishing 3rd thanks to a whole series events among two or three teams in which I was more of an observer than instigator. Even so, I was more than pleased with my ride. For a change, I never felt like I was really on the ropes. If there's one thing that I know for sure, it's that the more frequently you race, the better you get at racing. It's almost independent of what you're doing the rest of the week.

Next up is the 46th Annual Tour de Louisiane, which of course I won't be riding since I'm the Race Director and an official, etc.

Since I had today, Memorial Day, off, and since it was raining early in the morning, I went out alone on the rain bike around 10 am for an easy sightseeing ride on the levee. The roads were still wet when I started, but soon the sun started breaking through the clouds. By the time I turned around out at the upriver Jefferson parish line, things were pretty dry. The river is still fairly high, which brings a lot of wildlife close to its base as the batture floods. I spent a lot of the time with my camera in my hand taking photos on the fly of wading birds, and a few people too. When I say it was an easy ride, I mean it. My max heart rate for the ride was 112 bpm.

A Little Rest

Old Man River is a little high lately.

After skipping Monday's ride, I was ready to get back to the routine Tuesday morning. The souvenir bedbug bites I'd picked up in Brookhaven were still bothering me and my right eyelid was pretty puffy from one of them, but otherwise I was good to go. That carried over to Wednesday, which was perhaps unfortunate. Wednesday morning it was windy hell, which made the WeMoRi ride harder than usual, even for me who gets there after they've already ridden seven miles on Lakeshore Drive. I rode pretty hard anyway, stopping at Starbucks for coffee before riding home. Although I hadn't taken any more Benadryl, I was feeling a little sub-par all day, but decided to do the Wednesday night training race anyway. On the way out I caught the light at Carrollton and Washington.  Since there are two lanes just past there that turn onto the interstate, I knew I'd have to get on the pedals fast when the light changed so I could claim the lane and not get chopped off on the right. The light changed. I hesitated for a moment as a car ran through the red light, the I jumped on the pedals only to find another car coming at me who  had also run the red light and was racing to cross the intersection before the cars, and I, go going. I hit the brakes and stopped. The car screeched to a stop. I stared at the driver, pointed at the light, and went.  No use arguing with someone like that. By that time of the evening it was even more windy than it had been in the morning and I knew the race would get blown away pretty quickly. Indeed, a couple of guys kind of rode off the front on the first lap, which was fine. Going over the levee just east of Elysian Fields I was behind a tall guy with fuzzy legs and some kind of bag hanging from his top tube. The wind had been blowing off the lake, so I was escheloned a bit to the left. When he hit the incline he eased up and drifted left right into my front wheel. Luckily I saved it. When I talked to him later I found out he didn't know which way to pull off, or why it would matter.  Learning opportunity. Anyway, the group was rapidly disintegrating and I soon found myself with a little 3-rider chase group. I use the term "chase" loosely here. We were riding pretty hard, though, so it was a good workout. Coming around the Seabrook loop on the second lap we were suddenly confronted with two cars basically stopped. I hit the brakes and went right, the other two guys went left. After having already had two near-death experiences that evening I decided I needed a little alone time, so I didn't try to close the gap that had opened and instead just rode solo down to the other end, turning around early to get back in with the other guys for the last lap. By the time I got home I was feeling pretty wasted. I guess it was the wind.

Thursday morning's ride on the levee was nice. There were some fast sections and some not so fast sections, which was good because I was still feeling kind of tired. I happily stopped at Z'otz on the way home for coffee and contemplation, taking a nice candid shot of an older woman with her head buried in the newspaper. She was busily talking politics with the barista. I think I overheard her say something like, "We haven't had a good republican president since Eisenhower." Anyway, by then I was feeling like Friday was going to have to be an easy day - really easy. So this morning I went out to the levee again, this time alone, and spun out an easy twenty miles or so. The weather was great thanks to the little cool front that had brought all of that wind on Wednesday, but I think that's all over now and we'll be quickly getting back to summertime temperatures. The Tour de La is rapidly approaching and I have a big long list of volunteers needed and things that must be done with lots of blank spaces in it right now. Putting on the race is always an exercise in compromise - and anxiety.

I posted to FB a photo of the bunch of old frames that's been at the Tulane Cycling headquarters since last summer. I had been hoping they could raise a little cash for the club, but that never really came to pass and they're just taking  up room, so now I'm trying to give them away. Whatever's left next week will probably go in the dumpster. I think a few of these were flooded during Katrina in the old Bicycle World shop on Calhoun, but a couple of them look like they could be built up in to nice bikes by someone willing to track down the right headsets, forks, seatposts, etc. If you had a big bunch of spare parts lying around you could probably make some of them rideable.

Danielle is still waiting to see an endocrinologist up in Washington. Meanwhile, Blue Cross is trying to weasel out of paying her hospital bills because she's covered under both that through LSUHSC and another policy under Shannon. Kenny's Bianchi is still missing thanks to UPS. It's been two weeks and according to the tracking information it never got any farther than Jackson Mississippi where it just disappeared. How does a big bike box just disappear?

Bugged Out in Brookhaven

Coming over the top of the climb in my
usual spot - probably the hot spot lap

The weather forecast was looking pretty dismal on Friday afternoon when I hit the road for Brookhaven, MS and the resurrected Mississippi Gran Prix stage race. Just in case the 50-90% chances of rain weren't enough disincentive, there were other complications. Candy had a conference in California, so I'd need to find someone to keep the dog alive until Monday. On the plus side, Christian had already reserved a room so at least I'd have a place to sleep Saturday night. Since I was going to be officiating the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium on Friday night, however, I needed to get to Brookhaven around 5 pm. Also, I had the generator, race clock, and radios that would be needed for the weekend. Although I was sure the Friday evening criterium would be over well before any rain showed up, I was already resigned to racing in the rain on Saturday and Sunday, and can't say I was much looking forward to that.

The Friday night crit went pretty well. The officials, including me, were staying at a guest house in back of someone's home near town, so we all headed over there to finish up and post the results. Considering the 50+ rider field and difficult camera lighting situation for a race finishing after dark, the results were pretty good, which is to say that there were only a few riders for whom we had no actual finish placings. I slept on a little couch that night, and we were up early the next morning to drive up to the road race course north of Brookhaven where I switched, at least temporarily, from official mode to bike racer mode. The masters field had only fifteen riders in it, but I wasn't expecting to be finishing ahead of most of them in this 60 mile road race. It's not the right way to be thinking when starting a race, obviously, but I was feeling kind of mentally and physically drained already. I'd ridden the road course a few times in prior years, so I knew there were a couple of significant uphill stretches on the back side. In my pessimism, I was fully expecting to get dropped on one of them. Well, that didn't take long to happen. On the first lap I was sitting at the back of the field as we started up one of the long climbs. The pace didn't seem very fast, so I wasn't really paying much attention since it was still early in the race. We were about halfway up when I finally got a look at the front of the group and realized there was already this big gap that had split the field right in half. It was kind of strange because back where I was there didn't seem to have been any acceleration at all. It was like someone on the middle of the paceline just let the gap open without even trying to stay with the riders ahead. Anyway, by the time we came over the top the gap was way too large to close alone. I ended up with three other riders - Rick, Brett, and VJ. VJ would take long pulls as usual, and we were working together fairly well, but nobody seemed willing to make the extra effort needed to catch, and for a long time we could see the front group about a minute up the road. Somewhere along the way we rode through a little rain shower, but it wasn't too bad and half of the course never saw any rain at all. I was feeling OK most of the time, but by then we were just riding in to finish. A few miles from the finish Brett took a hard pull that I guess is where we lost VJ, so we ended up with just three of us. At 200 meters Rick jumped and I started to go to stay with him, but didn't have any motivation to come around. By the time the TT was scheduled to start the weather was looking a lot worse. I arrived at the TT location in the rain with thunder rumbling in the distance. I really didn't even want to get on the bike. I rode the time trial with no motivation at all, just to finish so I could race the next day.

Saturday night I stayed at the local Comfort Inn with Christian and Rachel, arriving pretty late since I was helping with results and then went to eat at a local Mexican place with the other officials.

Nice shot (not mine) of the climb with the
200 meter flag in the background

The rain was supposed to be even worse on Sunday, and when I arrived at the circuit race course I had no reason to doubt that. It was raining and there was thunder and lightning all over the place. I  helped get the finish line set up as the riders for the first race started showing up. The officials postponed the first race for about twenty minutes so that most of the rain and lightning could move through. The Cat 4/5 women and Juniors raced pretty much in the rain, but by the time the next race started the sky was clear and the sun was starting to heat thing up a lot. The Masters race was mostly pretty slow. It was a 24 mile race on a 6 mile circuit that included a mile or two of really rough old asphalt bordering on gravel. Naturally, that was where someone would attack on every lap. At the end of the lap was a long uphill that, for some reason, we rode up at a smooth tempo except for the points hot spot on the second lap. On the last lap everything was still together until Butch launched just before the rough section. I was right there and went with him, but burned my last few matches to do so. When he eased up one of his teammates counter-attacked and next thing I knew I was off the back. I could see that the group had split.  I backed down a bit to recover and once I got off of the rough section I could see that the group had come back together and slowed down considerably. Wes, in the follow car, came around me and I got a little draft off of his van for a couple of minutes. When I re-joined the group it was going about 18 mph with the finish just about 2 k up the road. I was a little tired from the solo chase, so when the sprint started at the base of the climb I just rode tempo up to the top. It wasn't like I was in contention for anything. Even so, I felt like it was a good weekend for me and I was glad I'd gone. My race fitness has been really slow to come back, in no small part due to the fact that I haven't been doing much in the way of intensity on my training rides. Still, there were some times when I felt like I was going better than I had at the last race, so I guess that's some kind of progress.

I changed back into regular clothes and helped with the officiating a bit for the next couple of races.   That's when I started noticing the itchy insect bites on my neck. I could feel three bumps in a row and knew immediately what it probably was.  Bedbugs. I'd been bitten by bedbugs a few years earlier, also at a hotel in Brookhaven.  Amazingly, it never rained again. The Cat. 1/2/3 race looked fairly animated and thanks to the long uphill the results were pretty straightforward despite the fact that Ricky was having trouble with one of the finish line cameras. I stuck around for the Cat. 1/2/3 awards, and even got a small prize for my lackluster GC placing in the Masters race.  By the time I was on the road for home the bites on my neck were all swollen and itchy and I could feel more bites around my eye and on one  hand and arm. That all got pretty uncomfortable by evening despite copious amounts of hydrocortisone cream. I had planned on riding but was so uncomfortable I just made some coffee instead. I took some Benadryl this morning, but things are still pretty itchy and swollen so I'm about to take some more. I assume the groggy spacey feeling is from the Benadryl.

A Ride with Hector

I was reminded this morning that I'd never logged anything here about our ride with Hector Picard last week. I was surprised, but I guess with everything that was happening I never got past posting some photos to Facebook.

So it was a few weeks ago that I got an email, or Facebook message, or text, or something (it was all so much simpler when there were just phone calls and emails) from Hector. He was doing a tour (Tour to Inspire) of sorts, passing through a bunch of cities, and was asking about local group rides that he might get in on. People contact me all the time about that sort of thing, and I never really know what to tell them unless they let me know that they're a Cat. 2 or something. He was going to be in town on a Tuesday and was looking for a ride in the morning, so I told him about the regular early morning ride on the lakefront and lake trail bike path. As I often do, I sent him links to a recent Strava page for the ride so he could see the route and, more importantly, the speeds. A while later he replied and said he'd be there. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have caused me any concern, but it turns out that Hector lost all of one arm and most of the other in an accident, and so I naturally wondered about his ability to deal with a fast group ride on unfamiliar roads. Turns out he's the guy in the video that made the rounds a while back where he is shown changing a flat, arguably faster and better than a lot of riders I know. It also turns out he's done a bunch of triathlons, including Hawaii. So I rode out to meet the group early on that Tuesday and Hector's right there in the paceline without the slightest problem. He's a better bike-handler than some riders I know, and somehow manages being in a paceline at 28 mph, shifting with his chin and braking with his knee. I was worried about how he'd deal with the section where we have to ride in the grass, up the concrete levee apron, over a curb, underneath the Causeway bridge, and back down on the other side. I assumed he'd  have to stop and get off to do that.  He didn't.  Somebody else fell, but Hector rode it just like everyone else. I think we were all pretty impressed and humbled.

This weekend is the Mississippi Gran Prix stage race up in Brookhaven. Looking at the list of pre-registered riders for the Master 40+ race, I'm pretty sure I'll be getting my ass kicked pretty badly. I've apparently achieved that age where all those fast guys who you were avoiding by rider Masters are now old enough to be themselves avoiding all those even faster guys in the Cat. 1/2/3 race by riding Masters. So the age, and for that matter ability, gap for me is pretty much the same as it would have been if I'd been riding the Cat. 1/2/3 race a few years ago. I'm scheduled to officiate the Friday night Cat. 1/2/3 criterium, which should be interesting since there will be at least fifty riders in that one and it finishes in the dark. On the plus side, it probably won't be raining.  On the minus side, it probably will be raining Saturday and Sunday. The Weather Channel is showing 60% and 90% chance of rain for Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Hormones and Hospitals and Bullets

Beautiful weather for the Sunday Giro     

Early Thursday afternoon I unexpectedly found myself on the way to Ochsner hospital with The Daughter. She had been to the doctor earlier in the day, trying to figure out why she had been feeling so bad for the past few months. A few hours later the doctor called and said, essentially, you need to drop everything and get to the emergency room immediately. Not really what you want to hear. It actually happened to me once when I had mononucleosis and it started affecting my liver.  Anyway, it's kind of a long story, but Danielle and Candy had both picked up a particularly nasty virus around Christmas. One of those where the coughing and congestion and all hang around for weeks after the initial infection. Some time after that Danielle started getting extremely and uncharacteristically tired on relatively easy bike rides. She initially chalked it up to asthma and/or allergies. A few weeks ago we started thinking it might be something else. Specifically, we started thinking it might be an autoimmune disease. There were a number of candidates, some really bad, some no so much, but of course none good. She went to the doctor and although they didn't come up with a diagnosis, it was noted that her potassium level was kind of high.

I knew this all sounded familiar

Over the next few weeks, and heading in her exams, she was not improving and we were starting to notice some hyper-pigmentation that couldn't really be explained by being out in the sun too much. That started to sound familiar. Long, long ago in graduate school, probably in microbiology or maybe biochemistry, I had seen something like that, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, the reason the doctor had become alarmed was because of Danielle's potassium level, which was way above normal and in the range where it could affect her heart, not to mention other muscles, along with shock from the concurrent drop in sodium.  Well, although Addison's Disease isn't very common, it didn't take very long for them to make the diagnosis. One of the ER doctors came in right away with three Residents so they could see what the pigmentation looked like. Initially, the Residents seemed a little disappointed. Then Danielle pulled out her driver's license so they could see her normal skin tone and their jaws dropped.  By the time all of this went down, Danielle had already been researching Addison's and knew a lot about it. They immediately started getting her potassium and sodium levels straightened out and started her on corticosteroids to replace the cortisol that she wasn't making. By morning she was feeling pretty good, although we were stuck at the hospital most of the next day waiting for the endocrinologists to show up to explain the treatment plan, prescribe the necessary replacement hormones, etc. So although this whole situation really sucks, at least Addison's is treatable and shouldn't have too severe an impact on Danielle's life.

Addison's is actually pretty interesting because of how the loss of cortisol screws up a whole negative feedback loop that leads to a couple of symptoms that aren't actually caused by the loss of cortisol per se.  That, of course, is probably why I remembered studying it. The next day I found my old collection of Scope Monographs, one of which was on the adrenal cortex. There were all of the pictures and text that I remembered, along with my highlighting and study notes. This whole situation was made even more complicated because Danielle had just finished exams (the stress is probably what pushed her symptoms into the red) and was scheduled to fly out to Washington on Saturday evening. We had a big rush on Saturday tracking down the right medications and especially an Addison's emergency kit, but it all came together and we were even able to make an appearance at Ben Bradley's graduation party. Ben will be doing his residency training at the University of Washington, which is where Danielle will probably be looking for an endocrinologist. It's a very good place to be if you're looking for a good MD, especially if you're looking for one with research interests. So we got her to the airport on time and she arrived in Seattle around midnight, our time.

Meanwhile, there was that shooting incident on Saturday.  Very odd.  I had gone out to the Giro Ride Saturday morning, and we had a particularly fast but otherwise normal ride. The Giro route returns via the I-10 service road and Bullard Avenue to Hayne Blvd. The stretch on Bullard isn't very long, and the pavement is pretty bad, so it's always kind of a regrouping or recovery zone before the final push on Hayne and over the two bridges. The Semi-tough group, does their own ride along the same route a little later, starting from downtown rather than the Starbucks on Harrison where the Giro starts. Well, as that group was returning on Bullard, one of the riders, Christopher Weiss, was shot!  Nobody can figure out where it came from, and luckily it was a small caliber bullet of some kind that wasn't going fast enough to penetrate too far. The bullet is still in there and it came dangerously close to one of his spinal cord nerve roots, so he's really pretty lucky.  The whole thing has people all freaked out. One of the guys behind him posted video of it, which of course had led to all sorts of conjecture about who did the shooting, but really they don't have much to go on and we'll probably never know if it was accidental, or if some idiot was, for some reason, using the group for target practice.

This morning the Giro did its usual route and as usual there were no incidents, not even anything like what we had a couple of weeks ago when there was a guy in the middle of Paris Road waving sticks at us and yelling "white people don't belong around here." The weather was really nice today and I'm enjoying the warmer mornings and earlier sunrise. It was the first morning I've ridden out to the Giro without lights this year. Next weekend is the Mississippi Gran Prix. I'm looking forward to it since I haven't had much of a chance to actually race this year. I'm setting my goals pretty low, which is to say I hope I can finish without getting dropped.

Get it Right

Fred and I had starter duties

I glanced over my shoulder at the big new expensive LED race clock and said out loud, "I've been standing here almost two hours." We were down to the last few Cat. 1/2s at the LAMBRA Time Trial Championship, having already sent around a hundred riders down the dead-flat 40 kilometers of asphalt we've been using off and on for decades. This year the weather was nearly perfect for the 8 am start, and although it was warmer and slightly more windy by the time we got down to the last batch of riders, conditions were still pretty good. I'd been worrying about officiating this race for a few days already, although I'm not really sure why.  I guess I just really wanted to get it right this time after having more problems than I'd like the last couple times I pulled on my blue shirt. I shouldn't have been worried. I'd been up until 1 am Friday night setting up the start list based on USAC Time Trial ranking points, posting it to the website, printing and sorting the entry forms and stapling the assigned bib numbers to them. Sunday morning Danielle and I packed the Volvo to the roof with equipment - clock, podium, p/a system, signs, traffic cones, generator, flags, tent, officiating stuff, cooler, etc.  It just barely fit.  On race day, when I opened the case with the stopwatches, every single one was set to Lap mode instead of Split mode. No idea how that happened, but I was glad I checked and was able to reset all of them. The night before I had drilled through the start/stop button on one of them so that you could insert a safety pin through the hole and make it impossible to accidentally stop the watch - a little trick I learned long ago.

Travis won the Cat. 4s

A number of club members had already stepped up to help with the race and I'd even gone to the almost unprecedented extreme of actually assigning most of the volunteer slots ahead of time. Truth be told, we often don't really know who or how many we have to help out until fifteen minutes before the start. This year we had a number of well-experienced people in all of the key positions, so things were looking pretty good. Still, there's always the chance something will go terribly wrong. There was that year when it was raining and the turnaround marshal couldn't find the painted marks on the road and somewhat arbitrarily put the turnaround a couple hundred meters past where it should have been. Stuff happens.

I finally got the last rider, a Cat. 2 from Indiana, started and rushed back to registration area where the computer was. Mignon and Mark had already started confirming and entering the start times, so I sent one of them off to collect the first batch of finish times while I filled out and double-checked the rest of the start time columns. The Juniors had already been waiting around for well over an hour to see their results, so we knocked those out pretty quickly. The rest of the results arrived, a page at a time, over the next forty-five minutes or so. Despite a few riders who had their numbers on the wrong side, or pinned way up on their backs where only satellites could see them, we didn't have any problems with times. With Danielle and Robin doing the timing and Branden sitting on top of his truck calling numbers, that had all gone quite smoothly. I made one typo on a finish time that was caught right away, but other than that everyone seemed happy.  Looking over the results, and considering the conditions, I was a little surprised not to see a time or two challenging the LAMBRA men's record of 52:17.  The closest was Matt Davis' 53:15. On the plus side, you had to go down to about 30th place to find a time over an hour. I was pleased to see Stephanie Smith break her own LAMBRA women's TT record, recording an impressive 58:21. We had a lot of riders in the various Masters 5-year age groups, including three in the 70+ age group, so we had an age range from 9 to over 70.

Frank Colangelo was the referee for the NOBC's first event in 1969. He's been racing since at least 1964,
so over 50 years, so far. 

I guess we got back home around 1 or 1:30, which was pretty nice since LaPlace is only about half an hour away.  I spent another hour putting the results on the website, then did the post-event report, paid for the insurance surcharges out of the online registration revenue, updated my race budget, re-organized and put away all of our race equipment, and finally called it a wrap. I even had time to get in a bike ride for myself, which I didn't do because I was pretty exhausted. By Monday morning I was already working on the Tour de Louisiane preparations, scheduling a meeting with the Covington officials. Thanks largely to Steve Johnson and Mignon Guerin we should have some significant sponsorship this year, which means we might not lose too much money. If the weather turns out to be good that weekend, we could potentially come out ahead, but you can never really tell with bike races.

Race of Truth

This coming Sunday we'll be hosting the LAMBRA Individual Time Trial Championship, otherwise known as The Race of Truth.  Truth be told, I won't be riding it. Now, one shouldn't take that to mean that I lack respect for the Time Trial discipline.  On the contrary, I am continually flabbergasted, amazed and humiliated by those who not only actually race in them, but excel in them. Aside from a few years around the mid-late 80s when dedicated time trial bikes were still experimental and I was motivated by a burning need to win back enough of my entry fees to pay for the next race's entry fee and/or the daughter's new shoes, I have struggled with time trials for the better part of forty-five years. Early on, I figured out that the best way to minimize the inevitable self-deprecating excuse-making manifested after most of my attempts to go fast without wheel-sucking was to be the Time Trial promoter or official. This allowed, and still allows, me to save face by having a valid, even noble, excuse not involving lack of training, general suckiness, advancing age, and/or lack of exquisite aero-ness. It also allows me to offer lots of advice to new time trial riders that may or may not have been entirely made up on the spot. Regardless of my lackluster time trialing history, there is no denying that I do have a fair amount of experience with them, even if it tends to be more from the perspective of a survivor as opposed to a victor.

First and foremost, as far as I can tell from observations of the past decade, if you expect to be on the podium you are going to need a Time Trial bike, otherwise known as a Tri bike, that will set you back five to ten grand in order to make your private parts go numb. I don't have one of those. I don't even have the now ubiquitous carbon fiber aero wheels because every time I save up enough to get some, I get a bill from the city assessor's office for property taxes or trees need to be trimmed or the air conditioner blows up. But I digress. If you can't spring for an actual TT bike, you can come reasonable close with a combination of aero wheels, clip-on TT bars, and a TT helmet.  I have the latter two and have borrowed the former one, largely without making a significant difference in my time trialing competitiveness.  That's probably because I lack the necessary motivation.  You see, in order to do a good time trial you absolutely have to make a solid, unwavering, irreversible decision, well ahead of time, to suffer ... greatly. One thing I know from my own experience is that there are no shortcuts in time trials.  There are no wheels to suck, no strategy to play out, no waiting for the sprint or attacking the big climb to get in a breakaway. There is only the truth, and the truth may be that you suck, or, for some apparently, that you don't. Either way, by the end of a TT, you will know the truth.

So, knowing that you aren't a time trialist, how do you put down a credible time trial that won't require the fabrication of multiple rationalizations ranging from that cold you had two weeks ago to your forgetting to de-ionize your disc wheel before the start? Well, I guess there are a few things I would offer as advice in addition to the obvious, which is to train your ass off:

1. Get a good warm-up and don't miss your freaking start. This has been the downfall of many a good rider. You need a good, serious warm-up, and I don't mean riding up and down the road at 15 mph commiserating with your friends about how much you suck at time trials. I'm talking about a good half hour that includes short but intense efforts that get you to the start line loose, warm and with an elevated heart rate. Hopefully a start list was posted. Know your start time and check your watch or computer so you arrive at the start three or four minutes before your start time.
2. Don't start too fast. In order for this rule to work, you have to understand up front that you are probably going to start too fast anyway. Those first 500 meters are going to feel great. You'll shift into a huge gear and the fist time you look down at the computer it'll be showing something like 33 mph. So unless you are running a power meter and know what those numbers mean for you, you're going to need to start out slower than your brain has fooled you in to thinking you can go. Give it a couple of minutes. By then your breathing will  have caught up with reality and you might possibly be able to get a handle on what you can actually sustain. 
3. Stay aero.  I can't emphasize this enough. Assuming you can still breathe, you need to stay in the most aero position possible. It will not be comfortable, but it will work. I remember the difference the first time I did a time trial in a skinsuit as opposed to a floppy jersey.  I also remember the difference the first time I did a time trial with aero bars. There was no comparison. Glenn Gulotta, who was the first local rider to go under an hour back when what is now the 40k time trial was the 25 mile time trial, back before aero bars or aero wheels or aero bikes or computers or power meters, used to ride time trials with his head down looking just at the white line on the edge of the road.  Of course there was that time he hit a dead armadillo he never saw and crashed, but that's a whole other story. 
4. Don't screw up the turnaround. Coming into the turnaround is your only chance to sit up a little and coast a bit. Rather than hammering all the way up to the traffic cone in the middle of the road and then slamming on the brakes, skidding the rear wheel, over-shooting the turn, riding over the rumble strip, and having to stand up in your highest gear and accelerate from practically a dead stop, ease up gradually, shift, focus on the apex, and make the turn smooth, fast, and in control like you would in a criterium. 
5. Keep the pressure on all the way. Your head is going to tell you to ease up. It'll try to convince you that if you ease up a little and recover you'll be able to ramp it up later and go faster.  Your head will lie to you.  Guaranteed.

If none of the above work, then maybe you should consider getting an Official's license or becoming a time trial promoter. Worked for me. 

Up in the Attic

Old Medals

The other day I found myself up in the attic looking for any old New Orleans Bicycle Club newsletters that might still be up there (and not all eaten up by roaches). Responding to a Facebook thread that involved an old race photo and lots of old washed-up bike racers, I'd decided to make a listing of all of the old race results I could find. I got a good start on it, but obviously was missing a whole lot. What I found, unsurprisingly, was that my record-keeping habits deteriorated dramatically around 1984 when my daughter was born, and didn't really ever recover until the mid-90s when I started stashing things on the NOBC website. Somewhere I know I have a bunch of floppy discs containing club newsletters written in WordStar for CP/M, and probably some written with Word for the early PCs. I haven't even started that search, and even if I find the discs, the problem of actually being able to read what's on them might be essentially impossible to solve. When we moved into our house back around 1989 Danielle was still very young and we were pretty pre-occupied with that and work and everything, so a lot of stuff just got stashed in the attic and basement.  Most of the basement stuff got thrown out after it was flooded during Katrina. Anyway, the "old race results" document will be a long-term project, I think, but I'll probably put what I have up on the NOBC website soon anyway.

Anyway, while I was up in the attic I found a bunch of old swimming medals inside a 1970 pewter mug inscribed with "Junior-Senior Prom, 1970." I was amazed by the condition of those 47 year old medals. Although the ribbons were in bad shape, the medals themselves were still shiny. It's practically impossible to find medals of that quality any more, but at the time these were just run of the mill medals handed out to hundreds of age-group swimmers at AAU and local country club swim meets. Interestingly, a few of them had been inscribed on the back by my father with dates and times.

I also came across an old leader's jersey from the Chimneyville Classic race that was held in Jackson MS some time around 1985 or so. I remember it because Candy was still racing and I recall having to leave the time trial to rush out and pick up diapers for Danielle. I think that was the race where the time trial was along the I-55 service road south of town and where Mike Lew overcooked the turn onto the service road, went through the ditch, came up onto the shoulder of the Interstate, crossed back over to the service road and turned in one of the fastest times anyway. Candy bought one of the extra leader's jerseys after the race.

All this officiating stuff for me really started as a way to avoid
having to actually race time trials.

Next weekend is the LAMBRA championship individual time trial over on the LaPlace course. Although I still don't know who we will have for turnaround marshals for the three turnarounds (there are 10k, 20k and 40k races, depending on age and category), most everything else seems to be in place except that I need to get the LAMBRA generator and maybe stopwatches that are currently in Baton Rouge. The weather forecast, for once, is looking pretty decent for Sunday with moderate temperatures, no chance of rain, and very light winds. There's a criterium over in Mobile AL on Saturday but I have a feeling I'll be uncomfortable about making the trip over there the day before I have to officiate and "race direct" the time trial. Turnout for the TT is probably going to be pretty good. There are about 60 pre-registered so far and it's only Tuesday, so I'm figuring on 100-120 riders.

So I mentioned the other day that I'd installed a new chain at about 3,200 miles or so. I think it was probably the third chain for that cassette and not surprisingly the new chain skipped pretty badly on the 12 and 13 or maybe 13 and 14 tooth cogs that I use a lot. I hate it when that happens. I put the cassette from my race wheel on for now but of course I'll have to start looking around for a new cassette. A good price for a Campi cassette is in the $100-120 range lately, which is a lot, especially considering the surprise "additional millage" bill that showed up from the assessor's office the other day.  Apparently we voted to increase our property taxes to throw more money at our completely incompetent Sewerage and Water Board. Between that and the prior week's hit for income taxes, I'm pretty broke once again. Anyway, I'm considering getting a Miche cassette for the training wheel rather than an official Campi one. They're about half the price and twice the weight, but I've used them before for Six Gap when I needed the lower gears and didn't want to pay for a Campi cassette that I'd probably use for 104 miles each year. They seem to work pretty well if you don't mind the extra weight, plus it's possible (but not easy) to buy just the worn-out cogs when needed.

Flexibility

You know the Giro was fast and windy when everybody is off the saddle just to go over the levee on Lakeshore Drive.

The weekend isn't working out at all the way I thought it would a week ago. I had been hoping to make the trip up to Shreveport for the annual Rocky Mount Stage Race. It's a long drive, but they have some nice courses and the race often attracts a few riders from Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Sometimes more than from New Orleans, which is actually farther away. As the week started, though, things were looking bad. The forecast for the weekend was pretty awful, and no doubt as a result, pre-registrations were really low. Being able to see who is pre-registered is a two-sided sword.  On the one hand, when you see that a race has a lot of people registered, maybe including some big teams or people you haven't raced with in a while, it definitely encourages you to register yourself. On the other hand, when riders check and see that hardly anyone is registered they start wondering if it's going to be a small race with small fields, so then hold off registering, which of course creates a Catch-22 or self-fulfilling prophecy or something like that. Bottom line is that nobody registers because nobody else registered. Well, the weekend forecast for Shreveport was consistently calling for rain all weekend, like 100% chance of rain, plus winds in the 20 mph neighborhood, plus chilly temperatures in the 50s and low 60s.  I have to admit, the prospect of driving five hours each way to do three races in the rain, and in which I might easily get dropped, was not terribly appealing. I did want to bring the radios up there for the race, though, and then I needed to bring the generator and maybe race clock back with me for the TT championship we're putting on next week. Well, on Thursday morning they pulled the ripcord and cancelled, hoping to re-schedule in the fall.  Naturally, that pretty much guaranteed that the weather forecast would immediately improve, which it did. This whole change of plans gave me a little flexibility for the weekend but presented a couple of new problems. I guess I'll have to drive to Baton Rouge some time this week to pick up some of the LAMBRA equipment I need for the Time Trial. On the plus side, it's looking like we won't get any rain around here until tomorrow afternoon, if ever, so I'll get in two Giro rides I guess.

Time for a new chain

Having some unplanned free time due to the cancellation of the Shreveport trip, I decided to drive over to LaPlace after the Giro Ride this morning to re-paint the course markings for the 5k, 10k, and 20k turnarounds. Meanwhile, up in Grand Junction, Ben Spain and Ben Bradley are in the middle of the collegiate nationals road race right now. Ben Bradley got 6th yesterday in the time trial, which is impressive considering that he lives below sea level and the race is at 7,000 feet. Naturally some guy from Colorado won the thing.

This afternoon I took advantage of my unexpected free time to change my chain. I got an alert from Garmin Connect, which I use to keep track of mileage on some components like chain, headset, etc. I have it set for 3,000 miles for the chain. I had already picked up a replacement, since I like to have one on hand so I don't wait too long and end up ruining the cassette too. I usually look around until I find a Campi chain on sale, which is another reason to get it ahead of time. I've used mostly Campi chains on my last three bikes, mostly just because they seem to work well and last pretty long. I'm sure I could save a bit of money with SRAM or KMC or something, but really it's not such a huge difference and not really worth experimenting.

Been through a lot of chains.....

So tomorrow will be another Giro for me. I had been thinking that it would be raining tomorrow morning but now the forecast is looking pretty good for the morning and I guess we'll probably be fine. Here in New Orleans you have to be flexible because the weather is about as unpredictable as the politics.

Sort of Racing

Took a few pics of one race

When Yoda told Luke "Do, or do not. There is no try," he might have been talking about bike racing. I have always known, and often actually demonstrated, that starting a criterium at the back and staying there for any length of time is the equivalent of not trying. It is also the equivalent of getting dropped. And so it was last Sunday at the Harbor Master Criterium over at Esplanade Mall. I had decided earlier in the week that it was time to get back to racing, even though I was clearly still a little bit uncommitted. I knew I wasn't in particularly great shape for racing. While the collarbone is essentially all better now, I've spent the better part of the past two months lollygagging around the back of the group on the training rides and generally using any available excuse to keep my nose out of the wind. By last week, though, I was starting to feel like I was at least capable of hanging onto the back of the race for a while.

Of course I had also offered to help with officiating, and had brought Danielle along with me to help out while I was riding the Masters race, which I didn't figure would be very long. We got there early and helped set things up at the finish line and started putting the riders into the race database as they signed in. I did maybe three laps of the course and rolled up to the back of the medium-sized masters field with all the confidence of a Chihuahua at a Pit Bull fight. Fortunately, the first few laps weren't too crazy, so thing were going OK and I was feeling fine. Right about the time I started thinking that I'd better get my ass closer to the front before things got out of hand, they rang the bell for a prime. Halfway through the lap the field was strung out single-file, and I was probably somewhere around the five riders at the tail end. Not good. Coming around the last couple of turns someone a couple of riders ahead let a big gap open. By the time I got past we were already around the last turn and I knew I wouldn't be able to close it by myself. I took a dig anyway, mumbling "never let a gap open on a prime lap" as I went by, but blew up pretty quickly. After a little bit I was with a nice 4-rider group that was going OK but of course losing a little time on the field with each passing lap. Eventually we were pulled, but I didn't feel too bad about it. I thought that if it hadn't been for that unexpected gap I probably could have hung in with the main group, so in a way it was a good test and a decent result for me at this point.

I helped out with the finishes for most of the other races, but since there were two officials and two cameras I didn't feel like I needed to actually score every lap. Turns out I should have anyway. One of the cameras seemed to be pretty out of focus and badly aimed, and things got really complicated with the large fields on a short course that made it necessary to pull a lot of riders. Adding to the complication, they wanted to place the pulled riders. Results were generally OK but there were still some errors even today, on Wednesday, that I'm still trying to correct.

Yesterday I went  up to Baton Rouge for our annual Tulane Day at the Legislature where we have tables set up in the Rotunda, which is actual rectangular. I got to go up in a big van with some of the engineering physics students who had just won the NASA Big Idea Challenge.  The ride there and back was definitely the best part of the whole day for me. In the afternoon when the legislature was in session they got recognized in both chambers, which was nice. Otherwise it was kind of boring for me, but then again it always is. We have a stage race in Shreveport this weekend but the weather forecast is looking particularly awful. I feel like I need to race, but while a 5-hour drive to get dropped in a masters race is bad enough, doing it to get dropped in the pouring rain with 20 mph winds makes it particularly unappealing. I guess I have one more day to make the final call, so we'll see if the forecast improves by then.

No Timz

Post-event photo while tearing down the criterium course

For once it was looking like we would have a rain-free race weekend for the Tulane Green Wave Classic. The course was marked, the police arrangements were in place, everything was looking good except for the not so minor fact that there were about half as many registration as normal. Of course, since they, and by that I mean the SCCCC, had decided to put the conference championships on Easter weekend I was only slightly surprised. I'd expected fewer riders than normal, but by the time we closed registration Saturday morning there were only forty-odd riders spread over six categories, which would have been seven but nobody registered for that one. For a conference championship, even in the SCCCC, there really should have been more like 100. I'd driven up to Covington Friday evening and checked into the Holiday Inn with Danielle and the other official, Mike.

Saturday's road races themselves went pretty well, although there were a few snags. For one, the address that was in the flyer for the start location must have been wrong because Google maps was taking people to the middle of a field a couple of miles away.  For another, the police wanted cash despite the fact that we'd been told that the sheriff's office would send an invoice and we could pay afterward.  That sent Quentin all the way back to Covington to get about $800+ in cash out of his personal bank account. We combined one of the women's fields with a men's field, so at least the follow car he was supposed to drive wasn't needed. An hour or so before the start I fired up the laptop only to have it go into "update" mode.  That tied it up for a good half hour, but since there were only 40+ people to plug into the results, we were able to get that done and print out start lists in plenty of time.  The races themselves were fairly uneventful. The radios and Zello worked fine, so there weren't any surprises. All in all, the road race went off great.

Great watches -
as long as they're set to the right mode!

I can't say the same about the afternoon Time Trial.  Time Trials are usually the easiest things in the world to run and score. We always have a starter who writes down every number and start time, and two judges at the finish making independent lists of bib numbers and times. Easy peasy, right?  What could possibly go wrong. Well, after the Road Race, I noticed that a couple of the new stopwatches (we have a nice set of six) had been accidentally set to "lap mode" instead of "split mode." There's a button on the face of the watches that toggles from one to the other, but once you start the stopwatch you're locked into whichever mode is set. I mentioned it to Mike and reset them to split mode and put them back into the case. Fifteen minutes before the start of the TT we gathered the officials and started five stopwatches - two for the start line and three for the finish line. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, Mike had gotten the modes mixed up and had changed all three of the finish line watches to Lap Mode. This started a cascade failure that would play out three miles down the road when both judges hit the split button for the second time and saw the lap time rather than the cumulative split time. Both were confused. Unfortunately, Mike tried it again with the backup stopwatch, so now they had no cumulative times at all.  They went ahead and recorded the lap times hoping we could reconstruct the cumulative times.  Well, that didn't work out.  I guess that with the one remaining watch they didn't hit the button once or twice, or maybe hit it an extra time or something, but anyway once we got past the first few riders the times were clearly wrong. After spending hours trying to figure out a way to calculate reasonably valid times using a combination of math, lap times, finish order, and Strava segments, it because clear we were screwed. We ended up not counting the Time Trial at all, except for the Cat. A group which was the first and thus the least affected. It was pretty much the worst case scenario for a time trial and by far the worst I've seen at one of our races. So the moral of the story is to make sure the watches are set properly before starting them, always have one or two backup watches, and if you have to resort to the last backup watch, don't push any buttons!

No time to take photos, so here's one from one of the finish line cameras.

The Criterium went off very smoothly since by then there were only 27 riders spread over four races. Other than the winning MSU Cat. A rider who got relegated for coming over on the rider next to him in the last 100 meters, the races were fine and of course results were pretty simple to finalize. I'm sure the MSU guys think that I was playing favorites there since the rider who got moved up into first was a Tulane riders, but the fact is that I intentionally consulted with Ben Davis, the conference co-director, to make sure he thought the same thing since there was a perceived conflict of interest there. Anyway, the bottom line is that the race was well organized, the weather was great, the courses were great, and everything ran on time. The time trial disaster and the low turnout, however, really sucked.

It was disappointing to see Tulane miss out on winning the Club conference championship by only 81 points. Since the championship was worth double points, that was basically the difference of one more Tulane rider placing in the top five in a couple of Category B races, which would have been easy since four of the races had fewer than five riders in them.

So this morning, after riding through the wet and mud and grass to get over the lakefront levee at Causeway where they're doing levee-raising, we are thinking that some of us will instead do our Thursday training ride back on the river levee starting at 6 am from the pipes at Dakin Street. We'll see how that goes. I can't say I'll miss the commute to and from the lakefront.

No Rest

Painting the Road Race Course took forever

With the Green Wave Classic collegiate race fast approaching, I figured I'd better go paint arrows on the road and time trial courses or it probably wouldn't happen. So last Saturday after doing the Giro Ride I threw the bike into the car and made the long drive "up north."  The road course is almost 80 miles from home, and I was already pretty tired from the morning ride, but it had to be done. By the time I got there it was already after 1:00 and the temperature was well into the 80s.  That's when I discovered I'd left my jersey at home. I was wearing the wind-resistant base layer I'd worn for the morning ride, so while not ideal, it would have to suffice. Fortunately I'd brought one of those little string backpacks along, so all the stuff that would normally go into my pockets went into that, along with two cans of road-marking paint. Riding by myself way out in the country was nice, and I was happy to be on some very low-traffic roads, which is pretty much why we use them for this race. I rode around the 17 mile loop, stopping seemingly every few miles to paint arrows ahead of the turns and in the turns and after the turns. When I got back, I also marked the 200 meter and 1 km locations. Next, I headed back to the Time Trial course, and did the same for that 3-mile course from Lakeside High School. By then it was already after 4:00 and I was hot and sticky and hungry and tired. I stopped at Starbucks before hitting the Causeway back across the lake. Sunday, of course, was another Giro Ride. Meanwhile, a bunch of the local guys were up in Anniston racing Sunny King and the accompanying road race on Sunday. Some got their asses kicked pretty badly, but a few snagged good results. I was glad to be able to catch the live webcast of the main women's and men's criteriums Saturday evening. I guess those who can, do; those who can't watch it on the internet.

Heading back from Kenner on the morning ride after a fast outbound leg.

So this week's training was pretty routine with just a couple of quirks. The levee-raising work on the lakefront has now closed the bike path on the east side of the Causeway, so we are riding in the grass then up over the concrete apron, underneath the overpass where it's about five feet high, down the levee on the other side, and finally back onto the bike path. I guess it will stay like that for at least a month. These projects always seem to lack any sense of urgency.

Not an easy detour for the morning ride

I was trying to ride pretty hard on Tuesday and probably hadn't recovered from the weekend, so by the time I went out to meet the WeMoRi I was already feeling pretty tired. I had seen the group coming on Lakeshore Drive, so I'd turned around and made it onto Marconi before being caught by Eddie and Woody who were off the front. I made a huge effort there to get on, which was fine, but halfway down Robt. E. Lee the effort started catching up to me. I probably could have hung on, but I knew, or at least thought I knew, that the group was right behind us. I glanced back and saw lights and eased up with the idea of going back to the relative safety of the group. Unfortunately, the lights I'd seen were from cars, not the group. Turned out the group had been held up at the traffic signal and was now way, way behind, so I was stuck in no-man's land for a little while. Anyway, I rode the rest with the group once they caught me, slamming into a rock somewhere on Lakeshore Drive but luckily not pinch-flatting. That evening, although I was feeling dead tired and was starting to get some sort of sinus infection I rushed home and rode out to the WNW training race. I got there a bit late but got in with the group right at Elysian Fields where the neutral warmup ends. There was a nice big group and little wind, so it wasn't very hard sitting in near the back. My plan was to do two of the three laps and then wait at the finish. Well, partway through the second lap, as we were going up the levee before the Seabrook loop, I saw Matt accelerating down the right side as the rest of the group bunched  up on the left, so I latched onto Matt's wheel. A moment later I heard a crash behind and to the left. Michael B had gone down when I guess he ran up onto someone's wheel as the group bunched up while he was drinking out of  his water bottle and unable to hit the brakes until it was too late. I turned around along with a few others to make sure he was OK, which he was.

This weekend I'll be officiating the collegiate race along with Mike Abshire. Danielle will be helping, so that's good. I went ahead and sprang for two nights at the Holiday Inn to cut down on the Saturday morning drive time a little bit. We're not doing the Friday night registration like we have in the past because so few of the collegiate riders seem to show up for it. It's possible that Saturday morning will be some form of chaos if a lot of people show up who haven't pre-registered. Anyway, I'm just hoping they will have enough follow cars and lead cars and all for the road race. Once that's out of the way, the rest is a lot less stressful. The weather is looking to be pretty good, so that's good. Turnout, however, is not looking so good. Online registration ends tonight and I'm seeing only about 30 registered even though this will be the conference road championship. I shouldn't be too surprised since it's Easter weekend and, for some, also Spring Break. Hopefully all of the cameras will be working and judging will be relatively easy. The biggest downside for me is missing another weekend of riding. I've been putting in decent mileage lately, and mixing in a little bit of intensity here and there, but I can't say I am feeling very confident about my race fitness.

Steve Tilford

Steve Tilford

The streets were wet this morning, and for a minute I debated whether I should to out in the dark to meet up with the WeMoRi. I took the old Orbea, thinking I'd probably get wet and dirty and maybe puncture a tire. Halfway to the lakefront the streets were dry and I merged into the group as it came flying down Marconi, turning onto Robert E. Lee maybe third or fourth wheel. The pace picked up, I accelerated, hanging on to the wheel in front, then, Wham, I slammed the front wheel in to that damned little pothole that I never see till the last second and blew the front tire. I coasted to a stop hoping it wouldn't snag or come off the rim before I could get my feet down. The first spare tube blew out. It was still dark and hard to tell if there was a cut in the casing somewhere, so I put about 40 psi into the second spare and headed home.

I thought it was a bad morning - until it got worse.

First thing I saw when I fired up the computer to upload Strava data was that Steve Tilford had died in a car accident. The details are on his blog, posted by his friend Vincent Davis who was with him.

I didn't know Steve personally - never met him, probably never raced with him - but on the other hand I felt like I knew him very well. He started racing just a few years after I did, but while I was always down here in the small local races, he was way up there in the big international races. He was one of the real pioneers of U.S. cycling, moving seamlessly from road to mountain bike to cyclocross and winning championships in all of them. He never really capitalized on any of it. If he had enough to get to the next race, he was happy. In a lot of ways, I identified with him. I added a link from my blog to his a few years ago. He was one of the few who consistently updated his blog, and was never shy about calling out the dopers or the cheaters or any of the other things that threatened to drag bike racing down. If you don't know who he was, well, you're probably relatively young. Steve made 57 earlier this year and was just about ready to resume racing following the skull fracture and TBI he suffered, and documented on his blog, last fall, a few months after being inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.  I will really miss his blog posts and I will especially miss reading about his come-back from his skull fracture. I have no doubt he would have been dropping guys half his age by June. So his unexpected death feels like a real personal loss to me and a huge loss to the U.S. cycling community. It kind of sucks being at this age where life stops giving you things and starts taking them away instead.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/5141593-155/two-dead-in-crash-of-semis

 "A chain reaction accident involving two semi-trailer rigs and a van killed two men — including internationally known cyclist Stephen Tilford — early Wednesday morning on Interstate 70 near the Utah-Colorado border. Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Todd Royce said the tragic events began with the first semi drifting off the road and then overcorrecting. It overturned, coming to rest on its side and blocking all eastbound lanes of the highway at mile marker 214. Moments later, a Mercedes-Benz van plowed into and through the big rig's trailer. Tilford, 57, of Topeka, Kansas, got out and was standing next his vehicle when a second semi crashed into the wreckage, striking and killing him. 
The driver of the second semi, 70-year-old Stanley Williams of Grand Junction, Colo., also died of his injuries at the scene. A passenger in the van was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries; the driver of the first semi was not reported hurt. The highway was closed down for nearly four hours as wreckage was cleared and the scene investigated by troopers. Tilford, inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 2000, had five Union Cycliste Internationale masters' class championships, four U.S. National Cyclo-Cross titles and two world championships in Masters Cyclocross competitions, in addition to a U.S. National Mountain Bike championship."

Back in the Pack

Riding weather doesn't get much better than what we had on Saturday.     

After nearly three weeks of gradually increasing (some might use the term "sputtering") intensity, interspersed with long periods of overly cautious wheel-sucking, I finally started to feel like I was more or less back to normal last weekend. Although it was painfully obvious that the fitness is still lagging pretty far behind, and there's still some dull pain around the collarbone, Saturday's Giro was the first time I've gotten my heart rate above 90% in a couple of months. For the record, that was 52 days post-injury, so roughly 7 weeks. I guess that's about normal.

On Saturday the weather was perfect for riding. Blue sky, light wind, temperature in the low 70s. It wasn't surprising, therefore, that there was a big turnout for the Giro Ride, despite the fact that a few of the local guys were up in Fayetteville at the Joe Martin Stage Race, which I still think of as the Fayetteville Classic. It's one of the oldest stage races in the country and has evolved into a pretty big regional event with a professional event management company running things and lots of overlapping classes and categories that I find a little confusing. As expected, some of the local guys were in a bit over their heads, but that's exactly what makes going to races like that so important. A couple of the Tulane guys went with the 4D Racing team to ride the 2-day Cat.  1/2 race, which had a surprisingly small field of only 25. A few of them did pretty well there, although I was a little surprised to see that a couple of them got dropped pretty badly in the RR and Crit. I suppose there's a story there.

Anyway, I pretty much pulled out the stops last weekend, which is to say I sucked wheels a bit less than usual and didn't sit up too early for the Giro Ride sprints. I felt pretty good, considering, so I guess all of those easy rides I did early on helped me maintain a little bit of fitness. The weather was so nice on Saturday that after the Giro I continued out onto the lakefront bike path with Jaden and Stephanie to log a few more easy miles. By then the wind was picking up, so we had a pretty noticeable headwind on the way back, but we weren't going very fast so it didn't really matter.  I woke up Sunday morning with some soreness in my legs, which I totally expected, and headed out to do the Sunday Giro. Turnout there was a little lighter than Saturday, which is normal. The weather was changing and although it was warm, the sky was overcast and there was rain in the forecast. We got in a good ride, though. By the end I was happy to ride straight back home, having logged almost 310 miles for the week, which was about where I had been back in the first week of January.

Last night a big line of thunderstorms came through, along with tornado and flood watches, so I guess I won't be riding today unless I sneak out this evening. No matter, I probably should take a good recovery day anyway and get to work on the Tour de Louisiane.