Katrina Anniversary

City Park lagoon on the way home with a little rainbow and a blurry, aka impressionist, photo

Today is the 13th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans. If you look back in this blog you won't find an entry for August 29, 2005. The last sentence of the last post I made before the hurricane read, "I think this is going to be bad," and the title of the post was "Looks like the Big One."  It was. The following morning we evacuated, spending the entire day en route to Dallas, and it was another day before I had an opportunity to post again. I was using dial-up internet at the time. Over the course of the next week or two this blog and the NOBC Yahoo Group email list because invaluable tools for tracking down members of the cycling community that had been scattered all across the country. Many lost everything, some never returned, some moved away. Yet somehow, within a couple of months, the Giro Ride and the morning levee ride were going again. In a way, they kept us sane.

Since the last road races of the 2018 LAMBRA season a couple of weeks ago I've been on a kind of auto-pilot, just keeping up my regular riding routine but without any near-term goals in mind. There are some track races coming up in Baton Rouge, and then a bunch of official, and not-so-official, gravel and cyclocross races or events or whatever you want to call them. I'm feeling like I'd like to find a cheap cyclocross bike at some point, but as usual such things are hard to find in the 49-50 cm range within my financial comfort zone. The old Pennine can always be pressed into service, of course, but by modern standards it is too big for me and rather heavy, and currently lacking a 700C rear wheel. The frame is designed for 5-speed and although a 6-speed wheel can easily work, I don't seem to have anything handy like that except for some old racing tubulars hanging in the basement. Perhaps I'll get around to building an appropriate wheel eventually.

With the university academic year having started at the beginning of the week, I'm looking forward to helping out with the Tulane team and have somehow volunteered myself for leading some indoor training sessions once a week once it starts getting too dark and/or cold for people to get out on the road consistently. We'll see how that goes. There's actually been a fair amount of activity already and there are a few new members even though the annual Organizations Expo isn't until this Friday.

Down the road, I'm scheduled to head up to Colorado Springs for a couple of days for the USA Cycling Local Associations symposium, which happened to fall on the same weekend as the Pensacola stage race that I had been kind of thinking about sort of maybe riding. Beyond that, I'm assuming I'll be making another trip up to north Georgia for the 6-Gap Century sufferfest. In a moment of weakness, I recently ordered up an 11-29 cassette for the occasion. It will be interesting to see if I can make it work with the existing derailleur and chain, but anyway I'd been thinking about it ever since I was passed halfway up Hogpen Gap by some guy casually spinning along while I was standing up in my 39x27 on an extended section of 10% grade. I seriously doubt having the lower gear will actually allow me to go any faster, but perhaps it will lessen the suffering just a tad.

This morning I headed out in the dark for the usual WeMoRi. The sky, as best I could tell at 5:30 am, looked cloudy. A couple of minutes later a light rain started to fall. I had no idea if it was just a prelude to a downpour or just a passing shower, so I continued on. Halfway to the lakefront it stopped and the roads were dry. I latched onto the group at 28 mph on Lakeshore Drive and made a couple of efforts when the opportunities presented themselves. On the final stretch along the lake to the finish at Shelter #1 the whole group came together. I was somewhere in the middle of it all as the speed started to increase a couple of miles before the finish. Gaps started to open here and there, and I was just surfing along with whatever wheels were still moving forward. We were probably inside of the last kilo and there was a small cluster of riders with a little gap off the front. Then I heard Eddie Corcoran coming up on the outside, and when he passed me I thought, "He's going to blow past those guys before the finish." He did. As I crossed the "line," aka the crosswalk, I looked up at the sky to the southwest. It was dark and ominous, but it looked like it was going to skirt us to the west so I rode the usual cool-down along the lake before heading back for coffee at Starbucks. Before I got there it started raining, and then stopped raining. I went ahead and got a cup of hot coffee, checked email, and headed back home on wet streets. 

Opportunities - LAMBRA Crit and Road Champs

Road Race finish area in Clinton MS (not mine)

There was a time that seems not so long ago, but actually is, when I would have seen the announcement of a first-lap criterium Prime as an opportunity to launch a breakaway. When it was announced on the starting line of Saturday's LAMBRA 40+ Criterium Championship, all it represented to me was an opportunity to get dropped on the first lap. I started fairly cleanly, around mid-pack, on the very bumpy course in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.

The masters field wasn't too big, but there was quite a bit of horsepower in attendance, so I was already expecting an early break. You'd think that by now I'd know enough under such circumstances to stay near the front, and perhaps I actually do, but apparently my physiology has different ideas about sprinting around the entire first lap of a criterium course. So by the time we came to the last corner, which featured a big hole right across where the best line would be, I was near the back. We came flying around the turn with riders taking all kinds of different lines trying to avoid the bumps when Peter, who I think was just ahead of me, almost lost it on the outside. Of course that was like 200 meters before that first-lap prime, so a gap opened up right away that we were never really able to close. So basically we were off the back by the time we finished lap 2. Well, with the front of the race pushing the pace and attacking each other, we eventually accumulated a nice little group anyway as other riders were shelled from the front group. By the time we were half-way through the 40-minute race the front group was starting to break up.  Eventually we were lapped by the lead group, and then by Frank and Kevin who I stayed with until a couple of laps prior to the finish when my front tire exploded like a gunshot on the bumpy downhill. I'd pinched it on one of the many sharp edges and cracks and was immediately riding on the rim heading for a turn I couldn't possibly make and a rapidly approaching barricade. Somehow I got it stopped before running into the barricade, and luckily someone standing there offered me his front wheel so I could finish out the race. Oh well. At least I finished before being lapped by them a second time. Elliott, with whom I'd driven up the evening before, got 3rd in the 35-rider Cat. 4 race, his first since upgrading, so there was that. After the last race of the day we packed up and headed over to Clinton where the NOBC had a couple of rooms for Saturday night, and then drove all the way back to north Jackson for dinner at Bravo, which has practically become a tradition when in Jackson.

So we were up early on Sunday to help set up for the road races, just a few miles from the hotel. I had not ridden, or even seen, the course, but knew there was supposed to be a significant hill at around the 10 mile mark on the 16 mile loop. The Masters race started out calmly enough, as in the phrase "calm before the storm." There was a half-hearted attack the first time up the hill that pretty much everyone survived, but I was fully expecting fireworks on the second of the three laps. We were about four miles from the second lap hill when a couple of the Velovit riders went to the front and started stringing the group out. I was about 4th wheel at the time and by then could clearly read the writing on the wall. Obviously a plan was afoot and a big attack was going to be launched on the hill. We rounded the right-hand corner about half a mile before the climb and Andrew Crater from South Carolina pushed himself in front of me. He could see what was about to happen too.

Getting dropped on the hill

The hill represented the best opportunity on the course to establish a break; also the best opportunity to get dropped. Leading up to the start of the climb the pace picked up even more and I was already in the red zone halfway up when things came apart. Frank and Woody had attacked hard and over the top Andrew and Frank already had a gap. That had not been the plan, though, and Frank wasn't going to help Andrew with the rest of his team, including designated sprinter Woody, still chasing. That was pretty much the last I saw of the front half of the race, but what happened was that the group came back together, and then there were more attacks on the last lap that gapped off Frank I think a couple others. Woody was totally gassed and starting to come off the back a couple of miles before the finish but for some reason the lead group started looking at each other and that lull allowed Woody to rejoin them with only a mile to go. So basically they had a chance to gap off the best sprinter and the blew it, with the predictable result that Woody won. Andrew was royally pissed off and apparently argued with the officials about a car or something that the other guys didn't think had anything to do with the finish. Guess there's more to that story. Meanwhile, back in the second group, we eventually accumulated a nice little paceline of six or so with everyone taking pulls. Naturally there was still a sprint for the finish anyway. I was on Troy's wheel when he basically led it out, and for a little while I thought he was going to take me all the way to the finish. I really should have stood up and sprinted sooner, though, because in the last 50 meters Mike Corcoran came around us, and then right on the line David Blumenthal slipped past me. So it was another bronze medal for being the first 55+ dropped rider.

The guys up in Jackson put on a great race weekend with significant prizes, so I think everyone had a great time. Andrew Do took 2nd in the Cat. 4 race with Elliott 8th, so that was nice. The only bad things about the venues were the road surface in the criterium and the traffic in the road race finish area. I don't know where all those cars were going or coming from, and at least none of them were going fast, but it really did cause some problems with a couple of the finishes. The other problem was the loud music across the street from the officials and finish line that made it almost impossible for the officials to hear the communications from the follow cars and race crew. It was loud enough that it was even hard for them to communicate between each other. Anyway, it was a fun weekend and other than a crash in the Cat. 4 finish that sent one rider to the hospital with a broken bone, everything went quite well. More photos at https://photos.app.goo.gl/prmZf98RLfHyzbLe9.

Team Time Trial and Tribulation

As usual, I didn't have a Team Time Trial team together until a couple of days before the race. We had one Cat. 4 team that was already put together, and then there were the rest of us - Cat. 4, Cat. 5, 40+, 55+. For a while I thought we might be able to cobble together both a 55+ and another Cat. 4 team, but as we got closer to race day it was not looking good. In the end, there were four of us, and we were going to have to race as a Cat. 1/2 team since two of us weren't old enough to race masters. In a way, that was good because the two masters teams ended up putting in the fastest times of the day - way, way faster than ours. So on Friday night I bolted on the old Aerobars, dug out the skinsuit and TT helmet, and assembled a bunch of LAMBRA and NOBC equipment that we'd likely need for the race - table, clock, tent, generator, computer, printer, etc. The bikes were going to have to ride on the roof.

I got up a bit after 5 am on Saturday, loaded up the car, drove over to Starbucks just after they opened at 5:30, and then headed over to mid-city to pick up Elliott. It's about an hour drive to Vacherie, where the TTT was being held, and looking at the big dark clouds I knew we were going to get wet. We arrived around 7 am as planned and I went about setting up the tent and everything in the rain. We put the tent in the corner of the Jubilee Truck Stop parking lot because there was something there to which we could secure the tent to keep it from blowing away if and when a bug thunderstorm came through. Unfortunately, but the time we got it up it was raining hard enough that we were standing in a couple of inches of water. I eventually fired up the generator, being careful to keep the cable more or less out of the standing water, and they started registering teams. Naturally the weather had scared away a few teams. We were the only Cat. 1/2 team, but there were three for the Cat. 4s and two for the Masters. On the down side, that meant we'd be the first team to start. I was fully expecting that we'd be passed by at least a couple of other teams.

Trying the Mio Link HRM

After a fifteen minute rain delay we started out in a light drizzle. Steve led us out, with me, Elliott and Phil following. Steve and I are reasonably close in size, but Elliott is much taller than I, and Phil is probably a bit taller still. Basically, Steve and I were going to be getting a nice draft, Elliott and Phil - not so much. Elliott had a TT bike, as did Steve, but Phil was on his regular road bike without even aerobars. I knew he was in for a hard ride.

Easy to see who was getting the better draft!

On the way out we had a bit of a tailwind. With the light rain and foggy face shield on my TT helmet it was very difficult to read my computer. Everyone else was having the same problem. I was using my new Mio Link optical heart rate monitor, which was working fine, apparently. I never looked at my heart rate during the ride. From the start, Phil was taking rather long pulls, and we were rolling along pretty smoothly. Given our lack of warmup and mix of abilities, I was happy with our 26.5 mph average speed for the outbound leg. We definitely could have gone a bit faster, but I'm pretty sure that would have resulted in at least one rider blowing up completely on the return trip.

Cat. 4 podium

At the turnaround we somehow got pretty badly separated and Steve and I had to wait up a bit for everybody to come back together. There was an increasing headwind all the way back, but at least the rain had pretty much stopped by then. By the time we were halfway back Phil was starting to show the strain of being the biggest guy in the paceline, and together with our accumulating fatigue and the headwind that kept our speed for the return trip down to around 24 mph, so by the finish I was showing a 25.0 mph average. I knew we'd be minutes slower than some of the other teams, but I hadn't been expecting we could do anything better than 26, so I wasn't too disappointed. Our Cat. 4 team did a really good ride and won the Cat. 4 category, posting the 3rd fastest time overall, so that was great.

I think everyone who raced had a good day. The rain wasn't really much of a problem and fortunately we didn't have any issues with lightning. By the time we did the awards the sun was out and the street was almost dry.

A Day Off??

Coming down the Casino overpass near the end of Sunday's Giro Ride. Three TT bikes in a row. 

Friday evening when I got home and turned the car off (Candy had taken it to work and so I got a ride home) the "Low Battery" warning came on. Hmmmm. Now, in the old days I would have immediately assumed that the alternator was bad and that it wasn't charging and that was why the battery had died. Also in the old days I would have checked the charging voltage before rushing out to buy a new battery, but these aren't the old days and time was tight etc., etc., so I had kind of rolled the dice on the battery issue. At any rate, now I wasn't sure what the problem might be. Battery terminals were pristine, no other warnings appeared, car started and ran normally. My experience told me that it could very well be some module somewhere that needed to be reset after the battery replacement - in other words, lousy software. In an abundance of caution, however, and since the "Service Overdue" message had been popping up for the past couple of weeks, I decided we wouldn't drive the car over the weekend and I'd take it in on Monday. I didn't need to be anywhere that required a car anyway.

The weekend was hot and pretty dry and for me the highlights were two Giro Rides and the last two stages of the Tour de France on NBC Gold. Both Giro Rides were fast last weekend. We have the Team Time Trial coming up and so there were a couple more TT bikes in the mix and they were all apparently trying to see how fast they could go. Fortunately, there was no crosswind. Unfortunately, the group split at least once each day. Regardless, I felt like I got in a couple of good workouts, although you couldn't tell from my heart rate monitor that has been gradually flaking out for the past couple of weeks. On Saturday I sprinted hard a couple of times. The last was an all-out effort up the Seabrook Overpass at the end of the ride. I blew up a bit short of the crest, gasping for air, legs on fire, and looked at the computer to see it showing a nice sedate heart rate of 54 bpm. It was obviously time for a new HRM, or a Cardiologist. That afternoon I decided to try a Mio Link arm-band HRM since I have always hated the chest strap and only use my heart rate data out of curiosity. I figured that the skin on my aging paper-thin lily-white forearm wouldn't pose much of a barrier to the optical sensor. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, it was actually a good weekend of riding with some solid intensity here and there with lots of recovery time in-between watching the Tour and some really old Buck Rogers era sci-fi on Comet TV, and a little while in the garage re-setting the garage door opener that had forgotten where to stop a few weeks ago and wondering what was holding up the front part of the garage since the termites seem to have eaten pretty much everything except the old barge-board.

So this morning I decided to take a day off from riding in order to take the car in to the dealer early. Looking back at my Strava data, I see that I haven't taken a day off from riding in three weeks, so I guess I'm due. Fair warning: If I voluntarily take a day off from riding, a rained-out day is virtually guaranteed within the week. I went out early and checked the running voltage on the car and it was up around 14, so I felt reasonably sure I'd make it to the dealership. They called a little while ago and as I'd suspected, the car needed a software update to clear the low-battery warning. Of course, it also needed the usual $250 oil change, a $150 front-end alignment, a $290 repair of a broken piece of plastic for one of the rear seat latches, etc., etc., and I won't be seeing it until tomorrow. Also, new tires appear to be in my immediate future.

Batteries

Front half of the Thursday group regrouping after the turnaround at Ormond

The note on the kitchen counter read, "The car wouldn't start this morning - "Low Battery."  Wonderful. I'd just gotten home from my morning ride. We were still under a "Heat Advisory" because of the combination of summer temperature and particularly high humidity. Not that I'd been planning on taking the car to work anyway, but I knew there would be some logistics involved in replacing the battery. Later, at work, where one of my co-workers had called in to say she would be late because her car battery was dead, I checked the inventory at the nearby O'Reilly Auto Parts store and saw that they did indeed have something that would work for the low, low price of $159, plus tax, plus core. There were some cheaper alternatives, of course, but this one was closer and my only readily available source of transportation that could carry a battery was Danielle's scooter that hadn't been on the road in a couple of months, at least. As soon as I got home went out with my 10mm socket and got to work pulling the battery, which is a simple task except that the moment I disconnected it the alarm, which apparently has its own power source, went off. With no power to the rest of the car, the remote had no effect. The only way to turn it off was to manually lock the door and close it. Naturally, that meant that opening it again was going to involve prying off a plastic cover on the driver's side door and using the metal emergency key that I was hoping was in The Wife's key fob because mine is a replacement that doesn't have that.

and the back half of the group

So then I'm ready to take the old battery to the store, only to discover that the scooter battery is too run down to start the engine and little bitty kick-start wouldn't do it either. So I put the charger on the scooter battery and had to wait an hour or so for it to charge before heading off to O'Reilly's. I put the new batter in, then had to reset a whole bunch of things so that the keyless entry would work and the clock knew what time it was, etc., etc. In the process, the car displayed a message that The Wife's key had a low battery.  So back to the internet to find someplace with the relatively uncommon battery, a trip to Walgreens where I paid approximately ten times the actual cost for two little batteries. That evening I burned the hell out of my arm on the barbeque grill when I reached down to adjust the air intake. Went to bed early.

Corsairs!

So Thursday's levee ride had, for some unknown reason, a pretty big turnout. I guess there were twenty or so at one time or another, so that kept the pace fairly brisk. Woody was on his TT bike, but he was just shadowing the back of the paceline trying to get comfortable on the bike. The LAMBRA Team Time Trial Championship is a week from Saturday and so there have been a few more TT bikes showing up than normal lately. I was feeling OK, but for some reason, possibly the prior day's WeMoRi, my legs were loading up really quickly every time I hit the front, so I was taking short pulls to try and limit the damage. This morning I took it nice and easy on the levee, stopping at Zotz on the way back for an iced coffee. This weekend may turn out to be another double Giro Ride weekend for me. After a couple of weeks with practically no rain, it looks like we'll be back to a more typical weather pattern by Sunday when the wind finally shifts back around to the south, more or less. Meanwhile, I've been enjoying Erin's photos from the Oshkosh fly-in.

Fast Summer Giro x 2

It was full gas the minute we hit Hayne Boulevard on Saturday. I knew it was going to be fast, but my legs were having a hard time believing it. Earlier, when we had turned onto Lakeshore Drive and I felt the 10 mph tailwind and looked around at the three or four riders on time trial bikes, I thought "this is going to be fast." It was.

The "warm-up" stretch along Lakeshore Drive that is usually completed a nice easy conversational pace was instead done at a speed that constituted a definite breach of protocol. That was the first clue. The second clue was was the kind of clue that is like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat. We hit Hayne at 30 mph and the speed just kept going up from there. I was sucking wheels like a pro, but within a couple of miles the long string of riders was already starting to fracture, and before we got to Bullard there was already a split. Naturally I was on the wrong side of it, but the riders behind it weren't giving up easily. When we hit Bullard Big Phil was on or near the front and there was a car somewhere in the intersection. We slowed down a bit and Phil somehow had to bail out to the right, going right into the corner gas station. I looked back and saw him coming back onto the road and thought he at least had a chance of catching, but a few seconds later the pace picked up again. The guys in front didn't know. I looked back again and knew he wasn't going to be able to catch. The front of the second group hand pretty much given up hope of catching the break, but we were still going 28 mph. After we made the right onto Paris Road, Pat rode up to the front and got them to ease up long enough for Phil to catch. The break was just a spec way off in the distance by then anyway.  Even so, there was still enough horsepower in our group to keep our average speed on Chef Highway at 27 mph. Despite the headwind on the way back, we did a lot of it at around 25 mph, at least until we got back to Hayne Blvd. where it finally eased up a bit.

Sunday morning at 6:10 am I headed out to Starbucks for another Giro beating. To blocks from home I passed a couple of girls passed out on the sidewalk in front of a house. It looked like they'd just bailed out of an Uber and didn't make it to the front door. One was basically naked. I just shook my head and continued on since there was a woman dog-walker heading their way and besides, I hadn't had my coffee yet. Priorities, you know. When I got to Starbucks I checked the weather and saw that the wind was already at 10 mph from the WNW, so it was basically going to be a repeat of Saturday. With the Team Time Trial coming up in a couple of weeks, there were a few strong riders on their TT bikes. I knew what that meant.

For some reason I was a little more motivated this morning, so I stayed closer to the front on Hayne Blvd. It was even faster than Saturday, with an average speed of 32 mph for the 5-mile stretch. The rest of the way out was not much different. The average speed all the way out to Venetian Isles was 28 mph which was almost the fastest we've had this year. Things were a little easier on the return trip. By then it was getting pretty hot, around 90F, so combined with the headwind, there was a lot keeping things from getting out of hand. I was still feeling OK and somewhat uncharacteristically got into the paceline at the front for a while. For the first time in a while I went through a full large water bottle and most of a small one. Must be summer now.

Lakefront Storming

Five to go - before the storm hit

The forecast didn't seem too much out of the ordinary for Wednesday. Then again, weather forecasts in July around here are not particularly reliable. It can be clear and sunny in one place, and five miles away some pop-up summer thunderstorm can be flooding the streets. Regardless, I was optimistic about the last race of the Wednesday evening series out on Lakeshore Drive as I loaded up the car before heading to work in the morning. I rushed out of the office at 4:30 that afternoon, headed for Lakeshore Drive. The sky was overcast, and radar was showing some storms scattered about, mostly north of the lake. Problem was, they were drifting in our direction. I arrived at the race site, got out of the car, and pondered the situation. The wind was already picking up, and the sky to the north was dark and grey. I backed the car up to the windward side of the finish line so we could tie off the tent to it like we'd done the week before. Then we got the camera and computer and clock and everything set up and were ready to go in time for the first race at 6:10, which we intentionally started a few minutes early with the idea of keeping on schedule by the end of the night so it wouldn't be too dark. I already had the linescan camera's fps setting dialed way down because the cloud cover was already blocking a lot of the sunlight.

One of the earlier races

The first race went off pretty nicely. For some reason there weren't too many riders who were lapped, so we got those results done quickly as riders lined up for the second race. I checked the radar.  Yikes! It was not looking good. The wind was already starting to increase as the weather closed in from the north. We calculated the number of laps very conservatively for that race, so that the winners finished a few minutes short of their scheduled 30 minutes. Fortunately, most of this race had stayed together, so results again were relatively uncomplicated. The finish line camera was still working fine, despite the darkening sky, but it wasn't really needed except to confirm a couple of bib numbers.

The third race, however, was going to be a different story. As we lined up the riders along the unprotected Lakeshore Drive, it was clear that we were going to get hit by a pretty good squall. The only questions were when and how badly. We told the riders that if the weather got bad we would be ringing the bell early. A lap or so later the weather got bad. A wind gust blew the new LAMBRA laptop off the table (miraculously, is survived) and spectators rushed over to hold down the tent as the rain started getting worse. The waves started crashing over the seawall. I gathered up the computer and put it, still connected to the camera and power supply, into the open back of the station wagon. It was not the first time I'd had to do that. Luckily, the camera itself was holding steady thanks to the big sandbag weight I had hanging from one if the tripod's legs. The rain got worse, the sky got darker, the wind got windier. A lap or two later I made the call. We'd be ringing the 1-to-go bell on the next lap. The 40-minute race was now more like a 25-minute race. Lance and Sam had been off the front almost from the start, but this time Sam came by alone. Lance must have gone down somewhere, but after a few more riders passed, he appeared in full chase mode. A few riders dropped out. Then the power quit - apparently the generator ran out of gas?  My antique tape recorder had already failed during the prior race so I grabbed the little Sony digital one that I always seem to screw up with. I hit the 'record' button and started calling out numbers as the riders finished. There was a big gap, so I hit the 'pause' button, or that's what I thought. Actually, I'd hit the 'play' button by mistake and missed the next few riders entirely. Fortunately, Michelle and Angela were doing great with scoring, so results were pretty clear and the only real problem was that the paper was pretty wet and a few numbers were hard to read. There hadn't been enough time for anyone to get lapped. Volunteers had already stripped off the top of the tent and stuffed it and the frame into my car. It was still raining pretty heavily as I disassembled the camera and packed everything up as best I could and crammed everything into the car for the drive home. I called ahead and got Candy to order a pizza. Back at home I unloaded everything in the rain and set it out in the basement with the box fan blowing on it. The tent top went into the dryer (on air-dry), and I went upstairs and opened a bottle of pinot noir, and waited for the pizza to arrive before firing up the computer and wait for Townsend to send me the final results to post to the LAMBRA website. 

Just the Words

I've been carrying around the camera, plus the phone that has an arguably better camera than the actual camera, all week and keep forgetting to pull either out of my pocket. Perhaps some of that has been because the rides were hard, or seemed hard - hard to tell sometimes!

One of the young Juniors
was lapped twice before
finishing his first lap

Last Wednesday's lakefront races went fairly well despite a downpour during registration. Fortunately the summer pop-up thunderstorm drifted away and dissipated before the racing started. Turnout was actually almost normal, which was surprising considering what things looked like at 5:45 pm. As usual the first race, which includes Cat. 5, Women Cat. 4/5, and Juniors, was chaos. When you have riders mixed together with such a wide range of abilities, the race quickly becomes one long unending string of individual riders or small groups, most of which are gradually being lapped by the leaders. Scoring something like that is a nightmare, but I think we got it pretty much right that time, even though there were riders lapped twice in a 20-minute race on a 1+ mile course. We didn't have time to determine most of the placings (lots of lapped riders) before we had to start the next race, so those results weren't ready until after the final race of the night. The other races are considerably easier to score, but by the time the last race, for Cat. 1/2/3/4, finishes it's dark. We pulled Michelle's Jeep up with the headlights aimed at the finish line, which helped a bit. I had the frame rate turned down really low on the camera, and remembered to force the camera rather than rely on the auto-record motion-sensing, since that doesn't seem to trigger reliably when it's dark. The images were still plenty dark, but the numbers were definitely readable.

So last weekend I had no actual obligations, and ended up riding the Giro both Saturday and Sunday. Both days it was super fast on the way out, but not so fast on the way back. We had a new rider, Cliff, who recently moved here with his wife who is on faculty at UNO. The speed on Hayne and subsequent gaps caught him by surprise on Saturday and he was off the back pretty soon, but ended up finding people to ride with anyway. He came back on Sunday, though, and fared well. After Saturday's ride, I had been thinking that Sunday would be a lot easier. It wasn't. Somewhere after Hayne Blvd. a big gap opened up in the middle of the pack and it split. Naturally I was on the wrong side of that split. We were still going pretty fast, but were just holding the gap all the way to Chef Highway. When we turned onto Chef I could see the group ahead of us spread out across the lane and told whoever was nearby. "Here's our chance. We have about one minute to catch them before they start rolling again." Alas, there was some hesitation and thirty seconds later I could see the paceline starting to string out again, which meant that someone had already put the hammer down. I took off and was soon joined by Jaden and then by VJ, both of whom did 99% of the work while I tucked low at the back staring at my computer that was reading over 90% max heart rate despite the substantial draft. After a mile or two at 32 mph we finally pulled into the slipstream of the front group. On the return trip there were some complications with flat tires that kind of took the wind out of everyone's sails. I didn't complain about that.

It's like this project is a hobby and they just work on it in their spare time.

This morning I did a nice easy solo recovery ride on the levee. I stopped for a minute to take a photo (which is on my camera, which is at home) of a bunch of Egrets and even some Roseate Spoonbills taking advantage the food available in what must have been a drying up little pond on the batture. Later, on my way to work, I took this photo of the never-ending 5-year underground plumbing repair work on Pine Street. The locals have resorted to spray-painting messages on the Sewerage and Water Board's barricades and traffic barrels. Can't say as I blame them.

Hammerdal and a 5-day Weekend

Almost dark and off the back but not feeling too bad about it Friday night (Boedi's photo)

I knew it was going to be a complicated week. A nephew and his family were scheduled to arrive at the house on July 4th. My brother and sister-in-law were coming a day or two later. Another niece and her family would also be arriving for the weekend. So lots of family that included small children pretty much guaranteed trips to the zoo, aquarium, and insectarium, plus big get-togethers for meals.

None of them had checked with me beforehand about my bike racing plans which were now, of course, very much up in the air. Dustin was putting on the Hammerdal Criterium series starting Friday night which included criteriums on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I'd been feeling increasingly desperate to inject more intensity into what masquerades as my "training program." After missing a lot of weekend riding due to officiating responsibilities I was starting to feel pretty badly out of shape, both mentally and physically, and I knew the only thing that could start to pull me out of that hole would be some actual races that didn't involve jumping on the bike minutes before the start after having been officiating the earlier races. So first, I decided to take Thursday and Friday off from work. I figured I could probably slip over to Hammond, just about an hour's drive away, on Friday night without being too unsociable. Saturday, however, was another question altogether so I put that race tentatively off the table unless the gods smiled on me, which they didn't. Sunday morning everyone was scheduled to be heading back to Orlando or Austin or Jackson, so I figured I could make those races.

Thursday turned out to be a marathon that started with a walk down to the start of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line. After the long ride down to Canal Street, we hit the Audubon Insectarium, followed by the Aquarium, followed by lunch, and then the streetcar ride back home. I was tired by the end of that day.

Lunch at Satsuma on Maple St.

Friday was busy as well, but since I had to bring a bunch of the LAMBRA equipment to the Friday night race, I had to be on the road around mid-late afternoon. That didn't turn out to be much of a problem, so I loaded up the car and got to Zemurray Park in plenty of time to unload and help get the finish line set up. The oddly named race (Hammerdal is a town in Sweden from which one of the city's founders, Peter of Hammerdal, came from) was held at a nice local park with a winding 1 km road around a little lagoon. As such, it wasn't really quite a criterium since there wasn't anything resembling a corner on the whole thing, but the sweeping curves around the lagoon proved to be sufficient to cause a few crashes anyway. Friday's events included just a Cat. 4/5 race and a Cat. 1/2/3/4 race, with a fixed-gear race in-between. With the Cat. 1/2/3/4 race not starting until after 7:45 pm, it was going to be dark by the time the 1-hour race was over. For the really old guys with cloudy eyes like me, that just added another layer of concern on top of the multiple cash primes that would make it hard to hang onto the back.

Jim was bloody mess after his crash, but showed up and raced Saturday and Sunday, placing 5th and 6th, anyway.

Despite getting a reasonable amount of time to warm up, this race didn't go well for me, but I knew teammates Jim Booth and Chris Brown would probably do fine. When they announced a Prime on the first lap, I knew I was in trouble. As expected, the race started out like it had been shot out of a cannon, with the first lap averaging 28 mph despite having started from a standing start. It didn't slow down much after that, either, with attacks and primes coming one after the other. Halfway through the second lap I was already coming off the back, and I wasn't alone. I got together with Butch, who not coincidentally is my age, picking up one or two others over the next few laps. We were about 20 minutes into the 60 minute race when we heard the lead motor coming up behind us. Fortunately the officials hadn't pulled us, so we jumped onto the back of the pack when it came by. That lasted seven or eight laps until there was a big long surge and we were popped off the back yet again. By then it was pretty dark, so it was probably just as well. Meanwhile, a break had gotten off the front. When they came around and lapped me (again) I jumped onto the back for a few wonderfully smooth and fast laps while they pulled me back up to the pack that they then lapped themselves. I hung with the pack for a little while, but was soon off the back again, getting pulled in time to help the officials with the lap cards and bell. Somewhat disappointing, but not all that unexpected. Two laps before the finish we heard that there had been a crash on the back side of the course. A couple of minutes after the finish Jim Booth came riding up looking like he had been dragged through a cheese grater. It looked worse than it was, but it was visually impressive nonetheless. He's gotten caught on the outside of one of those fast sweeping curves and ran out of asphalt when the rider ahead drifted wide. Meanwhile, Chris placed 7th, which was impressive since there was a two or three-man break off the front.

The obligatory snoball stop

Saturday was Zoo day, followed by lunch at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood, and then snoballs at Panola, and then a lot more food with everyone over at the house where I perhaps drank a little too much wine for someone who was planning on getting up at 5:30 am to race. Sunday's races started at 8 am with the Masters race and ended with the Cat. 1/2/3 race at 10:30. I was planning to leave around 5:45 am. James, my nephew, was planning to head out with his family for Austin around 5:30. Things were going on schedule until he discovered his car wouldn't start. So we jumped it from mine in the dark and got him on the road, although I was giving him only about a 20% chance of getting back to Texas without having to buy a new battery (he did indeed have to get a new battery en route).

These races went somewhat better, which is to say I didn't get dropped. Since that was basically my main goal, I was pretty satisfied with it. The Masters race was considerably slower than the Friday night race had been, although I was very much in survival mode near the back for most of it, finishing mid-pack well behind a small breakaway. The 1/2/3 race was actually a lot of fun even if my game plan was basically to follow wheels at the back. There were a lot of attacks, but fortunately for me there was also some omnium points team strategies playing out that resulted in periodic lulls. Of course a few riders got off the front, but the resulting team considerations kept the pace in the pack kind of under control. Right after seeing the 2-to-go lap card, the motor passed us and the pack was lapped by the leader, which meant that we were unexpectedly on our finish lap. I guess only about a third of the riders realized that because there wasn't really much of a sprint. Still, I felt good about how I was feeling after riding two races that morning, so I'm logging it as a successful weekend even if it isn't reflected in my placings. After my race I rushed to the car, put the bike on the roof, and rushed back to collect up the camera, tripod, a ton of traffic cones, the race clock, and anything else that would be needed for the upcoming Wednesday races and Team Time Trial. I was rushing because I needed to get to Audubon Zoo for a Tulane event at 2 pm. Somehow I made it, although I have to admit I was pretty wasted by then. At least there was a lot of food and wine and snoballs!

Up in Tupelo

Easy officiating with small fields

A 5-hour drive, a new race with a new promoter, painfully low pre-registrations, unfamiliar officials, and a sketchy plan to both officiate and race. Typical weekend nowadays, it seems. I was just south of Hattiesburg when I looked up to see a very impressive wall cloud between me and Tupelo. Well, no road trip is complete without at least one stretch of white-knuckle driving, right? A few minutes later I drove right into the storm, wipers on high, staring at the red tail lights of the truck ahead of me. When I saw an exit, it took it. Since I wasn't in a hurry, there was no reason not to wait it out. Half an hour later the sky was clearing and wall cloud had been replaced by a rainbow. Mixed messages.

The other half of the 40+ race

Saturday morning I left the hotel around 5:30 or so, drove down to the local Starbucks for coffee, and headed back to set up the finish line. By then it was raining and the radar looked bad. Really bad. I met up with Jeffrey and Morris, both officials from Tennessee who I had run into someplace before, and we got the tent and camera and everything set up. Half an hour before the first race was supposed to start the rain went from bad to worse. Looking at the radar, we decided to delay everything by an hour and combine some of the races in order to make up the time. Since turnout was extremely low for most of those races, combining races wasn't going to be much of a problem. The first few races went off just fine and we were pretty close to being back on schedule, more or less. Then, with just a couple of races left, the computer running the finish camera suddenly froze up. I restarted it and was greeted with a message indicating that it couldn't find a boot drive. Not good. It wasn't until much later when we were packing up to leave, that I discovered that the laptop had been sitting in a slightly low spot on the table, so pretty much all of the rain that was getting blown onto the table had accumulated immediately underneath the laptop, more specifically underneath the hard drive. It was dead. Anyway, by the time the last couple of races went off the weather was much improved and we were even able to put down an actual finish line. That evening I got the link from Ricky for the software and downloaded a copy to my personal laptop that I had been using for registration and results. It seemed to work at the hotel but I was a little cautious about it because it's pretty flaky software that uses an Ethernet port and can be affected by things like anti-virus software.

Sunday's weather was looking to be hot and dry. They were using a different course in the same general vicinity with the start/finish directly in front of the hotel parking lot. We got set up early and thanks to there being no rain, everything started right on time. After the first couple of races, I pulled the bike out of the car, rode one lap of the course, and lined up at the back of the 6-rider 40+ group. This switching from official to racer thing never goes well, so from the start I was just in it for the exercise. For some reason the race started out really slowly, which was nice since it allowed me to at least get a little warmed up. After a couple of easy laps there were a couple of attacks. I came off the back after one of them, but they slowed down and I rolled back up to them. It wasn't long before another attack and I found myself in-between a 3-rider group ahead and two riders behind. I probably could have dug deep and gotten onto the break but I guess I was a little short of both motivation and power, so I waited for the two behind me. We rode a number of laps together, but one of the guys had two teammates in the break and understandable didn't seem willing to work much. Our pace slowed down again, so I went ahead and took a pull, fully expecting him to launch an attack, which he did. I didn't even try to get on them as they flew past me, and just rode out the remaining five or six laps.

Back at the official's tent, things were going fine until, at some point in the middle of the Cat. 1/2/3 race, the camera software refused to allow me to record images. I have not idea why, but fortunately the finish was easy to judge by eye. Anyway, other than the low turnout the races went off pretty well. Even with all of the rain on Saturday, there wasn't a single crash all weekend. I loaded the software onto my old laptop and will give it a try at the Wednesday night criterium after I disable the anti-virus software. Hope it works.

This afternoon we drove up to Baton Rouge to watch them demolish Candy's family house on Harrell's Ferry Road. I guess it took about 45 minutes for one guy to turn it into a pile of rubble. Hopefully, that will help them sell the property.

Giro Here Mnats There

Rui - blast from the past on the Giro

Last weekend was basically a mental recovery weekend for me. I rode the Giro both Saturday and Sunday. I rode out to Starbucks Saturday morning later than usual. That was because I knew that the Starbucks was closed for renovations. I had gone ahead and made coffee at home since there's really no place around there that is open early enough anyway.

So it was around 6:30, I guess, when a car pulled up alongside me on Carrollton Avenue and I heard someone yell, "Randy?"  I looked over to see Rui Ponte, who I don't guess I've seen in person since some time in the mid-80s. He said, "I'll see you at the lakefront!" Rui graduated from Tulane in Architecture and lives in D.C. where he is quite active in the local cycling community. At one point while he was at Tulane he worked on the design of a velodrome.

That's Rui on the front row next to Brian Roberts
some time in the 80s at the Tour de La

As continued my ride out there I wondered how many people knew that the place was closed. I also wondered if people would think that there wouldn't be a Giro Ride because of it. As it turned out, we had pretty much the usual crowd, meeting up in the neutral ground parking area across from Starbucks. We picked up Rui and a number of others along Lakeshore Drive. It was warm and the wind was essentially calm. The group was a little slow to get going, and the pace didn't get particularly fast until we were halfway down Hayne Blvd. It turned out to be a particularly steady ride, thanks no doubt to the lack of wind. When VJ flatted on the way back somewhere on Hayne, most of the group was still together.

Stephanie with hardware and coach Jed

Sunday's Giro was an entirely different story, however. Although the wind was again almost nonexistent, it seemed like only three or four people were willing to do any work at the front. That made for fairly slow and erratic speeds for most of the ride. On the way back, when we turned onto Hayne, I casually rolled off the front at some moderate low-20s speed and ended up probably a couple of minutes ahead of the lackadaisical group. Go figure.

Meanwhile, up in Augusta GA, Masters Nationals was going on. We had just a handful of riders who went, but a couple of them had pretty good results. Peter Reed was 2nd in the 40-44 Time Trial. Stephanie Smith was 2nd in the TT, 2nd in the Crit, and 3rd in the RR in the 35-39 age group. And of course there was Debbie Milne, who is in NC now, although we still claim her. She won the Road Race and was 6th in the Crit in the 45-49 age group. The GeriAtrix guys, Tom Bain and George Heagerty, from Texas, also did well in the 65-69 age group. Tom won the Road Race and was second in both the TT and Crit. George was 4th in the Crit.

On Tuesday I went out to the regular levee ride. The sky was overcast and there was just a touch of rain showing up on radar. Perhaps that was one reason that everyone except Rich and I turned back early. Rich had just gotten back after the unexpected death of his daughter. We didn't talk about it - just traded long steady pulls. We got barely a few raindrops here and there; hardly enough to notice. Even so, it was a lot more time on the front than usual, and so I definitely felt like I'd gotten my money's worth out of the ride by the time I got home.

Tour de La Number 47

Start of the Cat 1/2/3 Tour de La Criterium, June 10

Well, the dust has about settled on this year's iteration of the Tour de Louisiane stage race and by all accounts things went pretty well. The volunteer list kind of came down to the wire as usual, and there were the typical loose ends to tie up the week before the race, but in all it was definitely a success. We had 127 entries this year, which was just slightly more than last year. Still a long way from the 200+ we had around 2009, but my sense is that turnouts have kind of bottomed out in the last year or two and are starting a very slow rebound.

So around Monday before the Tour I realized that I didn't know who had made the police arrangements for the Time Trial. Turned out nobody had! Fortunately, Fred Schroeder was able to get that in place quickly, which was a relief. On Sunday before the race I got Candy to make the copies of the race bible, and then spent an hour or so assembling and stapling. As usual, most of then pre-registrations didn't start coming in until the last couple of days, so it wasn't until Friday that I felt like entry fees would at least cover the prizelist. I had decided to take Friday off from work, so that gave me a lot of time to print out the waivers, organized numbers, and ultimately load everything into the car for the trip across the Causeway. We decided not to do the Friday night registration this year since turnout for that has been pretty low in recent years. I guess we don't get as many riders from far away as we used to, so a lot of the riders are driving in on Saturday morning or arriving late Friday night. Anyway, I didn't head across the Causeway until around 6:30 pm. We had made arrangements for a couple of double rooms at the Holiday Inn Express for the officials, but when I arrived they didn't have any reservations. After a few phone calls the guy who Mignon had made the arrangements with appeared and realized he had never actually booked the rooms. All their double rooms were booked by then, so we ended up with three single rooms, which actually worked out fine since only two of the motorefs needed rooms on Friday night, and only one on Saturday night and Ricky was driving directly to the start on Saturday morning. The road races went really smoothly with only one minor single-rider crash that I know of. We got the results sorted out at the hotel, printed out the TT start sheets and Road Race results, and before I knew it, it was time to head over to the Lakeshore High School to get ready for the 5:30 pm Time Trials. Robin was already there and had already put up the signage, so once the police arrived we set up the start tents, put out the traffic cones, and got things started right on time. The TT results looked good, so after I got back to the hotel I got those posted pretty quickly and the other two officials and I walked over to Copeland's for dinner. It had been a long and hot day, but I was glad it hadn't rained and that nobody had to call 911.

I was up again at 5 am for the Covington criterium, having allowed a little extra time to put up the new USAC snowfence and to give Robin, Fred, and the other volunteers time to put out the bales of wood chippings that we were using instead of hay bales, which were apparently both expensive and in short supply this year. As usual, there were a few cars parked on the course, so things were held up between the first race (just the juniors, so small) and second race while a tow truck removed a couple of cars that had been strategically parked on the outside of corners, including the final one. The rest of the criterium went fine until it was time to line  up the Cat. 1/2/3s. At that point the sun was still out and everything looked good unless you checked the radar. There was a big thunderstorm brewing and heading our way. We started the 1/2/3s right on time, and as the clock ticked down from the 1 hour mark we were keeping one eye on the weather. By the mid-point of their race you could see the big dark clouds approaching. It looked like the worst of it would pass just north of town, but it didn't look like we would escape the rain. Sure enough, with maybe ten or twelve laps left the thunder and lightning and rain started. Once the street got wet, someone over-cooked a corner, slipped on a paint stripe, and took out a bunch of riders. At that point it was pouring down rain and riders started coming into the pit from all directions. There had been a 2-rider break with 10 seconds on the field, but now the field was shattered. With all of the thunder and lightning and confusion we made a quick call to stop the race and re-start ten minutes later when the worst of it would be past. So we called everyone back to the line with 5 laps to go, started the breakaway, and then started the field. A number of riders at that point were content to take it easy and just finish upright, but at any rate we got things finished in a light drizzle, posted the results in a hurry having forgotten that one rider had previously lapped the field, re-posted the correct results, and got the podium ceremonies done. Then we stuffed a ton of wet tents, banners, snowfence and equipment into the car for the drive home where I threw the snowfence and flags and tent tops into the dryer and set everything else out to dry in the basement with the fan blowing on them. Then I posted the final results to the website and sent them to Robert to upload to USAC.

I was still feeling kind of dragged out for the next couple of days, mostly from sleep deprivation I guess, but eventually got back into the routine over the next week or so, riding just the Giro Rides on the weekend and the usual training rides during the week. This afternoon is the first of the Wednesday evening races on Lakeshore Drive, so I'm going to try and get out of here a few minutes early so I can set up the finish camera and help with scoring before jumping into the 1/2/3 race myself. This morning's WeMoRi was uncharacteristically easy, so I guess a few of those regulars are planning on doing the evening race. Then this weekend I am heading up to Tupelo to officiate/race/deliver equipment, for which I have not yet made any arrangements. Registrations for that are frighteningly low right now, so I hope things pick up soon!

Reconnaissance Ride

The Tour road course has some really nice sections and even a bit of shade. This definitely isn't central Texas.

With the 47th annual Tour de Louisiane festivities looming just a week away, it was time for a trip up to the road race course at Stoney Point. I had been kind of dreading the task of riding from one intersection to another with road-marking paint in my bottle cage instead of water, stopping, painting, waddling up the road a bit farther in cycling shoes, painting again, etc., etc., so I was quite happy when Robin texted me that he'd gone ahead and spend a day freshening up the turn markings, sweeping the corners and patching a few of the patchable road surface problems. The TDL road course is an hour and a half drive from home, and although the original plan was for an 8 am start, most of the guys had subsequently decided to arrive early enough to ride an extra 16-mile lap beforehand. On the one hand, that was appealing because it would be a bit cooler. On the other hand, that would mean a very early wake-up call. I was kind of on the fence about it until Mignon texted suggesting we drive up together rather than needlessly burn all that extra gas, so I compromised. We timed it so that we'd get there while the early group was still out on the course, ride backwards until we met them, stop again at Stoney Point for 8 am to see who else showed up, and then take off on some undetermined number of additional laps, which, as it always turns out to be, is one less than originally planned. The Tour de La road course is best described as "death by a thousand cuts." There are really only a couple of places that you could legitimately call climbs, but on the other hand there are essentially no places that you could call flat. It can be very deceiving, with the difficulty of each succeeding lap seemingly increasing exponentially.

Anyway, the early group had gotten a late start so as we were getting ready to go we saw them come sprinting up the road, finishing their first lap. It was still well before 8 am, so we rode with them for a few miles into their second lap and then turned around to get back to the start by 8 to pick up any others. Then we rode backwards on the course and met them about a third of a lap around. For the most part, the pace was moderate and mostly everyone stayed together, which was good. The road surface on this course is about 90% good, 5% OK, and 5% pinch-flat territory where sections of asphalt overlay have broken out, leaving nice sharp inch-high cracks (for lack of a better word). It looked only marginally worse than last year. I ended up with only 47 miles, but when Mignon asked if we were doing another lap I wimped out. Everyone else was ready to head home. I probably would have done another lap if most of the group was doing it too, but it was getting pretty hot and I was feeling pretty tired, so I decided to call it a day.

Right now it's Wednesday afternoon. The forecast for the weekend is looking pretty good, although of course there's always the chance of a thunder storm popping up at random this time of year. A 20% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday with highs of around 90 is about the best one can hope for this time of year, so I'll take it for sure. Other than volunteer assignments and recruiting, most of the key arrangement for the races are pretty well nailed down, so that's good. Online registrations are at 50, which is OK for the Wednesday afternoon before a race weekend, not that I wouldn't like it to be closer to 70. Lots of work to do tonight since I kind of took yesterday evening "off" from Tour de La stuff. I felt like I needed a break.

Feliciana Road Race

Thursday on the levee after the turnaround

Last weekend already seems like it was a long time ago (it's Thursday), but I figured I should log something about last Sunday's Feliciana Road Race while I can still separate it from all of the other times I've ridden that course. The much-hyped tropical depression Alberto did what I was expecting it to do, which was to track more and more toward the east. The net result for us was that we had some relatively dry air and mostly clear skies for Sunday's annual Feliciana Road Race up in St. Francisville. There was a pretty good turnout for the race, a bit over 100 riders, which made for a decent field of 14 for the Masters race. For this one Acadiana had four riders and 601 Racing/Velovit, which is what was C-spire last year and was once Palmer and before that Herring (when they weren't so old), also had four riders. I was the lone NOBC representative. VJ, Mike Corcoran, Hamrick and a few others filled out the rest of the field. Having done this race a number of times I pretty much knew what would happen on the first lap. From the start I rode at the front for the first mile or two to turn #1 where I knew one of the Acadiana guys would attack. He did. I followed with great effort. He looked back, realized he wasn't going to go clear, so eased up so his teammate could counter-attack, which I also expected but by then wasn't in a very good position to do anything about. Fortunately that counter, which pulled away one or to others, was quickly chased down and things came back together. We were probably no more than six miles into the race. We were still on that same stretch of road when VJ and a couple others just kind of rode off the front. Frankly, I was at the back when that happened and don't really know the details there, but at any rate they weren't pulling away very fast.

As we approached the left turn onto Highway 10, I looked over at Woody and told him I was expecting an attack at the turn. Well, that didn't quite happen, but a little while later a gap opened up, various people went to the front, and next thing I knew there was a group in-between the break and the remnant of the pack that included both Woody and Frank. This was not good. As we headed north, still only maybe 12 miles into the 66 mile race, I could see that group slowly closing in on the little break. My group, however, wasn't really chasing at all even though it wouldn't have taken much of a group effort to get us all back into the race. I swear, this happens every year on this course. A mile or two later I saw the two groups come together and fan out across the road, so I knew they had slowed down. It was a prime opportunity for our group to close the gap, which at the time couldn't have been more than 40 seconds, but no such effort was made. Once the road curved back to the west and the front group got to the hillier part of the course the front group started racing again and by the end of the first lap they were essentially out of sight. Woody told me later that Frank had started pushing the pace and they had gone through the feed zone at something like 28 mph. I guess we were left racing for about 7th place at that point, so my motivation was lagging. Up at the front, though, Woody and Alex broke away, I think shortly before the turn onto Highway 10, and started putting time into that group. Meanwhile, back in the grupetto, not much was happening. Halfway through the second lap VJ came back to our group, and then around the end of that lap we saw Alex on the side of the road holding his flatted wheel in the air. Although I didn't know it at the time, that left Woody out there on his own with a 22 mile lap to finish ahead of the pack, which he ultimately did. Our little group was going slowly enough by then that Alex caught  up to us after getting a wheel change. Toward the end of the final lap I figured I'd better put in a sprint in order to keep up appearances. There's a decent little climb about a mile from the finish, and of course we went fairly hard up it. That kind of strung things out but I think it mostly came back together before the final kilometer. At that point, though, I wasn't looking back. We came around the last bend about 500 meters from the finish fairly slowly with me maybe third or fourth wheel, behind Butch who I knew would sprint. Finally, right at the 200 meter flag, Butch jumped. I was barely able to stay in his draft from there to the finish, so that gave me an unimpressive 7th place, or equally unimpressive 4th in the 55+ geriatric age group. I guess I was riding too defensively that day because I never felt like I'd made any really huge efforts. Sometimes, missing that break that you know you should have been in kind of takes all the wind out of your sails.

So the weather around here has just been getting hotter and hotter this week. On the plus side, I'm not seeing any major bad weather through the Tour de Louisiane weekend of June 9-10, which is good. I still have a lot of stuff to take of before that race weekend, but most of it seems to be coming together in its usual last-minute fashion typical of anything being organized by a bunch of volunteers with real jobs. Last Monday was Memorial Day, which meant I was off from work. There were multiple people proposing various of Memorial Day rides, which led to some confusion, but eventually I decided I was going to do a ride on the levee out to the Spillway with Pat and Mignon and whoever might show up along the way. My legs were a little bit tired from the prior day's racing, so I didn't want to go for the Holiday Giro Ride option anyway.

Meanwhile, at work I've had a little free time to start learning the new content management system, Drupal, that Tulane is using. I have to move, or really completely re-create, our departmental website under the new system, so I have been slowly working on that. Then I discovered that the Tulane Cycling website, had disappeared. That was because Student Activities, which housed it, switched over to Drupal and just kind of abandoned it without telling anyone. So I got authorization to rebuild that site as well and decided it would be a good simple site to learn the ins and outs of Drupal with before tackling our regular departmental site. So I spent most of yesterday doing that and got it pretty much wrapped up early this morning. I think that I'll dive into the departmental site head-first tomorrow now that I have at least a little bit of experience.