2009 Louisiana MS150 - Day 2

After waking up, packing up the van and riding back to the main campground area this morning, we filled up on a big breakfast - good fuel including grits, eggs and plenty of bacon - before gathering the team together for the day's start. The ride organizers were very serious about people not starting early, which seems reasonable since they needed to get all of the rest stops set up, state troopers organized to patrol the route, etc. The patrols must have helped, because even though we rode on open highways, there was very little traffic either day, and the few cars we saw were courteous and gave us a very wide berth when passing. No honking, nor a single epithet (or anything else for that matter) was hurled from passing pickup trucks.

The weather Sunday morning was a worry; although it was overcast things were still dry, but it was chilly and I was glad for my arm warmers. The sun peeked out about midway along the route, but it was mostly overcast all day. Here's the map and ride data for Sunday, as recorded on the Garmin.

After turning out of the main gate of the state park, the Waters Parkerson team moved gradually past the other riders and eventually I took the head of the line after a couple of miles and pulled us into the first town of Magnolia, where a large group of riders from the "Green Team" swarmed us right at the turn onto Hwy 51. I stayed in the front part of their group, and for about a mile it was as close to riding in a real peleton as I've ever experienced - there were dozens of them it seemed, and they were riding really fast. Yet, with a draft coming from every directly it was nearly effortless to stay in the group at that fast pace. It was pretty exhilarating. Eventually, they resolved themselves into two parallel pacelines (not rotating, but parallel) and I was about six riders back in the line closest to the side of the road. For a while, we were cruising in the mid-to-high 20s but the Greens were protective of their paceline and didn't seem to want any non-team members to move into the rotation. Eventually, I got to the front and just at that moment there was a lot of yelling off to left that one of the Greens had snapped a chain, so they all pulled up!


The remainder of the peloton sailed into the 2nd rest stop (having ridden past the first) after an hour of riding at an average of 22 mph (which included the slower start and warmup as we left the park). We never did see the whole Green Team all organized like that again for the rest of the day.

Lunch was at Stop #4, and just about the whole team finally arrived so we regrouped before setting off again. Here I am on the left with Rodney Steiner just before we left the lunch stop. The next stretch of road was nice and we kept a fairly relaxed pace - relaxed enough for me to take a couple more videos and some photos of the whole Waters Parkerson paceline (my apologies to those whose photos came out too blurry to post - taking videos and photos while riding at 20 mph alongside a paceline is a bit hit-or-miss).

As we neared Independence, with about 15 miles to go, the skies started getting considerably darker, and at the final stop the wind was gusting and we thought that we'd better try to get back to the finish before the weather got really bad. By this time, we were facing a stiff south wind for the last leg, which slowed us down quite a bit. David, Larry, Brooks & Chris had gone ahead, skipping the final rest, so it was just Scott, Marc and I for the final leg, plus a couple of other riders who picked us up.  After taking turns leading into the wind, I took the final pull of about 3 or 4 miles and cranked it up to about 21.5 mph for the last push before we turned onto University Ave. for the last few blocks before crossing the finish line.

We weren't the absolute leaders by any means, but certainly we were among the earliest to finish, averaging about 19.5 mph on the day - not bad, but not as fast as last year's Day 2, which we finished (without the headwind) with a blazing 20.5 mph average ("Blazing" is relative - remember we're a group of mostly 50-ish men). Just as we finished changing out of our riding clothes into dry shorts and; t-shirts, the skies opened up and we dashed over to where they were serving jambalaya and beer for lunch, huddling under the tents to stay dry. The hundreds of riders still out on the roads must have had a miserable time because it had really turned into a deluge by then.

We waited around long enough to see most of the team finish, and then Rodney, Marc and I headed back to New Orleans in a driving rain.

It was another really fun ride, well organized, lots of good road time and terrain that was more challenging (and  interesting) than the levee.   The team was really fun this year - bigger and better than last. Many, many thanks to Scott Crabtree for organizing and motivating the team, handling all the details from the jerseys, to beer and snacks waiting at the cabins, to air mattresses so nobody had to sleep on the floor, and for generally making everything work so smoothly for us!