For Saturday's race, I was one of the volunteers riding the bike course with toolbox on the bike, assisting with mechanical issues. It was pretty interesting to be in the middle of the race as it was going on.
At least 6 or 7 people yelled "thank you!" as they rode past (and not when I was stopped helping someone). And several people telling me I needed to be more aero (jokingly). One of the racers whose flat had gotten fixed (by one of the other service volunteers) made a point of coming over to the tent after the race to thank him. Very nice.
On the other hand, one of the racers whose flat I fixed was quite annoyed that she had to wait so long before someone helped her. I felt bad about that, but nothing really that could have been done. No word of thanks, even though I had to perform some magic to change the flat without having any tire levers. (longer story)
Also saw quite a few instances of racers being quite nasty to other racers -- yelling, swearing, flipping the bird, etc. Mainly this seemed to be about passing and people not keeping to the right. Esp. on the narrow part of the bridge and on the Marginal road. Seeing someone flipping the bird while in the aero bars is quite funny.
Watching some of the racers try to take the hard right turn off the shoreway was a bit scary. Such a variation in skills. I would have thought that people would have at least driven the course beforehand and would have known that was coming. There were a number of crashes there.
Surprised at how few people were using rear disc wheels. And then further surprised at the number of people using regular road bikes, no clip ons or anything -- nothing wrong with that, just surprised there would be so many.
Surprised at the number of bikes that had noisy chains and gears. For a race like this I would have expected people to have bikes in tip-top condition.
Drafting. I guess it's inevitable with that many racers on the course. Not a lot of blatant drafting that I saw, but lots where there was a line of bikes with much less than 3 bike lengths between racers. More like 1 - 2 lengths.
All in all, it was a fun thing to do. I think we ended up fixing about 10 flats between 3 of us. A lot less than I was expecting. (and I think we needed to have at least 5 people to adequately cover the course).
At least 6 or 7 people yelled "thank you!" as they rode past (and not when I was stopped helping someone). And several people telling me I needed to be more aero (jokingly). One of the racers whose flat had gotten fixed (by one of the other service volunteers) made a point of coming over to the tent after the race to thank him. Very nice.
On the other hand, one of the racers whose flat I fixed was quite annoyed that she had to wait so long before someone helped her. I felt bad about that, but nothing really that could have been done. No word of thanks, even though I had to perform some magic to change the flat without having any tire levers. (longer story)
Also saw quite a few instances of racers being quite nasty to other racers -- yelling, swearing, flipping the bird, etc. Mainly this seemed to be about passing and people not keeping to the right. Esp. on the narrow part of the bridge and on the Marginal road. Seeing someone flipping the bird while in the aero bars is quite funny.
Watching some of the racers try to take the hard right turn off the shoreway was a bit scary. Such a variation in skills. I would have thought that people would have at least driven the course beforehand and would have known that was coming. There were a number of crashes there.
Surprised at how few people were using rear disc wheels. And then further surprised at the number of people using regular road bikes, no clip ons or anything -- nothing wrong with that, just surprised there would be so many.
Surprised at the number of bikes that had noisy chains and gears. For a race like this I would have expected people to have bikes in tip-top condition.
Drafting. I guess it's inevitable with that many racers on the course. Not a lot of blatant drafting that I saw, but lots where there was a line of bikes with much less than 3 bike lengths between racers. More like 1 - 2 lengths.
All in all, it was a fun thing to do. I think we ended up fixing about 10 flats between 3 of us. A lot less than I was expecting. (and I think we needed to have at least 5 people to adequately cover the course).