Convergence

Sometimes things in the universe collide. Distant and unexpected things that live in separate worlds come together to influence the course of things. This weekend was of one of those kinds of weekends.

A few weeks ago, Enterprise had a deal. Weekend rates of $9.99 per day for an entire weekend rental. I thought I was going to Madison this weekend for a cyclocross race, but I was mistaken. I got my dates mixed up. I had the car reserved already so Monday night, an hour before registration closed, I threw my hat in the ring for a MTB race in Lake Geneva WI called Treadfest.

I picked the car up on Friday night, and found parking right across the street from my apartment just as meters were turning off (i.e., I won the Chicago parking lottery). My preparations on Friday night and Saturday morning were quick, but not hurried. I have done this enough now that I know what I need, I know where it is, and I know how to make it fit in a backpack. Saturday morning I was up early but puttered around the house cleaning a bit, as I was in no real hurry to go anywhere. I fed the meter once in the morning which gave me an 11AM departure time. I was in the car and on the road by 11:15AM.

I made it to Lake Geneva at about 2PM. Despite growing up in Southern Wisconsin, and having been to Lake Geneva dozens of times, I had never been to the Grand Geneva Resort. I did not even know where within the huge playground for the rich and famous the race was being held. My usual trick of "following the bikes" was not working, as I did not see anyone hauling bikes when I arrived. So I looked at the signs and made an educated guess as to where I should head. I followed the signs pointing to "Mountain Top".

I made it to the ski lodge, found a spot in the shade in a parking lot full of mountain bikers. I pulled the QuBe out of the rental, and changed into riding gear. I climbed the short hill over the ski lodge and saw something rather intimidating. The start of the course went straight up the side of the ski hill. Not only did it go straight up the ski-hill, but it came virtually straight down as well. There was basically no where else to go but up, so I started my first pre-ride lap on a big easy climb. I was intimidated a bit by the descent and rode the brakes most of the way down. I followed the course around to the west side of the hill, and found another steep climb. That came down with an event steeper descent. After making it through the first two climbs, I continued on with my pre-ride. I remember trying to keep my tempo and pace slow. I wanted to remember features of the course, not just practice riding fast. I also remember wrestling with my own thoughts. They were heavy, and not facilitating a good ride. There were some steep downhills on the course with rock drops that I found to be intimidating. They reminded me of my injuries, my accidents, my hospitalizations and my surgeries. I struggled to push those thoughts to the corners of my mind so they did not become self-fulfilling prophesies. But the presence of the doubt also made me question whether or not I belonged there. I felt out of place and I felt slow on the twists, turns, climbs, and lose dirt. To make matters worse the QuBe was making a horrendous racket on each and every climb. There was a creaking sound coming from crankset that made me question whether or not my bike was broken, or about to break.

I finished my first lap unscathed despite the doubts and worries. The trail was dry and dusty so I wanted to try out my "dry" tires. I went back to the car and swapped out tires. When I was physically recovered I went back out. My intention was not to ride another lap, but to take a few sections of single track, and come out on the double-track access road. The climbs and descents went fine, but I noticed that my tires felt too soft. I had inflated them both to just over 30psi but it was not enough. I was bouncing through to the rim on the rear, and the front was too soft to really dig in. The shorter treads also did not help. During the first 200 yds of single track, I was coming down a sharp turn to the right on loose powder and my "dry" specific tread washed out in the thick layer of powder that covered the track. It was weird because I was turning, weight heavy on the front wheel, but I hit a bump or skipped over a small depression and shifted laterally washing out in the loose dirt. I was on my side in an instant, with dirt clinging to my sweaty skin and clothing. There were riders behind me (but not too close) so I yelled out "man down" and struggled to my feet. I was not hurt, and had the wherewithal to check out myself, my equipment, and the ground around me before taking off. There in the middle of the trail was the rental car key. Bullet 1 dodged. I checked out my bike testing the alignment on the front and back wheels and the derailleur hanger. No issues to report. Bullet 2 dodged. I got back on my bike and continued my second lap feeling even less confident about my equipment and my ability.

I got back to my car, put my bike away, washed the dust and dirt off my body, and was seriously thinking about throwing in the towel and heading back to Chicago. A couple of things happened in the parking lot to help me shake of the emotional dust after I finished washing off the physical dust. First, there was another guy who came out of his pre-ride lap even dirtier than I was. I hit the ground and slide, he hit the ground and tumbled. He told a friend that he failed put enough air into his tire and missed the "magic number" of optimal pressure. I was not the only one! Second, I was really bothered by the creaking noise, so I inquired as to whether or not there was a local bike shop nearby. There was one in Lake Geneva, but it likely closed at 5pm. It was 4:50pm. There was no time to make it off the reservation and in to town so I just started to look at my bike and see if there was anything I could do. I started by making sure the derailleur and chain-catcher were not causing the problem. Loosened them both, tooled around the parking lot, tightened them again, no change. I pushed on the crank arms to see if something was loose in the bottom bracket. I knew I didn't have the right tools for that kind of adjustment, but I opened up the Allen wrench set to the biggest wrench and stuck it in the hole anyway. It was too large. But as I was looking at the base of the crank arm I saw a screw hole that matched the largest Allen wrench I had. I stuck the wrench into the one of the four screws holding the two largest chain rings to the crank. I turned it to the right, and it turned with a loud squeaking sound. I tightened them all, pulled the bike out and put the front wheel back on for the fourth time, and took a spin around the parking lot and up the short hill by the ski-lodge. There was no squeak. Woot! I felt like I won the "you can fix your own bike" lottery. Third, I ran into Paul-Brian and Jen, a pair of Half-Acre riders that I knew from Chicago in the parking lot. We had a nice chit-chat about the course, and equipment, and he advised me to be careful of the first two climbs because they could turn into bottlenecks in the middle of the pack. It was comforting to see someone familiar faces, and get a few useful pointers.

I felt a little bit better after that short conversation, so I packed up and went to meet my Mom in Janesville. We did some shopping, ate some Noodles and/or Inc and then went back to the ancestral manse. Once at my parents house I spent another 2 hrs preparing for the race. It involved making sandwiches, changing to a third tire-combination for the day (a deep-tread Specialized Hard Rocker on the front and a shallower "dry conditions" Michelin on the rear). I inflated them to 10 psi more than they had been, organized everything for the morning, made a list so I wouldn't forget anything, and went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning before my alarm to the pitter-patter of little feet. My sister and brother-in-law had brought over my two little nieces. My plans of getting to Lake Geneva 2 hrs before my race started were knocked a little bit off track. The first unexpected collision of the day was with cute little girls who wanted to play with their Uncle Nathan.

Eventually I escaped with all the things on my list that I had managed to scatter around my parent's house the night before. That in and of itself is no small feat as I am notorious for leaving things at my parent's house.

Southern Wisconsin is the place where I grew up. The land is pockmarked with memories from my childhood some of which hid under the surface like landmines. I was doing okay with the nostalgia until a song by Adele came on the radio. I had heard the song once before on the VMAs, but in the car I was able to really listen to it. Her words tore through me like shrapnel, reopening old wounds, and letting the tears leak out like rain. I was drying to a mountain bike race peering through a hazy blur of water that could not be windshield wiped away.

The song and the somber mood passed as I found a different radio station playing more appropriate music. Some alternative rock to energize my motor. I arrived at the Grand Geneva an hour after I had hoped, and paid the penalty I was hoping to avoid by being early. The main lot was full of cars, and I was redirected toward the auxiliary parking lot .5 miles away from the starting line. That put me in a quandary. I was hoping to get up to the course and take some photos of the citizen riders before my race, but I didn't want to leave my stuff laying around on the ground somewhere while I raced. I made the decision to err on the side of caution and focus solely on getting ready for the race. I put on my race kit, pinned my number on my camelpak, and headed to the starting area to warm-up.

I had just over an hour before my race from that point forward. It was plenty of time so I planned out a long slow warm-up in my head. The ride to the course was the beginning then a slow granny-gear climb up the hill. I returned to the road for a few laps between parking lots. The final lap I burned hard to flush out the legs, and get my heart pumping. At about 11AM I went over toward the starting line to queue up, but there was some congestion near the starting line as a pair of ambulances arrived to provide care for a citizen rider who had some sort of accident. It was a reminder of the dangers of what I was about to do. Regardless, I queued up with the rest of my age group and made small talk with riders whom I had seen in previous races.

The first wave was a little late to start (presumably because of the ambulance), but eventually the hordes started to stagger forward toward the starting line. When my group was on deck I noticed that I had not been as aggressive as I normally am to maintain a position near the front of my wave. As we surged forward to the start line I was in the third row. I didn't panic, but I thought back to Paul-Brian's words about not being in the middle of the pack on the descents. I had to make a move up this hill.

GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As expected the front line surged, then the second line, then me. I was just right of center, and stayed there for the first hundred feet before seeing an opening to the right as gravity started to string out the mass of riders. I took advantage of the gap, stood up, and started to power past the dozen or so riders ahead of me. When we got to the top and leveled off there were only three riders in my wave ahead of me. Just where I wanted to be. We zipped down the hill, and was happy I avoided any Charlie Foxtrots.

The second climb was almost as steep as the first climb, and I lost track of where I was in my heat. Guys were coming up from behind, and then withering in front. The second descent was a dozy and I remember that at one point just as we dropped into the first real single track three or four riders in front of me missed a turn, and I was leading my wave. I made a mental note as I passed the place where I had wiped out on Saturday, and felt another small sense of relief. The three now pissed off riders who had to turn around and come up hill caught up before too long, and passed me in the narrow gaps as sign posts with names like "Son-of-a-Butch Climb", "Butch's Playground" and "The Rock Garden" whizzed by. I had ridden the course before so I had mentally connected some of the labels with features, but for the most part I just rode.

I kept my heart rate above 160 (90% of max or higher) for the entire first 20 minutes of the race. After 20 minutes I laid off the gas and took a 2 minute rest at 80% of max HR, and then pressed onward. Towards the end of the first lap, I could feel my body starting to reach it's limit and backed off the gas just a little bit. I started to really focus in on maintaining a sustainable pace and minimize the mistakes that can happen with low O2. There were a few times when I got hung up on stragglers from earlier waves. The longest such time was during "the Pines" which was a long single track with few good passing opportunities. There were about three guys piled up behind me (I could tell from the impatient encouragement to go faster) and two in front of me. We squeezed past the first guy after going through the first part of "The Roller Coaster", and I passed the guy who was immediately in front of me when he chose the wrong line between two tight trees and caught his left handlebar on the left tree and twisted and piled into the tree on the right. I stood on my brakes and did not run into him, and he awkwardly scrambled through the tree and off to the right. I made it through and passed him without even putting a foot down. I remember that on the last passing section of the lap before the start, two of the guys who had been caught up behind me burned a match to get around me. One was in orange and one of in blue. I smiled and nodded. When we got around to the second hill climb I smiled and nodded again as I passed them on my way up the hill.

I made it through the first half of my second lap with only a few specific memories. When I was coming down around the rock-garden someone from below yelled "Rider down" which caused me to slam on my brakes and skid down a sweet descent instead of "bombing" down it. When I got to the bottom there was no rider, and I was a little miffed with the spectators for not following it up with an "all clear" call. But better safe than sorry. I also remember a section of trail where the leaves of the lowest foliage had been completely covered in a thin layer of gray dust that was being kicked up by wheels.

I was actually feeling pretty comfortable by the mid-point of my second lap, and was mentally getting ready to surge through the last quarter of the race when it hit me. Or maybe I hit him. It probably depends on who you ask.

Somewhere that morning a wasp left it's nest and started the journey that would be his day. Flower to flower, tree to tree, plant to plant he cruised along his route searching for food, shelter, and/or recreation. I don't know what motivates a wasp to turn this way or that, but I can only assume that he was twisting and turning his way through the woods with some invisible purpose much as I had been. He must have seen us, the humans on bicycles moving through at break-neck speeds, but he probably didn't give us a second thought. We live at a different scales of existence that wasp and me. I exist in the large part of the world that he sees as dark shapes that move through the distant universe, and he belongs to the smaller world that I could not see at race pace. At any given instant in time had he turned this way instead of that, or at any given point in time I had speed up or slowed down we would not have converged. I think it was simply the force of impact that drove his venom filled stinger into my left index finger. I had no warning of impending pain, I reacted as one who grabs a hot pot handle on the stove and opened my hand jerking it away from the perceived threat. My mind went into overdrive, but I think my body remembered the kind and quality of the pain before I could even focus my eyes on the source of pain. It took only a blurry visual confirmation of something black and yellow clinging to my glove to realize what was happening.

BEE STING!

I reached behind me and flicked my hand hoping to get it off without getting additional stings. I looked back at my finger and it was gone. By the time I lifted my eyes to look for the trail it was gone too.

BRING ME A SHRUBBERY!

Thankfully it was clump of small trees that gave way as it jack knifed my handlebar and swept my bike from underneath me. I am not certain if I went completely down to the ground or if I was able to step off with my right foot and stay kind of upright. I don't remember lying on the ground or getting up so I think I stayed on my feet, but I'm not certain. I do remember the riders in blue and orange whizzing by again. When I had a moment I stepped back out into the trail and remounted my bike.

All was not well. As soon as I started rolling I could feel it, and hear it.

Zubbbb, zubbbbbb, zubbbbb, zubbbbb. My wheel was now rubbing against the brake pad. I pulled over again and gave as much slack as possible to the front brake cable. It did not eliminate the rubbing entirely, but I thought at least I would be able to finish the race.

When I got to the next passing zone I looked down and noticed something else amiss. My quick release lever was pointing almost straight away from my bike. It had not lost tension yet, but another blow from anything in the right direction and my wheel would be set free. I stopped a for the third time in in less than two minutes to fix that issue.

Morale was definitely shaken. My finger was throbbing, my shoulder was sore, my brake pad was dragging, and I was starting to feel sorry for myself. When I was going through "the Pines" the second time I even started to replay that Adele song and start to settle into darkness. I grabbed myself by the shoulders and shook. I realized that if I had time to think about sad thing I needed to Rule 5, 6, 10, and 20 in a hurry. But especially rule 5. It was time to HTFU.

It was shortly after having my "moment" that a rider came up from behind and started to jockey with me for position. I made a mistake and she passed me, she made a mistake and I passed her, she burned a match and passed me again. At that point in time it wasn't about "getting beat by a girl" because I knew she had already made up 2 minutes on me and I wasn't going to beat her under any circumstances. But I did put a big target on her back and started chasing her because I knew she was moving faster than I was and I wanted to finish the race strong.

I burned a match on the final climb before the finish and edged ahead of her on the downhill. She stayed with me, but I was in the finish shoot ahead of her. I caught my breath, and went downhill to talk with my Mom for a bit. She decided to head home, and I went to the car to clean up and change. There were enough open parking spots that I was able to move my car up into the close lot, but on the way there I realized I had left my sunglasses sitting on the roof of the rental car. They were of course gone when I parked, and I had no idea where they might have been. A subsequent search back toward where I came from did not turn up anything. It is the second pair of Ryder Hex glasses that I have lost this year means I have two empty cases now with four extra sets of yellow and clear lenses for rider Hex frames. Sigh.

I grabbed my camera bag for the car, and I came back up to the finish area and found my name in the list of results.

1 4 2885 Nathan Schneeberger CHICAGO IL 34 1:13:11.4 0:00.0 Johnny Sprockets

First place in my age-category. I was pleasantly surprised.

Thus only did I collide with my past, a Bee, and a tree, but for the second time this year I converged with a gold medal. This time there was a podium, and this time I was there to stand on top of it. I had on a clean team jersey, and gave my camera to a by-stander for some pictures. So for a brief moment in time the top spot on the podium was mine. I'm not going to lie. It felt good. But now it's cross season, and we must remember the rules.

Rule Number 10: It never gets easier, you just go faster. Sur la plaque, fucktards.