"Things went downhill from there."

There are a lot of quips I could put as a title to this weeks post, but for the sake of keeping it "realz" I will use part of my FB status from yesterday to kick off this post.

As always my race preparations started on Saturday with bread baking and sandwich making. Unfortunately I saved my bike preparation for last, and due to a particularly long session of Fallout: New Vegas ended up being at about 11PM when I should have been getting ready to go to bed. But the race prep was supposed to be quick and easy. I just needed to strip off some commuting gear and swap wheel sets.

(Sidebar: I went for a road/path ride on Friday and popped two spokes on the way home. I ordered a brand new set of Fulcrum Racing 5 CX to replace them, and donated the old wheels to the junior program at West Town Bikes. What gear do you have in your closet that an underprivileged kid could use to get hooked on bikes instead of something worse?)

So I flipped my bike upside down to put on my racing wheels. But when I grabbed the front wheel to align it parallel to the frame I felt and heard something very bad as it spun: crunching and grinding. Instead of being quick and easy, my bike prep quickly degraded into trying to clean a pair of dirty, sandy, gritty, black-greasy, rusty headset bearings hoping that I could get enough of the particulates out of the cartridge to make them turn without grinding. I got them turning freely again, but I got to bed much later than I had hoped.

Despite the late night repairs, the morning went smoothly. I got dressed, finished packing, ate breakfast, and rode north to meet Chernoh at Sarah's house. As I was stopped at the intersection of Clark and Belmont I saw a familiar face, and yelled "Hey Gabe". Gabe is the manager of my friendly-neighborhood car rental place. Every weekend I have had a race this summer I have rented a car from Gabe. I guess that makes me a "regular". He was hopping back into his illegally parked SUV with a fresh cup of over-priced coffee in his hand. He hollered back, "Hey! Am I going to see you later?" and I said "Sorry, catching a ride with a friend today". That is to say: "Sorry Gabe, I'm cheating on you."

Sarah was kind enough to share her spacious SUV with me and Chernoh, and got us to the race. We had a good time in the car, and we arrived precisely when we intended at 9:30am. Unfortunately we did not make it from the car to the starting area in time for a pre ride before the Master's 30 race. Instead we unloaded the car, answered our respective calls from Nature, found our team tent, and I got my camera out to take some photos of my teammates and friends in the Master's race.

After taking some photos I set my camera down and started to get ready for the next window to pre-ride the course. Part of that preparation involved eating one of my home roast beef and cheddar sandwiches on homemade bread. There were some bees flying around so I was being careful with my sandwich, wrapping it back in the bag between bites, and swatting them away when they tried to land on the sandwich. Unfortunately I was not careful enough. About half-way through the sandwich I was bringing it to my mouth and the yellowjacket landed on the sandwich when it was below my field of vision, and ZAP!!!!!!!!!!

My eyes melted with searing pain as his stinger buried into my tongue.

Spit, sputter, yell, drop to my knees and paw at my tongue to make sure there is no stinger in hole.

I remember being under the center of our tent on my hands and knees drooling.

I remember telling EVERYONE as my tongue swelled that I had been stung by a bee.

I remember than no one knew how to treat a bee sting to the mouth.

I remember Katie teasing me by asking "So are you going to finish that?" with a covetous tone in her voice.

I remember going to the first-aid kit and finding the insect sting / bite antiseptic wipes.

"External use only."

I sent text messages to my girlfriend and a nurse friend asking for advise, I talked to Sarah who is a nurse about what to do, and Chernoh googled "bee sting on tongue".

There was no recommended treatment, so we ended up deciding on an anti-histamine. I rode across the street to the Jewel, walked inside with my bike, and wandered around in the pharmacy for 10-15 minutes looking for benedryl. I finally asked for help from the pharmacist. He said they don't make it anymore, and pointed me to the generic.

I returned to the meet, took two 25mg pills, and did my best to warm up. It was 11AM by that time already and the field for the 3s was going to start queuing up in about 10 minutes. I had no time to pre-ride the course, I didn't really even have time to do a good warm-up. Instead I went and stood in the staging area for 40 minutes. Bryan Lee was near by and gracious enough to give me verbal tour of the course as the words "Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment" flashed in my mind. Maybe this wasn't a good idea.

Call-ups were made, and after the rush I ended up in the 4th row back from the start. I had a pretty good start and moved up in the field as I normally would. But instead of being able to sustain that pace and hold my place in line the lack of warm up hit me. My legs got very heavy and I got slow. The rest of my race is a blur. I don't have an idea of how many laps we did, and I can't give a lap-by-lap account. Just some fragmented memories of what happened.

I got passed...a lot by all the usual suspects. Austin, Forest, Demey, etc.

I wiped out at the north end of the course on an off-camber turn.

On two separate laps my left foot did not unclip as I was trying to dismount and turn to go over the uphill barriers at the south end of the course and wiped out.

On the way to Dekalb we were talking in the car about CrossResults.com and the concept of a "nemesis". Sarah asked me if our friend Austin was one of my nemeses, and I laughed because Austin is way faster than me, and I only every see him when he is passing me or he is on foot with a mechanical. Sarah yelled on the first or second lap "Let's go Nathan, at least you're ahead of Austin" not seeing that Austin was immediately behind me waiting for the next straight away to blow past me. Austin quipped "Hey!" and he was gone.

Somewhere about 3/4th of the way through the race I started to feel okay again, and maybe like I could start climbing back up the field. A guy in a red/white kit passed me on a straight away, and I started to try and hold his wheel. When we got to some technical sections I was able to close the gap, and when we went up the flyover I was able to bound past him again. On the remount on the top of the flyover though I overshot my saddle a bit and had to swerve to catch myself. I then had to swerve back to keep from falling the other way, and fell into the side railing at about 15mph. I was able to get control of my bike, pull off the railing and not crash into the ground at the bottom of the ramp, but I could feel a burn on my forearm and on the back of my hand. It could have been a splinter, it could have been a cut, I wasn't sure if I was bleeding or not. I could see that I had epidermal burns on the back of my left hand, but I couldn't see my forearm. After navigating two turns I tried to look at my forearm for blood, and ended up running off the course and getting hung up on the tape and a plastic post. I had to take a step backwards, lost two spots, one of which was to the guy in the red/white kit who I passed recklessly on the flyover to get the burns in the first place. I think my second wipe out at the barriers was on that last lap too.

I remember that Julia was helping out the Half-Acres and running around the course doing mid-race repairs and cheering me on. I needed and appreciated the encouragement.

I remember gagging and choking on my own salva and mucus. It turns out you can't swallow when your tongue is paralyzed. There was a lot of sputtering, hacking, and spitting trying to keep my airways clear enough to breath.

It was kind of a miserable race. It was my worst finish ever in any ChiCrossCup race in any category. I wanted to quit. I wanted to throw in the towel. But I did not quit. I finished, and I finished in the top half (42nd of 90 some odd finishers). After the race I got on the phone with my girlfriend, walked around the picnic shelter with registration, and laid down in the grass and had an emotional breakdown. It had been a really rough week, and a terrible race day was the straw that broke my back.

It took another three hours of being a complete zombie before I was "with it" enough to even take some pictures. I got a few good shots of the 4s and SS race before bailing back to the city. My race bag remained unpacked as I zoned out telling friends and family and Facebook the story of how (complete Facebook status) =

"I got stung my a bee. On my tongue. Things went downhill from there."

Sometimes the downhill parts make the best stories.