The second day of the Planet Bike Cup started off well. Morleigh and I slept in a few extra minutes before getting up for breakfast, and starting our day. This compressed our time at the park before my race started so we did not see the beginning of the first race. We arrived in the middle of the Cat 4 race, but instead of rushing to get ready to pre-ride I decided that I wasn't going to go out for a pre-ride and get warm-and-then-cold. So it hit me rather suddenly after the lady's first lap that my race was up next and felt a moment of panic. I put my pre-race prep into high gear getting my layers sorted out, heading out around the block for a long slow warm-up, and then making my way back to the staging area to line up at the back of the field.
My strategy was going to be similar to the day before, work my way to the outside, and power past as many as I could around the first turn. But I had already made a tactical mistake, in that I picked a spot in the center of the starting grid. The whistle blew and the mass of men and bikes surged forward, I tried to work my way to the outside. It wsa then that I discovered my second tactical mistake. I had forgotten to shift from my small to large front chain ring while I was waiting for the race to start. I had not been having any problems shifting so I decided to sacrifice a little speed on the pavement and power-down to shift up. However, I couldn't get it to grab on the top ring. It was skipping and jumping. After about 5 pedal strokes I decided to give up, and just drop back down on the small ring, but in doing so my chain fell off to the inside. As we rolled over the starting line the field pulled away as I was spinning my cranks trying to get a tooth to catch. As we turned the corner I dismounted, fixed my chain, and then remounted now 100 yds back in DFL.
I shook my head and thought about the nice training ride I had before me.
Because I didn't pre-ride I was taken completely surprise by the changes in the course from Day 1 to Day 2. I was expecting to gain some ground winding through the pine-trees and instead turned sharp left and had yet another straight-away to deal with. Once I made it through the modified sections though, it didn't actually take all that long to re-attach to the field. I caught back up to the first riders as we headed back down through the long straight-away that went past the wheel pit and the starting area. I could see my friend Mike half-a-dozen riders ahead. As we made our way down to the bottom of the hill by the playground equipment, I started to catch and pass riders. On the way up past the playground equipment I got ahead of Mike and in the middle of four or five riders moving together. As we speed back down along the edge of the parking lot and around the final curve before the big uphill I was on the inside line surrounded by riders.
I was aggressively leaning into the corner, at the edge of friction when the worst possible thing happened.
I hit a bump.
I did not have enough weight forward and my front wheel bounced off the bump and went airborne, and my bike went all Newtonian mechanics on me. It flew out sideways and I piled straight into the ground.
Kudos to those riding around me that my wash-out did not turn into a huge pile up. Somehow neither I nor my bike were ridden over, which I considered to be somewhat of a miracle. As I stood up and dusted myself off, checking myself and then my bike for damage, I passed the initial flight check, got on the correct side of my bike, and then remounted.
I tried to pedal and looked down. My chain had dropped again. I dismounted, fixed my chain, and then remounted again. I was once again DFL.
I scrambled to the top of the hill, and saw my girlfriend taking pictures of me. I got off the main line, rolled close to her and tried to, without screaming at her, ask her to stop documenting this, the worst race ever, with photos.
I made it down to the bottom of the hill and decided to spite the course by riding up the hillside strangler. I almost lost it, having to put a foot down after the second railroad tie, but I was able to put down enough power to get moving, clipped in, and make it up to the top. It was one small personal victory on what was shaping up to be a very bad day.
Once I made it to the top of the hill and rolled out past the starting line, I started the difficult task of trying to mentally reengage in a race that had gone horribly wrong, and reconnecting with a pack that was long gone. It was as I started to try and put down power on the "roadie-friendly" straights and the initial adrenaline of crashing had worn off that I discovered a host of "engine" problems. I had a big painful charlie-horse on my right calf that was preventing me from putting down power, and my back was knotted up with spasms which was also making it difficult to pedal. Of the 10 units of suffering I had available for pushing my bike forward, I was now using about six units coping with the physical pain I was in. To put it in more concrete terms, on a flat straight away a tail wind I was struggling to get over 15mph.
On my second lap, as I looped back around the top of the strangler I saw the lens of my camera pointed at me again. Once again, I pulled off the well worn line, over to the fence and asked my girlfriend as politely as I could muster to please put the camera down. I needed no photos of myself remind me of this fiasco.
The pain was too much and I was unable to ride the strangler a second time. Instead I dismounted, and pushed my bike up the hill. Running felt oddly better than walking, so I sprinted up the hill to the best of my ability. Over the next two laps I pushed forward trying to reconnect with the end of the field, and it felt like I was able to shrink the gap on the shaded "low" technical section of the course, but I would lose those gains on the sunny roadie-friendly "high" plains.
There was another 8 minutes of suffering alone, as I wondered if I would be able to finish the race. I kept picturing my name at the bottom of the list of results and wondered in the back corners of my mind what the difference was between DNF and DFL, and if it mattered whether or not it was one or the other. I kept working to shake those images from my head, and self-talk myself through the course one straight away at a time. I also thought about next week, and whether or not I would even be able to ride again in seven days. I made the decision that I was not going to preregister for Hopkin's Park in the middle of my third lap.
When I got to the backside of the strangler I saw my girlfriend standing there, and instead of being obscured by a camera lens, I saw her face, and she had a big smile on her face as she cheered "Let's goooooo Gra! I'm so proud of you!"
I took a mental picture of that smile, and seeing that smile again became my motivation for riding another lap. That smile was definitely worth another 8 minutes of suffering. I dismounted and ran the strangler again, and pressed on committed now to finishing another lap.
The fourth lap, I had finally closed the gap to the point where it felt like I might be able to reconnect with the end of the field, and get out of DFL. As I was rounding the final curve to head on the long straightaway that ran out to the pine-trees, I put my head down and started to block out the pain so I could hammer as hard as I could, and instead of hammering I got hammered. Somehow I swerved inward just enough to catch one of 2-inch square wooden stakes that was holding up course tape. I hit it hard enough that it twisted my handlebars out of alignment with my fork. I hit it hard enough to rip it out of the ground. Needless to say I crashed in epic fashion. I heard a collective groan from the mechanics in the pit, and Rosanna yelled at me...asking if I was okay. I picked myself up, picked my bike up, and looked down to see that my chain had fallen off again. I reached down, and put my chain back little ring yet again. As I started to ride away and one of the mechanics yelled that I should not leave the stake at an angle like it was so I looped back, and ripped it out completely and threw it on the ground. I then pushed off again. I wanted to see that smile one more time.
I swung through the pit and had the SRAM neutral support re-align my handlebars, and talked with Roseanna a bit. The mechanic finished his adjustment and said "This should be good enough to finish the race" and I laughed to myself because I knew my race was kind of over before it started. When I made it down to the bottom of the hill by the playground equipment the leaders lapped me, and I knew from the starting instructions they were going to pull people who were lapped to make the last lap clean for the leaders. I figure this meant it was my last lap, so as I circled the top of the hill above the strangler, I soaked in my girlfriend's smile, and passed a single rider with a flat tubular before heading back down to tackle the Strangler one last time. I decided as a matter of principle to ride it, and without even so much as a foot down I burned my final match getting to the top. I wound my way down the hill to the pavement as before rounding the final corner I made eye contact with the official, and she whistled me off the course after just 34 minutes. It was by all accounts the worst race ever. It was the most physically painful, mentally draining, and emotionally disheartening race of my short career as a bike racer. But my girlfriend still kissed me, she still told me she was proud of the fact that I finished, she told me was amazed that I was able to finish with my head held high and she was proud that I displayed nothing but class in the face of so much pain and adversity. Yeah, I guess I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment