First of all, this is my second season of cyclocross racing with a year off in between. In my first year I was 40 years old and started in the "C" group, raced 3 times all top 10's or top 5's, moved into the "B" masters for cat3 and cat4 masters racers and continued to get top 10's. I was fit, strong, inexperienced, and still kicking ass. I raced a masters race in Vt and won. Small race, but still. I beat about 25 guys, some of them lower level elite masters. I upgraded to the next category and started trying to race with the elite masters at the big races. This is where it gets demoralizing. The elite masters are Cat 1, 2 and 3 but really they're mostly cat 1, 2, and 3's who never bothered to upgrade to 1 or 2. These guys have been racing since their teens and twenties when i was busy drinking myself into a coma. They've had hundreds if not thousands of races. They're national and regional champions. They're legit cyclists. There is one guy who is a cat 3 with 2 seasons of racing experience. Me. I have yet to race in my 20th cross race. So wtf am I doing there with the elite masters? I ask myself the same thing every time i get my ass destroyed in one of these races. The fact that I'm finishing on the lead lap with the elite masters with my level of experience is actually pretty remarkable. Unfortunately for my psyche, that fact doesn't make me feel any better... I could enter "B" masters races now and be in position to win every one of them but would that be satisfying to me? No, because I know there's a better field out there that I want to be competitive with.
Here's my problem. I want to be the best at everything I do. I don't just want to be the best that i can be, i also want to be better than everybody else. That's why I compete. Why would I enter a race if I didn't want to beat everybody? To me, that makes no sense. Note, I didn't say I expect to beat everybody else. I said I want to beat everybody else. I have enough common sense to know that I can't win all the time. I also have enough common sense to know that I will probably never beat Roger Aspholm or Jonny Bold in a cyclocross race for the next 10-15 years (watch out when we're racing over 65's at the National Championships though. By then I will have enough years under my belt to compete with them).
If I look at things from a different perspective I'm probably stronger than 99.99% of people who ride a bike. That's not bad is it? There's fields of Cat 4, Cat 3, "B" masters, full of people that I can crush. Hundreds of them just in this area alone. There's guys that have been riding in the elite masters fields and have been racing forever that I can beat. Those guys don't concern me. As soon as they're in my rearview mirror they're history. I don't spend a second focusing on the ones that are weaker than me. My targets are always ahead of me. I strive to be the best. And until I get there I am going to get my ass handed to me on a regular basis and I'm going to come back for more. Stronger every time.
This past weekend in Vt it was the first weekend of the Verge series. This is the biggest cross series in New England and all the top guys come out for it. The top 20 in the results are always the same guys who have been crushing fields forever. This race has current national champion Roger Aspholm and former national champion, Bold, in it. They show for all the Verge races. The two of them pass the national championship back and forth like it's a hot potato.. "Hey Roger, it's your turn this year.". And then there's me, in the staging area like a bug-eyed kid in a toy store just kind of in awe at the racers around me, feeling like i don't quite belong here (mostly because I don't). My goal is to someday enter the staging area feeling like I belong there and I know that if I continue to bust my ass and stay focused that day will come. All the punishment and embarrassing losses will pay off some day. But damn if it isn't tough sometimes to realize how far away you are from where you want to be.
The race started with the usual mad sprint for position that put me at my limit within about 5 milliseconds. Shit! I hate these guys so much..... But to be honest, I started well and I managed to stay in the top half of the pack for the first lap right into the first set of barriers, which was about 6 minutes into our 7 minute laps.. I got over the barriers and remounted the bike all screwed up, the front wheel jacknifed and I flipped over the bars landing squarely on my forehead. Dazed, I got up, climbed back on the bike and started pedaling frantically to get back in the group before they got away. Oddly, it felt wicked easy to pedal the bike, almost like there was no chain (because there wasn't).. "Hey, I'm not moving!". The damn chain came off and was wedged into the front derailleur. Took me about a minute before I could get going again. Once I was back on track things just didn't feel right. The bike, the helmet, the legs, everything. When I crashed, the internal cage of my helmet which secures the helmet to your head, ripped out of the helmet. So my helmet was just kind of floating crooked on my head, picture the three year old on his training wheels with the way-too-big-hand-me-down helmet from his 8 yr old brother... I was a mess and I wanted to quit.
The group was way gone by now. This is the moment of truth. You know your race is over, there is absolutely no way I am catching the field at this point. One lap in and I'm out of contention, not that I was going to contend for the win, but I was hoping to be somewhere in the middle of the pack when it was all over. This is incredibly demoralizing. What do I do? Call it a day? I couldn't live with myself if I quit. So I got back on my bike and went chasing. I passed one guy in fairly short order, but he was chunky so I took no pleasure in that one.. Then I passed a guy who was really fit, but he was walking his bike, so I couldn't take much pleasure in that one either. At the very least, I was not finishing last :) In cross races you can see very large sections of the course from anywhere on the course so I could see how far behind I was from the main field, which at this point was pretty strung out. And I was so far behind. I decided that it would be a victory if I could finish the race on the lead lap without getting lapped. With the strength of the field and the difficulty of the course, this would be difficult enough without the crash. I spent 3 laps alone slowly closing the gap on some riders that were about a mile ahead of me when I started the chase. I was suffering like crazy. There was a section of the course where there was an uphill with three logs across it. The top guys rode it, the rest of us ran it with the bike on our shoulders. Every time I would come to this I wanted to collapse, my legs felt like they were loaded with concrete. It was brutal.
Isolated, in agony.
On lap 5 I finally caught one of the guys in front of me and traded places with him a few times. Then the two of us caught another guy. There were a few more racers in view. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to claw my way back into the end of the race. At this point I had one lap to go to make it to the finish line without getting lapped by the leaders. And they were getting close. It was Roger and Kevin Hines, another freak of nature, who at 48 years old can still come top 3 in the pro field at some of these races. They were coming on hard and it was going to be close for me stay out in front of them. I came to the barriers for the last time and cleared them cleanly, got back on the bike and put everything I had into getting to the finish line first. At this point I had gapped the riders I had previously caught by a wide margin. They were getting lapped, but not me. I came into the straightaway to the finish and punched it, I looked over my shoulder and I had maybe 50-70 yards on the leaders. I got across the finish line about 5 seconds ahead of Roger, who won the race. Considering I lost the race by about 7 minutes, it was actually quite an achievement to not get lapped by the guy wearing the national championship jersey, considering my crash and mechanical issues in the first lap.
Now that I look back on the race and put everything into perspective, it's not so bad. I don't really suck, I'm just in over my head and trying to get stronger so I'm less in-over-my-head next time around. It's going to be a while, but I'm not backing off. I'm staying in this field if it kills me. I wonder sometimes if I don't suffer enough. But then when I think about it, I think I probably suffer more than most of the guys that are beating me. I don't think anybody suffered more than I did on Saturday, out for 4 laps alone, trying not to get lapped by guys that are profoundly better racers and so much stronger than I am. It would be impossible to suffer more. In these races I am right at my limit from start to finish, there is no question about it. I can't look at one point in any of my races and say to myself "I could have gone harder then".. So it's not that I don't suffer enough, it's just that I'm not strong enough.. Yet....
My training for today is a trail run and a mountain bike ride.. I did the trail run this morning, I've now turned my 30 minute trail loop into a 24:33 trail loop. I was sprinting up hills gasping for air. This is what will make me stronger. I'm heading out now to tear it up on the Horse Hill trails in Merrimack for a couple hours on the 29'er. Tomorrow night there's a practice cyclocross race that I'm going to. Take it easy on Thu and Fri and then I'm heading to Gloucester for week 2 of the Verge series where I will be on my limit, suffering beyond comprehension, hoping for a finish that I can be proud of. But with the expectations I put on myself, that's a pretty tall order. Maybe I should scale back my expectations... Fuck that! This is what makes me who I am.
All the best,
kevin
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