This past weekend's kick in the balls came courtesy of the Providence Cyclocross Festival, rounds 5 and 6 of the Verge Series. Saturday was an incredible Fall day and we were racing on another course laid out by Tom Stevens, who is a genius at course design. I wasn't completely sure that I would be able to race in Providence so I waited until pretty late in the game to register. Unfortunately for me, in the Verge series the staging order goes by top 25 in points then registration order. I know several people that are top 25 in points, some of them on a first name basis, but apparently that doesn't count. So they're staging everybody until finally there's me and one other guy standing there looking at each other when they call up "the rest".. It's going to be a long day.... As I've said before, the start of a cross race is one of the most important parts of the race. Have a bad start, or end up staging near the end and you are spending a whole lot of time trying to chase a whole lot of people down. For me I guess it's not as significant as it is to others since I spend all my time chasing people down anyways.. And on the bright side, if you're in the back at the start there's nobody left to pass you, right? Last weekend on Day 2 in Gloucester I got an excellent start and was able to ride with a bunch of guys who are typically way stronger than me in the field and gave me a middle of the pack finish which was my best Verge series finish of the year. I celebrated my 42nd place finish out of 80 starters with a 4.4 lb lobster freshly caught off the Fort Stage Park shores.
The race begins and I have a lousy start, again not getting clipped in cleanly. Wtf! I really need to work on that. Once I'm clipped in I bury myself on the sprint, pass about 10 racers and enter the fields. Picking off people, one here, two there, I work my way up until I'm probably ahead of about 20-25 guys by the time we come around on the third lap with three to go. I'm dehydrating badly in the heat and my heart is redlined as usual.. Now a typical cyclocross course is mostly fields, dirt roads, and trails. Then there's some paved sections or gravel sections. 99% of all crashes occur on fairly forgiving grass or dirt sections since it's mostly on some off-camber grassy hill or a slippery chicane that's going to get you. But that's not for me, I prefer laying it down on the tough stuff.. I'm coming hot into a 90 degree corner off of a paved sidewalk onto a dirt section and both wheels just slide right out from under me. I went down hard on my hip and arm and slid to a stop into some fencing. People (maybe 2 of them) are yelling at me, "Get Up! Get Up! Get Up!" but there's a voice in my head saying "Why? I'm about 50 riders back, my hip is on fire, and the next group of riders ahead of me have about 30 seconds on me?" (which is now increasing by the second).. I drag myself off the ground, straighten out my shifter which got bent in the crash, throw my leg over the bike and carry on, much to the delight of the two people who now feel as if they personally willed me on to continue. I don't know, maybe they did. You know how in the movies when something like this happens they might show it in slow motion to add dramatic effect? Well, this was just like that except for two things. First, I was literally moving in slow motion, and second, it was really lacking in dramatic effect. Then something strange happened. My bike started shifting itself.. I thought, "Cool, maybe it will start pedaling itself too". I tried to shift, but I got nothing. The chain kept automatically working it's way down to the hardest gear. So I get to the bottom of a hill, get off the bike to see what's going on and realize my day is over. I lost my rear shifter cable and am stuck in the hardest gear, this is unrideable for the race course I'm on. All the people I worked my ass off to pass are now passing by me. This is very demoralizing. I noticed there was a team tent right off the course where I stopped and there were a couple racers there so I asked them if they had a 5mm wrench. One of them came over with one and we got the shifter cable back on, adjusted the shifting so it was rideable, and off I went.. This is grounds for disqualification but something tells me the officials aren't really paying attention to me at this point. OK, so what exactly am I riding for now? My 3 laps of effort wasted by a nasty crash and mechanical issue and I've just lost at least 4 minutes. What's left today for me? Maybe I can hit a tree or a skunk or something. This is where my unshakeable mental toughness comes in. At this point I figured that I would attempt to finish on the lead lap, only half-heartedly expecting to be able to do so. I've lost too much time, I'm riding alone, and I have half the race to go.. Whatever, I buried myself. I put everything into it and started re-catching riders that I had passed earlier, sprinting past them like they were standing still.
Chasing so fast here that even the advancements in today's
digital photography can't keep up with me.
I was so dehydrated that I was spitting cotton balls that would just stick to my lips and cheeks. I came around the finish line with 2 laps to go and knew I just had to make one more lap to finish on the lead lap. I can hear the announcers screaming about the fight going on with the leaders.. I end up making it around again with a minute to spare before Bold and Aspholm come across the line 1, 2. I don't let up for the last lap though as I can see a group of riders with about 1 minute on me up ahead.. I catch them just before we get to the finish line and roll across with that group. For the day I ended up over 8:00 minutes off the winning time, 47th out of 71, which to me was astonishing considering the crash and bike issues I had. I still finished ahead of about a third of the field..
After the race I was riding over to the pits to pick up my spare wheels and I was badly in need of some water. There was a 30x20 big top tent setup so I rode into it looking for something to drink. There was a woman who seemed to be in charge of the tent so I rode over to her and asked her if they had any water to spare. I figured that since I had enough cotton on my cheeks to spin a t-shirt she could probably ascertain that I was pretty parched and had just raced so I also probably didn't have my wallet with me. She gave me one of those big phony smiles like you get from a bank manager and informed me that "Sorry, this is the VIP tent.".. I slowly looked around.... The tent was empty except for coolers full of water, beer, soda and two "VIP's" over in the corner of the tent wearing jeans and t-shirts drinking a couple beers. I then turned back to the woman and blazed a hole directly in the center of her forehead with my lazer vision before riding away on my bike.. This would never have happened in Gloucester at the race being run by my club, ECV :)
Day 2: Got up in the morning and my hip, which had a 4x4 patch of road pizza on it, was in quite a bit of pain. So was my shoulder and chest which felt like I must have stretched out some muscles and tendons in the crash. At least I didn't have to deal with fixing my bike in the morning, I spent an hour on that the night before. Thanks to SRAM for designing shifters that require bar tape removal to replace a fk'n shifter cable effectively turning a 5 minute job into a 30 minute job... Anyway, a good breakfast in me, a handful of ibuprofen, and it was back to Providence for day 2 of the festivities. Can't be worse than yesterday, right? I get to the grounds and I'm riding over to the course to get a practice ride in on the course and I notice a woman on her bike with a big hole in her bibs exposing her ass. This was a big hole, probably 3 inches in diameter right over the crack of her butt. Now typically, a hole in a national champion woman's bibs exposing her ass, might be cause for a little excitement by the predominantly male contingent at these races, right? But when it's the Over-65 Women's national champion, not so much. I took a couple warmup laps on the course and then spent some time working on my starts. I knew today I would be at the back of the bus again in staging and I wanted to make sure I at least nailed my start this time.
When the race started I nailed my start.. I worked my way right up into the middle of the pack. Excellent! Things were going to go much better for me today, I could just feel it. About 1 minute into the first lap, the congested field came into a tight corner with a PVC crossing gate on it which I remembered from my warmup could cause some problems. Don't I get squeezed into the outside of the corner and T-bone the gate? My bike coming to an abrupt halt, I calmly removed the PVC from my handlebars and huck it 15 feet in the opposite direction while the rest of the field rudely race on without me. This effectively negated my great start. I composed myself and sprinted myself back into the mix. My heart was racing like a blender on ice crush for 45 minutes as I turned myself inside out to hang with a group of riders that are usually a minute or two ahead of me in the standings.. At the end of the day I finished 4:57 off the winning time, 41st out of 75 starters, and about 2:00 minutes ahead of guys that I was about even with at the beginning of the season. It was one of my best rides and I'm now able to hang with the middle third of these really strong fields when I'm having a good day. Things are looking up.
It's always imperative to finish in front of the guy in pink
After the race we headed over to Bristol to pick up Michele's son at college and took him to lunch at an oceanside restaurant that was right next to a big top tent where they were holding a wedding reception for an extended family of beached whales who were undoubtedly going to return to sea at the end of the festivities. It was all I could do not to put a stack of my business cards on the tray of bacon wrapped twinkies they had for hors d'hoerves. As they stood around outside sipping champagne, smoking their cigarettes I could hear their arteries slamming shut over the crashing of the ocean waves in the distance. I then listened to my own body, which was buzzing from two days of maximum efforts. It's amazing the peaceful feeling I get after putting absolutely everything I have into these races, regardless of where I place out overall. Crashes, bike problems, mud bogs, inexperience, whatever else may get in the way never really matters. I always leave knowing I did my best and I didn't give up, even when there are times when it doesn't appear to make any sense to continue. Every time I come out I get tested at the highest level. I put myself in incredible pain, I have things happen to me that would make it easy for me to quit, I fight like it's a matter of life and death for 42nd place. Some might call it mental, I call it mental toughness.
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