Spanked

If you’re expecting a heroic story worthy of a breathless play-by-play by Phil Liggett, don’t bother reading further. Maybe talk to Joe, who finished the Fox River Grove crit with his pride intact. If on the other hand, you don’t mind taking a little perverse pleasure in the pain, suffering, and humiliation of a fellow rider, then by all means, read on.

Lesson #1: The occasional hill done once builds character and confidence. But repetitive slogs up the same hill make no more sense than Sisyphus pushing his rock.

I believe I have pretty well established my trepidation at the prospect of doing a crit. The thought of taking hairpin turns at high speeds in a large pack made me very nervous. So incredibly, when I saw the Google Earth post of the Fox River Grove course, I took comfort! “Look at that climb!” I pointed out to friends and family. “That’ll string out the field and make the turns safe and easy.” The subtext I was happy to get across was that as a self-professed “climber,” I’d be able to pull away from the pack, put the hurt on everyone, and if not win the thing, at least wave to the locals from the podium.

Expectantly, then, I drove Joe with me out to the hinterlands of the metro region. We arrived just shy of ten o’clock and with a noticeable dearth of other riders (the sensible sorts decided to mow the lawn or wash the car or engage in some other more civilized way of passing a Sunday), we were able to register quickly, suit up, and give the course a test ride.

The big hill comes quickly, no more than a few dozen pedal strokes from the starting line. My first time up, I felt strong, pushing a conservative gear in my middle chain ring (I bought my Lemond used a year ago and it came with a triple) and leaving poor Joe a healthy distance behind by the time I reached the crest. A rather sharp left awaited us there, over some bumps and stones, but since our speed was low, it wasn’t disconcerting. It was followed by a long descent that, as it turned out, continued pretty much uninterrupted for a mile, through a series of sweeping turns, back to the starting line.

Joe looked a little worried. I said something intended to encourage him, my own confidence brimming. We completed the first lap and started up the hill again. I rode in the same gear as before, but found I needed to stand up out of the saddle here and there to get the power I wanted. I believe I still managed to hit the peak comfortably before Joe, but I noticed that as the descent started, he was quickly by my side again. More troubling, I found myself coasting a bit before resuming my stroke, while my heart rate took its sweet time dropping out of the red zone. Hmmm.

Well, we were only warming up and my aerobic system probably hadn’t kicked in yet, so I felt no cause for alarm. That said, I made a mental note to find a gear in the race that would allow me to spin a bit easier.

Lesson #2: If you’re not sure whether or not you belong in Elite, you don’t.

This race was apparently under the jurisdiction of the United States Cycling Federation, in contrast to last week’s race in Carroll County, which had operated under the auspices of American Bicycle Racing. Whether this made a difference or not I don’t know, but this week I found I had two choices of categories, the 30+ and 40+ Masters Cat 4/5 or the Elite Cat 4/5.

I discussed this quandary with Joe, who pointed out that the former category was scheduled to do 20 minutes plus two laps whereas the latter was going to do 30 minutes plus two laps. Well, I hadn’t driven an hour to cheat myself out of 10 precious minutes of race time! Not to mention that as a young buck himself, Joe had no choice but to ride with the Elites. How could I have wussed out and ridden the girly-man race while watching Joe ride with the big boys?

I began to doubt my bravado when the Masters Cat 4/5 lined up and I recognized some of the guys from Carroll County. None of them seemed to display any sign of shame or embarrassment and I wouldn’t have had the cahones to call any one of them a girly-man. What did they know that I didn’t?

Lesson #3: 10 MPH for 0.2 miles + 25 MPH for 1.0 miles takes longer than 8 MPH for 0.2 miles + 30 MPH for 1.0 miles

Were I smart enough to have done the math in advance!

Each time I took the climb, I more or less attacked it with a decent amount of strength. Sure enough, I was able to gain ground on the riders ahead of me and in some cases, pass a few on the way up. But each time I crested the hill, I would be wasted and in need of a break, so I would coast or soft-pedal down the long descent.

This was a huge error and the opposite of what I should have done. Rather than attacking the climbs and recovering on the descents, I should have conserved as much energy as possible while going up and pushed it more going down! Whereas my size gave me an edge over larger riders on the ascent, on the descent, they had a distinct advantage and could more than make up time any I had gained.

Moreover, as fatigue began to set in after I had done a few laps, my legs were reduced to a quivering mass of jelly and my lungs screamed for air. This meant I needed even more recovery on the descents, exacerbating the effect.

Lesson #4: When repeatedly confronted with a ridiculously tough climb, you will try a Heinz 57 variety of techniques in hopes of minimizing the pain and suffering. None will work.

Each time I ride hard, I cross one or more thresholds of pain. There’s the Wednesday group ride when someone, usually Patrick or Jason, sets a blistering pace that leaves me sucking air and praying fervently to the cycling gods for the strength to stay on the wheel of the guy in front of me. That pain is entry-level. Then there’s the threshold I’ve experienced while hammering out a century with Thomas or Bryce or Mark when one of them decides after about 60 or 80 miles that it would be good clean fun to accelerate. We can call that pain moderate. Then there’s the threshold I experienced doing the 300K brevet, when, after 150 miles and a series of unfriendly hills, my eyes began to cross, my legs to cramp, and my can-do spirit started to drain out like Gatorade from a leaky water bottle. Finally, there’s what I began to experience yesterday after about lap five of our race. Ah, now we’re getting into the region known to birthing mothers and self-flagellating penitents – truly excruciating stuff. Legs cramping and burning, filled with more lactate than blood. Lungs turning themselves inside out as they try to fill themselves with air. Heart rate somewhere in the stratosphere, tongue on the top tube. I only needed a hair shirt under my jersey to be considered for cycling sainthood.

But the physical pain is only part of it. Then comes the insult added to the injury as the sound of whirring wheels approaches from behind and the lead group laps me. Lapped, good God! And in front of witnesses! I begin looking around to see if there are some bushes handy where I could feign a crash or a flat or some other face-saving way to quit. But then I see Joe’s jersey not too far ahead of me and I take heart. At least if I’m getting lapped, Joe’s getting lapped, too. Maybe, just maybe, if I can find some reserves somewhere, I’ll catch up to Joe on the next climb and commiserate with him all the way to end of this stupid race.

No such luck. Joe’s jersey remained like a distant mirage, appearing briefly, disappearing, reappearing as a tease, and then disappearing again for good. Well, at least I was ahead of the muscle-bound rider from North Branch, a pleasant guy whose acquaintance I’d made the week before in Carroll County. He wasn’t even sure he was going to doing this crit, precisely because of the damn hill. His physique was made for modeling spandex, not for pushing it toward the heavens.

I lost count of the laps by this time. I just wanted it to be over. If I remember correctly through the fog of the final 15 minutes, I was on the last lap (or maybe it was the next to last – I don’t know, since by that time I think the leaders had already finished and showered) when I looked up and saw Joe’s concerned face looking at me like I suppose one would look at a train wreck. Yes, Joe was now lapping me as well. And somewhere fore or aft of this humiliation, Atlas from North Branch also regained his position over me.

I crossed the finish line, coasted a bit, turned around, and started feebly pedaling in the general direction of the parking lot. I unclipped my helmet and ignored the judge’s reprimand for doing so. I got off my bike and began to walk it through the tall grass toward my car, where I saw Joe, already looking fresh and relaxed. I took my helmet off and felt around my head for the switch that would turn off the jackhammer in my skull. I fumbled around the car for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to lie across the seat and bake in the oven-like heat or whether to sit with my arm slumped over the car door. I finally chose neither and simply dropped like a stone into the grass. I politely declined Joe’s generous offer of a slice of pizza. No way I was going to be eating anytime soon. After a few minutes, I sat up, but as I felt I was about to puke out my spleen, I dropped back down again.

After what seemed like an hour, but what was probably not that long, I was able to rejoin the living. Joe was over watching the next race, so I decided I’d slip into my civvies – quickly, in hopes that no one would recognize me as one of the racers. The two of us then walked over to judges’ stand to see the official results. I came in 19th out of 29 or so, the judges graciously putting me one ahead of Joe, who had, of course, lapped me. So much for the veracity of the official results. In fact, I might have finished last, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to dwell on it.

On the ride back, Joe and I discussed plans for our next race.