Sketches of Cyclocross №2
The Throttles of My Own Suffering
“This is the category 5 race. If you are not a category 5 racer and you’re on the grid right now you’re sandbagging”, the official announced in a loud voice. “This race will last 30 minutes. After your first lap, you’ll see the lap card to the left of the finish line telling you how many laps you have left. Hand-ups are not allowed in this race. If someone reaches across the tape to hand you something, and I see you take it, I gotta pull you from the race. If you don’t get caught then good on ya!”
I crack a preoccupied and somewhat nervous smile as he addresses us. His tone is lighthearted but, well, official. I am a tea kettle that’s ready to start whistling but I do my best to focus on what the official is saying.
The man goes on to explain how the pits work. Cyclocross races have pits similar to auto racing. Riders can store spare wheels, even spare bikes, in these pits. This can be especially helpful when your bike becomes laden with mud: simply swap out for a clean bike while your crew hoses off the muddy one. Now, if you pass the exit of the pit and all of a sudden get a flat tire you must run the entire length of the course to enter the pit — there is no turning around.
“We still have about 4 minutes before the 30 second mark”, the official continues. Once the official hollers out “30 Seconds”, he is able to start the race at any time. At that point you are a human Jack in the Box. Everyone is quiet as time slowly melts away. “Oh, and remember: nobody in this crowd is going to make a living out of this. You’re racing, but remember to have fun. You’re all going to drive home from this event…probably”. The smartassery of this guy is disarming. I like him.
Another official offers us newbies some advice: “Start with your hands in the drops, that way it’s harder for you to get locked up in someone else’s bars”. A few “mmmyeah…alrights” ripple up from behind me. Nobody comes off their hoods that I can tell. Tick…tick…..…..tick. Another ice breaker from the official: “Anyone want to share a good joke?” Oh, God! Just start this thing already! I kept my mouth shut but almost shared this quickie since being a wise ass is my go-to stress reliever:
An American is walking through the Irish countryside and steps into a quaint little pub. He goes up to the bar…
MAN: Sir, I’ll have me a Budweiser, please.
BARTENDER: Oooh, an American, eh?
MAN: Oh, how could you tell I was an American? Was it my accent?BARTENDER: No, ‘twasn’t your accent at all, sir.
MAN: Oh, well then was it the fact that I ordered a Budweiser?
BARTENDER: No, ‘twasn’t your choice of beer, sir.
MAN: Well then how did you know I’m an American?
BARTENDER: Because you’re the fattest fuck I’ve ever laid me eyes on!
How the hell this joke, among all other possibilities, bubbled to the surface is beyond me. In a flash, though, I push it aside. The official reports: “Gentlemen, we have everyone here who has checked in. Does anyone object to starting early?” A collective no is murmured. The official calls the finish line crew and the announcer on his walkie-talkie to ensure they’re ready. They are.
“30 seconds!”, he shouts as he walks backwards to clear out of the way. I start my watch now so that when the time comes to get moving I’m not messing around with one hand on the bar and another on my wrist — I want all my energy to transfer directly to my pedals and to my handlebars.
In the space of a few heartbeats after I start my watch, the whistle blows. 22 riders simultaneously detonate. Seismometer needles shimmy around the world. Epicenter: Winchester, VA. It takes six seconds for my heart to go from 90 bpm to 120. About 40 seconds later I reach what will be my average heart rate of 155 bpm.
We are pyroclastic flow erupting from the starting grid. For a few seconds I’m in the lead but am soon flanked on both sides by two riders and we make a “V” formation. Then, from the left another rider rockets past the three of us and abruptly slices right in front of me. We four are now in a diamond formation. I see nobody else, but I know they’re all there and they’re coming after me! The finish line is a grey flash in my periphery. We drop off the edge of the road onto the grass careening toward Pavilion. We are the bulls of Pamplona!
I ease back a bit as our diamond has become more compressed and I want some room to brake in the event that the leader augers in — space is my insurance policy here and I’m watching the first turn come upon us rapidly. Preoccupied with our tight grouping, I hardly notice two riders pass to our left as we angle to the right and enter Pavilion. I am now in 6th place…I think. Okay, we expected this. You got your hole shot and now need to maintain what you’ve got. Bastard’s approaching, you’ll be locked in for a while after that.
I peak at 27 mph before decelerating out of Start and entering Pavilion. Ahead I can see the first two riders approaching Bastard. I write them off. I will not catch them unless they wreck. My breathing is heavy and I wonder if the guy in front of me can hear it as he whips his head to the side to steal a glance from the corner of his eye. Brakes, brakes, brakes…pop into a lower gear now. I enter the turn and ahead in the distance I can make out lower ground spreading out before me. Another lower gear…keep those RPMs comin’…
I turn left into the defining plummet of Bastard. My butt is off the seat hanging over the rear tire to keep my weight shifted rearward to mitigate the chance of flying over the bars lest I prang in too hard at the bottom. There’s a rider ahead of me and one ahead of him scurrying up the other side of Bastard’s horseshoe. The very second I’ve bottomed out I’m swinging my right leg off the bike in order to start running uphill. I push my bike up the hill and feel the stiff, inflexible soles of my bike shoes slipping on the dirt. Cresting the hill, I wheel the bike a few feet before remounting.
Let me hit pause on The Great Stampede Show for a moment to discuss the task of remounting a bike. It’s a race, right? You don’t want to waste any time or energy getting back on the bike so it behooves you to do so in the quickest, most efficient manner. Consider this sequence of movements all carried out in rapid fashion: you crest the hill and start running to keep your momentum. Step…step… now swing your right leg over the back wheel of your bike and try to land with your inner thigh on the saddle. Using that momentum you’re able to slide your unharmed crotch back into riding position. If you dismounted your bike in good form, your right crank and pedal should be at a position (12 to 3 o’clock) such that you’re able to clip your right foot in and begin mashing on the pedals.
Watch a video of the pros and they make it look easy, but to a noob like me, the fear of all of my 205 lbs spot-welding my balls to the seat is very real. During my last race a spectator had the good fortune of watching me land on my grapes not once, but twice at the same obstacle. To me, remounting is the golf swing of cycling: it‘s fairly straightforward but subtle flaws in your form can have big consequences. In this particular analogy, I’m the Happy Gilmore of remounting.
I’m glad to have departed Bastard upright but my sloppy remount costs me another position or two, but not by much. This has happened before and you might take ’em on the hills. The pack is starting to stretch out as we make our sweeping right along the down slope of the hillside headed toward the long, fast, straightaway of Barriers section. I remember that I never dropped more pressure from my tires to improve traction on this section and hope that the tread will see me through this section. I feel my ass end begin to break loose a little and hear the unmistakable sound of grass ripping beneath my wheels but remain upright. The top three riders are visible on the straightaway about 100 meters ahead — a million miles from where I am. My legs are starting to burn and my breathing is just as heavy. I’m close on the tail of the rider ahead of me and I can hear the jangling of chains slapping against chainstays behind me. The fight for position is still going strong and though we’re on a narrow section of the trail now, I know I’ll have to light a match as I hit the straightaway. Make them think you’re going to crash into the barriers — do not slow down until you absolutely have to!
My middle finger slaps my gear shifter three times as I pedal through the arcing left turn into the straightaway. Faster…faster. I slowly pass the guy ahead of me but find I’m on the outside of the lane. If I could get some more space, I can get in front of him and slow him down while taking the inside of the turn. Sounds of cowbells come into range. Team riders under their tents are milling about, some watch us as we approach the 180 degree turn. My deceleration is sudden and I can feel it in my face. I can hear the other guy unclip his shoe simultaneous with mine. Dammit! He’s abeam me now! I grab my bike like a suitcase and cross the first barrier…step, step, step, LEAP over the second barrier. I look down toward my pedal which is in as bad of a position as I could want. I then have a staring contest with my saddle as I sweep my leg over the bike. One more position lost but not by much. Silver lining: wedding tackle is intact.
Leaving Barriers toward Double Drop I make use of the relatively fast ground of the departure leg to overtake the guy once more. If you can keep him on your tail long enough he’ll stop trying to pass you and then fade. The course climbs slightly but I need to keep pressure on the guy. There is no shortage of riders behind me… I just can’t tell how many. I’m too focused on the course ahead. We hit a small serpentine section leading to Double Drop and there’s a rider on the ground up ahead. “You okay?” I shout. I know he is… he didn’t hear me, though. I ask this every time I see someone not riding their bike when they should be. It’s good karma. The guy behind me asks the same and gets an answer: “All good!”. I don’t like gaining position this way, but it is what it is. That guy was probably having the best ride ever and now has to wait until the course is clear enough to hop back on, then struggle to make up lost ground.
Winding through the serpentine section, I’m able to get a glimpse of who all is behind me and I’m shocked to see so few. Barriers guy, crash guy, a guy on a mountain bike, and maybe one or two others. The rest of the field is very far behind and though only the most basic logical circuits of my brain are functioning, I am able to deduce that there was a wreck that must’ve caused such a gulf. Either that or some crazy Hunger Games shit just went down that I may have overlooked when I signed up for the race.
At last it’s time for the screaming descent of Double Drop. My front tire has barely kissed the asphalt of the road that makes up this descent when I put my chain in the big ring up front and start popping my chain on down my rear cassette into high gear. There is no coasting here. There are no breaks. There are no brakes. The wind roars past the chinstraps of my helmet by my ears and blocks out all noise. I top out at 30 mph and contemplate what wrecking here would do to me. I’m scared but very much alive in this moment. Nearing the base I return to a lower gear and apply the brakes as I come up to a grassy rise and execute a left 90 degree bend before hitting the pavement again and making a final descent to the Belgian Wall. Roaring down the pavement at 20 mph, the ground drops out from under me and I’m flying a couple inches above the ground as I put on both brakes to slow down for the wall. Both wheels chirp as they make contact with the ground again like a 747 jabbing the runway with its landing gear. Here goes…
As I had determined to do during my pre-ride, I pedal up the first leg of a five-legged zig-zag up the wall. I dismount and hike The Velocitractor up on my shoulder and run up the hill with short choppy steps. As much as I consider myself to be in shape, it’s features like these that bring me back down to Earth. I think I get passed by a rider…by ten or a hundred riders. The guy in front of me tries to ride up the second leg of the zig-zag and then his back tire slips on a tree root right at the uphill turn to the next leg. I pass him on foot as he regains himself and I arrive at the crest of the Belgian Wall ahead of him. Though his remount is observably cleaner than mine, I stay ahead of him until we reach the entrance to Woods. He overtakes me as we enter the wooded section and I watch a squirrel dart out in front of him and almost fall victim to his front tire only to jerk himself back toward the tree from whence he came. A squirrel? Now? Really?
By this point in the race, the battle is not of one large mass. It has become several smaller battles between two or three riders in a cluster. The guy who passes me in the woods has been patient and continues to put space between us. Jesus, maybe I shouldn’t go so hard in the beginning? Maybe he was able to fight through whatever accident happened back there? The pace does not let up. I don’t want to surrender where I am…whatever position that is. There’s wolves after me and this is still the first lap. I’m guessing we’ll do a total of three laps. Oh God, my heart and lungs can’t keep this up for two more laps. Slow down, rest….No! C’mon, Air Commando…get movin’!
Woods and Woods 2 are bone shaking blurs. I maneuver my front wheel around the most heavily rooted sections, hop over some of the hard stuff, and round out the first lap with enthusiastic spectators and their cowbells agnosticly cheering me on.
It’s moving. I’m not being sarcastic, here… it’s seriously motivating to have random people shout out “good job…get some!”. Doesn’t matter that they don’t know me; they’re taking the time to cheer on a bunch of Cat 5 scrubs whom they’ve never seen before, one of which is a hard core mouth-breather wearing a mountain biking shirt and helmet on a gravel grinder bike.
I smile as I pedal past them all. I’m in pain and my lactose threshold is red-lining, but my smile is fueled by gratitude. It sucks but it doesn’t, you see? I signed up for this and my hands are on the throttles of my own suffering. I can meter out how much the next couple laps will suck. I ultimately will determine the extent of my suffering based on whether or not I want to maintain position, burn my matches to gain position, or just say “fuck it” and idle along until I get lapped and am kicked off the course. Deep down inside, everyone here knows that. And as I bear right to join the course along the now-truncated section of the prologue, I choose to suffer and pop my chain onto the big ring to make some time.
Lap number two starts as I cross the finish line. My prediction was correct: the lap card shows 2 more laps to go. My Garmin watch beeps and vibrates; I glance at it and see nothing but a vibrating nonsense of grey and black. I pedal harder in as high of a gear as I can stand. I’m alone as I head toward Pavilion and resolve to maintain where I am and race three people: me, myself, and, I. It feels Montessori…very “you do you, I’ll do me”.
Wait. Someone’s there! Jesus Christos, who the fuck is back there and where did he come from? No time to worry… move it! My head flickers to the inside of the left turn I’m making and I see in my periphery a form on a mountain bike in loose trail of my bike. I mobilize all that I can to build some space between us as I roll down into Bastard. Fuck physics, this is combat and I will not be passed right now! At Bastard’s nadir, I see the unmistakable remnants of a crash: someone plowed through the outer boundary and the white tape which defines the left boundary of the course now lays limp on the ground.
The guy on the mountain bike is my Red Baron: throughout the second lap though we trade places numerous times. I realize throughout our joust that the course offers something for everyone: hills and gnarly root sections for mountain bikers and fast flats and downhills with barriers and serpentine technical areas for the CX bikers. Throughout our two-wheeled tete-à-tete whoever between us is ahead is a result of making the very most of what our bikes, legs, and hearts are capable of with the smallest of margins separating us. I reaffirm that this is what makes cyclocross so awesome: it’s impressively inclusive!
By the time I enter the straightaway of Barriers, I see David from our chat in the parking lot during my pre-race rituals. He’s just entered Start placing him about a half lap behind me and Mountain Bike guy. I yell over to him “GET MOVIN’ DAVID! YEEAAH!” It’s like shouting out to the sea at night; I have no idea of he’s heard me and as I lower my head to grind forward, I hope that he’s enjoying himself.
Mountain bike guy and I both suck at remounts. I take him on the descents. He takes me on the Belgian Wall and it’s a tie as we negotiate Woods and Woods 2. As I pass him leaving Woods 2 on a climbing right turn I quip somewhat cavalierly “Man I miss my mountain bike…a front suspension would be great right about now”. As I utter that phrase I can hear a bell ringing in the distance.
The “Bell Lap” is the final lap of a cross race. Mountain Bike Guy and I cross the finish at the same time — one lap to go. I pour on the speed as I head down the remaining prologue toward Pavilion. He’s not far behind me. First down Bastard…still close. Down toward Barriers, more speed. He overtakes me on the remount and I’m in close trail as we head to Double Drop. I sail by him as I pop into my big ring and maintain the lead clear to the Belgian Wall. His gearing, and perhaps his fitness, bests my capability and he passes me as I trot up hill. In time, he too must run his bike up. At the top his lead becomes more solid and by the time we reach Woods 1, it’s decisive. He’s a bike length ahead of me and I yell “Let’s go, Mountain bike!” in friendly acknowledgement that I’m out of matches to burn.
This is as much a physical win for him as it is a psychological loss for me. With a third of a lap to go, I throttle back but only a smidgen; there’s nobody behind me for a very long way. I double check as I jink my way through some turns to make sure of this. I watch Mountain Bike guy enter the descent into Woods 2. I’m on autopilot for the remainder of the course, pushing as hard as I can now to the finish line.
I sit up straight for the first time in over half an hour as I cross the finish. I halt my Garmin as I coast along the prologue not bothering to apply the brakes. Around me, the world has moved on from this race as I embrace that magnificent post-race feeling: exhaustion, elation, release, satisfaction. I sail past the woman from the Bikenetic team who is pre-riding with another woman. I’m unable to utter so much as a “hey” in these first seconds after the race. The juniors are entering the staging area and in a matter or minutes, this course will once again roar to life, filled with the tumult of riders screaming along its fantastic, adventurous paths.
I seek out other riders from my heat and exchange handshakes and a “good race, man!”. Bastard is a popular topic when we share our thoughts on the course. I spend a few minutes with Mountain Bike Guy who is sipping complementary hot apple cider in one of the Pavilions. I really enjoyed racing against him. He doesn’t know it, but he forced me to push myself harder than I thought was reasonable less than an hour before.
I’m able to walk. I’m not crippled by my output. Maybe I’m little dazed, gauzy…smoked. I watch the junior races start and clap along the sidelines as the riders pass. I’m envious that they’re able to start participating in this sport at such a young age. What lessons they must be learning in doing so!
I attach my bike to the bike rack on my truck, take my toolbox from the bed and put it in the cab. Standing behind my open driver’s side door I inhale deeply as I take in the fullness of the scene. I pour myself into the seat, back out slowly, and head home. I don’t want this season to end.
