Crash Sally Crash

Whole Wheel Velo must have consulted with an attorney before they mapped out that course. It was a smooth, wide road with three turns that were more like sweepers than real corners; you could take them all at speed. It was the safest course I've ever raced. And yet, what I saw out there was sketch, sketch, sketch, and just when you thought the sketch well had run dry... more sketch.

I did the 5 race, and then the 35+ 4/5. I went down in both.

Cat 5 race. Right from the start, the peleton was nervous. Like thoroughbreds in the gates, only slower, fatter, and less equine.

I could tell some of the guys just weren't accustomed to pack riding, because they were swerving for no apparent reason on the straights and taking aberrant lines though the turns.

Oh well, it's a huge course, right? We could ride 10 abreast! There's room for some newbies to swerve, as long as people don't overlap wheels. I'm thinking: good on the WWVC guys for taking this into account when setting things up.

At first, the pace was almost comically slow. My teammate Richard and I both found ourselves at the front softpedaling, because at that speed, why not? It's the same effort. Then, maybe three laps in, things started getting intense. We weren't racing all that fast, but braking hard before the turns and pushing hard out of them.

On the back straight, two guys in front of me swerved into each other. I heard crunching and started looking for slots to get around them, but somehow they didn't go down. They bounced off, slammed into other people, but everyone kept their rubber sides planted. Scary riding, but impressive recoveries.

"Ok, race gods. You satisfied now?"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
(race gods laughing their asses off)

A few laps later, I was sitting midpack, fully warmed up now and happy. My plan was simple: sit in, do no work whatsoever, and get into position on the back stretch of the last lap. See what I had left. I knew there wouldn't be any successful breaks.

My teammate Jeff, in only his second crit, was on his limit, and, feeling he might get sketchy himself with his legs and lungs giving out, he let himself fall off the back. Good call. Not only did Jeff spare the tricolore paint job on his sweet C-50, he stayed within his limits and didn't put anyone else at risk.

Then it happened. On the back straightaway, again, two riders directly in front of me locked bikes and went down. I didn't see anything leading up to it. Just seemed like a weird, random, freak event. Their bikes went sidewise, wheels and cranks up in the air, bodies hitting the asphalt below.

It happened so fast and so close to me that I didn't even try to ride over them or bunny hop. It was almost instantaneous. I was focused on my landing. I unclipped somehow, went over the handlebars and did the tuck and roll. Came up with some hip bruising and minor road rash along the left side of my body. Pretty smooth, actually, for a heels-over-head crash at full speed in the middle of a pack.

Not everyone was so lucky. Behind me, an elderly guy was moaning like he'd lost his leg in an artillery explosion. I mean, every exhale wound down like a siren of pain. I tried stabilizing him and asked him where it hurt most. It was his hand, which didn't look that bad. He had a cut above his eye, though, and, from the way he was wailing, must have had the wind knocked out of him. Eeeesh.

My teammate Richard was behind me. He almost got around the wreckage, but alas, didn't quite manage it. Afterwards, he stood cooly by, as he always does, and I assumed he was ok. I asked if he was going to try to get back in and he said something about getting his wrist checked.

Turns out, Richard's wrist was not only broken, but completely shattered. He needs reconstructive surgery: plates, screws, etc. He's out for a couple of months at least, and probably more. He'll set off metal detectors for the rest of his life.

Richard was looking and feeling really strong in the race. He would have contended. Now his season is over.

I got back in. Threw the brake levers open, tried to right the handlebars (unsuccessfully), and rejoined. But my race was essentially over. Rear deraileur was bent and gears were skipping all over the place. Handlebars were pointed thirty degrees leftward. And I was scared. There was still plenty of sketch to be found in the pack, and I just decided: screw it, I'll ride by myself on the side. Which is what I did, braving the wind on my own for much of the way around, for a few laps, chain noisily bouncing between cogs, until deciding to drop out.

Disappointed? Hugely. But there was still the 35+ 4/5. Someone from The Bike Lane twisted my derailleur back into place and repositioned the bars. (Thank you!)

Besides, surely the race gods must have had their fill of biker blood, right? Wrong.

35+ 4/5

What a great category. No Chuck Hutch here. No Ramon Benitez. No Pete Cannell. No Dave Fuentes. These are the guys who actually ride like they're over 35.

Everything was better here. The pace was easy. I had lots of teammates and we were organized, controlling the race. Most of all, riders were smooth.

Then it happened. Again on the back straight, and again for no apparent reason. I was near the right side of the road, shielded from the wind, when I heard the crash in front of me and to my left, in fact, all the way over on the left side of the peleton. The thought flashed through my mind: at least it's way over there; you're ok. But I wasn't. It was the strangest thing, this cascade of contact from left to right across the group, like a spark running along a fuse.

This time, again, two guys went down directly in front of me, only this time I had a second to think. I tried hard to stay on the bike, to stay upright. And that cost me dearly. Instead of the drop, tuck, and roll routine of the earlier race, I performed an awkard pile driver, a high, slow motion forward flip that only got half way. I landed on the back of my head, neck, and upper back. Nice upper spinal, lower cranial impact before sliding along the asphalt. Ouch.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I couldn't move for awhile. Lots of injuries. I think I'll be back on the bike soon enough, but need to see how the neck heals. Right now, I can't really look to the side without turning my whole body. Sleeping is not going to be easy without drugs. And I really hate drugs.

If anyone from WWVC is reading this... you guys put on a great race and, like me, just got unlucky today. Also, thanks to the medic for professional treatment, patching me up.

I limped back to the start line just in time to see my brother pumping his fist. (Casual one-fisted sidearm victory salute. Understated cool.) He'd won in a sprint finish, throwing his bike. YES! And he'd go on to take 3rd later in the 4 race as well. His best day of bike racing ever. My worst. Our days balanced out. I bet he'll have a very different writeup.

One final note: I watched the women today. I know theirs is a small field, but I am always impressed with how smoothly and smartly the women race. No overlapping wheels. No sketchiness in the corners. Just nice clean lines. Women are competitive, but they're not going to risk other people's safety to win.

Why can't guys be like that?

On the Problem of Freedom and the Incoherence of Sport (Warning: demotivational)

Ok, maybe this isn't the best post to write before racing tomorrow. But I've got to write it.

Why do we race bikes? And why do we care about other people racing bikes? Why do we participate in, or even follow, competitive sports at all?

Dude, why are you asking such idiotic, annoying questions?! Maybe because your only ability of note is descending fast in a (nearly) straight line.

Fair enough. But if the question is idiotic, what's the answer?

Here's one: we're just curious as to who is all around fastest and fittest. Racing tells us who those people are.

Right. Well, that is valuable information, particularly if you're a female looking for the highest quality sperm to fertilize your viable eggs. An evolutionary basis for cycling (and podium girls).












Victor of athletic contest between male primates releases his pressurized, uh, champagne, uh, against a backdrop of attractive female primates bearing tokens in his honor.









But suppose you could determine who's fastest without endangering anyone's testes... without racing, I mean.



The Joe Parkin book I reviewed a few weeks back tells a story about a father and son team of doctors who tested him upon his arrival in Belgium. They first attached some leather straps to his wrists and ankles, each with wires connecting to a tan steel box. Then measured. Parkin reports:

It was amazing how accurately the doctors' numbers foretold the truth... The good doctors had compiled quite a bit of data on riders and had devised a graph that would put me into a category of cyclist. At the bottom of the list was "Cyclotourist" and "Amateur" and then a boundary line signifying "Beroepsrenner" (professional). At the lower end of the professional category was the "Kermis racer" and then "Classics racer," with the top level being "Tour winner." I fell into the category of classics riders, somewhere in the middle of that group.

Parkin goes on to say that if he accepted his fate he would have made a lot more money, and found a lot more contentment than chasing after the polka dot jersey in a grand tour.

Remember, this was nearly two decades ago, with what sounds like torture equipment. Imagine what medicine will be like two decades hence.

Will we be able to determine the winner of a race before the starting gun is fired?

Suppose we could. Not only would we measure brute physical attributes like strength, endurance, and the ability to process oxygen, but also efficiency, tenacity, pain threshold... you name it. Anything relevant to the physical process whereby one bike wheel crosses that finish line before all the others.

Ok, so in that case, why race? We'd already know the outcome. Would we do it anyway? Would we avoid the data beforehand so as to enjoy the surprising reveal?

Is bike racing like the television show, Deal or No Deal, where the logical thing to do is to draw up a curve beforehand with one's risk tolerance, i.e., the price of insurance, i.e., the price one would be willing to pay beyond expected utility for various bets? And then to write down the sequence of breifcases to be opened? (Or accept the proposed order of a random sequence generator. This part of the show is just plain irrational.)

Deal or No Deal continues on, as far as I know, and makes a lot of money. People watch it just to see something unfold over 30 minutes that shouldn't take more than a few seconds.

Hey Howie... Here's what I'm willing to pay for insurance. Here's what you are offering. Here are my briefcase numbers, should you need them. Decision is predetermined by our formulae plus the sequence. Just patch our spreadsheets together and we're done.

There's no reason to sweat over this stuff in real time. But we like the titillation, the surprise, the suspense, of just coming to know something. Is that all bike racing is? A striptease?

In the cheesy, but surprisingly hard to forget film, Gladiator, Proximo (Oliver Reed) tells Maximus (Russell Crowe): "Listen to me. Learn from me. I was not the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd and you will win your freedom."

In other words, entertainment requires suspense. Suspense requires prolonged ignorance of the outcome.

Another way in... My brother proposed a different way of setting up racing categories. You do a complete genetic profile and base the categories on groups of people with roughly the same genetic potential. Great idea. If we did that, I'd be racing some pretty sad competition.

But what would separate out the people within each category into faster and slower? Well, the variations in RNA, variations in how neatly the genetic sequences were triggered in development, the history of the person's diet and environment (e.g., altitude), and so on. If we knew all of these, we could make all of the categories more even still. That is, we could make the categories even fairer.

But then what would account for the remaining variation in the categories? Still more causal factors that would need to be programmed into the system, until eventually you would have categories with perfectly evenly matched people, destined to tie, or else some unknown or lucky factors would decide the race (e.g., squirrel gets caught in one guy's spokes). So then the joy of racing rests on ignorance and chance. (And a really great system would take the squirrels into account and predict their actions as well!)

The deep underlying problem, I think, is none other than that old philosophical chestnut: the freedom of the will. We think that for all of the medical factors: genetics, childhood conditioning, diet, and brain chemistry, there is some mysterious leftover: the will. And racing sorts that out; it is a "test of wills", after all.

The will is a magical, living thing, operating outside the scientific realm of cause and effect. It's an unmoved mover, a first cause. There's no figuring it out beforehand. You've just got to reach deep into your suitcase of courage and see what you're packing. That's what racing is all about.

Except I think the notion of free will is an illusion. It's not just that we don't have it. It's that the very idea doesn't make any sense.

(More later. Or not. I'm guessing this post will not be well received. Even I'd rather read about Floyd's apocryphal exploits.)

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 2

Most people don't think of the bike as a practical way to travel. While many of us have done centuries (typically, supported) or taken in 80 miles in a training day, we still won't go from *here* to *there* on a bike. We drive. We fly. We take a train. The exceptions are fully-loaded tourers and decked-out commuters. But what if you just have a racing bike and no racks, panniers, and such?

Truth: if you're not riding across the continent with Habitat for Humanity, you don't really need any of that stuff.

I planned my Memorial Day trip on a lark; I made reservations and got out the door in less than an hour, everything I needed stashed in a backpack fit for a sixth grader.

I left the city around 2 p.m., the same time as everyone else. Across the Chain Bridge and out through the suburbs, I flowed through the gridlock around me, lungs heaving, heart pumping, legs spinning. Around me, people sat motionless in their steel cages, blood pooling in their extremities. I imagined they were practicing zen techniques. Confined in expensive, high-powered vehicles, they were averaging the pace of an overweight jogger. How frustrating.

Virginia's tangle of asphalt ribbon represents a failed, decaying way of life. It's ridiculously resource intensive and it's hideously, hideously ugly. We are going to look back on this recent period of strip-mall-and-subdivision-development and cringe.

Yet there is an indescribable thrill in blowing through all the man-made ugliness at 20-24 mph under your own power: past the auto malls and gas stations, the chain restaurants and condo complexes ("Already Half Full!", i.e., still half empty), through the underpasses and by the quarries.

I went faster than traffic from DC out through the Manassas battlefields, where the road was still a parking lot. Then I took a right turn. Suddenly, no traffic. I stopped at a nearby gas station to refill my water bottles. Whoa! A southern accent I could barely decipher. Just like that, I was in a different Virginia. Red State Virginia. "Real" Virginia. A major improvement, aesthetically speaking, over Nouveau Riche Virginia.

Back on the bike now, I am hammering. The miles are ticking off and I'm deliriously happy. No more diesel fumes and honking horns. I'm gazing under green oaks, out at decaying farms and gentle-sloping hills. This countryside is speaking to me. Whose voice do I hear? Walt Whitman's? That "American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual". Just like this landscape.

Maybe it was the sight of Bull Run that brought Whitman to mind. Maybe because the fetishization of the Confederacy just annoys the hell out of me -- more on this in a bit -- that I recall the over-the-top line:

Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses.

In other words: kick some ass, Union.

But Whitman is not the voice of this place. What I hear is Gerard Manley Hopkins. What I see are the dappled things of Pied Beauty. "Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough." I see things "counter, original, spare, strange". I can't bring all of the lines to mind, but his words land like stones.

Now it's "God's Grandeur". The world does seem charged with the grandeur of God. Yes...

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil.

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

What language! What language! Who should be reading this? An old man. A superhero. Ian McKellan!

I look down at my arms and see goosebumps. Am I really having a religious experience? I'm not sweating. I have no appetite. The water from the gas station is still in the bottles, yet I'm not thirsty. Hmmmmm...

How does the poem go? It's an argument.

And for all this nature is never spent

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

So... nature's resilience proves God's sovereignty? The Holy Ghost freshens up the world overnight? After the suburban wasteland I've just ridden through, it doesn't seem like the strongest case anymore. This countryside exists because the people who live on it are too poor to despoil. The park I'm going to see tomorrow exists courtesy of FDR. The Holy Ghost had nothing to do with it.

My speed has dropped. My skin is dry and bright red. It's heatstroke.

More to come...

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 1

Conestoga left me with a wheezing, hacking cough, and on my following trip to New York it worsened. I returned to DC hung over, exhausted, and severely respiratorily infected. I also faced some irreversible and, as always, bewildering life choices. What to do?

Trial and purification... by bicycle.

Friday morning I plotted a four-day soul-and-body-cleansing route. That afternoon I would ride from DC to Front Royal. From there, I'd take the Skyline Drive down the Shenandoah to Elkton on Saturday. From Elkton back to Front Royal on Sunday. Home on Monday. Around 70-75 miles per day.

The trip would have been more fun with company, but fun was not the goal. This was a religious thing; it was about corporal mortification. I was supposed to reflect, have visions, or whatever. I sojourned alone.

As it happened, I made no life choices and failed to rid my lungs of invaders. I did find a substitute for the cilice, though. It's called a Fizik Antares.










The Antares is a brilliant invention, really, because it serves a dual monastic purpose. Not only does it mete out constant doses of pain, right up to your threshold. It's also an effective, if temporary, sexual disabler. Ride this baby enough and, like Origen of Alexandria -- who, according to Eusebius and Jerome, castrated himself to stave off sexual temptation -- you'll never have to worry about breaking that vow of celibacy.

More to come...

Conestoga: Circle the F-ing Wagons, It's a Genocide

Yes, I am aware of the many levels on which this title is offensive.

(1) The Conestoga-towing settlers, and not the wagon-encircling natives, perpetrated the genocide.

(2) While borderline cases of genocide (e.g., Armenians, Palestinians, etc.) are hotly contested by scholars and advocates alike, amateur cycling events aren't even in the running. To liken a hilly bike ride through the woods to the wholesale slaughter of an ethnic group is to inflate the currency of persecution. I guess it's like saying you got raped by your cell phone contract. The price of gas is not a holocaust. I get it.

(3) The F-bomb is always offensive.

But you're reading, aren't you? You're reading. I learned that little trick from one Ann Coulter. Thanks, baby. I owe you a drink, but nothing more. Nothing more, I say!

Seriously, though... the Conestoga Challenge lived up to its name. No wagons in sight, but plenty of obstacles, both external and self-inflicted. Foremost among these were the 20% grades. 20% is just a number. It doesn't sound all that bad. I mean, it's only a 4:1 ratio of over to up. It could be a lot worse, like a 1:4 ratio, for instance. But I suggest you try it. Stand up and hammer in your 39x25 for awhile. That's right. Actually feels pretty good for a few kicks, doesn't it? Now repeat until you taste blood in your throat.

Someone in the 3/4 race snapped his rear derailleur cable and got it stuck in his 12 cog in back. Up the sharpest hills, he ran with his bike, and by his own accounting, lost little to no ground on the 3/4 field. Yeah. Not a bad idea, actually.

Take those 20% grades, and throw in some screaming descents on narrow, sharply-crowned and pothole-ridden roads. Cross some poorly-marked, bewildering intersections and turn tightly against camber at the bottom of 50-mph bomb-fests. Add a straight, slightly uphill section with a 15-20 mph breeze in your face, and there you go. All the makings of Little Bighorn.

The 4/5 race had 60 starters, a massive group on narrow roads, with the yellow-line rule in effect throughout. After a neutral start I was near the back of the pack with Gregg, violently alternating braking and pedaling as the pack kept bunching up and, just as quickly, stretching out. Minor gaps up front kept expanding through the pack and whipsawing those of us near the back. It was impossible to ride smoothly in that congested, messy accordion, but I did my best.

Turning up a 10%+ grade, riders in front launched an attack, and just at that moment, someone flatted in the middle of the peleton, directly in front of Gregg and myself. With bikes and bodies bumping all around us, we steered out into the grass and around the mess, safe from the crash. Only now the first 30 riders had a 50-meter gap and on a brutal hill. Gregg and I jumped hard, and we made the front group, but at a cost. My legs were like, "Here's your pound of flesh, boys."

I was in the top 5% of my heart rate range for nearly the next 10 minutes, hanging off the back of the pack and climbing back on. Gregg was gone. I nearly missed a turn crossing a tricky intersection, was gapped while descending cautiously (i.e., poorly), and then dropped hard on the next big climb. We stragglers were all breathing like racehorses.

Spectators camped out at the sharpest inclines, urging us on. Even though they were mainly interested, I think, in seeing a human being explode before their very eyes, it was cool to have fans. I wish some of them had been running beside us shirtless, with pitchforks, antler-helmets, bodypaint, and such. But if that's not going to happen, I'll take nice, neighborly Pennsylvania folks on lawn chairs over the usual audience of locusts and cowbirds.

Back to the race... The bike twenty yards in front of me missed a sharp right turn. I don't blame the rider. I saw no markers anywhere, though my vision was so narrow at that point, I would have missed an illuminated billboard for free hookers and blow. (Not that I'm into that sort of thing *cough* Tom Boonen *cough*.) But I followed him and we rode for nearly four miles off the course before realizing our error and doubling back.

This is what I meant by "self-inflicted" obstacles. The worst part about Conestoga was not the 20% grade on the course. It was the 20% grade *off* the course that I didn't actually have to do.

Turns out, we were not the only ones. We hooked up with some other lost souls after doubling back, both of whom had taken different routes out for a couple of miles and back.

I knew my race was over, but I had paid my entry fee, packed up early and driven over two hours, and there were still these lost guys to beat, right? The will to power is strong with me. (Nevermind wattage. My Will-to-Power-Tap readings are off the scale.) So I hammered. And yeah, I didn't see those three guys again. Ah, the sweet taste of victory.

Up the worst of the hills the next time round, I saw the police escort's lights flashing from behind me. It was the 3/4 race, and I thought, "With this grade, I bet it's Rugg on a break". Yep. Rugg had at least 100 yards on the field, which was only like six or seven people by now. Yeah, that's right. Field shattered.

Rugg looked effortless, floating by me on the 15-20% grade, not so much an angel of death as a kid riding his bmx around the cul-de-sac. I handed him a bottle of water and told him he looked strong, which wasn't the right thing to say. He looked easy.

I pulled over when the five or six riders in the peleton came by and I saw that my brother wasn't there. What? Calvini dropped? Doubtful. An accident? Possible. But these were all 3's chasing Rugg, who is, by all accounts, a freak on hills. Polka-dot man. None of the five or so Shirks guys who started was there. Wow. Maybe my brother really was dropped. I mean, the rest of the field was gone, wasn't it?

When I crossed the line in full asthmatic attack, feverish and coming down with a cold -- full-blown illness at the time of this writing -- I saw my brother there cheering me in. He had indeed been dropped, despite throwing down some massive wattage numbers and hitting 50 mph on the downhills to catch back on. Insane.

End of the story... Some beastly rider bridged up to Rugg on the flats and helped him stay away from the field, then jumped at 200 yards to go and held it to the line.

In sum:

Gregg: valiant, but dropped
Me: cracked, lost, destroyed
Calvini: dropped, despite riding well
Rugg: wrecked nearly everyone
Conestoga: genocidal

My plan to win next year:

1. Starve and train til I have Andy Schleck's watt-to-kilo ratio.
2. Nurture an indifference to death.
3. Know the course.

That's definitely do-able.

CAT 5 HEROES

For me, Fort Ritchie was just another day of MABRA-tic ignominy. But for two shining beacons of wonder and awe it was a day of glorious triumph.

Marcus Aurelius Floro, you proved worthy of your namesake, "the wise," by positioning yourself shrewdly in the final turn and taking second in the following sprint. As the great emperor and sage philosopher once observed:

“The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.”

I don't know if you were the strongest in the field, Marcus, but you sure organized the hell out of the non-obvious. Smart, gutsy racing. Hail to thee...

The second of today's heroes was John LaRue. With a lap to go you took the manliest of gambits. You bet the guy behind you that he couldn't hang on your wheel. You bet all the guys behind that guy that they couldn't jump and catch you either. You cursed aerodynamic advantage, the swirling vortex of peleton power; you surged off the front like Cancellara in the Tour of Switzerland. Man-versus-the-wind. Man-versus-nature. Man-versus-himself.


You were only just nipped at the line. That was GLORIOUS, dude! A day to be remembered... and repeated.

Nota bene: it is my understanding that neither of today's heroes had previously placed in a bike race.

The Quale of Turkey Hill

A recent ad from Carmichael Training:

"37 years old. THREE KIDS. Lots of business travel. SOUND FAMILIAR?"

Yeah, sounds very familiar. But how about this?

"AP athlete of the year from 2002-2005. BEAT CANCER. Seven-time winner of the Tour de France, RESTING HEART RATE: 32. Max heart rate: 201. DATES CELEBRITIES. Has piles of gold lying around the house that weigh more the UCI bike limit. SOUND FAMILIAR?"

No. No it does not.

Very little about Lance Armstrong is "familiar". I'm gonna quote David Foster Wallace: "To be a top athlete, performing, is to be that exquisite hybrid of animal and angel that we average unbeautiful watchers have such a hard time seeing in ourselves."

And yet, we do see a little bit of that hybrid in ourselves. We fantasize it anyway. We see it in potential. We see it in our greatest moments. Which is why the Carmichael ad will work. It's why Lance inspires. He's not just transcendent. He's also flesh and blood. (And maybe some cow-blood derivatives.) What separates Lance from us is only an iron will and a few hundred thousand mitochondria. That's all.

I'm afraid my race report will not be inspiring in that exquisite-animal-angel-hybrid, familiar-yet-unfamiliar, immanent-yet-transcendent kind of way. It's more like just the animal side, the familiar side, the immanent side.

It's like the war-movie screenplay I've always wanted to write. It opens like Saving Private Ryan: D-Day madness, from the soldier's-eye point of view. Within minutes, the character you've been inhabiting on screen gets shot. Credits roll. (I'm not suggesting the ushers come out and shoot the actual movie watchers. That would be one hell of a war movie!)

For a lot of soldiers, that is what war is actually like. You get shot. You die. In battle, the camera does not hover, lovingly, over the people who matter, pausing the action when one of them is hurt or in danger, and following out their narratives in a dramatically satisfying way. And when you die, your movie is over. YOUR camera doesn't pan over to your best friend who goes on to avenge / mourn / learn life lessons from your death. It's just OVER. But we watchers, spectators, always follow the survivors.

And that is true in racing as well.

All of this to say: my race report for the Turkey Hill Country Classic will be about as popular as my war movie. Yeah, that's right: I got dropped. Bang, I'm dead, roll credits.

It wasn't exactly a surprise. I'm untalented and I've been training for less than a month. I knew it would be rough going out there with that kind of fitness. It didn't help matters when the riders from the 3/4 race came in. There was a haunting, hollow-eyed look about them. I was reminded of a scene from Glory, the Matthew Broderick / Denzel Washington film about the 54th regiment from Massachusetts in the Civil War. In the scene, the 54th is passed by another regiment marching back from the front lines. The 54th is cracking jokes when one of the marchers says, "Men are dying down that road."

The 3/4 race featured crashes and the Gamber Wall. The field was shattered, literally -- I saw a cracked helmet and a bloody buttock -- and in racing-speak as well. Men were dying down that road.

But, apart from our own individual bouts with fear, pain, thrill of victory, agony of defeat, etc., the 4/5 race was uneventful. No crashes. The course was hilly, but not absurdly so, with two climbs of about 80 ft. and one triple climb of around 200 ft per lap.

My positioning was poor: I was in the back quartile of the pack for most of the race. With each hill, and especially, with each corner, I could feel the mounting fatigue as I sprinted to 're-compress the accordion'. Yet, there wasn't a lot of room to move up, except in the moments when I had the least energy.

I could see one of my friends up at the front of the field, launching off into space, then slowly coming back to earth. He was just having fun.

I got dropped coming out of a corner in the third lap, 13 miles in. There was a very short sprint, two guys went around me, and I was gapped. Too bad I was nearly on my limit. I tried sprinting, but the legs would not co-operate. I turned around and saw only the police escort. No riders in sight. None.

It's like drowning in open water, not because you can't swim, but because you can't swim forever. Fatigue sets in. Except for your own breathing, it's quiet. There's nothing to mark the urgency. Your mind is telling you that your SURVIVAL is at stake. But the natural world around you -- and Lancaster county is so peaceful, so pastoral -- is indifferent. I'm gonna quote Auden:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That for all they care, I can go to hell

And to hell I went. Sprinting wasn't going to work. My legs were balloons of acid. Worthless. The only option was to settle into a steady rhythm. In front of me, a mild set of hills. Only 80 feet of elevation over the next a mile or so. I lost even more distance, but bombed the downhill and took the corner well, without having to slow for any riders ahead, because, um there *weren't* any. I was gaining on the pack and starting to believe I could fight my way back on.

Over the next mile or so, on a slightly uphill grade, I time trialed ever closer, the police escort, menacingly, right behind me. Steady, steady rhythm. Steady. Smooth pedal stroke. Deep into the drops. Knees high. Massively into the red. World shrinking. Fighting doubt. Don't give up on that wheel 50 yards in front of you. Nothing matters but that wheel. Get that wheel. Get that wheel. Catch that fucking wheel!

And I catch it. I catch it.

And then I'm dropped again. This time, falling back rapidly, helpless, my heart and lungs and legs exploding, bike weaving, police escort zipping past, as if to say, in an official capacity, "You're DONE, sir".

I gather myself and settle in to work again. The peleton is receding quickly, but I still want to chase. Want to chase, but can't. Until the end of the race, I'm alone, out in the Pennsylvania countryside.

2009 Season Starts: Camp in West VA

The Viking and El Presidente

For three days in mid-March, twenty six of us amateurs and our one pro rode through the mountains George Washington National Park. Four rides, 168 miles long, 12,000 feet up, mostly in rain and with temperatures in the mid 40s.

This is our second year as a club. Last year there were about 15 of us, only one with racing experience, and he was too busy to do anything other than give us some advice (e.g., don't wear underwear under your bib shorts). We were naive, enthusiastic, fitter than most CAT 5s, but also dumber. We caused our share of accidents and committed tactical blunders. We did do a lot of attacking, not knowing any better, but at least we did more than cluster together and hide from the wind.

By the end of the season, we'd had a number of CAT 5s ranked in the top 100 nationally, and the top ranked local CAT 4s. And we had a few riders with real potential: young guys like Tony Abate, Tim Rugg, Tim Brown, Lance Anderson, and Sam McCadney.

I hadn't ridden much since October, so camp was my attempt to jumpstart my training year. Clearly, others had been riding hard all winter. The sixty mile afternoon ride with 8,000 feet of climbing killed me. Miles of uphill grades steeper than 10%, my cadence at <50, speed around 6 mph, and I was absolutely roasted. I got dropped with about 5 miles (and 2,000 feet uphill) to go.

I nearly gave up. If I hadn't seen Dennis climbing in his 42/21 on his ancient cast iron Bianchi, I might have called it quits.

When I finally made it back to the cabin, I reminded everyone that I'd gained 20 lbs since last year, and that I'd ridden exactly six times since October. I made the rounds, explaining this to everyone. Repeatedly.

Truth is, it's awesome seeing the improvement in those who trained with dedication. Some guys hired coaches, others read Friel's Cyclist's Bible and created their own plans, guys bought Powertaps and Quarqs, guys rode through snow and on Christmas Day and got up from warm beds (leaving their SOs cold), guys stopped drinking beer (unbelievable, huh?), guys went to bed early, guys ate vegetables.

Now some guys have the watts/weight ratio of CAT 2 riders. Knock on wood, they're going to tear some legs off this season.

After Mt. Weather and Naked Mt.