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It’s strange to pin your whole year on 45-minutes. Not only strange but downright dumb. But so are most addictions.
It had been a pretty shit season. An accident in August seemed to drag and left me looking for former fitness. But I had already paid for the airfare and registration for Cyclocross Nationals. The AirBNB I had booked ended up being bizarre; the rental house’s pipe burst and I ended up sleeping in the owner’s daughter’s pink princess bed. But the bike was ready and all my frustration settled in my head like the clouds the storm clouds blew in from the East. There was nothing to do in Kentucky except be the calm little center of the world and wait for my start time.
It’s cold and dank but I pull off my arm warmers, from the last row I can toss them behind me to my Mettle team boss Randall. The arm warmers are a safety blanket from the elements, a last bit of luxury I won’t need. I feel the need to light everything on fire.
“Riders you are inside thirty seconds,” roars overhead from speakers in the distance and the rowdy lycra-clad crowd hushes with their last few breathes in the frigid dampness. Time slows but even so I am so far back in the state chute sea of lycra that I have no panic, it’ll be an extra few seconds before my actual race will start. The light switches and followed by the sound of cleats snapping into pedals ripples backwards row by row.
My entire world narrows. Nothing exists outside the Kentucky blue grass turned over and over until it has become a serpentine pig pen of mud.
This is it. There is only forward.
I am in full control but somehow the sensation is different than the dozens and dozens of past races. My body is not my own. My sense of self has shrunk into a tiny operator. Rather than feeling the effort it’s like I am piloting a myself from within. My body is but a vehicle of effort; a machine made for careening through a muddy obstacle course. I can read all the inputs meanwhile the bike sliding beneath me is somewhere between marathon and rodeo.
In front of me is a school of lycra clad fish winding their way between the tape. Bumping and moving as one. I know the fast lines. But I do not take them. I must zig where others zag. Passes come by the handful, moving and taking space. As we careen and splash. Momentum is my only friend.
The flat upper bends and chicanes are done and my tactic has been working. The crowds gather on either side of the huge mud chute. It’s not clear where the puddle stops and the brown toboggan run starts, it is all varying degrees of muddiness. The announcers overhead echo from afar broken as a space transmission while the crowd screaming on my side is in tongues. The cowbell is the only noise that makes any sense. Racers cluster to the safer high side, my only opportunity is to zag and take the low side. The decision is made.
But in front of me is a slow motion crash begins to roll from high left to the right. There is no way to actually stop. Control is not what you have in these slippery conditions, you merely where the bike should go. Exhale. Let go. Let go of the brake, it’s the only chance. But gravity slides the riders in front of me further. I think it’ll be o…
A bar end catches the brake lever. Sirens in my head come alive. Error! Error!
Rolling from head to back then presses off the soft clay mud with a right hand. Find the handle bars and go. Auto-pilot takes over, somehow in a blink I’ve crashed rolled and rebounded. I have no vision while a rhythmic splatter from beneath shoes mixes with the sounds cowbell let me know where I am. My glasses covered in brown, reflexively I tossed into the unknown world beyond the course tape. There is no stopping. Only forward.
Hanging onto the bars is incredibly difficult with an inch of slick mud on your palm. But back off the bike we go to run up chutes and lime stairs. Then back down to the basin bottom. The track is so tilted and thick it is tricky to know whats faster. Run. Jump. Pedal. Jump. Run.
The sea of racers has been scattered along the course now. The treacherous conditions has separated mice from men in less than a lap. The battle shifts from one another to against the race course itself. But for the first time I can see the front of the race as the course doubles back on itself. As I continue to dodge, pick and battle with other riders. The race track takes us back up what was is the main mud chute sees all the same people simply shifted over twelve feet. Their chants for carnage are now wide eyed at the mud covered monsters coming back up the hill.
Stamping at the pedals my sights narrow on more racers. And now I can begin to take more inside lines. Using puddles to crudely wash off my bike and keep the mud from setting up.
The machine is beginning to crack now. Running too hot.
At the top of the hill the pits already whirring their ferocious hum. As we hit the only flat easy ground for the whole race I rip off my gloves. Undoing the velcro with my teeth. The gloves have been figuratively off for a lap, but the gesture still feels appropriate.
There is still three more laps…
From the basically the last row of 137 starters I managed to get 14th on the day. Passing well over 100 riders. With no pit bike. This will probably be my best performance on a bike in over a decade of amateur racing. The only accolades earned are my memories of what it feels like to have a peak performance. It’s addicting. Makes you want to chase the dragon.
One last note for clarification. This race was in Dec 2018 and was technically the second Cyclocross Nationals of 2018. USA Cycling flipped back to a December schedule after trying the more international January slot.
