The Mad Madder's Blog

I can defy gravity…sort of | May 5, 2010

With five road races under my belt already this season, it was about time a criterium showed up on the calendar: the Marshall and Sterling Spa Crit.

I like crits.  They’re an ADHD girl’s dream. The requirement for patience, so absent from my repertoire and so necessary for road racing success, is missing. Sure you might sit in a bit on someone’s wheel, take a rest after a pull. But, basically, you redline. In crits you grimace. You gasp. You sprint. You lean. You test the limits of gravity on the corners and the limits of your heart on the straights. This is a chance to prove how much pain you’re willing to put yourself through, how far you can drive yourself. It’s my kind of world.

And this race, above all others on my race calendar this year, was important to me. Almost a year ago, at the first running of this race, I lost my best friend, Natalia. I still think of her every day. Her memory drives me and this race, dedicated to her and raising funds for her scholarship fund, had been in my sights for months now. I’d been doing everything within my power to make sure the race would be a success and, of course, to make damn sure I was ready to race.

So after a fabulous morning course marshalling, watching face after face pass by distorted in pain (with some spectacular crashes sprinkled in to really get me inspired), I was relieved from my post on turn four and it was time to get ready.

I’d downed three bottles of water already but that had barely dented the feeling of oppressive languor that mid-80s temps combined with a muggy Louisiana swelter imposes on a Northerner. By the time I’d donned my kit (the black will be awesome in XC and ‘cross season but not so much at that moment) and jumped on the trainer, I was pretty sure I was going to keel over from heat exhaustion and miss the race, dangling carcass-style from my bike, feet still securely clipped in. But, luckily, I had some great helpers keeping me entertained and hydrated while my coach, Mike, combined race strategy pep talk with paparazzi harassment. Disaster averted.

Before I knew it, I was off the trainer, joined by the other four wonderful Team Elevate Cycles ladies racing: Aurora, CJ, Julie and Melissa, and riding some preview laps. Fortunately, once you got moving, the breeze alleviated some of the stickiness. It was still hot, but tolerable.

The twenty-odd of us were quickly back at the start line and lined up to go. I knew a good percentage of the field and remembered how quickly the race had jumped last year. So I chose to line up behind the girl I believed to be the fastest: Jenny Ives. I just wanted the fastest wheel to take me through the first turn, the turn that scares me the most since the full field is in contention and battling for the hole shot.

And I’m sure that would have been a brilliant plan if, when the pace car took off and the race was on, I could clip in my other pedal. I’m an infamous fumbler even with my two-sided mountain cleats and with my Mavic pedals I often feel like I’m the star of a circus clown act. Fumble anxiously and watch the field distance itself. Look down at foot. Fumble again. Look up. Field is further away. Fumble. Further. Fumble. Click.

Now to chase. Luckily this is familiar territory for me. I had a full 2009 season of experience being nearly constantly basically last in road and XC races to draw on. It taught me how much fun it is to pass people. And my experience being last-ish in crits has taught me that if you don’t pass people quick you’re done. So I passed. I passed inside. I passed outside. I pedaled hard through the first two corners and sprinted up the backside. And caught the leaders. Phew. Now to sit in….

…For all of ten seconds. Because the lead group was working hard to gap the field and shed anyone with plans to suck along at their tail. Oh well. Can’t complain I’m bored. Turn, sprint, turn, sprint. Open gap, close gap. Rotate, lead, drop back, catch a wheel. Turn, sprint. Turn, sprint.

Working together, our group of six riders started to lap a few riders. I felt good. Every time we passed the finish line, the official turned the lap counter card. As I passed. Me. Not some group in the far distance, laps ahead and getting further from me with every pass. Me. Suddenly all those painful hours suffering on the trainer were worth it. All those hours watching any movie with a high explosion to dialogue ratio. All those hours squirming awkwardly trying to make biking in place a comfortable proposition. I felt GOOD!

And then, coming out of turn three, infamous turn three, turn three of the disastrous crashes, the girl ahead of me, reacting to a rider in her path, turned her wheel into a lip in the road and found herself tumbling perpendicular to my path.  There was no space for evasion. I was hugging her wheel as close as a racer could and ran directly into her frame as I collided with her at 25+ mph. Mountain biker instincts kicked in immediately. Do not stop your fall with an arm and be sure to protect your head. So I kept my hands on my handlebars, tucked my shoulder forward and prepared to roll out of the fall.

There was a clichéd moment when I found myself a million miles off the ground. A frozen second. I clearly saw every detail of Rodney’s black and red Fizik tape, every detail of the fallen rider’s white, pink and black Anthem kit, the seam in the road that torqued her wheel.

Then impact. Impact comes at full speed. You need to be able to forget it to continue, so it comes fast. It seemed I was up before I hit. My bike extricated from the chaos, I threw myself in the saddle, clipped in with marginally less trouble than usual and was back in the race.

Oh surprise, I was chasing again. (I think there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy at work sometimes…I’m so surprised I’m doing well that I subconsciously self-sabotage…Probably not, but I am sensing a pattern.) But, after three quarters of a lap, I managed to reach Julie, who was waiting generously to help me try to bridge back up to the break.

Having a team is wonderful. And having a team with selfless riders willing to work for each other is a luxury I never thought I’d have. Julie let the break go to wait for me. She burned all her matches to give me a chance to catch back on. Ultimately our chase was futile. The two of us could not bridge the gap my flip had caused. Four excellent riders working together with a 45 second advantage was simply too much to neutralize, but the rest she provided gave me the chance to stay in the race. Having toasted herself for my cause, Julie sent me off on my own with a little less than half the race left. From that point on I was on my own, knowing I had to be worthy of her effort.

Each lap my teammates at the finish line called out the gap time to the lead group, steadily growing toward a minute as they picked up the pace as the race neared its end. Try as I might I couldn’t make time on them. But the lap counter kept falling and I was still passing racers.  Only a few more laps. Only a little more pain. There were only 4 riders ahead of me and I would not let anyone get near enough to me to take my 5^th place.

With three laps to go, I leaned ever further into the corners, stood to sprint up the short ‘hills’, and made sure when I hit the line I had left nothing in the tank. On the final lap, I summoned the last of my reserves, sprinting alone across the finish line (somewhat foolishly I suppose since a sprint finish is fundamentally unnecessary with no one to outsprint…but I was carried away by the roar of the crowd…). Done.

5^th place. Only a few places higher than last year’s 8^th place but when results are posted there will be a time by my name. Not lap but a real time. Just over a minute and a half down from the girls who chose the traditional non-crash route to the finish. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t crashed. But, for once, that didn’t matter to me. I had raced well. I had emerged nearly unscathed from what should have been a collarbone breaking crash. I would make no excuses and finish my day with a smile.

All that was left to do was collect my winnings (enough to buy a beer or two and remind myself that next time I should keep the rubber side down.

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