A good race gone bad

I threw out a tweet last night about this, but I wanted to break it down in more detail. I don’t know why, call it cathartic.

The course last night at the Driveway was very interesting. It had you going up the corkscrew, and then quickly afterwards taking a sharp, over-90-degree turn to the right. At the top of the corkscrew you turn to the left, so ideally you want to be on the inside of the turn at the top of the hill so that you can have the nicer line going into the sharp turn.

So while I felt great, even up and over the corkscrew, I let myself slip back in the group beyond halfway. I was maintaining that position with no problem. I just wasn’t working to get any closer to the front. Bad mistake.

Every time we went over the corkscrew I would line up early on the left side of the road. And every time I had to pull some maneuver to not get pushed off the course by some jackhole who decided he wanted to be where I was because he hadn’t thought fare enough ahead entering the corkscrew.

Then we were going up the hill, and I am looking ahead of me and see this group of people, and they all seem to be trying to get into one spot. I think to myself, those people aren’t all going to fit. 

CRACK CRACK BAHM SCRRAAPE

Yep, they didn’t fit. The pile of bodies and bikes continued to grow to the right. I squeeze my brakes enough to keep me from plowing into it. My job is to protect my front wheel. On that subject, my front wheel does role over or get hit by something on the ground, but I stay up no problem, though I come to basically a complete stop. The people further back all zoom past me.

Here is my fatal mistake. I didn’t instantly jump up out of the saddle and kill it. I got rolling and waited until we got around the two sharp corners and then started back down the hill to get on top of it. I chased like mad for a lap, slowly making ground, but when we came back up the corkscrew my legs popped for just a few seconds. 

I kept riding with an AT&T guy for several laps just getting some workout in. With a few laps left a side stitch cropped up. I am not sure why. I’m assuming the humidity had me sweating more than I thought, and that I didn’t hydrate enough pre-race. Who knows? I was able to fight it for a lap, but it got worse with like a couple laps left in the race I pulled out and spent some time spinning around the general area to cool down and get the stitch to go away.

So very frustrating. I mean, I really felt good. I felt comfortable in the pack, I didn’t feel nervous. I was able to keep up with the accelerations and never feel overexerted. My two mistakes were not staying near the front enough and not reacting fast enough after the crash to get back on. Oh well, live and learn. I was excited that I reacted fast enough to the crash itself to not go down. 

I am feeling great in my training, and the results are starting to show up in the race. I think this is the strongest I have ever felt. I am looking forward to the race next week before our cruise. I am hoping to actually come out of that with a solid finish.

Quick discussion of the paper. This paper, being about my dissertation work, is at times bringing me back to a weird place in my life. Finishing my dissertation wasn’t the happiest time ever. This paper, unfortunately, has occasionally brought back some weird ghosts of that time. I will be very glad to ship it out next Friday. That being said, cycling has been helping to keep me sane. Going out and riding my bike has helped me to focus and to let out some of the anxiety and frustration. While I have traded time working for riding, I find in the long run I have been more productive and more sane.