1speed
Incredibly profound yet fantastically flawed
This past weekend I made my annual pilgrimage to the Leesburg Bakers Dozen in VA. This is probably one of my favorite events all year - a Saturday in April with nothing to do or think about except pedaling my bike around a really cool farm on the Potomac all day long. It's really a beautiful place to ride a bike ... under most circumstances. (Let's call that "foreshadowing" ...)
I took Friday off from work and drove down to the venue to get a pre-ride. I arrived around 2:30 and jumped ont he bike right away and headed off. On even years, the course runs CCW, and odd years CW. There really doesn't seem to be a better direction in my opinion, but the start on odd years is definitely more hectic because there is a short rooty climb less than a mile into the race that tends to create a backup as folks slip on a root or two. So there is always a mad dash to be up front and not get stuck on a conga line.
The rooty climb ...
My pre-ride went well ... the course was super fast and fun - just as I remembered it.
In the pine tunnel ...
Singletrack is what the LBD is all about ...
As I was finishing up, though, what would become the real star of the show was just making her arrival ...
I was in my car and changed by the time the rain arrive around 3:30 or 4. It was really coming down hard for a bit but then after about 15 minutes it stopped. But that would prove to be an all too brief respite for the rest of the weekend.
Ultimately, the rain started up again after dark and it pretty much rained all night, pretty hard at times. And I think that as the start loomed on Saturday morning, you could kind of feel the nervousness in the entire field. People seemed happy to be out there, but there was definitely a palpable sense of "so what is this going to be like?" from a lot of folks before the start. I chatted with Larry Etgen and @capedoc and a few of their crew and I think we all had a sense of resignation that we were in for a long day. After the meeting, everyone headed to the start area right away. I had probably my worst start position of the five years I've done this race, getting stuck about six rows back because I'd had to make a quick stop at my pit before heading down the road to the line. But I wasn't too concerned -- I kind of figured the start would be slower than usual, and I guess that was right. Of course, my fellow-Philly guy Jake Wade killed it off the start line, taking the hole shot on a fatty. That dude is part cyborg.
I did get hung up a bit on the rooty climb, but I really couldn't complain too much - I mean, that's a tough slick section at speed when it's dry. On Saturday morning, it was a sloppy horrible mess already, so there was some understandable carnage. No worries, though, because I was feeling better than I thought I would and I was right in line with three other SSers as we cleared the area and rode through the twisting and now soaking wet pine tunnels. Ultimately, I was doing fine throughout the first lap, but I did have to give up a few spots at one point when one poor guy took a really nasty spill on some rocks and was clearly hurt. I stopped to help him and stayed with a him a few minutes until he could breathe. He said he was done and was going to cut back across the field and he was okay to do it on his own, so I remounted an headed out. I figured that cost me some time, but also knew that in 13 hours you have some time to play with and I would have felt like an asshole if I just left the dude there.
I finished the lap in about 46 minutes, which meant that riding-wise I was doing okay if I discounted the lost time for stopping.
And then ... it all went shithouse.
I won't get into the details of each subsequent lap because no one likes to read about a massacre with no happy ending, so here are a few "highlights" of the rest of the day:
- From lap one on, the rain only increased in intensity and the course deteriorated exponentially each lap
- I didn't have time to think about how much I was hating it myself because I kept encountering people who were on the edge of losing it and was trying my best to say nice or funny things to them to make them forget the suck at least a little bit. I saw more brokedn derailleurs on Saturday than in allt he previous races I've ever done combined.
- I completely forgot to race -- I was just trying to survive.
- I saw Eric standing on the side waiting for his teammate to tap him in and thought he looked way too clean. I may have said this to him, but I honestly don't recall anything I said or did after my second lap - I just remember mud.
- They finally decided to pull the plug and stop the race at 4:00 because the stories coming from the back half of the course were horrific. And I can attest that conditions were as bad or worse than the organizers believed them to be - the entire second half of the lap was more or less unrideable peanut butter mud that packed into every book of your bike. In general, bad conditions are the rare instance where a SS can be a real advantage ... except when mud starts packing up. Then you have no "out" you can't drop to an easy gear and spin. You just pedal against the fudge and then carry your 50 lb bike when it can't move anymore.
In the end, if I had been able to convince myself to don one more lap, I'd have finished third. But I honestly didn't care. I just wanted to stop and so I ultimately finished fourth with five laps. Two of the guys ahead of me were too far gone, but the other guy just had more mental toughness than I did (or else he was batshit crazy - could go either way on that one) and he sucked it up for another hike a bike slog while I sat on my cooler and stared off into space for an hour in the rain just to collect myself enough to change and leave.
I will be back to the LBD for sure, but I'm not sure I'll ever want to do something like that to one of my bikes again so if it rains the day before, I may have to pull the plug int eh future. It took me three hours just to get my bike to the point where I can take it into the shop to get new bearings on ... well, pretty much everything that uses bearings. The whole bike sounds like a retired WWE wrestler's knees right now. I looked down at one point on Saturday and my body and the bike were completely monochromatic light brown. I was literally covered head to toe in thick greasy mud. I'd love to say I fought the good fight and came out a better racer for it, but honestly that ain't true. I was laughing at how much I hated it by the end of the day. Even this morning, I am still picking mud out of my eyes. After the race on Saturday, I had blurry vision all night and my eyes physically hurt from the amount of dirt in them. I honestly never want to experience something like that again!
After the carnage - smile is meant to be ironic ...
