Making it through the holidays with any semblance of fitness is hard. This is particularly true when you don’t start the holiday season with any. With the goal of having a decent race at Nationals it was my intent to a block of training and rebuild between Thanksgiving and New Year. Much easier said than done. What actually happened is that I stayed sick and instead of piling on the training miles, I piled on heaping spoonfuls of guilt for every extra cookie or extra bottle of wine I consumed.
By the numbers: Between Thanksgiving and the end of the year I trained 7 hours--Not 7 hours per week--7 hours. Total. In 6 weeks.
By Christmas, it was obvious to me that my Nationals race would not be for anything but the experience of attending a high production value event and as possibly my one and only opportunity to race nationals without having to get on an airplane. In other words, race for the fun or racing. This is supposed to be fun, right?
Later than I should have, checked the race predictor/call-up list on the USAC website and discovered that I was projected to come in something like 97th. I knew it was going to be a strong field but dudes I routinely battle with (Nick M for example) were projected to come in the 30’s 40’s. Hmm. Odd.
I do a little digging and learn that USAC rankings (basically a rip-off of
crossresults.com rankings) are calculated on your average for the best 5 races within the preceding 12 months. If you don’t have 5 races, they average in 600 points for each missing race. I raced exactly 5 times this season, and while I had a couple really mediocre races I never had a terrible race so I couldn’t understand the ranking. Then I discovered that my 4th place at Emmaus wasn’t showing up. I emailed the promoter who did what he could and I submitted a request with USAC but as far as I can tell they don’t actually give a shit about this sort of thing. As a result, I was seeded last row.
I will admit, I thought seriously about bagging Nationals at this point. What’s the point of driving 2+ hours to race for 45 minutes when five of those minutes would be spent standing around at the first pinch point waiting for traffic to clear. But thanks to some sensitive and nurturing words from
@Dominos (I think her words were “stop being a wanker, put on your big girl panties and go race your goddamn bike”. I’m paraphrasing of course)
On Thursday night, I packed up the paddy wagon with 2 bikes, 14 wheels, 1 fluid trainer, and a bunch of other random crap. Just before arriving to the race parking, the Jetta in front of me decided it would be easier to slow down by smashing into a another car at 40mph than by applying his brakes. I narrowly avoided the Jetta as he spun across two lanes and parked the car just as the initial adrenaline high was wearing off.
I tooled around, found
@seanrunnette ,
@Harry Hamilton @MadisonDan and
@jShort and we ready to hop on course during the 11AM pre-ride. I was super stoked about the course after the pre-ride. As Colin Reuter said to me after his race, the course was “wicked haahd bike handling with almost no pedaling.” A perfect course for me. Super tricky frozen ruts, slippery, technical, no too hilly, very few power secations. Then the sun came out and warmed everything up.
By our 1:40 race, the course was super muddy in the sunny areas and most of the really challenging ice lines were soft enough to give a lot of grip. Shitttt. What was a skill course had become much more powery.
I put on my race stuff, rode around a bit and bumped into Erin and Angelo who graciously offered to pit for me then sped through foot traffic to make last call to staging. As mentioned, I was basically last row. Behind Jeremy and Dan A. We chatted, made jokes, tried to hear the race announcements but gave up on that because we were a mile away from the line. And without much warning, the whitle blew!
We waited…waited…waited. The Go! Stop. Go! Slow. Go! I found a couple holes then set myself up to take the right hand line through the first sweeper and stayed hard right close to the tape before the pit entrance #1. It worked and I passed a bunch of people until I heard “rider down” and had to go full lock to avoid smashing into a pile of bodies. After untangling some handlebars from my rear wheel I was off again.
First time up the anthill, I went middle line. At the top the conga line was moving until near the end, so I stepped down a couple feet to a non-line and ran past probably 10-15 guys who were stacked up at the pinch point at the end of the run. Through the woods I worked to pick off guys one at a time and probably passed another 5 by the time we hit the drainage dip where I promptly crashed and smashed my left hip. Luckily no damage to the bike. I run the “dip” and try to get back in the groove.
After that it was just a game of picking off guys one by one…trying to be smooth and not make mistakes. Running up the ant hill the second time, I noticed how heavy my bike had gotten so I told my faithful pit crew I was coming in next lap. Erin and the crew executed a perfect bike swap but a half a lap later the said that the power washers were out of water and there was nothing they could do. I pitted again on the next lap and took the still-heavy A bike back.
I tried a different line on the ant hill every lap. They all sucked. The low rut was really hard to ride and the high line had gotten impossible to ride. The running was way harder that it looked on TV, with roots and rocks and big ankle twisting holes.
One to go:
https://twitter.com/usacycling/status/817449306491863040
I bled spots on the power sections and re-passed guys in the techy bits. Last lap I made sure to get in front of a couple guys before the woods and rode them clean to get daylight except at this point I only had about 3 working gears. The ice and mud was starting to re-freeze and wreak havoc. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed the Di2 rear derailleur miss a shift.
After the race Kathryn and Andrew were waiting for me after the line with my race bag and warm jackets. Super pro support from those cats. After 5 minutes of cursing the blood returned to my fingers and I could start to talk again.
I think the race went about as well as could be expected given the situation. I passed something like 50 to 60 people and finished right about where Crossresults had predicted. With a last row start, I’ll take it. My lap times were relatively consistent with only 1 actual crash. But mostly, it was a really fun course to race. So…winning?
After the race, Sean bought me two amazing beef empanadas. We stood around in the beer tent to get warm then I got in the car and made it home by toddler dinner time. We put the kids to bed, ate copious amounts of Saag Paneer and Dal Makahni, drank a couple beers and went to sleep feeling pretty content about another season ending.
