State champs in Salem: Double up, head out

(Race report a bit slow in coming; so it goes.)

Saturday morning, at an unnecessarily early hour. It's cold. It's grey. It's probably raining, has just rained, and/or is about to start raining again. And I'm supposed to (1) stop sleeping (2) get out of bed (3) pack my bag (4) clean the bike I haven't touched since PIR and (5) pile in a car to go ride my bike in the rain and mud? Oh right, and (6) if by "ride" you mean "race".

Grumble.


But, really - it'll be fun, it's good to get off your (ahem) and go do things, in general. Plus, you have two awesome cheerleaders and a teammate for this venture, so ... go for it, eh?

Tomas met me here; Rob swung by to pick us up in the official Team Slow-Mobile (Rob's PT Cruiser) and we headed to North Portland to get Erinne. Bikes strapped to the trunk thanks to Halley's loaned bike rack - and we were off down the I-5 and heading to the capital to race our faces off. Or at least ride our bikes.

At some point in the short track season, Rob suggested that I race both beginner's women (first race) and women's singlespeed (second race). It would be extra-hard core! It would be hilarious! (Um, it would likely be impossible? Those races are f-ing hard.) But the suggestion of the absurdity had a certain attraction...

...so, flying down the interstate, I proposed the Axel-Plan to Erinne. Race women's singlespeed, then turn around and race women's beginners. And we'd finish upright, maybe, and we might finish last - but we'd get extra badass points, and a bit of bragging rights, and what a great way to end the race season. (Schedule conflicts mean no USGP for me - so Salem was it...)

(montage of much driving goes here.)

We found the venue, we pre-walked the course. Someone had replaced logical ground and reasonable mud with some horrible Nutella combination. There were hills all over the course, off-camber slicks, ups and downs and also the token concrete sections. And Nutella. Slippery snotty thick evil-looking mud; not the benevolent muck of PIR - no, no, this was frightening stuff.

Just relax, Rob says - weight back, and let your front wheel go where it needs to. Look ahead of you on the course, not straight down - that'll make you choke. (Just like riding a velodrome, you know...)

At the singlespeed start line, there's Beth, her ever-excited and slightly-shit-talking self (this course is awful! impossible! let's go have fun! oh my gawd mud! but also awesome!). And... ...and there's all these other people. In matching spandex. On really nice bikes. And they all look fast. Really fast. The kind of people who have coaches and training regimes and nutrition plans.

Sigh. This is when I want to give up on racing. Girl's outdone before she starts...

We were racing with the men's singlespeed field, and the men's B field. Both men's fields started, then we headed up to the line... Beth and I got our call-ups for our season of perpetual winning at PIR short track - everyone else shuffled up behind us.

And we were off...

...and there they went...

What followed was a flashback to everything I hated about short track. Having no one in sight to race against, or race with, or cheer on, or catch, or be caught by. A lonely, lonely course, with spectators giving you the "c'mon, you can do it, don't give up!" type cheers because you are by. yourself. out. on. the course. And you look tired.

And then there's the men's B field -- apparently devoid of communication skills, these riders blow past you with zero space and negative warning. When the pack caught me (of course they did), I just pulled off the course and let them all go. Yeah, this is bad racing. But I'd rather lose a place than deal with the anxiety of a bunch of performance athletes behind me.

At one point, I was lapped ... by a woman on a singlespeed. New sense of defeat comes here.

God bless Tomas and Rob - Tomas with his pom-poms and cheering, jogging next to me as I slogged through the slick shit and struggled up the hills; Coach Anderson being encouraging and positive at points throughout the course. (I think they both ran at least five miles that day, across the course)

Three laps later, they finally let us stop. I crossed the finish line angry - at feeling unwelcome on the race course (not fast enough and/or not male enough), at myself (not fast enough). Unhappy.

Chug a can of coconut juice. Drink some water. Race off to the start line. 45 minutes of racing done, 45 to go...

And there's a reasonably-sized beginner women's field - not the 105 of the Cross Crusade races, but a more manageable sub-20 field. A normal spread of folks - some maybe newer, some maybe should be up with the B's, some grassroots and some clearly sponsored in and out the wazoo. Erinne and I were pre-Nutella'ed, pulling mud off our bikes at the start line - pre-tired or pre-warmed or... something.

AND... GO!

(There's Beth! Screaming "We win! We win!" at thje start line...)

The mud was still unforgiving. I still ran more than I ever have on a racecourse. (and I still never could quite ride that one sharp hill; the fear of endo-ing is too strong in this one...) And I wasn't in the front of the pack by any means...

...but I could see people who were in my category. We caught each other. I was dropped. I passed people. The hills were still hard, the technical sections still needed all of one's focus. There was some amount of struggling. There was a lot of being really ridiculously tired, and having an intense desire to stop riding through this ridiculous snot-like ground-slick, and knowing that if a grizzly came up behind me, I couldn't actually move any faster than I was right now.

There's Tomas with his pom-poms. DO IT FOR THE BEER! GO KBOTT GO! GREAT JOB! KEEP IT UP! There's Rob with his estimate of race-placement... Two more spots, top 10 ... pick it up, pick it up... Top 10, hold it...

Lather, rinse, repeat. Same as the singlespeed race - three laps.

I crossed the finish line without anyone to chase (but passed narrowly by the famed Heidi Swift at the end) - and in front of two people I'd been leapfrogging all course. So - not last. And no crashes. (I fell over once in the ss race. When you're moving that slowly, I don't know if it counts as a fall.)

I was tired, a good solid worn-the-heck out. And I was really proud of myself. And tired.

And done racing for the year, having done pretty darn well for someone who bought her mountainbike two weeks before short track started, and was new to this entire scene.

Over dinner and beer we talked goals for next year - for the "team" and for us as individuals. Have more to say on this - but for now - I'm off to catch a train to catch a train to go up to Seattle for the annual non-holiday: a chill dinner in with Andrew in his goat-haven of a recluse house, and then Meg's birthday over the weekend.