Oregon Road Race State Championship

Turner, Oregon  May 12, 2012

(written 5/15/2012 - gm)

This is a blow by blow of my first road race. I raced in the Men’s Masters 40+/50+/60+ Cat 4/5 race.  Race time was 1:45pm, a sunny Saturday in the low 80’s with a 8-10 mph wind.  The race was 47.7 miles and consisted of 3 x 15 mile loops.  Very little flat, mostly serious rollers with several good climbs - a very punchy, dynamic course.  Most folks found it very challenging. My time was 2:15:30 @ 21.1 mph average.  I placed 1st in the Men's Cat 4/5 60+ race, making me the Oregon State Road Race Champion in my division that year.  Go figure!?  I was and am currently a Cat 5; at that time, my racing age was 63.


Here's how it went.

Al had it right, “Nothing happens, until something moves.” ~ Albert Einstein

Lap 1: “The Rude Awakening”.  We’re off!  I started from the back and worked my way up the left side of the group.  Within the first mile I managed to loose the wheel in front of me and another rider grabbed it immediately.  I was now locked out of the paceline to the right with only open road on my left.  Next thing I know an official’s car pulls up and shouts, “5669, Centerline Warning!”  A rude awakening.  So this is how it’s gonna be!  “Garth, you’re runnin’ with the big dogs now”, I tell myself.  I see an opening up ahead, accelerate, move up, and tuck in again.

The first thing I notice is how exciting this is and how unexpectedly at ease I am in mid-pack.  It reminded me of my competitive track days running fast in close quarters.  I also notice to my surprise, like someone flipping a switch, that I'm in total full-on track race mode - focused, vigilant, quietly aggressive and attentive to the nuances of pace, energy expenditure and tactics.

In the pack, nothing is happening so fast that I can't react to it comfortably.  However, I also fully realize the physics of the situation.  We are all in an envelope traveling in excess of 20 mph.  That’s a considerable amount of kinetic energy. Any “incident” that would cause a sudden deceleration and that energy would, suddenly and violently, be bled off in the form of bone crunching and bike mangling.  The thought sobers my hubris.

At the end of the first lap, I'm a bit more tired than I'd like but not unexpectedly so, as the group is already really working the course.  It is clear these boys came to play and I'm squarely in the belly of the beast.  This was not going to be some old guy death march race.

Lap 2: “Aimin’ To Misbehave”.   You can tell the 40-year old seasoned riders and the “teams” are up to no good now.  You can tell, this lap, they aim to misbehave.  And they do.  No soft-peddling this lap.  Lots of attacks and surges.  This lap is about softening up the weak.  The culling process had clearly begun.

I stay with the lead group. But my god, it was crazy-mad dynamic!  One second I'm in good position, tucked in protecting myself from the wind and we’re moving right along.  The next second, there’s a paceline on the outer left of the group moving up to the front.  Now, I'm toward the back of the pack again and have to work my way back toward the front.  Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.  And I mean, ad nauseum!

Then about midway through this lap, it happened.  That thing all cyclists dread.  I hit a small bump in the road.  My tire bounces up slightly and suddenly to my horror it is now overlapped and affixed to the back wheel of the rider in front of me.  Although I am the Buddha Belly of calm, I fully appreciated the tragic calculus of the situation.

I watched in morbid fascination. Everything, and I mean everything, disappeared from focus except my front wheel locked onto his back wheel. I clearly heard the buzzing sound of rubber on rubber.  Now this is weird. Really weird.  The next thing rattling in my head was the voice of my sailplane instructor.  Not in nice, long, clear, declarative sentences but in a very tight, all-at-once, nanosecond delivered ball of information which when unpacked conveyed, “... work the problem... the sailplane wants to fly itself, just get out of it’s way,... whatever happens keep flying the plane,...people crash because they overdo, underdo, do too early, do too late,... keep flying the plane... keep flying the plane.”   Totally weird but oh so helpful in that time dilated moment.

Luckily the rider in front was holding his line rock solid.  My wheel felt stuck as if held to his by a very strong magnet.  I knew that the reflexive thing to do, to pull my wheel away from his, would lead to mayhem, screams and serious amounts of pain.  So ever so gingerly, gingerly, gingerly, I decreased my speed and slowly let my front wheel slide off his back wheel.  When my wheel cleared I went in the direction the bike wanted to go, slightly to the right.  Then it was over, as if nothing had happened.  This all occurred within about 3-seconds.  The fullness of this event didn't hit me until after the race.  And the thought of it quickened my pulse.

Lap 3: “Blood in the Water”.  The bell rang for the last lap as we went by the finish line.  I'm tired but in relatively good shape and brace myself for a very tough lap.  I am not disappointed.  The ladies start to bring the hurt in earnest now.  Each “roller” is now given special loving attention - of the tough love variety. And of course these “rollers”, as if by magic, have now increased in both gradient and length since my last visit, transforming themselves into legitimate climbs.

When you’re in the middle of the pack you don't see the climb as much as feel it.  And this one was taking its toll.  It suddenly occurred to me that my fatigue was growing fairly rapidly.  I was clearly on an increasing and frighteningly steep fatigue trajectory now.  Then I realized with surprising suddenness, and not without a touch of disappointment.  This was it.  It was go-no-go decision time.  And that decision had to be made very, very soon.

Sometimes you have to roll the “hard six”.  My choices were clearly laid out.  I could go “stupidly heroic” and risk driving my physiology into an unrecoverable state or let go of the rope and try and recoup in time to deal with the group of riders behind me.  One minute I'm mixing it up with the big boys, the next I get the dispassionate memo; “we’re finished with this poser”, as I'm unceremoniously shot off the back like so much “human chum”, nothing more than “blood in the water” left for the rapidly approaching sharks behind me.  I awaited their first savage bite. Then,... nothing.  Nothing.

I'm alone in “no-man’s land” now, about 10-miles from home.  The race has gone up the road. And for the first time I'm looking at my Garmin, focused on getting my heart rate stabilized while maintaining at least 19 mph into a stiff headwind.  I make a turn and then head up the road which gives me a clear view of the road behind me.  I chuckle at what I know is the silly-stupid smile painted on my face.  The group behind me? They’re riding a different race, one in another zip code.  I keep at it.  I suspicioned that others in the lead group made different decisions.  Ones that might yet cost them.

It started about 5-miles out, a faint tingling sensation in my face, that got stronger. By 4-miles out that feeling was unmistakable.  My face was morphing into serious shark like lines.  Yes, there was blood in the water again, but this time it wasn't mine.  At 3-miles out, I was now down in the drops, in a full-on blood crazed frenzy as I chased down 5 riders who from their looks had badly overcooked it, the finish line not coming soon enough to save them.

Postscript: “In the Lap of the Gods”.   The road racing gods smiled on me many times that day, but I know damn well they are a capricious and fickle lot.  Not to be counted on, not to be trusted, and certainly not ever allowed to seduce one into complacency.  And so it goes, like so many other endeavors in life,.... “you buy the ticket, you take the ride,... and you see what happens”.

:: garth ::