A really good weekend

You can't stay down forever. You just can't. No matter how much of a sad sack of shit you are, at some point something's going to happen and you're going to smile in spite of yourself. That was what happened to me on Saturday. I woke up, and in spite of everything, I had a good day.

I'd been fighting all Friday with Grease Monkey. In the morning it was about her dishes in the sink. In the evening it was about her ex girlfriend coming over to get some stuff that had been in storage all this time. And before bed I had finally sat her down and made her listen while I said my piece (calmly), which led to her telling me to never speak to her again. So despite a lullaby of screaming and slamming doors on Friday night, I slept like a rock (as you do when you've done as much crying in one day as I'd done), and I woke up on Saturday in a good mood.

It was sunny and warm like it usually is in late May, not late March as I saddled up to go on my first group ride in about six months with real, live people. I had planned to ride easy with Slick, Pepe, and Jorge in order to save my legs for Sunday's first race of the season. Usually everyone rolls out together and then we regroup at a stop sign five miles out, so I didn't think anything of rolling out with the big guns... until we hit the stop sign and they kept right on rolling. I turned around to look for Slick and them, but there was no one behind me. When I turned back, everyone had taken off full steam... up a hill. I had to think fast, so I took off after them... and immediately dropped my chain (haven't done that in... years!). By the time I'd caught on to the pack, I was committed to keeping up with the big boys for the day and in significant oxygen debt.

In the past it has taken all I have to keep up with the fast group when they're cruising along. When they're hammering, forget it! These are guys who average 22+ mph for a century, although no one's in that kind of shape this time of year. But today I had no problem keeping up with anyone, even when everyone gunned it into the town line sprints. It looked like Eric's coaching was working after all. I am so strong! I kept telling myself over and over, because affirmations are supposed to come true if you say them right.

The only time I had to push in the whole ride was going up the damned hills. We'd be riding along just fine and I'd barely be pedaling. Then, when I knew a hill was coming up I'd try to jockey toward the front and then rip it up the hill as hard as I could. And fashoom! Vroom! Whirrrrr! I'd be 10 yards off the back by the top of the rise. Luckily, real cyclists go on a cigarette break the second they crest a hill (figuratively of course), and I was able to catch back on as they picked their noses going down the back side.

I started to get really mad at myself. There is simply no reason why I should be such a shitty climber. I'm small. I'm powerful. I can't sprint for shit, so if you're not a sprinter, you're a climber, right? But nope. Not me. I'm a complete anomaly in that I'm fast, but never when it matters.

And I might have stayed angry about getting dropped on all the hills if I weren't so damned proud of myself for keeping up on the rest of the ride. At one point near the end of the ride I confessed to another rider that I hadn't ridden with people in forever, so I hoped I wasn't too squirrely. "Nah, you're not squirrely at all!" he said. My heart nearly burst out of my chest with pride. I'm always ashamed of my triathlon roots because cyclists see triathletes as a liability in the pack. I practically blended in!

Then, after the ride one of the Big Boys introduced himself. "You rode really strong today," he said. I played it cool and graciously thanked him, but inside I was jumping up and down, clapping and screaming: They like me! They really do! Those five desperate minutes of going balls out after the last hill to try to catch up were instantly forgotten. I decided that it had been a good ride.

With a song in my heart and a smile on my face, I checked my cell phone as I shoved a Clif bar into my face before riding home. Text from Grease Monkey (who was supposed to never be speaking to me again): "I don't want to fight anymore."

In this whole ordeal, I've known that all I had to do was shift my attitude, and things would begin to fall back into place. Once I stopped going crazy and being a needy, clingy, desperate headcase, then she would chill out too. But I just couldn't seem to get my mind around relaxing or being happy again. Now it seemed like all my meditating and visualizing and praying to God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster were finally beginning to kick in. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

For the rest of the day I was just chill. I wasn't anxiously checking my phone for messages from HER every 2 minutes, and I wasn't depressed. I enjoyed the sunset. That night I hung out with Grease Monkey and it was just like when we first met with us giggling and flirting like kids. For once I was fine with us not being "us" for now. It was just... well... a perfect day!

Sunday

Sunday's race was a crit (riding endless laps in a tiny circle in a tight group for an hour, just so everyone can sprint for 20 seconds at the end). Have I mentioned that I hate crits? I've only done one, and it was such a horrible experience that I didn't do another bike race for 4 months. Stupid crits. But so much of bike racing is crits around here, that I have to get used to them, even if I never get good at them.

Knowing full well that I might cause grievous bodily harm to another rider with my erratic riding in a tight pack, I decided to do my first crit of the year far, far from the women that I would have to see for the rest of the season. Three hours away in southwestern Connecticut seemed like a good place to start.

Instead of a traditional play-by-play race report, I'll just give you a list of seven reasons why I hate crits:

1. Crits suck because you can't warm up right. Because the course is a mile or less and they're always running another category's race right up till the last minute, you don't get to warm up on the course. You have to go get lost somewhere in town, and you don't get to ride around and figure out where the bad pavement or tight corners are before the rest of the party shows up.
2. Crits suck because it's all about jockeying for position, not riding your bike. It's like riding in a washing machine. One minute you've got a nice spot in the front, and the next everything's been turned upside-down. You get boxed in, you get passed on all sides, and you get cut off. You move your legs more to get out of the way of other girls than you do to pedal. There were times when I just wanted to stick my fist out and clothesline the train of girls passing me without letting me in, or elbowing girls in the face who got too close.
   
3. Crits suck because they're bike races that discourage pedaling. I swear I spent 3/4 of that stupid race not pedaling. Last time I learned my lesson about not letting anyone use me as a workhorse, so I only pedaled to get myself back up to the front of the pack, and then I pedaled like hell up the little hill up to the finish line on each lap. If I pedaled anywhere but on the hill, I found myself shooting out the front in no time. Then, when we hit the little hill all the girls who had been sitting on my wheel not pedaling would use their fresh legs and zoom right by me, and by the next lap I'd be spit out the back.
4. Crits suck because it's not the best cyclist who wins, it's the biggest weasel. So the art of successful crit racing is to be the one who sucks the most wheels, pedals the least, and cuts the most people off to be in the best position to sprint away for the last few seconds of the race. To me, that's not cycling, that's... cheating!
5. Crits suck because the courses are boring. If you're just riding round and round around the block 22 times, the course is boring and predictable. There's no place to break away, so everyone just winds up riding together the whole time in a giant clump and stressing each other out. Everyone sprints in all the same places, and it's about as fun as watching traffic at a stop light.
   
6. Crits suck because they always come down to a sprint up a hill. So the only time that anyone is ever putting in any effort at all whatsoever is on a hill into the finish that happens every lap (in my limited experience, this is always the way the course is set up). Wiesel your way around 90% of the course, sprint up a hill, repeat. Since I can't sprint OR climb, this makes crits especially stupid. I feel like I'm just getting warmed up, and then everyone goes on a cigarette break just as I catch up.
7. Crits are stupid because I'm not good at them. I lead into the hill on the second-to-last lap, hoping to get a better spot at the front when the pack accelerated through the bell lap. But by the top of the hill I was boxed in and couldn't get around to where the girls were accelerating. By half way through the last lap I was all the way in the back again. I moved around to the outside and accelerated back to the front by the bottom of the hill and sprinted for all I was worth. Apparently all I'm worth is 17th out of 20, because even though I hit the hill in 4th or 5th place, all the wheel-sucking weasels came around at the end.
   

All that being said, I count the race as a success. I knew it would take a miracle for me to do well at a crit, so my goals were on other things:

1. Handle myself well in a pack. I resolved to dive head-first into the pack and hold on to people's wheels at all costs. I concentrated very hard on what was going on around me at all times, and aimed for the tight spots if they were the best place to go. I got touched by several girls and cut off once and never faltered, so I think that was a success.
2. Not be anyone's bitch. I promised myself I would stay in the pack and not ride off the front. I only pulled the pack once, and only for about a minute. And when I was up there, I didn't ride hard. So there. I didn't give nothing to nobody!
   
3. Not go down or take anyone else out. Success!
4. Ride the hill like a bat out of hell. Okay, so I didn't shoot out the front on the hills, but I didn't shoot out the back either. In the past I would have been dropped every single time. Instead, I was just as wiesely as everyone else and didn't pedal in order to save my energy for the hill. Judging by how sore my ass was last night, I guess I rode pretty hard even though I was never accelerating for long enough to break a good sweat.
   
5. Have fun. Well... that one still needs work.