A jam-packed post about a jam-packed weekend

It seems that no matter what I do in my personal life lately, it's just not right. Every time it looks like me and Grease Monkey may be back to something resembling normalcy, I fuck it up, or she backs off, or usually a combination of both. I turn crazy when there's uncertainty and a lack of control in my life, so each time the bottom drops out... well, let's just say it's not pretty. In this climate, I've been re-evaluating what's important to me in life, and trying to find my rock that's going to get me through this time. More and more, I'm realizing that this whole high-performance training thing isn't working for me. The last thing I need right now is another stressor. I've been giving my bike the silent treatment, pretending that I don't even notice that it's there when I do bother to go out and ride. What am I doing out on this road in the middle of nowhere? Not riding my bike, I'm just sitting here thinking. No riding going on here. Nope, not me. As you can imagine, my workouts haven't been very focused.

See, over a year ago, before Grease Monkey burst into my life, I was so miserably lonely. I didn't really talk about it, because... well, it's kind of embarrassing when your yoga teacher re-adjusting your shoulders makes your whole body relax and puts a lump in your throat because you haven't been touched by another human being since your last yoga class. A friend of mine told me that before she met her husband, she used to pay for massages just to get touched by someone else. I was always hopping from one group of acquaintances to another, jumping in to whatever sounded like fun because I didn't really have anything of my own that gave me that sense of "roots" or "community." Without drinking, I didn't really have anything else to guide my life. Then, suddenly (as always happens with lesbians) I had someone who cared about me, and someone to spend my empty moments with. Suddenly it was okay not to be so driven or spastic with a new challenge every weekend. I was really ready to settle down. I thought we were moving (ever so slowly) toward marriage, and I was even thinking about kids... me!

Now I promise this is getting to some bike racing in a minute... but just bear with me for a second...

So now that everything is gone and the dust has settled, going back to that Claire that would throw her hat into the ring for any challenge just sounds exhausting. I've dug deep and found things that I like and things that I don't, and I feel like I've explored everything I need to explore through athletics. Now I'm reading more books on business than on sports. I want to re-connect with non-exercise friends. I want to save money for something other than races. I want to go on vacation and sit on a beach somewhere without looking for a place to go for a long ride or an open-water swim. It's not burn-out, it's growing up. I want to settle down. And I've even been considering hanging up my bike for awhile until I can find some balance.

But the problem is, that all this hard training has had one very specific purpose: to keep my lips off a bottle of beer. And as I relax my focus on riding and athletic performance, the draw of each and every liquor store I drive by becomes stronger. It's been... bad.

All these thoughts were weighing heavy on my mind as I rode to the Wednesday night hill ride. This was the ride that I quit on after the first hill last summer because I was the last one to the top and STILL almost threw up over my handlebars. This time, I was not only the first girl up the hills, I was among the first riders. The fact that I rode so hard I tasted blood in my mouth was all worth it when one guy even called me a "climber!" Before this ride, I was ready to skip out on one or both of my weekend's scheduled races, but now I was a "climber." I was temporarily encouraged.

Race Number 1 was the Turtle Pond Circuit Race, an 11-mile loop that we would ride three times. The attraction of this race was that they had a separate race for category 3/4 women, which meant that I wouldn't be fighting with the experienced girls for upgrade points. When I got there I was a little nervous to see about 25 other women, but as we began to ride I relaxed. Despite only doing a handful of group rides this year, I feel at home in a pack these days. Today, we were riding at a pace whereI could easily accelerate to a better spot if I wanted to, and I wasn't in any hury to put any effort into the pedals.

The race began up a 5-minute hill that they made us take at a "neutral" pace until the top, when our race could start. For the first loop no one made any real moves, and like an obedient student I sat in the pack watching for other people's moves. Every time a girl popped off the front, I shot after her (a little over-eagerly) hoping for a long breakaway, and tried not to be too disappointed when she stopped working and the pack caught us within a minute. We came around the first loop without any major drama and started up the hill again. A girl who I had pegged as a good candidate for DFL (based on her cheap-looking no-name shorts and solid-colored jersey combo fresh off the rack at Sports Authority, and the Ray Bans she had trouble fitting under her helmet) totally surprised me by ripping it up the hill. What surprised me even more was that I was right behind her along with a handful of other girls. Then a car came along beside us honking up a storm and waving an arm out the window. When I saw the sign on the back windshield that indicated that it was the follow car I thought, WTF?!

"You're supposed to ride neutral!!!!!!" the official was screaming. What? How are we supposed to have a race if we can't drop people on a hill? I thought. After awhile (a long while) I figured out what was going on; one of the men's races that had left earlier in the morning was catching up to us. So what would have been a great breakaway was quickly quashed on a technicality.

About halfway through the race I had just accelerated to the front of the group when I heard a clatter that could mean only one thing: CRASH!!! It was right behind me, and I started to turn my head to see how bad it was when a girl next to me screamed, "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" I didn't think that it was supposed to be good race etiquitte to make your move when there was a crash, but I'd be damned if I was going to let her get away with it. I accelerated with her and then crossed my fingers that they wouldn't ride like the dickens to take advantage of the crash. I certainly wasn't doing any work. I was relieved when the rest of the pack caught up with us.

Now more than half the race was behind us, and still nothing had happened. We were all in one big clump, so when we hit the hill for the last time, I pushed to the top as fast as I could. About six of us managed to break free, and a couple of stragglers caught us over the next couple of miles. But we had finally broken away. There's always one bossy one in every pack, and in this pack the bossy one was ordering us all to get in a paceline so that the main pack wouldn't catch us. A couple of girls would emerge out of the swarm and start to form a paceline; Girl Number 1 would come to the front and take a 30s pull and then peel off to the right, letting Girl Number 2 come through and start pulling. When Girl Number 2 peeled off, it was my turn. I pulled for about 30 seconds and peeled off to the left.
No one came around.
I looked back. Girl Number 4 was about 5 yards back, pretty much completely out of my draft. I sat up and waited for her to come up and pull, and she grabbed my wheel. Fuck you, it's your turn! I thought, and stopped pedaling. The rest of the pack came back around in a swarm until Bossy Chick ordered us into a paceline again, Girl Number 1 stepped up again, and the whole process started over.

With about 5 miles to go, the follow car pulled around again and told us to neutralize. "What the fuck?" I said to the girl next to me. "When do we get to ride our race?!"
Some of the other girls were less patient. "Come the fuck on! They're going to catch us!" the bossy girl yelled. We slowed down to about 16 mph and everyone in our pack got very edgy, except one girl that seemed to think that everyone was overreacting. I wondered what was wrong with her.
After awhile, a huge pack of men came around, and when they pulled ahead of us they were going about our neutralized speed. We couldn't get back up to speed until they did, and so we continued to hang back, getting even antsier (except that one girl).
"HURRY UP!" the bossy girl yelled.
"COME ON YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!" another screamed.

Eventually the 20 or so men pulled far enough ahead that we could start riding again. At this point we only had about 3 miles left, and I was still surrounded by half a dozen girls. Well if these dipshits can't hold a wheel, then I'm going for it, I thought. Just let them try to keep up with me! I clicked into a harder gear and started riding at about 90% effort. I wasn't going to really open it up to all-out time trial pace unless I managed to shake them. After about 2 minutes I looked back to see if I'd done any damage. Wouldn't you know, these stupid bitches had learned how to grab a wheel! I decided not to give it any extra effort and just save it for the end.

When we got to the 1K to go sign, I snuggled back to 3rd wheel and waited for other people to make their moves. Then, right before the 200m to go mark, they went. I was going to wait for the 200m line! I was caught with my pants down. I started to half-assed sprint. I half-assed it because, come on, it's me! I can't sprint, right? Then why was I passing girls back?! Then I started to really get up to speed. I passed a girl, then another, then another. I was about to pass another girl when I ran out of road.

By what I saw on the road I was unequivically in 4th place (2nd or 3rd Cat 4) and therefore up for some upgrade points, but when they posted the results, I was missing. "Unknown Rider" was in 5th place. What the fuck?! No points? I was pleased with how I'd ridden, but frustrated that I hadn't been able to outwit the weasels. My confidence was temporarily bolstered for the next day's race, but I still would have prefered to stay in bed.

Race Number 2 was the Quabbin Resevoir Road Race: 100k of relentlesly rolling hills. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it was in the high 40's and rainy as I drove out to central Mass for the start. I had no idea how to dress for a race where I would most likely be soaked to the skin for over 3 hours, so at the last moment I put on an extra layer that I would wind up regretting later.

This race wasn't a USA Cycling sanctioned event, and all the women from Cat 4's to Pro's started in the same pack. With no upgrade points on offer and no prayer of winning my share of the prize pool, my only goal in this race was to hang on for as long as I could. It was pouring when we started down the hill, and not 500m into the race a girl went down in a traffic circle. Seeing people go down always scares me, because they always lie there for a couple of seconds blinking behind their sunglasses. Those couple of seconds are the only couple of seconds that you can usually see them before you have to turn back to the road ahead, leaving a picture in your mind that looks like they're dead. So for the next half hour I couldn't shake the picture in my mind of the dead girl lying on the wet pavement in the rotary.

I was expecting the pace of this ride to be a lot stiffer in the beginning to shake off the rif-raf, but everyone was spooked with the rain and I rode my brakes for the first several miles. Riding the brakes was even more frightening because they were so soaked that they didn't work very well. With about 50 girls in the pack, I was finding myself choked in the middle with no hope of moving forward in the group to get some elbow room or safety from a crash. Zipping my jacket up higher gave me enough sidelong momentum to almost hit the girl next to me.

Finally we hit a hill and the big girls opened it up. Much to my delight, I kept up at the front on the first hill, and the next, and the next. But by about mile 18, I was getting to the top closer to the back of the pack. At about mile 20 it happened; I lost contact with the back of the pack by the top of the hill, and I was time trialing to try to catch up. When you're dropped in a situation like that--riding flat-out just trying to catch back on--you know you're screwed. I reached a point where I knew that if I even reached the pack, that I wouldn't be able to hold on for a nanosecond on the next hint of a hill.

For long, long moments I tried to decide what to do. What was the point of riding the whole race if I was going to be riding by myself? The rain had stopped, but it was still a shitty day for a ride. And I was tired. And I really had better things to be doing with my time than losing a race. I picked up another girl, and we worked together for about 10 miles, long enough to convince me that I might as well stay on my bike. When I couldn't keep up with her anymore, I had another battle with myself before 2 more girls came along and told me to hop on their train.

I really couldn't have felt much more awful than I felt on my bike finishing those last 40 miles. Even though I was hanging on to wheels when I could find them, I was going as hard as I could the whole time. My legs loaded up with lactic acid the second I tried to push harder in the slightest, and in general I just felt like I'd been smeared across the pavement. In the final miles I lost contact with my escorts, but I could see them up the road at exactly the same distance the whole last 4 miles. I kicked myself for not being able to concentrate for long enough to just hold their goddamned wheels. You stop paying attention for one second, and then some daylight breaks in between you, and you're working twice as hard to go the same speed with no hope of catching up without a herculean effort.

Climbing the 2 mile hill to the finish I entertained fantasies of stopping my bike right on the finish line and lying down on the ground. I was overheated from my extra layer and out of fluids. I hadn't exactly thought to bring a snack, and my heart rate monitor said that I'd burned through more than 1,700 calories in the past 3+ hours. Nothing hurt, but everything hurt.

There was a man in front of me in the last kilometer, and I decided to beat him. I stepped on it HARD, and beat him in a slow-speed moribund sprint to the line. The timers didn't even bother to write down my number as I rode by. I would have collapsed on the line, but the apathy and lack of congratulations from the race officials convinced me that I wouldn't get a gratifying amount of sympathy here, so I kept climbing the hill (oh yes, there was more) to where the women had convened: right in the rotary where the dead girl had been lying 3 and a half hours before.

Even though I'd ridden half of the ride not on anyone's wheel, I'd still managed to average 18.7 mph over the hills. That made me feel a bit better about feeling so beat. As it turned out, I had only come in 11 minutes back from the lead pack, and perhaps if I'd been fresher, in a better state of mind, or not such a tactical half-wit I could have hung on and stayed with them (riding in a pack your average speed is way faster with way less effort). As it was, I was quite done with the whole situation. At the time of this writing it's Wednesday and I haven't ridden my bike since.

Despite a harrowing weekend and thinking crazy thoughts like joining the military or a hippie commune in Arizona, there are exciting biking times ahead. I'm rushing to get this post finished in a Hampton Inn in Springfield, Ohio because tomorrow I have a 12-hour race with Judi tomorrow morning. And yesterday I booked a one-way trip to San Diego. I wish I could say the San Diego trip were to move out there, but it's for the next best thing: I'll be crewing Team Type II for RAAM! I'll be driving an RV from Oceanside, CA to Anapolis, MD to support TT2 in their goal of finishing in just over 8 days. The biggest relief for both of these tests of endurance is that there is no pressure to perform well in either one, which is exactly what I need right now.