Relapse

Video for background music only.

There are other things to talk about: races, rides, ennui/burnout, but right now all that's taken a backseat. Basically, I relapsed. Hard.

I could go on for hours (and have) about all the gory details, but basically Lindsey (fuck protecting her identity anymore) fucked another girl from work and lied to me about it. Many times. Then the other girl lied about it, when I didn't even ask. Then when Lindsey finally told me, it was over text message ("We're sleeping together. You should know.") and refused to take my call, that's when I went out and bought some beer. She had lied just yesterday and told me I still had a chance with her with that slut's pussy still on her breath! I no longer cared about anything in my life except making the hurt stop. When she told me she wasn't coming home that night, that's when I started drinking the beer.

That is when shit really hit the fan. I called her after she got out from work and begged her to please come home and talk to me about this, that I was already drinking and she was the only person who could stop me (truth and manipulation at once). She came home, but said she was going to do whatever the fuck she wanted, and I couldn't stop her. I lunged for the beer that was sitting on the other side of her.
"If you drink that fucking beer, then I'll never respect you again for as long as I live," she warned. That gave me pause, and gave her enough time to leave the room. But once I was alone again, I decided that I would do anything, even ruin any chance I ever had of a good post-relationship relationship with her to have that beer back.

But as I was reaching this decision, she was stealing my beer to bring to the skank's house. I would have poured every one of those beers down the drain, but she could not take what was mine for herself and drink it with that whore. It was locked in her car, so I sat on the porch drinking the last beer in the house and thinking, Bring it on. This is what's going to finally make me over her. When she finally did come out, I calmly told her to give me my beer back. "It's mine and you don't have my permission to have it," I said. "I bought it legally, as an adult, with my own money and it's not yours to take. Give it back to me."

"What are you going to do, Claire? Are you going to smash my fucking window?"

The idea of smashing her window hadn't even occurred to me. It was mine and she was stealing. "No. You're going to give it back to me because if not that's theft."

"You owe me so much fucking money anyway, get the fuck out of here you fucking loser! You can drink till you kill yourself, I don't care. I'm leaving and I never want to hear about your fucking problems again. Leave me alone!"

"If I owe you money, then I will pay it to you. Make me a list of what I owe you money for, and how much, and I will pay you what I owe you," (I imagine that she planned on charging me labor for everything she'd ever done to my bike, at which point I was going to charge her for every coffee I'd ever bought her plus gas money for the delivery fee). "But you cannot take something that belongs to someone else without their permission."

"I'm calling the fucking cops!" she screamed. She pulled out her phone and I could see that she was dialing 911.

"You can't dial 911 for something like this, Lindsey. It's not an emergency. They're going to yell at you."

"Yes, hi, my housemate" (she pronounced the word with emphasis to prove her point to me) "isn't letting me leave the house."

"Lindsey, that's bullshit," I said. I knew that those 911 calls are recorded and I wanted to state my case. "I'm not restraining you in any way. You're between me and the car, I'm 3 feet from you, and we're on the passenger's side. You've just stolen something from me and I want you to give it back before you leave." I couldn't wait till the cops showed up and made her give it back to me and then told her to be on her merry way. I knew any arbitrator would be on my side. (Later my housemate said, "Hers was the only voice I could hear screaming. It's just so TRASHY to be screaming at someone on your front lawn in the middle of the night and calling the cops like that!")

"She's drunk and she's standing in the front yard in her pajamas," Lindsey went on.

"How drunk do you think I am?! I've had 4 beers in 4 hours, and you took all but the last one away from me 2 hours ago." Then mid-sentence, still on the phone, she just turned on her heels, got in the car and drove off to go fuck her skank. With my beer.

I was understandably furious. I had taken her shit patiently for 2 1/2 months, and now I'd finally snapped. She had taken away my last shred of dignity, and I didn't give a shit about what she thought of me anymore, the lying whore. I went inside and realized she'd left behind her crate of hard liquor. I found a bottle of $50 tequila that I'd bought her in Mexico and started drinking it. But I don't really like hard liquor, and it wasn't making me feel any less mad, so I went up to her room and I took back all the gifts I'd ever given her, love letters I'd ever written her, and sex toys we'd ever used together (and that she'd used on the skank, in my house, on my birthday I discovered). That still didn't make me feel any better, so I went through all her drawers where even her underwear was anally folded and stacked and I unfolded her shit. I threw some underwear on the floor, moved shit around in her closet, unalphabatized her CD's, unmade her bed, and poured the rest of the bottle of tequila on her comforter. Now I was feeling a bit better. I went downstairs and I saw the road bike that I helped her buy, the one that she was trying to sell to the skank for twice what she'd bought it for. Seat post plus saddle? That should be about $300; way less than my cut of the bike, I took the seat post out and pulled off the tape. Then I let the air out of her tires and went to bed.

That was on Tuesday. The next several days I was a wreck, especially since she didn't come home until Friday, but I didn't drink. I was mad at myself for drinking and figured I could forgive the extreme emotional distress as long as I never drank again. Then I found out that she'd fucked the skank in my house when I was away for my birthday, and lied about that even as she came clean about everything else. That's when I lost my will to live. When I found out about the birthday transgression from our other housemate, I waited 12 hours and texted her, "No wonder you were to exhausted to go out for my birthday. It must have been really tiring fucking that whore in my house all night. You'd better stay away for a long time you lying sack of shit. If I never see you again it'll be too soon." That's the day she started coming home and saying she was going to bring the skank to sleep over. The housemate had to step in to quash that one (I was so glad that I made sure there was a witness in the house each time we saw each other, just in case she tried some other bullshit legal bru-ha-ha).

More background music.

After that, I would just sit on the couch all day shaking and trying to sleep so that I could stay up late enough to make sure that she didn't bring the skank by. I couldn't ride my bike because I couldn't leave the house, and I had no energy anyway because I wasn't eating or sleeping. I only got about 2 hours' sleep a night. I lost more than 5 pounds in a week. Every minute I knew she was at work, I knew that the skank was at work with her. Then every minute that she didn't come home after work, I was picturing what she was doing with the skank: going on dates at our places, fucking her at her house, and telling her what a psycho I was. It was pretty clear from Lindsey's behavior and things that Lindsey had said that the skank was talking shit on me, turning Lindsey against me and I yearned for a chance to redeem myself. I am not the weak, loser you think I am! You cannot push a person that far and expect them not to snap! Come home and tell me that you love me and that you're sorry!

I knew that if they came by our house just once and squeezed me out, I would never be safe in my own home again. The skank lived about half an hour away on the other side of Boston, and we live about a mile from where they both work, making our house too convenient to pass up. So I had to stay home at all times to make sure the precedent wasn't set that they could come over and I would leave. I HAD to defend my territory! I made it through my vigil on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday without drinking, but Saturday when she didn't come home it was too much.

I cut a pretty blah date with a girl I was never going to fall in love with short, and I stopped by the liquor store on my way home. What was I even resisting the drinking for anyway, I didn't give a rat's ass about my life. At least if I drank then I could be alone comfortably and maybe even fall asleep. In fact, the only way to keep myself from hovering around her was to drink. I could hide from anything to keep drinking. She never came home that night, and I broke out my journal and just started writing and drinking; my favorite things to do in the world. The alcohol dulled the pain enough for me to face the really tough ideas (me having to finally get over her, the fact that she wasn't the Lindsey I fell in love with after all, the fact that my life was over), and quieted my mind enough for me to put my thoughts on paper without dropping dead from anger and grief.

But the next day on my vigil, I was alone and shaking from the anxiety again. I hadn't slept in days, I hadn't eaten in days, and I still had so much in my mind that I just couldn't face. So I went back to the liquor store and drank and wrote some more. On Monday I had to work, and since I hadn't slept more than a few hours in days I tried to take a nap after work, but my mind just wouldn't stop. So I drank all of her and the other housemate's beer to fall asleep, and when I went to replace it after my nap, I bought more for myself to get through the night. That night I spoke to Teen Idol, her best friend who moved away the same week she dumped me. He put it all in perspective, but he said, "You can't push a mule uphill. The only thing you can do is to leave and hope that someday she'll be willing to take your call."

When I thought that my world couldn't get any worse, here it was. She called me one evening at about my bed time and said, "I'm going to the package store. Do you want that 12-pack?"

I was already drinking, and couldn't figure out if this was an apology or a test, but the right answer seemed to be "no." "I don't want a 12-pack, I want that 12-pack. Never mind, don't even tell me the fate of that 12-pack. Just leave me alone."

"What the hell was that?" I asked her the next day. "Are you trying to fuck with me?"

"Well you'd made such a big deal of it, and I was thinking, if you want to drink yourself to death, then it's none of my business and I'm not going to stop you."

"So you thought you'd buy me beer?!" She was just as bad as the last psycho that made me start drinking again on purpose so she could manipulate me.

By Thursday I was up to almost a 12-pack a day already between my afternoon and evening sessions. Friday (my day off), I started drinking at 10 am, finally fell asleep for a bit, woke up, started drinking again, she came home unexpectedly and froze my bender for a couple of hours, drank more when she left, and went back to sleep. When I woke up that afternoon, I drank another few beers to get through the couple of hours before the spin class I had to teach. In the spin class I felt like I was going to vomit all over the floor and resented every soul who had shown up for even being alive and putting me through this. And then after the spin class I met up with an old drinkin' buddy of mine that I hadn't seen in about 5 years.

My drinkin' buddy and I have a long, sordid history, and as annoying and abrasive as he can be, he knows me well and he knows how to set a fire. The drinkin' buddy and I polished off about 9 beers apiece (and several cigarettes) as we set a fire in the woods and one-by-one burned every gift, every sex toy, and read and burned every letter. It was my way of saying goodbye and closing the book on this chapter of my life. There was no anger, just peace and sadness. "You were really in love with her, weren't you?" he said after I threw a particularly raunchy love letter on the fire.

"Yeah," I said.

"That letter was really hot. Do you remember that time when we got wasted and I convinced you to teach me how to have sex with a woman by pretending I was a woman?"

I groaned. That's another reason why I can't drink. I will fuck literally anybody, including my drinkin' buddy a couple of times. "That was some of the best sex I've ever had," he went on. "But you were always over it after just a minute or two and telling me to just finish up already. I'd always thought you just had issues with sex because of what happened to you... I guess you really are a dyke."

He had a way with words, but he was right. I'd been thinking of getting with a few guys just because they were easy and I needed affection, but I always regret it the next day, even if I'm sober (which has only happened once). Part of the reason that I'd loved Lindsey so much was that sex had never felt that meaningful with anyone else before. I don't think I'd ever truly made love with anyone, although I'd been with a few guys and gals I really, genuinely cared about.

(My feelings about sex with men are important for the next part of the story.)

We finished the beers, put out the fire, and headed out. "Can I drop you at your parents' house?" I asked. A side effect of my buddy's drinkin' problem is that he's lost his driver's license. I shouldn't have been driving either, but alcohol impairs judgment.

"No, my parents kicked me out for my drinking a few months ago. That's why I'm living in Everett."

"Well can I drop you at a bus stop or something?"

"It's too late, no busses running this time of night around here."

"Well I can't drive to Everett! I'm too drunk!" I protested.

"Can't I just stay at your place?" he asked.

(Now I'll remind you that alcohol impairs judgment.) "Fine, but I don't want you staying on the couch where Lindsey could find you in the morning. You'll have to sleep with me. But no touching!"

We went home and continued to talk deep into the night, waking up Lindsey. As we're getting ready to go to bed, I found a t-shirt for my friend, but no shorts that would fit him. He went down for one final leak and met up face-to-face with a very angry, very awake Lindsey. To make matters worse, he was holding her book about Spain that lives in the bathroom, which he had (understandably) thought was mine. "Where are you going with that?" she asked. Need I remind you that she hates it when people touch her stuff?

Then I got a text message. "I told you you didn't have to sneak around! I'm bringing over whoever the fuck I want! A good friend huh?! He's in his underwear!"

I told my buddy that he HAD to go down and sleep on the couch right now, and he had to get out of the house early in the morning. But by the time he woke up, she was already up and I was doing my best to explain the situation and begging her not to do anything to make things worse than they already were. I just wanted to talk to her in peace while she was in the house and actually listening to what I had to say, but I had the problem of an abrasive hung over man with no manners and no driver's license sitting on my couch.

He took a slug of her Kettle One vodka right from the bottle. Then he wanted a ride to the bus stop, but first he wanted a ride to his parents' house. He spend 45 minutes in his parents' house taking electronics and food, then he wanted a ride to Everett. All I wanted was to be go home and talk to Lindsey, then be alone. Getting caught up in his drama was exactly why I hated drinking so much. I would hang out with shady people because I didn't give a flying fuck, just as long as I wasn't the drunkest one in the room, then I'd get stuck being taken advantage of in these sketchy situations that I never would have put myself in if it weren't for the booze. By the time I got home, Lindsey was gone never to be seen again.

I had planned for the catharses in the woods to be my farewell to drinking, then I would stop staying in the haunted house as a birthday gift to Lindsey. However, she hasn't noticed my birthday gift because she hasn't slept at home since that night. She won't open the birthday card that tells her that the house is hers (although not her love nest) until I get back from RAAM. When she's home, she sleeps with her door locked and a baseball bat next to her bed. She won't speak to me or even be in the same room as me for me to tell her that I'm not drinking anymore, and that I'm back on my bike.

I know that at this point I shouldn't care what she thinks, but the reason that I fell in love with her was because she saw everything that I valued in myself – my independence, my drive, and my ability to quit drinking – and she loved me for them. As bad as this has all sounded, she was in love with me and acted as such as recently as Valentines' Day. How could I feel good about myself if the one person who valued those things in me now said she didn't care if I lived or died?

I am now on my third day of being out of the house, and my third day of not drinking. To see how quickly I could fall into a booze hole (less than a week), it makes me realize that it will not be long before I lose what little life I have left. I know that my first priority has to be not drinking, and making all my decisions based on that priority. But when all the things that used to keep me off the sauce – riding my bike, running, hanging out with friends, drinking tea and coffee, cooking, working – remind me of her, then how am I supposed to do that? I tried going to AA meetings, but a bunch of booze bags sitting in a room talking about drinking only made me want to drink, and their stories made me realize that relapse was possible.

So I have decided to move to San Francisco at the beginning of July. I'm not crazy about San Francisco as a city, but it is the traditional home of people running away from something. Shane has agreed to put me up until I'm back on my feet, I have the remains of a support network there from living so close in college, and a well-connected trainer at work has agreed to make a few calls for me. Because of a combination of my promotion and vacation (for RAAM), I'm not on the schedule at work, so I have no job here in Boston. Because I haven't spoken to my Dad since Christmas and because I can't be in my haunted house that was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of our lives with my girlfriend, I have no home. Since my girlfriend is sleeping with some skank every night just to get away from me, I have no relationship. Since most of our friends are in common and I cannot hang out with many of them at events that she might go to, I have a shaky social support. I never really planned on staying in Boston anyway, so I purposely didn't put down many roots. What else is keeping me here? It looks like what I need to do to take care of Claire is to start completely over... just like last time.

The idea that I'm getting out of here and that this is only temporary is the only thing that is keeping me away from the liquor stores. I'll take it.

Choking on my medicine

Background

I'm still looking for a catharsis, or at the very least an escape... or at the very, very least to feel like a shadow of my former self again. At the 12-hour race two weeks ago I thought that I was getting there, or at the very least the race had calmed my nerves enough to let me think clearly. And when I got home, we had a wonderful week where it was almost like Grease Monkey and I were back together again.

All I needed was stability, but then Grease Monkey went out to dinner with this girl from work. The girl from work is the kind of lesbian who wants to be your friend just because you're a lesbian too. I don't trust those girls. In my mind, the only reason for behaving that way after high school is because you're constantly looking for new potential girlfriends. To make matters worse, this girl already had a girlfriend. But when Grease Monkey came home from dinner, I came down to get a cup of water and saw that she was dressed up. Then I noticed that she'd been doing her hair before work for the last few weeks, while normally she doesn't even shower often. Then this horrible girl got her a flower for fixing her bike... and a bottle of tequila... and a case of beer. "Do you like this girl?" I asked.
"Kinda," she said.
My world ended.

Now I know that everybody thinks that I just need to get over her, but I simply can't. I just can't make my mind go there. I'll be alright one minute almost thinking I'm going to survive, and then I see her, and every single fiber of my being just wants to curl up in her arms. People also think that she's treating me like crap. That's not true either. Things mostly get bad when I can't deal with the situation as it is and try to push her to get back together, which usually has the opposite effect of setting off a several-week tense period. And I know that some people think that we shouldn't be living together, but neither of us have anywhere else to go. And I think that if she made the (well-though-out, and triple-checked) decision to move in with me, and then dumped me 3 weeks later, then it's her responsibility to make things liveable. Neither of us are happy when I go crazy.

Race Report

But I digress... It was in the midst of all of this, and with an intense desire to get some perspective that I started looking for something to do on my birthday. There were no good bike races that weekend, so I started looking elsewhere. I'd kind of been itching for the simplicity of a marathon since the Boston Marathon last month. I've never felt as accomplished as I did after some of my marathons (such as Cape Cod or Disney). So seeking to recreate that sense of accomplishment, I went to marathonguide.com and looked to see what was going on in the area. What I found was the Sugarloaf Marathon in Maine.

Now mind you, I haven't run more than 5 times in the six months since the Ironman. More than half of those runs have been on dirt and trails, and all of them have been under 7 miles long. I knew full well that this could hurt me, possibly for the season, so I sat on my decision for awhile. But when the Other Girl turned up, I decided that it would be best to get out of Massachusetts for a little while. The final catalyst to my decision came from the very unlikely source of a Wal*Mart-shopping fat lady:

I was catching up on Biggest Loser while riding on my trainer on Thursday afternoon (the last day to sign up for the race). The week's challenge was for the contestants to run a 5K with a bunch of local unfit people in Houston (or was it Dallas?). Anyway, among all these people who took nearly 2 hours to finish a 5K, there was still one woman who was way, way, way behind. When the camera found her, she was closing in on her last mile and could only make it a few steps before she would have to stop and use her daughter's shoulders as a walker to relieve the pressure on her knees. But that lady made it to the finish line. She was sobbing and crying and everyone was feeling empowered when she blubbered, "I just walked a 5K. I can't even walk a mile! I have to take a kart in Wal*mart." That floored me. If this lady who only got out of her seat to reach for the Ho-Ho's on the top shelf could get up off her ass and walk 3 miles when her knees were about to blow out under her weight, then I, a young, physically fit healthy person could rock up to a marathon on no training. I hoped that it would be such a grueling challenge that I would achieve the quantum leap in self-image that the Wal*mart lady had achieved. I wanted to dig down deep into the silty bottom of my soul and find out what I still had in there. This marathon would hurt like hell, but that was the point.

So I did a quick google map search to see where this place was, and found this:
Why, that can't be more than 45 minutes from Portland! I thought. I can stay with Mindy the night before, and then have a nice, easy drive home afterward. That pinprick however is where the marathon took place. To my credit though, that region is mountainous.

Here's the problem. This is the Sugarloaf that this race was at (about 2.5 hours north of Portland):

Note: that squiggly line just north of the pinpoint is Canada. So I was closer to Canada than to Portland. Damn.

But it was too late for second guesses now. I was $80 of committed to this thing. So I drove up to Portland on Saturday afternoon, had some dinner with Mindy and Mister Mindy, and went to bed at 8:30. As soon as I lay my head down, though, I started picturing what Grease Monkey may be doing with The Other Girl in my absence. I was never a jealous person before all this, but the situation has turned me into a headcase. At 10:30 I had to text her under the pretext that I was worried whether my cat had been fed to make sure that she was home, and NOT with the Other Girl. Four hours later, at 2:30 in the morning I was up again to drive the final 2.5 hours up to Carabassett Valley to catch the 5:30 shuttle to the start.

It was a very small race. It wasn't even chip timed.

I took a Sharpie with me and wrote "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" on both my arms before hunkering down to wait for the start. I hoped that the signs on my arms would have people cheering for me when I felt low. I need not have worried about the warning that shuttles would leave at 5:30 *sharp,* because runners continued to arrive for the next hour. I listened to a couple of marathon geeks talk about which of the 50 states they'd checked off their list. I listened to another woman say, "Did you see that there was a town called 'New Portland' on the way up here? Haha, why go to the regular old Portland when you can stay in New Portland???" I wanted to say, Yeah, and I passed a York on the way up here too. Maybe they'll have a New York someday and everybody will stay there rather than going to the old York and it will become a bustling metropolis! Basically, I had no desire to talk to anyone.

The course was a point-to-point, starting at about 1000 feet and climbing about 600' between miles 7.5 and 10.5 before it dropped about 1100 feet over the last 16 miles. I had no pacing strategy other than never to run hard. I figured that as long as my breath was under control I'd be alright.


Miles 1-7 It's funny how biking and ironman training has warped my sense of time. These miles seemed to be over in a flash, and I was surprised how easy they felt. I mean, I figured the pounding would have for sure started to bother me by this point. I felt like I'd just started the race a minute ago and here I was already over an hour into it.



Miles 7.5-10.5 (the hill) Starting at about mile 3 I had tempered my over-enthusiastic 8:15/mile pace, and people had started passing me. Now I saw the group pull ahead slowly up the hill. I didn't mind. There was nothing that was keeping me from running my own race today. I didn't really care if the road went up or down, and when it finally started to turn down again, I couldn't believe how fresh I still felt.

Miles 11-17 I was only now beginning to feel the miles in my legs, just like I might in a regular marathon. There was a twinge in my right plantar fascia, but nothing to be worried about. I tried to stay on the soft shoulder of the road whenever possible to spare myself from the pounding. I couldn't believe I crossed the 13.1-mile mark in about 2 hours. I had fully expected to run a 5-hour marathon today. Well, who knew what was going to happen up ahead.
By mile 14 I was thinking, Only one more mile until 15, and then it's only 3 miles to 18, and from 18 it hurts no matter what. But this is a piece of cake!
At mile 16 I remember thinking, Ten more miles? I can do 10 more miles. I started counting them down, but not because they were dragging on forever yet. No, I was counting them down because under 10 miles felt like a short way, and I was bored.
Mile 17, as predicted, was my last fairly comfortable mile.

Miles 18-21 Starting at mile 18, the miles felt longer and longer, and the wheels started to fall off. The constant downhill had my left quad burning with every step, and my right foot and calf were starting to feel really tight. But still, I didn't feel like I had to walk. I still didn't feel like I'd been running for very long. Mile 19 was exponentially harder than mile 18, and mile 20 exponentially harder than that. But what marathon doesn't feel like that? Mile 21 was the last mile that I didn't feel the temptation to walk. At this point I had realized that no one could read my arms, and I wasn't going to get any birthday wishes.

Miles 22-23 Now I was in a world of hurt. I was tempted to walk for a minute at each mile marker, but I realized that I wasn't in that much pain. I wanted this to be over more than I wanted to walk, so other than the aid stations I just kept running. I wished someone would talk to me and distract me from all this, but all the people who passed me were either wearing headphones or didn't want to talk.

Miles 24-26.2 I really, really wanted to walk at this point. I wanted to be out of my head so that I could dissociate from the pain. I knew that I had a terrible marathon shuffle going on, and could feel myself waddling like a lame penguin. But still, I was disappointed to find that I didn't have to dig very deep to find the motivation to keep running. All I wanted was for this to be over, I wasn't getting anything rewarding out of the experience. To occupy my mind while the miles disappeared at a glacial rate behind me, I started reciting the only poem I've ever memorized start to finish:

When the Pawn hits the conflict he thinks like a king,
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight,
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring,
There's no body to batter when your mind is your might.
So when you go solo you hold your own hand,
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights,
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land,
And if you fall, it don't matter cuz you know that you're right.
(Fiona Apple)

But still, the poem was wooden in my head. I would recite it rhythmically 5 times to myself, then check my watch and start over. I recited that damned poem the whole way to the finish line. I hadn't spoken more than a few sentences to anyone in over four hours. I'd only gotten about 3 Happy Birthdays. I hadn't reached any ground-shattering conclusions. I hadn't learned anything about myself except that marathons weren't a challenge to finish anymore, under any circumstances. I just wanted it to be over. When I crossed the finish line in 4:13 and change, all I felt was relief. It didn't even feel epic, just painful. It was actually over rather quickly.

I suppose I could have been happy about the race. I think I might have beaten my Boston time from 2008, a race that I'd trained all winter for. I could have been proud that I finished the whole thing without walking (except maybe 3 or 4 aid stations), but not even that had done it for me. Despite my lack of training, this marathon had felt exactly the same as every single other marathon I've ever run. The deterioration felt exactly the same, and the pain felt exactly the same. I'd only run 15 minutes slower than my best marathon time ever. The only thing that was missing was a sense of accomplishment. I felt more like I'd bought a giant chocolate bar to make myself feel better, and instead had given myself indigestion.

The whole way home I continued to work myself up about Grease Monkey. I had hoped that my being away would recharge our delicate relationship, but when I called her from the finish line to see what her plans were for the evening, she seemed bored with me. The whole 4.5-hour drive home I worked myself into an insecure frenzy to the point where when we finally got dinner (my request), I couldn't help but force her to tell me where we stood. I begged her to give me one more chance, I cried, I restated my case for the millionth time, even though I knew that these were the surest ways to push her away. She ignored me with an uncharicteristic calm.

It wasn't until I was already laying in bed trying to process everything that it hit me. Something that she'd said about the Ex that Came Before Me came back to me. "It's because I'm not Sandra, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she said in that way that I knew I'd finally hit whatever she hadn't had the balls to say.
All the puzzle pieces came together at once: she'd been excited to start our lives together until she unpacked all her (their) stuff out of storage, how she'd told me the day she dumped me that I wasn't the girl she wanted to marry so it was pointless to lead me on, how she hadn't needed space until I made a fuss about not liking her (and Sandra's) headboard on the bed, how she said she didn't want to be in a relationship with anyone right now (anyone that wasn't Sandra)... And like an idiot I'd just pressed and pressed and pressed until she was so sick of me that who can blame her for not wanting to get together with me. You know she didn't even actually say she wanted to break up until I asked her a million times if she was trying to break up with me and she answered with an exaspirated "YES!" (Then I kept pressing, trying to make her take it back.)
"You know, I can never be Sandra," I said. "But I made a pretty great Claire for awhile." That made her laugh, but it wasn't enough. I need a good, long time of not being psychotic for either of us to be okay with me again.

Lying in bed, sore and bloated from the marathon I now felt worse than I ever had before. How could this not be something that would blow over? Surely she would get over me Not Being Sandra pretty quickly, right? I mean, she'd been in love with me for a year without Me Being Sandra. But I'd gone crazy when she dumped me, when she didn't get over it fast enough, I just kept pushing and pushing. And now this little hoochie gets to be the next Not Sandra rather than me. And how am I supposed to stand by and watch her date the Other Girl or anyone else without going berzerk again?

To make matters worse, the hoochie is now single and Grease Monkey's spending more and more and more time with her. I feel as bad as I did when she first dumped me. And now all I have is a growing list of things that aren't helping me move on, and aren't making me feel better. I did drop about a tablespoon of salt into the water that The Other Girl's flower was sitting in, though. That helped me feel a little bit better. Who buys lillies for someone you like anyway? That's a funeral flower...

CRASH!!!

This story will end with this.

Prologue

Two weeks ago, I was running in the woods with Michelle and the dogs (yes, I've been sneaking in trail runs). I stepped on a pile of pine needles and my feet came out from under me. I came down hard on a sharp rock with my left elbow, and the pain that shot down my arm kept me from holding the leash for several minutes. Blood dripped off the tip of my finger from a gouge in my pinkie. It hurt like hell for weeks (still hurt this morning), but I didn't get a cool bruise, so it wasn't really worth complaining about. Who's going to give sympathy when all you've got is a flesh wound less than an inch long? However, the affected spot was exactly where my elbows rested on my aero bars, and during the 12-hour race it went from a dull ache to a stomach-turning aggravation.

In addition to my sore elbow, my cheek was also very tender. This has nothing to do with the story I'm going to tell you today, but it's still funny and involves bodily injury, so I'm going to tell you about it anyway. The day before I left for Ohio I was walking down a side street from Starbucks with my coffee for today in one hand, and my coffee for tomorrow in the other. Suddenly this dreadful little 9-year-old brat coming out of the candy store across the street screamed the kind of scream spoiled children emit when their ice cream drops off the cone. "Get ON the sidewalk, Jackie!!!" her just-as-beastly mother yelled at her. I craned my head around to see what was happening. My line of vision was blocked by some parked cars, so I twisted even further to see what had happened to the filthy brat. Suddenly "CRACK!" my cheek, shoulder, and knee went slam into an iron light pole. My coffees went flying out of my hands and exploded on the sidewalk.
Dazed, I looked at my coffee on the ground and started to whimper. It felt like someone had hit me in the face with a baseball bat and my $7 of coffee was ruined. I left the mess on the street and turned right around to buy 2 more coffees. "Are you okay?!" a guy in a pick-up asked, leaning out his window.
"Yeah, I... I just lost my coffees," I said. I was still stunned. I kept walking and went back into Starbucks.
The good Samaritan in the pick-up parked and came in after me. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm just so embarrassed!"
Over a week later, my cheek bone is still sore. Still, no cool swelling or bruising to show for my pain.

Prologue Part II (the important part)

The final prelude to today's story happened this Wednesday. I figured that since it was a nice day and I still had the aero bars on my bike, I would go to the weekly time trial. I pulled my front wheel out of the car, and it was flat. I didn't have a tube, so I had to buy one off another participant. When that was finally changed, I pulled the rest of my bike out. I gave my rear wheel a spin to see if anything was rubbing, and it stopped turning immediately like the brakes were rubbing. I checked the brakes and they weren't touching. I checked the wheel and it wasn't touching the frame anywhere.

I went over to a couple of guys and said, "I feel like I'm going crazy. Will you guys please look at my bike and tell me what's rubbing on my back wheel? Because I can't find it for the life of me." They took a look at it, and they couldn't find it either. We flipped the bike upside-down and pulled the wheel off, then put it back on. It still wouldn't spin for more than a second. Then I called Grease Monkey. After telling me to do the obvious like check the brakes and frame for rubbing, she had me pull the wheel off again and check that the springs on the skewer were loaded properly and the cups on my axel weren't loose. Then she told me I was fucked.

I didn't race, and when Grease Monkey took my hub apart the next day, she said that my bearings were so far gone, that they didn't even spin. I didn't even know there were bearings in there. I thought... you know... it was round, so it spun. Duh! "I told you that your bearings were going when I replaced your bottom bracket," she said. That was in the beginning of March, and I had been so butt-hurt that she'd made me pay for the labor that I hadn't even paid attention to what else was wrong with my bike.

Since March apparently my bearings have been in a state of steady decay, slowing me down so gradually that I hadn't noticed the difference. In the 12-hour race I had noticed that I felt like I was dragging a concrete block, and had reached back and released my rear brake calipers, but I had just figured that my general crappiness was the headwind.

While we were waiting for new bearings to be delivered, Grease Monkey lent me another wheel. Riding it yesterday I was furious. My bike felt like it was flying. Until now I'd been at peace with my results of my races this season, and had accepted responsibility for the 'what if's.' Now I was thinking about how I'd just been out of the money by one place in Turtle Pond, I'd just barely not been able to hang in the Quabbin race, and I'd been only 3.5 miles off my PR in Ohio. And what about the crits before that? How could I have done in those??? What was I really capable of?

The Race

But all that was in the past and there was nothing I could do to change it. Luckily, I did have a race today where I had a good chance of bringing home the bacon. There was a separate Cat IV start, which meant that I wouldn't be racing against the big girls to get my points. Unfortunately, for the third week in a row, after warm, sunny days for the two or three days before the race, it was pouring on race morning. I woke up to thunder and lightning and the sound of a full-blown downpour outside. And it was only 50 degrees. I dug my leg warmers out of a drawer, took my raincoat off the hook, and got in the car.

Fast forward to the first few minutes of the race. There were about 20 of us in a tight pack, riding our brakes for the neutral start. It was pouring again, and I could feel the water seeping into my socks and chamois--the two places you hope to keep dry for as long as possible. The roads were slick, the riders were squirreley, and brakes weren't working right in the wet. I got caught in the back of the group because I didn't dare shove my wheel into tight spots to get through the pack. You've gotta get out of here, Claire, I thought. Someone's going to crash, and you want them to be behind you when it happens!

Finally I got toward the front, and not long after I did I heard the clatter of a crash behind me. Then I got spooked. We were bombing down a long, steep hill with crappy pavement and my glasses were fogged up. It was so wet that gritty water had found its way under my glasses and into my eyes, and all I could see were dim shapes in front of me. I let a big gap open because I was afraid I wouldn't have time to react at 30 mph. "ON YOUR RIGHT!" a girl called as she came around to close the gap.
"I'm so sorry!" I whimpered. "I just can't see a thing!" The clatter of the crash was still echoing in my head and I was thoroughly frightened.

Finally we managed to blow the pack apart on an uphill, and the group was whittled down to about 10 riders, before long we were down to six. Despite numb fingers and constant accelerations from the other girls (like we were on the last lap???), I managed to get my glasses into my pocket so I could just squint through the spray.

The finish line was at the top of a steep hill lasting about a quarter mile. As we approached it, heading out for our second of three laps, I easily kept up with the lead girls. They were breathing like elephants in heat, and I was still feeling very comfortable. I can win this! I thought. I knew with absolute certainty that I could trounce most if not all of these girls on a final uphill sprint. One other girl was about 10 yards in front with me, and I figured she would be the best person to try to make a move with. I said to her, "Want to work together on the last lap?" She nodded.

Now that I was confident that I had it in the bag, I flew through the first three-quarters of the second lap always keeping my new ally close at hand. I tried to stay near the front of the group to avoid someone else sinking me by doing something stupid. Coming over the top of a hill about halfway through the course, a third girl said to me and my ally, "We have a huge gap, let's try to keep it." I looked over my shoulder and wondered what she was smoking. They were only about five lengths back, and I decided not to work too hard. The other girls caught up and one girl used her momentum to shoot off the front, trying too early to make a solo break. I chased her down with everyone else on my wheel.

Now we were all accelerating, trying to prove to eachother that You can't drop me, toots! We were no longer in an organized paceline, and everyone was swirling around everyone else. I felt so strong with the resistance off my rear wheel, and I was working only hard enough to cover everyone else's moves, saving myself for a big move on the final lap. We were going at least 20 mph, probably faster.

Then, all of a sudden I saw my front wheel parallel to the road about 18 inches in the air. In a split second I realized that I'd drifted onto the white line, which turns icy slick when the road is wet. I hadn't even slipped, my bike was just upended... I must have mashed down on my left pedal so hard that I kicked the bike out from under me.

...And then I hit. I came right down on the elbow that was still sore from two weeks ago, then I slid on the ground, first on my chest, then on my hip and back, but always on my already-sore elbow. I vaguely remember looking through my legs (which were sticking straight up in the air) and watching my bike stop sliding, so I must have twisted or rolled to be facing backward. I remember being horrified through the whole thing, but I don't think I uttered a peep. It all happened so fast, that I didn't even have time to react. Finally I came to a stop.

I don't know if I lay there like I was dead for an instant, but I think I got right up to get out of the road. I know I had my bike upright as I watched the girls disappear over a ridge. "Are you okay?" a race official on a motorcycle asked. I nodded and he pulled away, leaving me alone wondering if I really was okay.

I looked at my bike, then dropped my head on my top tube and let out a sob. There wasn't much behind my crying, so I stopped right away. I was terrified, not upset... yet. I still didn't know if I was okay. All I knew was that my elbow hurt and I was scared as hell. It looked like I'd knocked my brake hood too, and who knew what else was fucked up on my bike. If I'd hopped on my bike that second, I might have been able to catch back on to the other girls, but I needed a minute to pull myself together. It wasn't till I'd been riding for several minutes that I realized I was okay. I could still bend my elbow (no broken bones), and I didn't see too much blood (yet). My bike looked like it would still work, so I got on and started riding slowly to the finish line to tell them that I was out.

I couldn't believe how long it took for more girls to ride by. I felt like I'd been sitting on the side of the road for an eternity, then slowly pedaling for almost a mile before another pair of girls came by and yelled, "Hop on!" I shook my head. There was no way I was riding anywhere near anyone else today. I kept riding with my left arm hanging at my side, and people kept cheering for me. I cut my hand along my neck to say, 'cut it out, I'm done.' I felt awful. I had been in the lead pack. I knew I could have beaten those girls. Now my race was over. I saw no point in finishing. It would be one thing if I was dropped, but not like this... There was a camera at the bottom of the hill to the finish and he pointed his lens at me. I covered my face, and then I had a better idea. I flipped him off just so that the picture would never be posted on the internet. Climbing up the hill, people were still cheering for me. Won't you all shut up?!?!?! I thought. "I'm hurt. I'm done," I yelled at the top of my lungs so they would all leave me the hell alone.

The race officials didn't give me a hard time about dropping out, which I appreciated. "You should go to the EMT over there and have that looked at," one of the women said. My sleeve had been rolled up in the crash, and I checked my elbow again for the first time since I'd gotten back on my bike. When I saw the giant bubble of grated flesh and blood, I made an "Eeeeeeew!" noise in the back of my throat and blanched. I hate blood.

Now woozier than ever before, I went over to the EMT and told her that she could patch me up as long as she promised I wouldn't have to watch. Instead, I watched as girls continued to finish their second lap as she blotted blood off my elbow. We'd only been riding for about 16 miles and these girls must have been 10 minutes behind me; goodness knows how far behind the lead pack they were. Again, I was furious with my luck. As with other times when I'd gone ass-over-teakettle on my bike, I was surprised how little it actually hurt to crash at 20 mph. I'd slid more than I'd grated on the pavement, and I hadn't even ripped my shorts. But I could have won!

"Let me know if I'm rubbing too hard," the EMT said. "I want to make sure I get all the grit out."
"Actually, I can't feel a thing," I said. It was true, I couldn't even feel the pressure on my elbow. The skin was completely numb. I tried to make light of the situation without ever looking at what she was doing, and she hid my boo-boo under a thick gauze pad. It took us forever to get my sleeve pulled back over the bandage, then she sent me on my way. I had a long ride back to the car, and I rode the whole thing with my injured arm hanging limply at my side. I was hoping someone would ask me about my race, since I was riding back with all the Cat III men, but no one seemed to care about me and my bum arm or my ripped jacket.

As I was driving home, the skies opened up and it rained so hard that the windshield wipers couldn't keep up. I dimly wondered if the rain we'd been riding through had been this heavy. My elbow ached like hell whenever I bent it enough to hold the steering wheel, so I drove one-handed, squinting through the rain to see the car in front of me. My arm throbbed, but I was more pissed that I'd lost the race. I knew that I could have beat those girls. I KNEW it! Prizes went five deep, and now every girl in that lead pack was going to get money because I had eaten shit. Points, money, glory, satisfaction, all gone! And now I didn't have any races to make up for it for several weeks. I almost cried.

At least the bandage was big.

Grease Monkey made me stop by the shop to drop off the bike on my way home, and while she explained to some old guy why he couldn't put inner tubes in sew-up tires, I stood there staring off into space. I felt like I was living inside a cotton ball and all my joints had been replaced with static. I don't know why I was still in shock. I'd crashed before. I almost cried when she hugged me and said, "Poor pumpkin!" She called me 'Pumpkin' because (come on!) I really was fine, just upset. All I wanted was to drag her off into the break room so that she could hug me, lick my wounds (figuratively) and tell me that everything was going to be okay. I felt like a 5-year-old who starts howling not because he's hurt, but because he's shocked by falling off the monkey bars and if he howls then he knows he'll get a hug. But because I'm 27 years old, I just drove home to take pictures of my wounds instead.

The dark top-most mark is from falling in the woods two weeks ago. The rest is from smearing myself on the road today.

Not impressive road rash, except that I did that THROUGH my shorts and leg warmers. (Ignore the stretch marks! I'm just holding them for a friend, I swear!)

Again, not impressive until you realize that I tore this up through my sock.

Bloody gauze after only an hour.

We're in... Ohio?

*** Update *** The Wednesday after the race I took my bike to the Wednesday night time trial, ready to ride. I gave my rear wheel a spin and it stopped spinning almost immediately, as if the brakes were rubbing. But the brakes weren't rubbing, nor was the wheel rubbing on the frame. After checking in with some bike geeks, and some troubleshooting on the phone with Grease Monkey we figured out that there was no quick fix. The bearings in my rear wheel are shot, and apparently they've been that way for a long time. Turns out that at this race and probably every race I've done this year, I've been riding like the brakes were on without knowing it. This makes me mad, but not really for the reasons you would expect. I've been satisfied with my races this season, and I've been at peace with the "what if's?". Now I'm wondering how much my wheel slowed me down, and if it would have meant something different in each one of my races so far this season. Damn... I really need to learn to be more observant about my bike.

"You know you need your instrument,

"But does your instrument need to be mic'ed?"
-Ani Difranco, "Here for Now"

I don't really remember how the whole thing got started and who put whom up to it, but at some point I agreed to do a 12-hour bike race in Ohio with Judi. When I packed my shit in the car to drive all the way out to Columbus, I was really looking forward to the race (the first race in awhile I've been looking forward to). And it wasn't just because I was going to get to meet Judi face-to-face for the first time. I needed the 14-hour drive (in each direction) to think, and the 12-hour ride to sort some of my thoughts out. I was also really looking forward to jumping head-first into something that was way over my head. I hadn't tested my endurance and mental strength in a very long time.

Yes, I've done some pretty epic rides in the past, but I haven't ridden anything longer than 4 hours in six months. Twelve straight hours in the saddle was definitely over my head. Adding to the adventure, I had only put my aero bars on for the first time in six months right before leaving Boston. So much for training as you race. I rode the bike to work on Thursday to make sure that everything was in its proper place, and it turns out that my saddle was about an inch too high. Being the bright bulb I am, I didn't bring a multi-tool with me, and had to ride like that for 18 miles round-trip. I hoped that the adjustments I made in the parking lot at race registration would be good enough. I mean, riding around for 30 seconds is a pretty accurate depiction of what'll happen after 12 hours in the saddle, right? After the race Judi's boyfriend Dominic would tell me, "I don't know how you could ride at all with your saddle that crooked. My junk would've been all messed up."
"My saddle's crooked?" I said. Yep, that's me. If they used to call Lance "Mister Millimeter" for being so picky about his bike set-up, then you can call me "Miss Meter," meaning "as long as it's within a meter, then I probably won't know the difference."

The woman in front of me in line at registration was about 150 pounds overweight, and when they asked her if she was doing the 12-hour or the fun ride she said, "No way, I'm just doing the fun ride! I take my meds!" This last part cracked her up. She seemed to be thinking, Hardy-har-har, 'I take my meds!' Isn't that funny? Because all you people are crazy who do the 12-hour race. Lunatics! Harharhar. Meds. Ha. You crazy fuckers. No one around her seemed amused though, so she said her brilliant joke again. "No, I'm not doing the 12-hour! I take my meds." Still no response. The race volunteer cut through the awkward silence and started explaining the course to her, pointing out where she could take a short cut since she wasn't doing the 12 hour race. "NO! I'm definitely not doing the 12-hour race... because I take my meds every day!" she tried again. I wanted to point out that A) everyone had heard her the first two times, B) most populations don't take kindly to people calling them maniacs for doing what they love, C) getting in shape to do 12 hours of exercise might do a big girl like her some good, and D) she should get her fat ass out of my way. The next day I did notice that the well-medicated fun rider was at the race, but her meds also apparently kept her from riding in the rain. Apparently the difference between people who can make their dreams happen and those who wind up being unfunny fatass couch potatoes is that effective people "don't take their meds."

Judi showed up about an hour later with the famous Dominic and began describing how nervous she was. I didn't know what to say. I mean, in a 12-hour race you can ride 2 miles, or you can ride 300. It's the only race that you can quit when the going gets tough and not DNF. I didn't much care HOW far I got tomorrow, and fully recognized that I might quit before 100 miles if things weren't going well. I had no intention of gutting through this race on willpower alone, just in case burnout really is the reason I haven't been loving my bike lately. I did my best to reassure Judi as we grabbed some pizza, then it was time to go to our respective hotels and get some sleep.

The weather forecast was looking pretty ominous. The weather channel app showed an angry grey cloud with a thunderbolt hanging out of it next to every line on the hourly forecast starting at the same time as the race. When I opened my hotel door at 6 am, there was a giant flash. The area that the hotel was in reminded me of East LA, and for a second I wondered if it had been a gunshot before a big, fat rain drop fell on my head and I figured out what was going on. Left: They made us wear mirrors. The mirror that I attached to my sperm hat had fallen off by half way through the race.

At the start, the rain was unenthusiastic. While Judi had been so nervous that she ralphed up all her breakfast on the way to the race, I was pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. Meh, I'll just start pedaling and keep pedaling until I don't want to anymore, I thought. The rain wasn't boding well for my waning motivation. I took my time finishing my coffee and rocking up to the start, even though this was a draft-legal race, and therefore it would have behooved me to move closer to the front pack. I only muscled my way half way through the crowd that had already formed at the start, and Judi and I settled down next to an HPV (human-powered vehicle: with all kinds of aerodynamic accessories to reach the fastest speeds recorded by any non-motorized vehicle) that looked like a penis in a giant yellow condom. And I thought that I was a dork in my sperm hat!

I'm the one in the blue coat in the background. You can tell it wasn't a pretty morning.

Once the race started, I did my best to catch up with the lead pack, but where I'd seeded myself at the start made that pretty much impossible. Instead, I settled into the second or third chase pack and tried to figure out the best way to draft with aero bars in the rain. Almost as soon as we started riding, the skies opened up, my glasses clouded over, my socks got sopping wet, and life got miserable. It was damned windy out there, and every time I let the gap grow to more than about an arm's length, it became a huge effort to catch back on. As the second hour was approaching without my having a chance to eat anything and barely drinking a drop, I decided that group be damned, I had to eat. I dropped back as I shoved a bar in my mouth and tried to catch back on to the pack that was moving along at 20 mph. It took me a good 10 minutes to whittle the gap down to nothing again, and I realized that I couldn't keep this 20 mph pace up for the rest of the race. When we got back to the start/finish area after 50 miles, I hopped off my bike to grab more bars and liquids and decided to ride my own race.

"C'mon blue!" yelled someone as they rode by me standing ass-up over my cooler. Yeah, whatever. Fuck off, I thought as I mounted my bike and checked over my shoulder to make sure that I really was alone. Within a couple of miles, I found myself riding with a guy on a fixie, and like a snowball rolling down a hill we picked up more and more riders until we'd formed a group of about six. The wind had picked up to about 10 mph (if you trust the weather report) or 20 mph (more likely), and the whole course was exposed. The crosswind blowing through my spokes was making a maddening low whistling sound that was practically driving me to tears, and the headwind wouldn't let us break 15 mph.

It would have been wise to ride in a paceline with the guys, but they all had the worst bike handling skills I'd ever seen. They were weaving all over the road and had no idea how to behave in a pack. At one point they formed a beautiful five-man echelon (the most efficient formation for a crosswind) clear across the road, leaving me trailing behind and fighting the wind by myself. No one was trading pulls, and I was starting to get cranky and was afraid that I was going to tear these guys a new asshole if I rode with them much longer. When we got to the far check point at about mile 77, I let the zig-zag boys ride on while I got off to refill my water bottles. I would continue to run into these same guys throughout the race, and it often took more effort not to ride with them, but it was well worth the extra pushing to get rid of them.

RAAM veteran Terry and I ride through the crappy, crappy rain. I'm hidden behind the big guy in the back. He couldn't handle his bike worth a damn, and he was the main reason I wound up riding alone after mile 75.

Now that I was by myself, I could set my mind to more important matters. I had to pee. I knew that since I was soaked, if I stopped for too long I would get cold and it would be impossible to warm up again, so I figured I'd just pee all over myself on the bike. Hey, I was already wet. One problem though: the course was completely flat. It's next to impossible to pee on the bike while you're pedaling. It took me thirteen miles of pushing so hard on my innards that it made me burp to finally find a downhill where I could let loose. Pee ran through my shorts, down my legs, over my seat and onto my wheel, which flicked drops of pee every which way. Not a minute later, two guys came up behind me when I hadn't seen a soul in half an hour. To make it worse, I noticed for the first time that it had stopped raining. Oops! It never did rain again to wash all the pee off of me, and I wonder if that had something to do with the giant boil that has formed in my crotch since the race.

When I finished the second loop I had 100 miles behind me, and set out for my last loop of the long course by myself. By the time I got back the 7-mile short loop would be open, and I was
hoping it would be more sheltered in town. I told myself, Just 27 miles into the wind to the far point on the loop, then the next 23 miles are free into the tailwind. So I battled through the headwind by myself until I caught a tailwind about 7 miles early. I didn't let myself think about what that meant until I had already turned around and my tailwind was gone. The wind had turned! Fuuuuuuuck! At the halfway checkpoint I asked how many women had come through on their third loop.
"There were three women who were riding together, but the last time they came through they'd lost one of their riders."
"And they were on their third loop?" I asked.
"I think so."
So I wasn't winning... maybe. Damn! Oh well. I still had my tailwind (that would never be) to look forward to, so my spirits were high.


Finally through the crosswind that was not a tailwind, I rode through the start/finish area and headed right out for the first of several 7-mile loops. I couldn't wait to see what this short, sheltered loop would look like; Not sheltered at all, as it turned out. The winds felt stronger on the short loop than they had on the long loop, although the cycles of highs and lows were shorter. On my second loop I easily passed a girl who looked strong enough to have maybe been ahead of me this whole time (turns out she'd take second to me in my age group). Then I caught up to the guy on the fixie. "Go blue!" he said. He had such a southern twang that he managed to make these two words last for about 10 syllables. I hunkered in next to him for a chat.
"So is that fixed or single speed?" I asked.
"This one here," (this 'un hey-yere) "she's fixed" (she's fi-ixed). I asked him where he was from (Noahth Car'laahna), and how long it took him to get here. "About eight hours. Normally I ride, but this time I drove." So he was one of those super anti-social randonneurs. Clearly he didn't take his meds. I noticed that his helmet was held on with climbing rope rather than regular flat straps. "Oh you have no idea how anti-social I am!" he said. "You ever think of doing the grand-daddy of 'em all?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"RAAM." It wasn't till long after I'd told him that I was going to be there as part of a crew this year, and then finally asked him whether he'd ever done it that he revealed his experience. "What? You mean crewing? Yeah. I done that a coupla times."
"No, I mean ride it."
"Yep. I done that a coupla times too. Everybody at RAAM's got a Droppin' Terry story."
I looked at him. "How many times have you done it?"
"I done four, but I only finished three. And I come in third 'mercan each time," he recalled, thinking about it. "I'm trying this race to see if I want to do it this year on a fixie."
"They're sure going to tell good stories at your funeral," I said. I was impressed not only that he had finished RAAM so many times, but that it had taken him so long to boast about it. As I've said before, the people who deserve to brag are the ones that never do.

"You're in the lead," Terry told me.
"I thought there were 2 women ahead of me?"
"Not anymore they ain't," he said with such certainty that I believed him.

RAAM Veteran Terry drafting off of me.

I lost Terry as we turned out of the wind and I could use my bigger gears to my advantage. For the rest of the race, my mind had turned to mush. I couldn't remember where I was, in Ohio, or Mississippi, or maybe upstate New York, or perhaps the moon. I couldn't remember what the long loop looked like, or even how many of the short loop I'd done. My head hurt and I'd felt like I could fall asleep at any second for hours. I knew I was dehydrated, but it was so late that I could never catch up, so I just kept drinking at the same rate. Time stretched out, and it took me forever and ever to hit 200 miles. I knew that if I really stepped on it, I could set a PR and break my 12-hour record of 220 miles, but I didn't care enough to push it.

When I was talking to Terry about RAAM, I checked in with myself. Did I want to do RAAM? Did I want to do things like ride to Ohio on my bike, just to ride my bike for 12 more hours and ride home? My neck hurt already, and although I wasn't making excuses to get off my bike, I still wanted the 12 hours to be over. Did I want to do RAAM? No, I didn't think so. I didn't want to be one of those "anti-social" crazy people, I kind of wanted to know what it felt like to be one of those people who "took her meds." I wanted to fit in again. I kind of wanted to stop making sacrifices for a little while. Even the fact that I was winning didn't give me much of a thrill or a drive to keep going. I forbade myself from getting off my bike unless it was absolutely necessary to refill on fuel or fluids, but the spark was gone. I was satisfied with where I was and didn't really feel like pushing harder. What I really wanted was to have someone waiting for me at the finish line, someone to give me a massage on clean hotel sheets after the race. I know I need to keep active to keep myself from going crazy, but do I really need to be doing these crazy competitions and beating other girls to be satisfied with myself? The answer I kept coming up with was, Not so much anymore.

I set out for what would be my final loop with less than 15 minutes to go. There would be a volunteer waiting at every mile marker to tell us when the race was over. The Grim Reepers (as I dubbed them) were already out on the course, calling out time checks as we rolled by. "You can fit in 3 more miles!" someone yelled at the start/finish area. "10 minutes to go!" one yelled at mile 1. "You've got about 6 minutes!" yelled the next.
I turned out of the headwind and rode like hell for the next Grim Reeper. He didn't stop the guy riding in front of me, so I yelled out, "TIME CHECK?!" as I rolled by.
"Three minutes!" he yelled. "Go for it!"
Three minutes meant that I would have to average 20 mph with a crosswind and up a slight incline over the next mile (plus a bit of a downhill to the mile marker at the end). I started hauling ass, and pulled in to the last mile marker with seconds to spare, gasping and coughing. According to my GPS I'd gone 216.6 miles. They rounded it up to 218.5. If I had just squeezed a little more, I could have pulled out that last 3.5 miles I needed for a PR. Oh well.

All in all I counted the race as a success. Not only had I won by about 13 miles over the next woman, I'd also spent about an hour more on the bike than I had in last year's race and had gutted it out in way tougher conditions. In 12 hours I had been off the bike for less than 15 minutes. My neck, shoulders, back and feet hurt, but my legs and contact points felt fine. Although I didn't want to, I could have kept riding.


They made us wait forever for the awards, and right after getting our medals (Judi got third in her AG), we had to jet back to Cincinati, about 2 hours away.

The next day I felt completely hung over. My head hurt like hell, and I felt like I could fall asleep at any moment. I had that heavy hangover feeling in my body like my veins had been filled with concrete, and I could barely muster the energy to participate in conversations... which I felt horrible about because I really wanted to prove to Judi and Dominic that I was a fun and interesting person. "You're not at all what I expected you to be like," Judi had told me on the night we first met. "I was expecting you to be all chipper and 'rah, rah, rah!' You're actually really chill and laid back." I get that a lot.

I've felt awful after races before with stomach upset, sore muscles and screaming sun burns, but I'd never felt like I'd downed a bottle of cheap vodka and a case of Red Bulls. It was probably the combination of not drinking enough, not drinking enough electrolytes (I foolishly went for water throughout the day) and tripling my season-to-date maximum volume. Instead of me being a fun and interesting person to entertain my hosts, we spent the rest of the day draped in dogs and watching movies on cable.


On the 14-hour drive home, I ran out of audiobooks to listen to and finally had the time to sort through my thoughts through Pennsylvainia and New York. By Connecticut I felt like I had most of it figured out. In the darkest corners of my brain, I still couldn't find my bloodthirsty competitive instinct. The thoughts that were firing me up were off the bike. I missed going out into the woods by myself or with the dog and dancing over rocks and roots. I yearned for a feeling of accomplishment from a job, not a race. Then "Here for Now" (the song quoted above) came on my iPod. "You know you need your instrument" (in this case, my bike), "but does your instrument need to be mic'ed?" Do I really need to figure into some national rankings to feel a sense of accomplishment? I do need to be active and constantly challenging myself, but do I really need trophies and upgrade points to be fulfilled? Lately the most satisfying victories are the ones that receive no recognition: not quitting in the face of tough conditions, being able to dig deep in order to push my body beyond its own limits (even if they didn't look like limits on paper), and just finding that rare and unexpected workout that makes me feel like life is better because of it.