One year ago I lined up for my first bike race, a cyclocross race, without having any real idea what I was getting into. That race was Jackson Park. It took a few days to sink it, but that race hooked me on cyclocross.
As I stood on the front row of this year’s Master’s 30+ race, the first heat of the first day of racing, I thought how that day last year had caused an avalanche of change in what I did with my bike. I’d spent a long, long winter planning and scheming a training program to make me faster. I’d ridden more than 1000 miles in my living room. I bought a powertap or two. I trained with power. I did intervals. Oh man did I do intervals. I learned about my lactate threshold measured in terms of both power and heart rate. I learned how to ride tempo. I was dialed in. I did two full training periodization cycles. I learned to hate the build. I learned that for 15 seconds I can be pretty invincible.
I gave up 16 years of vegetarianism so it didn’t take me so long to recover after hammering my legs into oblivion. I recovered faster, and I trained and trained and trained. I subjected any of you still reading to all of this in excruciating detail.
I did this all for cyclocross.
This all passed through my mind Sunday as the race official put the whistle in his mouth, ready to start the race. I grinned maniacally, my first time to line up in the front row of a masters 30+ race and really mean it.
Cross was fucking here.
The whistle blew. I stood up ready to crush the pedals, ready to take the hole shot and worry about the other 45 minutes afterward. I knew in my muscles that I was going to get it. Before my second foot got anywhere near the pedal, my first popped out of the cleat, and I came down hard on the top tube. I saw stars. I swerved to the right running into people. Somebody behind shouted “dumbass.” I concurred. By the time I had both feet in the pedals, I felt like there was no pack and no race, that it was just another quiet day alone in Jackson Park kicking down the imaginary start chute, wishing that it was time for ‘cross.
I could tell you about how the race ended up. I could tell you how the next one didn’t go much better. I could try to wax contemplative and put things into perspective. For now, I think I’ll leave the first and second part of this story jarring against each other and work something out over the next couple of months.
Friends, cyclocross is here.