My last race with Williams

…so I figured I might as well write an absurdly long race report. Here goes.

Coming into the race, I was pretty amped. I was a little worried that I had peaked too early in the season, with my best results coming in at Philly and Princeton. Yale had been okay, as had Dartmouth, but I was concerned that I was on the decline just when I wanted to be reaching the summit. Just coming off a cold and starting to realize that biking at 6000 feet was very different from biking at sea level, I was definitely just as nervous as I was excited.

And perhaps with good reason. This race had been the focus of my efforts since October. Every other race had merely been an applied sort of preparation. When I decided last summer that I wanted to go to, and succeed in, the collegiate national race, the goal seemed incredibly distant. All of a sudden, the ultimate test was right in front of me.

The flight out of Friday went well, and Saturday was spent relaxing, getting in one last relatively-low-key ride, and watching the criteriums. Only a few important lessons learned from Saturday:

1) The very first thing I rode was the descent in the road race. As someone who isn’t exactly the most confident descender, I was more than a little concerned about the descent. Going 55 mph on a descent is one thing. Going 55 on a curvaceous, bumpy road after just having killed yourself to get up the climb is something completely different.

2) The criteriums were fast and crash-filled. Remember that “crash-filled” part– unfortunately it’s going to come up again.

3) The single best pump-up video of all time is that clip from Friday Night Lights (the movie, not the show) where Billy Bob Thornton gives the halftime speech in the championship game.

Sunday: blue skies, perfect weather, and just an amazing beautiful day. For those of you who have never gone to Utah, you’re missing out. Certainly the most beautiful place I’ve been in the United States. The car ride out to the start was hectic. I was convinced that I had left my race number at home, ending my race before it even started (the “ending my race before it even started is also unfortunately going to come up again). Fortunately, I made it to the start line as well-rested and well-prepared as I was ever going to get.

Someone blew a whistle, and then we started.

A quick description of the course: a few flat laps around a beautiful reservoir, and then a big lap that goes down a beautiful canyon, into the outskirts of Ogden proper, up the big-ass climb (about 2000 ft. in 4 miles), down the descent from hell, and then about five flat/gently downhill miles to the finish.

The first lap started surprisingly quick. My plan was to take things easy for as long as possible, marking who I took to be the two strongest climbers in the ECCC: Eddie Grystar of Brown and Robin Carpenter of Swarthmore. No sense in wasting energy before the race really started to get interesting. I slowly and calmly drifted back into the pack of about 100 riders as we sped along at around 30 or so. It seemed as though the first few laps were going to be pleasantly boring.

Nope.

About five minutes into the race, I suddenly heard the sound that scares me most: screeching followed by shrieks followed by carbon hitting pavement. Immediately dust was everywhere, and I couldn’t see what had happened or how to avoid the looming disaster. I started to hit the breaks and pray that I’d somehow escape. Alas, my pleas were in vain.

Next thing I knew I was on the asphalt. Quick check: paralyzed? No. Broken collarbone? No. Wiggle toes; wiggle fingers; get back up. Bike broken? Not visibly, though once perfectly-tuned bike was now certainly anything but. Saddle not pointing forward. Looking around, the amount of carnage was unbelievable. About half the field had gotten wrapped up in the crash. Blood, safety pins, and broken forks littered the road. An ambulance arrived promptly to control the damage. Though unlucky to have gotten caught up in the crash, I suddenly considered myself rather fortunate. My race wasn’t (necessarily) over yet.

The biggest problem was the chain. Caught up between the front derailleur and the chainring, the crank was stuck. Amid my confusion, it took me about sixty to ninety seconds to get back on the bike and get going again. The peloton (or at least what remained of it) hadn’t stopped. Biking away from the crash, I looked back. No one was coming with me. Most riders had either ended their race right there or where up ahead on the road. I was alone.

The first thought that came into my mind was how wasteful this all could be. Months of training, weeks of peaking, days of travel, and hours of last-minute preparation to ride for five minutes and then be done. That’s bike racing.

I had nothing to lose. I buried myself and finally caught up with another rider. Working together, we caught another group that had been delayed by the crash, and then another. The pace was sufficiently fast that many riders simply could not keep up. Finally we caught the group of Adam Bry, the ECCC season champion, a really nice guy, and–more germanely– an extremely strong time trial rider. Suddenly it seemed possible. The field was still in the distance, but the distance was closing. After a complete lap, we finally caught the field. Without Adam, my race would have likely been over. He was the closest thing I had to a teammate, and I owe an incredible amount to him.

Though back in contention, I was drained. I had averaged an LT-esque pace when I should have been cruising easy. Luckily, the field was finally slowed down. The next 40 miles went by basically without event. I felt well-recovered, if also frazzled and now extremely gun-shy. Feeling the urge, I attempted multiple times to pee during the race. Turns out that peeing while biking at 20 mph in a pack of riders is a non-trivial skill, and more importantly a skill that I did not have. I just couldn’t do it.

There had actually been a rider off the front during this whole time, but coming into the big climb, he had been reeled in, and now we were all together. Just as I had hoped, the race would come down to the climb.

Every once in a while, part of training and racing is putting out an effort so painful that you simply wouldn’t be able to do it every day; no one is that masochistic. But, when called for on special occasions, one can go so deep into the pain cave that you begin to lose sight of all light, respite, and hope. Unquestionably, this occasion called for such an effort. So, as the climb began, I moved into the little ring, and began to go deeper and deeper into the pain cave until all that mattered, all that was real was the group of riders in front of me. Slowly, and unbelievably to me, I began to close on my opponents. Moving up to 20th, 15th, 10th, and then–impossibly, passing Robin Carpenter to meet up with a rider from rider from Minnesota State. We crested the summit in third and fourth. I was tired.

The next three minutes were nothing short of terrifying. Given my position, I had no choice but to take the descent as aggressively as I could. While my body accelerated down the steep pitch, my mind rebelled. What if your back had been tweaked during the crash? Do you really want to find out that something is amiss right now? Crashing at 50+ mph is not a pleasant thing to think about. Every time my wheel skipped, my heart did the same.

But I made it down in one piece, only about ten seconds behind the MSU rider who had recently been my companion. I caught up to him, and we began our final push for the finish.

Incredibly, a rider from Cumberland University was catching us even though he was riding alone. Despite relatively strong pulls, he made up at least 20 seconds on us to make a threesome. In the not-so-distant distance, Robin Carpenter looked to make it four.

I began to perform a calculation in my head. Medals and podium were given to the top five riders. We were three, four, and five. If Robin caught us, I would have to beat one of them out in a sprint to place. Know thyself: not the strongest sprinter in the world by a longshot, I decided that my best chance was to take strong pulls at front, even if it meant that my two companions would break me at the line. And that’s just what happened. We kept Robin off, and I took last in the sprint. The race was over.

Though unhappy to again be beat at the line, I was ecstatic to have earned my place on the podium. With the race over, I suddenly felt the aftereffects of my tumble. The steer tube had rammed into my chest, leaving a nice bruise. Road rash covered my right hip, knee, and ass. Most painfully, I had a huge blood blister on my thumb.

As long as the race had lasted, the ending felt incredibly sudden. As the emotional numbness wore off, I finally began to feel again. Happiness, relief, soreness, fatigue, and dehydration competed for my emotions. At that moment, though, only the happiness part really mattered.