Tales from the Saddle

Monday, May 08, 2006

Takes One & Two

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a sense of direction, a memory and a constant awareness of myself and my belongings. What would I do with all the time I currently spend patting myself down in a frantic search for my wallet, keys, cell phone? Could I imagine not having to come up with catchy jingle to help me remember aisle 3 section F in a parking garage (in case you’re wondering, that would be the three little pigs named Frank, Fred and Fester)? And what about all that time I spend getting lost? Surely without all this mindlessness I would be a rather boring, uninteresting person—or so I tell myself.

Because of early Saturday morning rowing practices, I was unable to race at Poolesville this weekend. Instead, I found another road race in Lancaster County, whose women cat 4 race started at 1pm. Plenty of time for me to finish practice and drive up. In theory I was correct. I was on the road by 9. I hit traffic on the beltway and traveled 3 miles in 30 minutes. After that I made all my connections (95 to 695 to 83 to 30) speedily. And then I got confused. I blame it on the directions that I printed off of the web site that named no landmarks and referred to the race site as “the church on the right.” Very helpful in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of spiritual enlightenment.

I kept telling myself as I backtracked along east and west, that as long as I arrived an hour before my race I’d be fine. Another wrong turn, bad decision, and an hour became 45 minutes which became 30 minutes which became 20 minutes then 15 minutes. Registration closes 15 minutes before the race. Surely, it would be a close call, but that’s what makes me so darn exciting!

As I finally gave up and decided that I would drive to a familiar location of past time trials and go for a nice, long ride on the back roads of Lancaster---wouldn’t you know, I found the race—just in time to watch the Women’s race start! They were off to ride a 40k road race, so I set off in the opposite direction to do the same. Forty kilometers and many hills later, I returned just as the women rode back to the parking lot. I got back in my car and drove home—without getting lost.

Take Two

Sunday morning I was determined not to mess up again. Knowing that the Bunny Hop Criterium was only 20 miles away, I was confident that I would get there with enough time to experience my usual pre-race warm up routine. I left the house at 645, got fuel for the car and then for me (thank you Dunkin Donuts!). I was on the road by 715 and arrived at the race course by 745. I ate my bagel and drank my morning cup o’ joe listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition. Today was going to be alright.

I registered and got my bike out of the trunk and race wheels on. I attempted to solve the case of the crazy front derailleur. During yesterday’s ride, my front derailleur continued to act crazy (see I Want a New Drug) and would shift or not at all or make very loud noises that called undue attention to me. I recruited a fellow cyclist when I couldn’t get anything to work. He fixed it some, but we couldn’t get it to shift into the big ring through regular means. It would only shift when the cable was pulled. I sought out neutral support, who was able to make my bike function through conventional shifting.

My race was scheduled to start at 930a. There were two junior races before ours. One started at 8am and the next was supposed to start at 830. At 9am they started the Junior 17-18 race. At 930, the cat 4 women were allowed one warm-up lap of the 1 kilometer course. We got the line only to be informed that the course needed to be clear of two tractor trailers. We got to ride around for another 15-20 laps before they stopped us again. Again, the course was still not clear. We rode around for another 15 minutes. By 10:15 when our race should have been over, we were finishing up our seemingly never-ending warm up laps. By 1025 we finally started our race, which had now been shortened to 30 minutes.

I stayed on the back of the pack for a while, never able to get myself inside the pack. After approximately 10 laps I fell off. Another rider and I worked together around the course for another 10. With about 10 laps to go, the officials blew a whistle at me and my counterpart and gestured for us to get out of the way of the pack that was closing in behind us. We got over and continued our tempo. As we tried to get on the back of the pack, one of the women in the pack shouted at us that “they blew the whistle, get off the course!” The other cyclist and I looked at each other confused and said, “I don’t think so, they just told us to get out of the way.” So we kept our tempo up and proceeded around the course. As we approached the start/finish area we asked the officials under the tent if we had been pulled. They said that we hadn’t and urged us to keep going. A second group beyond the official’s tent, yelled to us to “get off the course.” We rode down to the first turn, thoroughly confused and a little pissed off. We got off the course and rode back to the officials.

I spoke to the officials and asked them if they minded telling us if we were still racing or not. One official said yes, but another one said no. I asked, “well, which one is it?” Finally they said we’d been pulled, as we’d been lapped. I asked why they didn’t use a more official and less confusing way of pulling us, by either saying our team name (as in "hey you Potomac Velo! Get off the course!") or by our name/number—they had a complete roster, after all. I was told they didn’t have the capabilities for that. I bit my tongue as to not get DQ’d, but believe me, I had words foaming at the mouth. Thank god for limited lung capacity, or else they would have gotten out!

After only 25 minutes of racing, I was done. It worked out to be $1 a minute in the end, but I am still upset that they shortened our race, instead of just pushing everything back, and that they were desperately unclear in pulling riders. My legs felt good, and despite the fact that I didn’t hold onto the pack, it would have been nice to get 45 minutes of racing in.

Perhaps I will protest the Bunny Hop next year, as I am duly unimpressed and discouraged by this year’s crit, considering that last year’s was very well run.

Special thanks to Eric Sloman who graciously put my wheels to the pit and took my jacket on the start line! His race was also shortened considerably.

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