Frozen Flatlands Road Race - aka Self-Torture

Learning the hard way sure is tough, but learning seems to be faster and more permanent when suffering is involved. The crit was a joke compared to the road race. Starting at 10:55 AM, when I’m normally sleeping, was much colder, windy and wet. The race was at max capacity of 75 for cat 4/5. All other categories had much smaller fields. My legs were tired already and I was about to get a week’s worth of riding in one day at the end of a long week.

The race started off comfortably enough after a short neutral zone. We battled winds from the SSE and few in the group were interested in riding in a position that would allow someone else to draft. Being in a pack wasn’t a tremendous help. Like yesterday, people attempted to break away, but when they were caught, we were nearly skidding to keep from a pile up. Within 5 miles, I was really cold from being under dressed for the rain and wind. To make matters worse, it started to hail. Hail in the face at apparent speeds of 30 to 35 MPH stings a bit, so the pack slowed as they kept their head down.

After going under hwy 195, we headed south on some rougher roads as it started to rain pretty hard. That rain turned to hail again and I actually started hoping it would turn to rain again. I was freezing and wanted it to rain! My fingers were going numb, my mouth was so frozen that I had trouble putting my lips around my water bottle and my shoes were filling with water despite water-resistant shoe covers. The hail stopped briefly and the sun threatened to come out and I was fortunate enough to have a Baddlands guy share with me some course information. He said “get ready to climb.”

We turned the corner, went under the highway and the road started to go up. This is where this thing got ugly. The hail came down bigger and heavier than any other time in the ride. I pulled my combat wrap (a.k.a. buff) up over my mouth and nose, which also covered the bottom of my glasses. They started to fog up, but it kept the hail off most of my face. With my head down, I looked up just enough to see the wheel in front of me. This went on until my glasses were so fogged that I could barely see at all. I pulled the buff down, wiped the glasses off and suffered the hail long enough to see that the field had been blown to pieces by an attack off the front. I was following the one guy that fell behind everyone by quite a bit.

On a day like this, the last thing I wanted to do was get left behind to suffer in the back. I stood up and started closing the gap. If I had noticed I was falling behind earlier, this would have been a pretty short chase. Instead, I gave chase for about 10 minutes. I hoped I’d double flat, break a spoke or something like that, so I could pull out of the race without quitting. This hill went on for so long that I found myself wondering if I was so delirious that I had descended a giant hill and didn’t realize it until I was going back up. The sag wagon, or whatever they call it, actually passed me and drove up to the back of the field. That pissed me off as I saw it as them counting me out, so I fought harder. My legs were on fire, my fingers frozen, my face stinging and I was challenging the wind, hail and rain to stop me. This is when it hurts so good that any difficulty only fuels the rage inside and makes me stronger. Finally, the quarter-mile gap was all sewn up, but I was at the back of the final pack. That’s not where I wanted to be.

Doing my best impression of Floyd Landis on stage 17 in the TDF, I caught the pack, ignored my body’s need for rest, rode right through the pack and started chasing the next one. About 15 miles of hell later, I was back in this one with one road companion in John Kercher. We were strong enough to keep leap frogging pack to pack, getting passed by the sag wagon and eventually passing it as we caught the next pack. Bodies were strewn along the road for miles, but somehow I got myself back into this thing by the last real hill. Shortly after, I hit a good sized rock in the road and thought I’d broken my wheel. Lucky for me, I was riding my Rolfs instead of Lews, so I was able to keep going without a problem. If that happened earlier, I probably would have stopped. We had a tail wind to the finish, so I latched onto a strong group and cruised along until the finish. We were too far behind the lead pack to catch them, but we still rode hard. Like the crit, I was boxed in again, but found my way out, even if a little too late, and managed to finish 3rd in my pack. Also like yesterday, I finished outside of the top 10 with a 12th overall finish. That nets me a sum total of nothing once again.

Looking back, I can see just how valuable it is to keep myself near the front. I was cruising alone at about the same pace as the lead break, but did so after setting myself up for failure. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how I’d survive riding more than twice as far as my normal long ride of 23.72M. Doing it as part of a small group would have been a lot easier, but somehow I held strong to the finish and turned last place into 12th. It’s certainly unnerving to cruise along in a pack of 75 racers plowing through wind, rain and hail just inches apart on unfamiliar roads. In what I thought would be an easier way to get some miles in, I found myself fighting mother nature and my inexperience to make something of this race. I learned a lot and overcame a lot more from refusing to quit when it would have been so much easier to do. After netting zero points, I’m still a cat 5 and will give it another go at the next one. I’m not sure why other groups were so much smaller and filled with easier competition. This pack was loaded with talent and so many bodies that my learning curve kept me out of the mix. I suppose that’s why I was there.