Wizzer

I learned something yesterday. Well a few somethings. First, as a bike racer I am stupid. Second, I learned that when I blogged about the freestyle pee’r the other day that I left one off. Yes, I forgot to mention ‘Stops to pee with 5 miles left in a bike race guy’. Actually I didn’t forget and leave him off, I never really knew that he existed.

So yesterday was the first race of the spring series. For me the culmination of 6 months worth of training. Well, maybe 5 months – one of those months was me not riding my bike and healing. Anyhow, thousands of miles and countless hours on the bike, 25 lbs lost, 25,000 snacks passed up, rides in the cold and dark, rides with miscellaneous freaky people on the greenbelt – anyhow, you get the idea. I prepared a lot and thought I was ready.

I should have known it was going to be a bad day when I rolled up to the start line and realized that my number was on the wrong side. Well, it was on my left when I pinned it on – of course that was when my jersey was upside down on my car seat. Who would have known that the upside down of left was right?

The second clue should have been when my race number blew away when I was trying to move it – all while standing at the start line. Nice. Oh well got it fixed and was still lined up in the sweet spot at the front.

The wind was a little bit gnarly. No one wanted the front. Brandon Archibald tried for a while, my team mate Nick and I tried for a while, Brett Nichols helped a bit. But mostly we just plugged along. I rode at the front a bit, tried to stretch it out a little – but I just wasn’t strong enough or motivated enough and the only thing I accomplished was making myself tired. Rob Van Kirk went for a little solo break for a little while, I went for a little while with Kurt Holzer and an ICE guy McGovern? That was pretty much it for the first lap.

The second lap was fun. Flying down Kuna-Mora Rd at 37 mph and managed to get dropped, how the hell did that happen? That was like all the gears I had, I couldn’t go any faster. Need to work on that. Never thought I would be wishing for a headwind, but I was. The headwind came, and I caught back on. And sat there, then I wiped the drool off my chin and sat there some more, then I wiped the snot off my nose and sat there some more, then I did the bike seat shuffle to relieve my angry posterior and sat a little bit more – I just sat there most of the way through the 3 lap in fact.

About 10 miles out I knew that I was in trouble. I started smelling things, nice things. Bike racing is many things, but nice smelling is not one of them – so I knew the olfactory lobe was burning up from the effort. Then we pass one a broken spoke woman from another race. Smelling nice is good, but during a bike race maybe not so much.

So anyhow Matt Fethke is up the road a piece. One of my teammates is riding well, I decide to help the chase a little with what I have left so everyone is back together when we hit last hill. So I chased a bit. Then a bit more. Then a little bit more. The gap came down a bit. Then a bit more.

We hit the hill and the engine gives out. Scotty is yelling from my legs ‘ I’m given ya all she’s got cap’n, she can’t take no more’. Unlike the dude from star trek my legs don’t lie. I drop like Dan’s chain (sorry Dan, couldn’t help myself). Everyone rides past me on the hill. Almost everyone. My teammate had stopped to pee.

I’m going to call him wizzer now.