I am a slow learner.
The guys I ride with repeatedly catch me cross chained. If you allow me an hour, I might change my own flat. I figured out just last week that if my weight is too far back, I can’t steer. All right, I confess. I didn’t discern that on my own.
Someone helpfully dispensed that particular advice after I let my bicycle go on ahead, riderless.
I also don’t know when to give up, which is perhaps corollary to the dim witted tendency above. I’ve been doing some research lately on addiction. Most sufferers have a poorly functioning orbitofrontalcortex. Their brains scramble memory, emotion and praxis. Yahoo! news summary: they do the same things over and over, even to their detriment.
I may have broken D2 receptors, but I’m not dumb, you know. Pain IS motivating. If something hurts enough, I’ll consider adapting. For example, if I know a race venue is predicted to be blazing hot, I start hydrating the day before. Take special electrolyte pills. Spin out a long, slow warm up.
This is a level of sophistication unavailable to me when I last raced at Bonelli. It was my third ever race, age group Beginner, mere weeks after I started riding at all. I rolled out on a bike I’d purchased the previous evening. It weighed thirty-four pounds. I also schlepped a fully loaded Camelbak for a short, single lap race in an urban preserve. And, since the course crossed the park entrances, I had to dismount to get down and up the curbs. I didn’t preride the technical sections. I crashed hard on the first descent, and fell over two more times after that.
At the time, my inexperience, heavy gear and skid marks did not seem insurmountable obstacles. No. Mere gnats on the fly scale of athletic misery.
What really got me was the heat. Nausea, dizziness, chills, cramps. I walked my bike up the last hill, coasted across the timing line, collapsed in the shade. My husband had stayed home with our three preschoolers, so luckily I had no witnesses to my ignominious finish.
Until Joy Duerkson happened to walk by and notice a semi conscious racer lying on the grass, bleeding profusely.
She rinsed the flap of skin hanging off my right knee, and then forced me to drink what was left in her water bottle. She sent for ibuprofen, and helped me limp to the first aid truck. I will never forget her kindness. I do wish I could forget the number of subsequent other times I had to seek out the race medics.
Fast forward four years.
I am back at Bonelli in a new category. I line up just behind the pros on my titanium hard tail. I’ve logged a record number of training miles since ending last season on top of the Sport points series. I know the first and last name of every woman in my field, having tracked their times race after race. Even the newcomers cannot hide from my superior googling skills. I double check my initial gear ratio, adjust my costly wicking clothing, lower my photovoltaic sunglasses, and I am ready for the heat.
Or so I thought.
If I’d stayed in the easier category, I could have finished long, long before the 1 p.m. start. Eighty-four smoggy degrees, and every single climb was exposed to the sun. My race goals evaporated on the first hill.
They were distilled into these phrases, repeated endlessly for the whole first lap: do not throw up. Do not give up. Do not get off the bike.
Hot. Very hot.
Keep going.
Sometimes neurology is on my side.
I survived the first lap, headed back up for the second. At the feed zone, I begged the volunteer to pour water on my neck.
Ah. Yes. Relief.
I am a slow learner.
I grew up in the desert, where the poor man’s air conditioner is charmingly called a swamp cooler. As water evaporates, it pulls heat energy out of the air. Or off a hot girl’s back.
Every cell in my body still howling in protest, I thumbed into a bigger gear. I found my yogi breaths. I took off. I never came close to catching anyone, but did manage to come in less than ten minutes behind the Counting Coup course record holder.
Water. That’s all I was missing.
Was it really that simple?
That’s why I race, actually. For the simplicity of it. Despite the fancy schmancy bikes, corporate sponsors, and the minutiae of carb to protein ratios, racing offers an elemental satisfaction that is addicting.
Begin. Suffer. Finish. Enjoy.
Repeat as necessary for inoculation against life’s true difficulties.
As the new race season approached, I had been looking forward to "aging up." Despite the relentless march of time, starting a new decade meant that I would be the youngest racer in my ten year age bracket.
However, two weeks ago, my fortieth birthday found me in another dried up desert town, attending my younger brother’s funeral. He was a veteran, weighed down by nightmares, hard luck and poor choices. He loved trains. He tried heroically to overcome his addiction to alcohol. He was a devoted father. He took his own life.
Yesterday found me lying alone under a tree, after another hard race at Bonelli. Hurting just as much, for different reasons.
Don’t give up.
Keep going, keep going.
I did. I will.
This one’s on me, big guy.
For Jon Paul LaPointe 1974-2009
The guys I ride with repeatedly catch me cross chained. If you allow me an hour, I might change my own flat. I figured out just last week that if my weight is too far back, I can’t steer. All right, I confess. I didn’t discern that on my own.
Someone helpfully dispensed that particular advice after I let my bicycle go on ahead, riderless.
I also don’t know when to give up, which is perhaps corollary to the dim witted tendency above. I’ve been doing some research lately on addiction. Most sufferers have a poorly functioning orbitofrontalcortex. Their brains scramble memory, emotion and praxis. Yahoo! news summary: they do the same things over and over, even to their detriment.
I may have broken D2 receptors, but I’m not dumb, you know. Pain IS motivating. If something hurts enough, I’ll consider adapting. For example, if I know a race venue is predicted to be blazing hot, I start hydrating the day before. Take special electrolyte pills. Spin out a long, slow warm up.
This is a level of sophistication unavailable to me when I last raced at Bonelli. It was my third ever race, age group Beginner, mere weeks after I started riding at all. I rolled out on a bike I’d purchased the previous evening. It weighed thirty-four pounds. I also schlepped a fully loaded Camelbak for a short, single lap race in an urban preserve. And, since the course crossed the park entrances, I had to dismount to get down and up the curbs. I didn’t preride the technical sections. I crashed hard on the first descent, and fell over two more times after that.
At the time, my inexperience, heavy gear and skid marks did not seem insurmountable obstacles. No. Mere gnats on the fly scale of athletic misery.
What really got me was the heat. Nausea, dizziness, chills, cramps. I walked my bike up the last hill, coasted across the timing line, collapsed in the shade. My husband had stayed home with our three preschoolers, so luckily I had no witnesses to my ignominious finish.
Until Joy Duerkson happened to walk by and notice a semi conscious racer lying on the grass, bleeding profusely.
She rinsed the flap of skin hanging off my right knee, and then forced me to drink what was left in her water bottle. She sent for ibuprofen, and helped me limp to the first aid truck. I will never forget her kindness. I do wish I could forget the number of subsequent other times I had to seek out the race medics.
Fast forward four years.
I am back at Bonelli in a new category. I line up just behind the pros on my titanium hard tail. I’ve logged a record number of training miles since ending last season on top of the Sport points series. I know the first and last name of every woman in my field, having tracked their times race after race. Even the newcomers cannot hide from my superior googling skills. I double check my initial gear ratio, adjust my costly wicking clothing, lower my photovoltaic sunglasses, and I am ready for the heat.
Or so I thought.
If I’d stayed in the easier category, I could have finished long, long before the 1 p.m. start. Eighty-four smoggy degrees, and every single climb was exposed to the sun. My race goals evaporated on the first hill.
They were distilled into these phrases, repeated endlessly for the whole first lap: do not throw up. Do not give up. Do not get off the bike.
Hot. Very hot.
Keep going.
Sometimes neurology is on my side.
I survived the first lap, headed back up for the second. At the feed zone, I begged the volunteer to pour water on my neck.
Ah. Yes. Relief.
I am a slow learner.
I grew up in the desert, where the poor man’s air conditioner is charmingly called a swamp cooler. As water evaporates, it pulls heat energy out of the air. Or off a hot girl’s back.
Every cell in my body still howling in protest, I thumbed into a bigger gear. I found my yogi breaths. I took off. I never came close to catching anyone, but did manage to come in less than ten minutes behind the Counting Coup course record holder.
Water. That’s all I was missing.
Was it really that simple?
That’s why I race, actually. For the simplicity of it. Despite the fancy schmancy bikes, corporate sponsors, and the minutiae of carb to protein ratios, racing offers an elemental satisfaction that is addicting.
Begin. Suffer. Finish. Enjoy.
Repeat as necessary for inoculation against life’s true difficulties.
As the new race season approached, I had been looking forward to "aging up." Despite the relentless march of time, starting a new decade meant that I would be the youngest racer in my ten year age bracket.
However, two weeks ago, my fortieth birthday found me in another dried up desert town, attending my younger brother’s funeral. He was a veteran, weighed down by nightmares, hard luck and poor choices. He loved trains. He tried heroically to overcome his addiction to alcohol. He was a devoted father. He took his own life.
Yesterday found me lying alone under a tree, after another hard race at Bonelli. Hurting just as much, for different reasons.
Don’t give up.
Keep going, keep going.
I did. I will.
This one’s on me, big guy.
For Jon Paul LaPointe 1974-2009
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