7 hours of icing and ibuprofen, followed by 8 hours of thrashing as I unsuccessfully attempted to sleep on a freshly damaged shoulder brought me to 6am Sunday morning. I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee, winced as I couldn't raise it to my mouth with my right hand and decided that I would learn to drink left handed. Something that I must have had practice with in my double-fisted 20's since it wasn't that difficult to re-learn, not nearly as difficult as trying to brush my teeth left handed which resulted in me brushing my teeth in addition to my cheek and nose. My range of motion sucked and it was a real struggle to get my arm over shoulder height. I guessed that my handlebars could be held in a tolerable position but that the jarring of a race would suck. I also guessed that as long as I didn't crash on the shoulder I probably wouldn't make it any worse. This really didn't give me much comfort considering that it's harder for me to think of a race in which I haven't crashed than one in which I did. I took a 10 second lap around the house and confirmed my suspicions. Sitting on a bike was fine, riding a bike hurt, but only a crash on the shoulder would make it worse and I knew that once the adrenaline of a race kicked in the pain would be gone and I'd feel nothing but my heart crashing against my rib cage and my eyes popping out of their sockets like in any race. More ice, more ibuprofen, more coffee. I managed to get my bike on the roof rack and it was off to Sterling. Shifting hurt, I should have taken Michele's automatic. Am I doing the right thing or is this stupid? I was second guessing myself the whole way to Sterling. This is a hobby, right? I do this for fun. It's not like I'm getting paid. Is it really worth it? Then I remembered the $15 check I won for 5th place at Plymouth and it all made sense. This isn't just for fun, it's a career dammit! In all honesty, the reason I did it is because I could have sat at home in pain wondering how I would have done, or I could have raced my bike in pain and found out exactly how I would have done. All season I've been having a much better day on the second day of the Verge weekends and I would have been miserable for days with the Saturday race lingering in my head. I needed to flush it.
Tom Stevens designed the courses for the Sterling weekend. Guy is an artist!
photo byBanach
I start my warmup lap and the course was way more technical than Saturday's course. Way more twisty with a nasty steep off-camber descent into a 90 degree right hand turn that would dump me right on my bum shoulder if I dumped it. As usual, my Tufos were sliding in places that I really needed them to hold and this was not even at race pace. Crashes were a given. Honestly, these tires suck ass. What a waste of money on a tire that is only good in perfectly dry hard pack conditions, which translates to maybe one or two races in New England. Maybe the new Flexus is better with the added side knobbies. I'll never find out as I probably will never buy a set. Every turn I came into it was in the back of my mind that I was going to go down and finish off my already dodgy shoulder. Luckily, I brought along a set of new wheels that I just bought off Adam Myerson that had a hardly used set of Grifos on them. I threw them on the bike and took two more warmup laps and what a difference! All of a sudden I was able to go from cautious to aggressive. Much, much better handling. My legs felt strong, my lungs felt great like they normally do on day 2. It was going to be a good day. Finished my warmup on the trainer and headed off to staging.
I was really hoping I wouldn't win today because it would have hurt like
a son of a bitch to get my right arm over my head like Jonny BOLD here.
photo byBanach
Another 5th row start right behind the callups and I tucked myself in behind Matt Theodore. Matt's been beating me all year by as much as a minute or so, but I was right on his wheel at Plymouth a couple weeks ago and I was thinking if I could hang with him today I may be close to the points. The whistle blew and we're off. Clipped in clean and had a good start. Really nowhere to move from where I was in the middle of the pack but I didn't lose any places either so I came into the first 180 somewhere in the 40's. The group immediately strung out coming out of the 180 and I burned my first match of the day in a full balls out sprint that got me by at least 10 guys coming into the barriers. What was even better was that I recovered really quickly. The same effort on Saturday put me in the red for what seemed like forever.
I might have Myerson's wheels, but still lack in the icy coolness department...
photo byBanach
Into the 2nd lap I was still at the tail end of a group that had guys like Rowell, Larocque, Theodore, Meerse, Rosczko, Hornberger in it. There was probably 20 of us within 15 seconds of each other. As the laps went on the group was getting smaller and smaller as the really fast guys got off the front. By the time things settled out in the 3rd or 4th lap I found myself desperately trying to hang on with a group of Domnarski, Summers, Hornberger, Magur, Biederman and Gary David. My usual weaknesses were hurting me again today. My remounts were brutal. Even my dismounts were crap. How can you fuck up getting off your bike? At one point coming into the runup I came around the corner, jumped off the bike and fell over right into a thornbush with thorns the size of sabertooth tiger teeth (assuming sabertooth tiger teeth are massive flesh eating thornlike things). While I was clawing my way out of the bush, two riders ran past me and a bunch of spectators laughed and heckled me. I don't blame them, it had to have been pretty funny to watch.
Proof of the vicious tiger attack
At some point we were coming by a group of spectators that yelled to one of the guys in our group that he needed to move up 5 spots to get in the points. Holy shit, I'm sitting about 30th with 3 to go and I'm feeling strong! Nice! Getting down to 2 to go, we dropped Biederman and then Domnarski flatted. Then we dropped David. There were 4 of us with Hornberger and Wade Summers keeping a very slight gap on me and Mike Magur. David was chasing like hell but we had about 10 seconds on him. I was dying trying to stay on Magur's wheel.
It's kind of funny when grown men throw on these clown suits, but when they start doing it to their kids it's just wrong. I mean this kid's gotta get a date for the junior prom for Christ's sake! photo byBanach
We got the bell for last lap and I threw up a flare. I sprinted onto Magur's wheel and got by him coming into the 180. I drilled it coming into the stretch back towards the barriers but he was right on me. I came over the barriers like a jackass to his thoroughbred and he got a gap on me on the remount. Nothing but experience is going to make me better at that. I figure to be able to do my dismounts and remounts cleanly like that in another 3-5 years. I can practice them as much as I want in my backyard or in some field but unless you're doing it at race pace with your heart in your throat and somebody right on your wheel then it is not going to help. Well, it doesn't seem to be helping me anyways. I closed the gap back on Magur just in time for the runup and another remount, which he gapped me again on. Then I chased him into the woods, out by the horse jump through some more chicanes and caught him somewhere around where we hit the pavement. There were a bunch of sketchy turns on gravel and dirt in and around some fences and small hemlock-type shrubs that we were snaking our way through. Coming into one of the corners we both came in too fast and were wide of the line we needed to be on. Mike jammed his brakes to avoid hitting a hemlock head-on which got me overlapped on the outside of his rear wheel so I had nowhere to go but into the hemlock. A much cushier tree to hit than the one that smucked me the day before. I pulled myself out of the hemlock and resumed the chase. But he was too fast and smooth through the last few technical sections and I couldn't close the gap to anything better than 2 or 3 seconds. I ended up 28th on the day out of a strong Verge field of 60. It was my first Verge race ever where I finished in the top 50% and I was only 10 seconds out of the points.
Thanks for the wheels, Adam! How much for another 30W on my FTP?
And I was second guessing myself on whether or not I should even be there. Actually, this could just as easily ended up with me crashing on my shoulder and getting that admonishing shake of the head coupled with "You're a dumbass!", from people that just don't understand. But then again they've never gotten that $15 check for 5th place at Plymouth, how could they understand? Hahaha...
So PRO!
Race over, adrenaline gone, the pain seeped back into my body like the embrocation afterburn that you get when you put your pants back on after changing out of your kit. I drove pretty much the entire way home in 4th because it hurt to shift. I reached to punch the CD out of the radio but it hurt to reach so I just kept AC/DC Black Ice cranking, which at this point was on it's 5th run-through since the day before. The need to change it having yet to outweigh the pain required in making it happen.. Back home. More ice, more ibuprofen, and while we're on the letter "i" I had myself a big-ass bowl of ice cream.
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