Nutz over Chocolate over Mud (almost) — Winter Short-Track Race #1
Saturday morning, the morning of the first Short Track race, was nasty. Off-and-on rain pounded the poor juniors trying to race. Last year was so much easier for me when I decided to forego short-track racing and just watch from the sidelines. This year, I decided to race, but to do it “for fun”. To assure the fun factor, I raced my SS. This would also assure my subsequent thrashing by whatever competitors I had. See, I wasn’t sure which class to race • do I race with the SS class and get killed by a bunch of fast guys, or do I race with the “Super Sport” women and get killed by fast girls on geared bikes? I chose to race with the girls, to lessen the massacre and to increase the numbers in the women’s race (Neal said that if he didn’t have enough women in Super Sport, he wouldn’t continue to offer the class). So, there were four of us • the three geared chicks and me. Plus, starting 30 seconds ahead of us were 10 singlespeeders. Thankfully, by the time we started, the rain had stopped, so we only had the residual mud to deal with.
At the start, I got in the back of the line, assuming the others would take off and I’d be spinning my butt off. But, somehow I got enough power in my first few pedal strokes to feel the need to pass one of the other girls. This was a tactical mistake, since I tried to pass and got cut off into the grass with the chain-link fence quickly approaching. Next time, I won’t try to pass on the outside. The girl who cut me off hit her brakes in the turn in the parking lot and almost bit it. All I could imagine was a pile of bodies up against the dumpster in the corner. Disaster avoided (narrowly).
The rest of the race, I just tried to hold on. I kept washing out in the turn just below the long uphill, and totally losing my momentum causing me to struggle up the hill each time. About 15 minutes into the race, I realized that I really hadn’t eaten anything substantial besides a “Nutz over Chocolate” Luna bar. After the first 3 long laps, “Nutz over Chocolate” almost became “Nutz over Chocolate over Mud” because I almost lost it all over the climb.
My internal voice kept saying, “Breathe, don’t puke. Breathe, don’t puke.” That worked for a while, so then the voice was saying, “This is fun. This is fun.” That worked, too. By the end of the race, I was feeling great. My legs were spent. My heart didn’t explode, but it came close. The best part of the race was crossing the line with Madonna. She was lapping me, but she was having shifting issues… (you shoulda ridden a SS!) We chatted all the way up the hill to the line.
No one in our class actually knew our race was over. “Are we done?” “Was that the last lap?” We all rode around the parking lot trying to decide if we were supposed to do another lap. Our race was supposed to be 40 minutes, and we had only gone 36:30. We thought we heard “you’re done” when we crossed the line, but we never got the last lap bell and it wasn’t time for us to be done. Oh well. If we were supposed to do another lap, it didn’t matter since as far as we were concerned, we were done.
So, 4th place out of four is fine with me. I had a great time. I love riding my SS and I like the extra challenge. Hopefully next week won’t be as muddy and I can keep momentum on the climb rather than struggling up every time. Everyone needs a little 40 minute anaerobic workout in their week.
