Cross Crusade #2: One-Lung vs. the Soul Crusher

Photo by Dave Roth

The second episode of our Cyclocross Video Series is imminent and I suspect it will contain some footage of me suffering at the hands of my bicycle. So, before the truth comes out (that damn camera never lies!), I’d like to present my version of the race report.

The Pre-Race Freeze

29 degrees. Twenty-nine degrees.

That’s how cold it is when we get to Rainier High school at 7:30 in the morning. Coming off a week of stunning late fall sunny weather, it isn’t even conceivable – that cold.

I’ve neglected to follow my own Cyclocross Golden Rule and I don’t have enough layers packed to come close to fending off the chill.

Instead there are blankets and huddling. Cursing. Laughter. Pleasant misery. It’s so cyclocross, that laughable discomfort.

Team tents are erected, the oatmeal-man is hunted, and then there is racing.

Bikes on gravel and grass, through meadows and over barriers. Up hills too steep to ride. Bikes on shoulders and leaned against trees and discarded with disgust (post-race).

Racing: Start Line

Normal pre-race nerves are assuaged by the distraction of conducting interviews and generally harassing my fellow racers with camera-man in tow. Anna Vaughn is wearing ironically rad red and white sunglasses (over-sized). She is about to win the race. I tell her as much. (She goes on to prove me right.)

Lindsay Kandra has her start-line vomit face on and refuses to give me any good quotes. The Ironclad creamsicles do their best to hide and Beth Burns is nowhere to be found (sneaky!)

Finally I tell Eric (previously mentioned cameraman) to buzz off so I can get mentally focused [i.e. make concerted effort not to throw up]. He obliges and random staging follows call-ups. I am staged randomly in the very last row. Sweet! I’d be pissed if I thought I even had half a chance at the hole-shot, but I know I don’t so instead I introduce myself to the nice Ironclad Cycling lady next to me and make idle chatter.

Whistle blows. Race is on.  Back of pack moves slowly off of grass and into gravel.

Everyone is still upright as we hit the lip of the pavement and turn left to climb a big paved hill.

Do you know how much I love to climb? I’ll let my beer-baby belly tell you.

Racing: Lap One

The foremost thought in my mind as we climb up the opening hill (I’m supposed to sprinting, I think, but I’m not) is that my mouth is dry and my lungs hurt.  Since there are 44 more minutes left in this race, I decide I better start thinking about something else. And quick.

We hit a flat section and I decide to race.

Go!

Grass, tree roots, bad lines, passes.  The first half lap is a bombing, dreamy, turning downhill extravaganza followed by a cyclist-eating gravelly left-hand turn into Hell Meadow of Bumpy Death. Pedal pedal pedal. I make up three positions with a clean run through the barriers. Zap! Take that, cyclists! Runners unite!

Toward the end of the lap I can see my teammate Susan coming back to me. We’re on an off-camber grassy section and she is riding the brakes – exactly the opposite of what I taught her to do during our skills practice three days ago. Susan should be destroying me out here – she is made of grit and power and Fast. But no one goes fast with the brakes on.

“Peithman, GET OFF YOUR FUCKING BRAKES!!!” I scream as I fly by her.

She calls out a bit of encouragement and we wind our way through a few swooping S-curves before launching toward The Hill.  It’s a sweet little gravel number, just steep enough to threaten to make me step off my bike.

Clang of cowbells, press of hecklers. The top of the gravel brings a half-second of respite before I realize that I now have to climb the pavement again.

Susan flies by me on the right screaming, “SWIFT THIS IS NOT A FUCKING RECOVERY SECTION!!”

Touche!

I manage to recognize a friend’s face in the crowd through all my gasping.  He screams, “STAND! UP! HEIDI!”

So I do. I take my little beer-baby-belly and I stand up and climb.  Susan is getting smaller ahead of me.

Another friend screams, “GO, ONE-LUNG!” in reference to my just-returned-from-flu status. This would normally make me chuckle but results instead in a snot and phlegm-shooting half-snort. Hot.

Racing: Laps Two through Four

Catch Susan through technical section.
Scream at her to get off her brakes.
Get dropped by Susan on pavement climb.
Get screamed at by her to “stop recovering”.

Rinse and repeat until gag reflex kicks in and I am breathing through my eyeballs.

Spend time passing the back of the beginner field as I lap them, which ends up being kind of fun.  Get stuck behind slower-moving racer, cheer them through the non-passable section ["You're doing great! Good job!"], request a line when possible, pass without spooking or otherwise being a complete asshole.

CameraMan appears on the big climb during one of these laps.  He is running.  He is running as fast as I am riding and there’s a lens in my face. His mouth is moving and he appears to be talking to me. Or screaming at me. Both?

I tell him something.
“I love this”
Something like that.

It seems like a lie at the time, but I realize later that it’s not.

I do love this. I love the sloppy, dirty, snotty, drooling, heckling whole of it.