Back at Base

(Baptist gem for the week)

Howdy

Since the early hours of Monday morning, I have been back at base. A great feeling after two + weeks on the road recovering while racing. No, not recovering from racing. Yes, it wasn't ideal and something I wouldn't recommend. I do feel better now, albeit continuously tired and sore.

Where is base? Somewhere west of Philadelphia, on the east coast of the US. To get there from Philadelphia, you need to dodge all the cyclists of inner Philly, avoid the bridge that has been destroyed and is in the process of being rebuilt (the smith street bridge), pass the University (with the wonderful slogan on their banners that says 'Left of Center'. Brilliant!), and then you take a wrong turn into a one way street, panic, and then find a street that enables you to continue west.

This then takes you into some of the most dodgy areas imaginable, with some amazing architecture accompanied by an urgent desire to lock your doors, and check them again at the next traffic light. And the next.

Finally you pass the Market Street detour and continue west on Route 3. Along here, you get to pass the neighbourhood of Haverford, which houses a pretty nice University (and a terrific head of security - Tom King), before you start to hit the signs and sounds of Newtown Square. This is my official address, but I don't actually live in the town. A bit like me saying I live in Yarragon, but four km from the actual township boundary. Here, the loose associations with postcodes is far broader. The comparison means I almost live in Moe but continue to use the Yarragon postcode. Lets not mention this again. Bad example.

The area I live in is quite nice, but far removed from things like shops, services and footpaths. But we have deer. As I was riding home tonight, I turned into the estate and continued to make the slow, windy climb that is the main feature for the last 500m of each ride. Two deer hurdled past me, just as I had my head down and was thinking the strain of being aware of the traffic on the narrow roads was over. Crap, keeping alert for deer is like expecting to step on a tiger snake every second step when bushwalking. You want to keep monitoring it, but you just can't keep the vigilance up for such a period of time. I shudder as I think of Les, a friend in nearby Centerville who shattered his shoulder riding one of these roads when a deer suddenly lept out at him and completely took him out.

But here in "Newtown Square" I have my own room, laundry, and internet. Pretty much a staple diet for a balance of sanity. I don't have any pictures though!! I also have a rental car this week, which is an embarrassing PT Cruiser. There is a reason you don't see many of these cars around. A very good reason. Oh well, at least when you turn up a one way street the wrong way people aren't looking at you for your lack of navigation skills.

So, lets summarise (quickly) my past two weeks of racing.

Week One - Speed Week

Didn't eat for three days, felt contiously sick for a week, and raced on top of this. Poor form, and poor results. Terrible. Crit racing is like being kicked in the guts for an hour, and if the kicking eases up, the idea is to talk smack until the kicking resumes, ie, move to the front and attack. When you rock up to a race with the kicking already at your guts, then things don't improve much when the actual beating officially commences.

The lowest, and highest, part of my week was the Beaufort Crit. We got a good result in 2nd place thanks to Kori dominating the scene, but I was hit pretty hard with an occluded pump, meaning my blood sugar was rising inexplicably before the start of the race, and finished with a level of 374 (20.8mmol/L) afterwards. On top of this, I was also the only rider to try to race with a banner stuck in my rear wheel. As I crossed the start/finish, I found myself towards the right of the course, near the temporary fenceline. They attach sponsor banners to this fencing, and with the wind and the draft from the peloton, one particularly poorly attached banner was flying out into the course. I hit it, and heard a commotion behind me. Thinking there was a crash behind, I did what anyone would do: I kept riding and didn't look behind. We neared the first turn, a sharp left hander. I went to take another pedal stroke before the corner and found it very difficult. I tried again. No go. Crap, must have done something with the crash that was behind me. I pull over and the pack streams past me. I get off the bike to find out what is going on, and am totally surprised to see the entire banner stuck in my rear derailleur. With me trying to pedal, it had wrapped around even further. A nice guy in the crowd and I tried to yank it free. I rode back to the start/finish where the mechanics were, and get my mechanic to check it out. The commissaire goes, 'did you crash?' I explained what happened. He said, 'so did you crash?' I say, 'well I guess I crashed into the fence, but no, I didn't crash.' He says, 'just tell me you crashed so I can let you back in the race'. I oblige, and get shoved back into the pack.

Typically, each crit for me started okay, but I would lose power and drain away about mid way. It was the result of the poor health leading into it, and anyone sensible would have suggested I sit out racing until fully recovered. Well, I suffered, and it hurt and impacted a lot on my confidence. A lot to recover from.

By the end of the week, the team ended up winning the team classification, as well as the best young rider (Sammy) and most laps led (Kori). A good week despite not much from me.

Week Two - Joe Martin Stage Race

After seven crits in nine days, we moved on to NW Arkansas for the Joe Martin Stage Race. Joe Martin was the guy who created this race for the locals some 32 years ago. He died in 1988 and they subsequently re-named the race after him. The race still holds true to the same routes and laps that Joe first chartered for his race back in the day. Its nice to learn about these things and how proud the community is for having such a race.

The race was centred in Fayetteville. Fayetteville houses 67,000 odd people, including the University of Arkansas. Funny enough, about ten years ago the University of Arkansas basketball team toured Australia and we played them in Dandenong. They were brutal, and beat us up.

(can you find me? Obviously Dandenong wasn't so sophisticated with our post game uniforms)

My welcome back to stage racing was much the same at their home turf.

Fayetteville sits in the middle of the Ozark mountain range, and despite the lower altitude, you get the feeling of being in a really high place. It is very green and scenic, with huge valleys and hills, low cloud and rain, and every imaginable stream and water run-off giving the appearance of being pure, mountainous wonderful water. Even storm water run off. A beautiful part of the world.

The other important fact in this area is that it is where Walmart was first created. Their home office (HQ) is located just up the road, and the airport we flew into was built specifically to house the needs of the Walmart folk and their business partners. Our host house family was provided for by a Kraft employee whose main role was to call on Walmart for Walmart-specific sales of Oreos and Mac cheese and everything else that goes with it.

Despite all things south in Arkansas, there are still a few references to the real south:

Even in the religious circles:

I was really worried about this stage race. I hadn't completed a stage race since 2006, and the hilly profile of the racing shook me up a lot. But first I had to get through the first stage - a 4km uphill timetrial at a place called Devils Den State Park. There was no nice way to do this, and despite suffering, was surprised to see the 1km to go sign so early. I probably left too much in the tank, but was very very relieved to not be time cut by the stage winner, my teammate Alison Powers. Twelve others were not so lucky.

Stage two consisted of about 100km of racing including a 20km mountain pass. Mount Gaynor. Needing to defend our lead on GC, I helped to cover and control a lot of the action in the first 38km. I led the team to the base of the mountain, trying to string the pack out a bit. We hit the uphill and I involuntarily hit 'explode now'. Too much work too early, but at least our climbers had been able to reserve energy until they needed to expend it. For me, my race was about to begin. I had to get over the mountain, down the short descent, along the long river-bound drag and to the finish line before the time cutoff. It was 60km of long, hard, tough time trialling. There was no opportunity to ease up, and my fears of not making the time cut drove me to ride as hard as possible. I was shocked to cross the finish line exhausted, learning I had made it with nine minutes to spare. How could I have known I didn't need to push so hard? The effort totally wrecked me: my legs, my lower back, and my spirit.

Stage three was 110km and although didn't have more climbing than yesterday, still consisted of way more climbing than I felt capable of. I tried to conserve energy at the start until the first tough hill emerged, but the legs just gave out straight away. Seeing the pack pull away from me I started to panic, and this made things worse as my breathing was thrown out. Faced with the unthinkable - an 80km time trial to try to make the time cutoff - I crumbled. There was no way I could repeat the extremes of yesterday's effort. In the rain, it seemed to also be wet on the other side of my sunglasses. A lot. At the next feed, just over half way, I threw the towel in and got myself another DNF.

Stage four was a crit in downtown Fayetteville, an area that could do with some revitalisation work and public realm investment. Yep, work creeps in at the best of times.

The race was exciting for us, even more so when Kori set up the race for Alison to counter-attack and ride away solo for the last four + laps, and to top it off, Jen our sprinter won the bunch kick for us to go 1-2. I was jealous witnessing it, but so happy for everyone involved and very proud.

Next up:

May 16 - Wilmington Grand Prix, Wilmington DE

May 17 - Kelly Cup, Baltimore MD

May 25 - Tour of Somerville, NJ

May 29-31 - Tulsa Tough, Tulsa, OK

Until then, see you in the soup and make sure you look out for deer!