Oregon State University Musings: In Which I Learned How to Avoid Crashing in a Crit

“Well this sucks,” my brain repeated endlessly. At every corner or hill, I kept attacking in hopes of splitting the pack (since it worked so well for me last week) but the hills weren’t long enough and with no teammates on the front, I had no one to work with to sustain an attack. No one wanted to work with me and form a break. And I pulling way more than I wanted to. Apparently, the field had learned from last week and was gonna try and force Western, Whitman, and me to pull them all the way to the line. 

Finally on the final climb to the line, the three of us jumped and finished 1-2-3 (I obviously took 3^rd as I still can’t climb.) I was frustrated. I didn’t like the way the race had gone (it wasn’t even a race for 90%. As no one else wanted to pull and I wasn’t gonna exhaust myself on the front, the average pace was pretty damn slow.) I didn’t like that I was still racing B’s (after pretty much demanding that I upgrade last week, the official changed his mind saying he didn’t know if I could compete at the level of the A’s.) And I didn’t like that I couldn’t do anything useful on a hill.

I suppose that’s the nice thing about collegiate, if you don’t like how one race ended up, you have two more races to try and fix things (though it makes for an extremely tiring race weekend.) So a few wet hours later (it started raining again to my eternal consternation) and back on the bike for the TTT, then onto the crit on Sunday.

Crits take place in one of two locations: in industrial sections/business parks or on campus. This one was in the latter category, weaving through the streets and parking lots of OSU. It was also a bit more technical than the last one with more corners, including a particularly sharp corner after the first straight away. After a 2 hour delay due to illegal parked cars in the middle of our course, racing finally started.

Whitman and I rotated on the front—neither or us willing to let the other get away. There were 20 or so other girls out there that day, in my mind, this was a race purely between the two of us. Though neither of us sustained a breakaway, our speed was enough to split the pack in two and we slowly started gaining on the back half of the pack.

We caught them right at the one sharp corner and that’s when Whitman made her move, accelerating around the corner and using the slower pack to block the rest of us from chasing. Being the stubborn bastard that I am (and lacking in the common sense to realize that this might be a bad idea), I hammered to get back onto her wheel and, in trying to squeeze by the slower girls, ended up taking the corner way too sharply and way too quickly for my bike handing skills.

Oh shit. Back wheel came off the ground. Then the front wheel. Fuck fuck fuck. No rubber on the road is a bad place to be. I jerked my handlebars away from the corner and corrected my precariously tipping bike, but placed myself on a path that took my directly in front of the following riders. Shit. Why weren’t my feet clipped in anymore? When did they come out? While my mind was sorta busy trying to avoid what could end up being a rather painful situation, a loud voice in my head was more concerned over the fact that we were at 5 to go, so if I crashed, I didn’t get a free lap and my race was done.

Jamming my cleats back into the clips, I narrowly avoided not only the curb on the other side of the road, but also all the other racers. My heart was racing so fast, I couldn’t distinguish individual beats anymore, so filled with adrenaline and the rush of avoiding disaster.

So I used the adrenaline to my advantage and drilled it back to the front, until once again, it was Whitman and me sprinting hard for the line and the win.

And once again, I find myself chasing Whitman’s wheel as she crossed first. Yeah, she’s definitely my nemesis. 

Last week with the B’s as I get to upgrade next week. Maybe I can ditch Whitman when I jump to the A’s.

On to Central and Week III.

(Side Note: Check out Whitman Cycling's Race Report to see another perspective on my unsustainable attacks during the RR.)

University of Oregon Race Musings: In Which I Learned to Ride in the Rain

I don’t ride in the rain. Hell, back home I won’t even ride when the ground is wet. See, home is the central coast of California, a magical place where it never rains and the temperature rarely drops below 50 or above 80. On the off chance the roads are wet, it’s just not worth going out. Why risk the possibility of crashing or deal with the pain of cleaning my bike? Wet roads=rest days. Case closed.

Hence I’m not exactly thrilled that the road is not only wet, but also consistently getting wetter as I’m sitting on a trainer under a tarp someone outside of Eugene, OR warming up for my first attempt at racing my bike.

Sometimes I’m surprised it took me 26 years to get around to racing—I’ve been riding a bike since I was four. (True statement. Still damn proud of the fact that I went to Kindergarten already knowing how to ride without training wheels. What can I say? I peaked early.) But in undergrad I raced triathlon and then I discovered rugby and for a while nothing could compare with the hard hits and big runs of 80 minutes of sheer insanity.

But I could never leave my bike for long. And I figured, why not? Last chance to race bikes as a collegiate athlete. Seems as good of time as ever to learn. Unfortunately, the weather of the PNW does not align with my requirements of weather that is acceptable for bike riding.

So it is an unhappy Husky that rolled up to the start line with 30 or so other college kids from assorted schools around the PNW. My heart’s beating out a sharp steady tattoo on my chest. The boys on my team expect me to destroy everyone else, the girls on my team just keep talking about how fast the other schools are. I don’t know what to expect. On top of that, my parents are here. 900 miles from home and my parents came up. Why the fuck did it have to be for my first race? God, I want this to be over. 

And we’re off. Roll down a straightaway then a left turn and a decent hill. But we’re still on a neutral roll out, so despite my issues with hills (more on that later), I’m still on the front of the pack when we reach the top. But half the field didn’t. A mile into the ride and we already split the field. OK, I could be down with this.

Another few fast and flat miles sitting on the front but not at the front, then off the main road and, oh, that’s a hill. That’s really a hill. This doesn’t bode well for me. Getting up a hill usually begins with the wheezing. Then the lungs catch fire. Usually I’m breathing so hard that I can’t take time to swallow and thus end up drooling down my chin. Finally, I perform a successful reverse breakaway off the back. There’s a reason my Cat 1 buddies affectionately call me “Little Cav”—and it’s not because I’m a fast sprinter.

Yup, there goes my breathing. Others are starting to side eye me. One asks if I have asthma. I just shake my head without speaking. No breath for that. My legs are churning and I’m passing people and thanking God for my compact cassette and just focusing on keeping my wheel even with Whitman’s and Western’s. Then that’s it. We’ve crested the hill. And “we” has shrunk drastically again—three of us were off the front.

And that was pretty much the end of the race. Western, Whitman, and I were so far ahead that, even though that hill was only half way through the first lap, we never saw anyone else again.  Tackling the hill the second time, we hit what I remembered as the final corner and I jumped to get over the top. Western and Whitman jumped with me, but I had severely misremembered the hill as we were only about halfway up. To my bemused delight, my accidental attack led to Western and me dropping Whitman and finishing the race 1-2. (She beat me on the final sprint.) My dad’s response to all this? “I was shocked to see you with the breakaway after that hill.”

So go me. Great intro to bike racing. Now I just want to go hang with the rest of my team. And yet, somehow I’m supposed to get back on my bike in two hours. This time for the TTT. What kind of masochist came up with collegiate bike race? Three races in 48 hours? Screw that. It’s raining again. I really don’t want to get out of this car. 

But I do. Back on the bike for a 12 mi rolling TTT with a headwind for 2/3 of the course. I pretty much died, but my teammate rocked it and between the two of us we took first by over 3 minutes. The officials didn’t like that. They came over and demanded to know how we achieved such a time. Our brilliant response? “Uh...we pedaled hard?” Once everything was found to be copasetic, the head official told us that after that performance we both needed to upgrade to A’s. Huh, ok. That’s cool. All the points are in the A division even if I do end up getting my ass kicked. And with that, my first day of bike racing is over. Though there’s still more to come.

Sunday. Crit day. The nerves are back. Not about how I’m going to stack up against the others, but whether or not I’m gonna crash. A pack of people with shaky bike handling skills (Mainly referring to myself here as my ability to corner sucks. I have a tendency to “mow the lawn” aka end up off the road and in the grass) going around in circles on wet pavement just seems like a recipe for disaster.

So about 2 minutes in, I decided to see if I could go off the front and take a few people with me for a breakaway. Turns out, yes, I can go off the front, but no, I can’t take anyone else with me as no one else jumped. Which means my 30 minute crit became a 20 min solo TT, before the group finally chased me down for the final few laps.

Ending sprint and my Whitman buddy from the day before beats me across the line for a 1-2 finish. Haven’t decided yet whether I like her cause she kicks ass on the bike or dislike her cause she kicks my ass on the bike. (I maintain that because I ended up with more points thanks to the prems I won when off the front, that I had a better race. Apparently, I am the only one who holds such a view.)

Bring on OSU and Week 2.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Seahawks Bandwagon

I hate football. I find it a barbaric and brutish sport that lacks the beautiful aesthetics of soccer, the raw athleticism of hockey, and the sheer insanity of rugby. But in just a couple days I will be glued to the TV, Seahawks cap firmly on my head (except for the moments when I’m nervously working it between my hands), screaming my brains out for a sport I rank just above cricket and just below curling in terms of watchability. (Obviously the most watchable sports are 1) Women’s soccer 2) Cycling 3) Cheese Rolling 4) Olympic Hockey and 5) Chess Boxing.)

So why the Seahawks? What is it about this team that is making me care about a sport I still believe epitomizes pretty much everything wrong with American culture?

There’s nothing inherent about the Seahawks per say. Growing up in SoCal, it’s not like I was surrounded by football culture. The closest team was still four and a half hours away and let’s face it, who the hell cares about the Chargers anyways?   Sure some people pulled for the Niners, but you were just as likely to run into a Panther’s fan or a Cowboy’s devotee.

As my dad’s family hails from Wisconsin and my mom’s clan resides in the Pacific Northwest, I’d express vague feelings of hoping the Packers or Hawks would win the Superbowl, but mostly couldn’t care less because, man, is football a dumb sport. And yet, here I am, eagerly awaiting the Superbowl. Not because of the game itself, but because of the connections the game affords me.

To be human is to want to belong. We all crave that intimate connection with others. We’re all looking for where we fit in. Some of us know from the time we can first form coherent thoughts, “I love dogs. I want to do something with dogs when I grow up. Maybe I’ll be a dog doctor.” And 20 some odd years later, you’re graduated vet school. Others figure out their place when they realize they’ve found the person they’re gonna spend the rest of their life with. Or when they see their kid for the first time.

And some of us never find where we belong. So we search for other ways to connect with each other. And yes, we find that sense of belonging in sports. There’s something pretty special about the fact that a bunch of athletic competitions with nonsensical rules can take people who may have nothing else in common and unites them.

I watched the 2011 WWC final in a hole in the wall bar designed to hold about 20 people. There must have been 100 of us in there that day, breaking every fire code and drinking the place dry. To this day, I do not know the name of a single other person in that bar. But for 180 minutes, we weren’t a bunch of strangers watching a game, we were fucking family.

And when our beloved team lost, I turned to the guy next to me who proceeded to wrap me in a giant bear hug as we both broke down sobbing. Connected over our passion for a bunch of women kicking a ball around.

It’s not a made up phenomenon either. There have been actual studies on this. While as far as I know, none have been done in The US, European studies have shown that the rate of suicides actually decrease in a country when they are participating in the World Cup. The country doesn’t even have to be winning. They could get curb stomped in every game and “self-reported happiness” would still be higher than normal. 

So yeah, I still don’t like football. But I love the fact that it lets me connect with my students over shared experiences and that after weeks of sitting around a TV for a few hours every Sunday afternoon, I’ve gotten a lot closer to people I thought I had little in common with and that “Didja see the game?” is an easy way to start a conversation with anyone and that Richard Sherman calling out people on their use of the word “thug” provides context for a discussion about racism and that Skittles are now a perfectly acceptable food to eat during a rugby match, because they work for Lynch right?