Cross Racing Day

Life can follow a familiar pattern. Get up, find yourself totally disorganized. Search wildly for a jersey, matching shorts, arm warmers, knee warmers, leg warmers, undershirt, wool socks, bike shoes, earband, helmet, gloves for all types of weather. Find yourself already behind schedule. Find your camera and your video camera and pack up your laptop. Eat breakfast. Look at watch and realize you are still behind schedule. Grab a few random snacks and realize you are woefully under prepared for the day.

Finally load bikes and get in the car and hit the road. Feel a sense of relief that your new car has a plug in so you can charge the batteries of your camera and video camera. Important things that seem to have fallen off the radar until the moment you need to leave the house.

Spend the entire trip in the car convincing yourself that you do want to race and that you are not going to back out now. Not after going to all the trouble of finding all your riding gear and throwing it into a bag. Daydream about not racing and wonder if that would be liberating. Or would it be depressing? Of course, it is always times like this when one questions the summer's priorities and wonders how you got here, today, so woefully unprepared.

After some deep thinking about not racing it becomes clear that racing must happen. If not now when? Next year? It won't get easier this year and the number of miles in the legs won't change. And downgrading has been taken off the table with all the injured and otherwise occupied Cat 1/2 Women it won't do to lose another to lack of preparation.

Once at the venue everything settles into a familiar routine of attempting to take some photos and shoot some video. Race preparation does happen as Dave is conscripted into mounting cyclocross tires on wheels. For the first time ever the cross bike has not been ridden until race day. Luckily one can visualize how to mount and dismount which hopefully makes up for actual practice. Surely you can't forget anyway. This was the passion. Preparation began in spring and a serious campaign was mounted with trips to Michigan and Ohio and UCI points earned. It's hard not to be nostalgic for that girl with the passion of a new convert and dreams of being competitive.

Times change. Now the dreams are of surviving and finding fitness in time for winter. However, a quick pre-ride shows that all is not lost. It is possible to get on and off the bike still. It's not smooth or comfortable but it's good enough.

The camaraderie with the other gals in the race is also a familiar feeling that one would hate to give up just because one didn't prepare. Then the race begins and for a few brief seconds you hang with the group. It's a nice familiar feeling. But so is the feeling of drifting off the back and riding around alone. Both places have been a familiar sight over the years. Neither is easy. This is cross and suffering must happen. The fun would be diminished by taking is easy and off the back or in the mix it is still a tribute to screaming legs and lungs. An idea comes - why not run the hill? Running feels more familiar than riding.

And eventually it is all over. You're left riding the course by yourself and you know you only have to do the hill once more and then the barriers and then you're almost done. And because the world is a funny place you're placed in 3rd in the provisional results instead of last. You can't help but think of how funny it would be to not say anything. The teammates would be quite surprised and think you must have been doing secret training camps in obscure locations in a plain jersey where no one would recognize you. Alas though the truth wins out and you demand to be placed correctly at the bottom of the field.

And then you take more photos and you curse your camera lens for deciding to stop working. But you try not to think about what this means - will it be fixable, will it be under warranty, can you afford a replacement, what about next weekend?

Then it's into the car where once again you love the new car features and you plug in your laptop and download photos. And by the time you arrive at your mother's nursing home you've already sorted and organized almost all the photos. Efficiency feels good. Sore legs and tired lungs feel good. You dream of reclaiming your fitness in time for the Birkie. Maybe the time and motivation can be found now. Late but not too late.

After what seems like a lifetime but is really just one really long day you find yourself back at home with bags to unpack, photos to upload and videos to create. How can so much chaos be created in just one day? Then you realize that this is a furlough week and your services are not required at work on Monday. There will be time to unpack and do the laundry. Take the camera lens in and maybe even relax.