Bike Kentucky

No more races for a little while, so I guess it’s the end of the season for me. And so it seems that I have begun a tradition to have my season finale at the Iceman race in Michigan. This was my third year to race there and it turned out to be my best effort yet. Although I was 20th out of 25, I was ecstatic, because I predicted and truly thought that I would be last place. I looked up the times of last year’s pro/expert wm and saw that last place was eight minutes faster than my last year’s time, so I psyched myself up to race the clock and not the other racers. This took some focusing on my part to remember that when I’m all alone on the trail with no rabbit in view to chase and no chain slap behind me egging me on, to just keep going as fast as I can and beat last year’s time. The pro men were set off and then they just counted down thirty seconds and said ‘go’ for us. Now mind you, this part of Michigan has lots of sand and small loose pebbly gravel everywhere--including the hard packed 60 yard straight-a-way at the start. Being only an expert rider with not much expert experience, I stayed to the outer edge and back of the pack. I didn’t know how badly these fast girls could run me over, so I just stayed out of the way. Thank goodness I did, because 50 yards out of the start some gal wiped out on the sand and gravel and took out about 4 more riders with her. I just sped around them relieved to still have my two front teeth. (But it was a spectacular sight!) They eventually caught up and passed me like I knew they would. I yo-yoed with a couple of girls for a while and then they must have had a nitrous moment (I think it’s really called an attack) because they took off super fast and left me to my ‘focusing’ on racing the clock. (Which involved ignoring my heart in my throat after being dropped like that and keep riding as fast as I could.) Too often I have seen racers get passed and they will automatically slow down a notch or two. Intentionally or not, this is a mental race tactic for the person doing the attacking. BUT, after my eleven hour road trip of meditating on ‘I’m racing the clock, not the other racers’, I made darn sure not to slow down. I even kicked it up a notch or two just to be on the safe side! I was in time trial mode now! At 9 miles to the finish, I see the bright blue tights of one of the nitrous girls. The better she came into view, the more I began to smile. I was thinking that I might not be last after all. And, I love a good chase! When I caught her I was slightly disappointed--she didn’t put up a fight. I guess she’d run out of gas. Well, at least I had a visual, now--the girl in the blue tights was now behind me and I couldn’t let her catch me! When I came to the very last mile marker, I saw ahead of me the only other girl in our pro/expert wave who shared my idea of wearing luggage. I really don’t remember her getting in front of me, but I do remember thinking at the start line, “Do I look that out of place with my camelback?” Anyway, I started to feel giddy that not only was I not going to be last, I wasn’t going to be second to last either. She turned to look when she heard me behind her and I thought, “Aha! She’s going to make a run for it!” (This was fine with me, because sprint finishes to the end are SOOOO EXCITING!) We turned around a bend on the double track and we were side by side when I looked up and saw a climb. Ugh. I’ve never thought of myself as an aggressive climber and at this moment I began to think how gravity was going to pull at my heavy bike, my heavy butt, my heavy, soggy, non-wicking ski gloves....and then I decided to just pedal circles like Ned Overend preaches in his book. I told myself that I was completely content to be behind this girl the whole race up to this point, why would I care if she finishes before me now? Well that’s not how I normally think (it’s just not competitive) so I began thinking if I just get past her a little bit, it’s going to mentally deflate her--especially on a hill. So I steadily rode faster to where I was ahead of her and sure enough she just gave up! (Oh the human mind and how it can work against us.) I almost felt guilty that she gave up. (She might have even been distracted wondering if her camelback looked as silly as mine.) Well, it was the last mile and I looked behind me hoping for an exciting finish, but no one was there. At this point I just looked ahead and hoped that I finished before 4:48 PM (which would be eight minutes faster than last year.) I wound my way through the snake-like finish and when I came around the last bend and rode across the finish line, the clock read 4:42 PM. I beat my last year’s time by 14 minutes. Woo hoo!!