Prinner Post: Random Notes and Race #2

Originally posted at The Prinner Posts

A bunch of random events + an account of my second real race of the year

After a week of bad luck I felt it was about time I got a stroke of good fortune. As if my randomly broken spoke in the middle of a ride wasn’t frustrating enough some greater being decided it would be amusing if I got stung in the neck by a bee as soon as I pulled over to analyze my first misfortune.

And then several days later I crashed once again on the infamous Shootout. The torrential sidewind had the field battling for the inside wheel (even if it meant riding off into a ditch in order to get that sliver of draft) which equated to crashes and carnage. Remember, even though the Shootout is technically called a “ride” we all know what it really is. “Riding” the Shootout is also a very paradoxal experience: on one hand you feel elated to be hanging on for so long as the field is slowly evaporating and on the other you’re kicking yourself for actually volunteering to wake up at 6:00 am (which remember is like 3:00 am teenage time) and turn yourself inside out for three hours in hopes of hanging on for about half of that time. Or perhaps to end up running over another rider (who just simply decided to stop in the middle of the field) and transfer all that energy stored gravitationally and kinetically directly to my poorly constructed human knees. This was a week ago. My knee is still swollen. I am all but baking Ibuprofen into pies by now.

Fortunately a distraction arrived in the form of Leah Sanda, Gary Whalen and Katie Isermann that same weekend and I was like a goldfish reunited with water as my Chi-Town buddies and I had an adventure around Tucson. Gary received a flat not a mile from my temporary home, but it was a good thing he had all the tools necessary to change a flat including a spare 650 tire and a 700 that already had a puncture in it.

Plus I got to use my frame pump for the second time ever for Gary’s flat. After roughly three years to travelling beneath my top tube I had not once used my weathered frame pump. The moment of truth arrived on an easy Friday ride with my housemate Matt (the one with the Canadian accent that says a-boot instead of about) when I received my first flat of the trip and came to the realization that I seriously had no idea how to use my pump. Luckily Matt is a mechanical engineer, and after much tinkering (including sketching out diagrams on the pavement and doing some insane calculus and trigonometry calculations—to which I pitched in to remind him of Sohcahtoa) he finally decoded my frame pump and we were well on our way.

This past Saturday I also signed up for a criterium downtown at the University of Arizona, and with $900 dollars awarded to the top three women in the 1,2,3 race I was ready to eat some more pavement in an attempt to nab some of that cash. The field was small as usual (about 15 women) but despite such a harmless façade it was a loaded field in terms of power including Julia Garnet (a National Team member for Canada), Erica Zaveta (a member of the USA Mountain Bike Team), three Trisport teammates, Chloe Forsman (last year’s winner), and a few other strong women who I simply don’t know all that well.

The race was fast from the gun, and with the wind picking up to over 20 mph, making drafting both difficult yet essential in this small field. The Trisport ladies were continually successful in counterattacking and consistently getting riders up the road, to which I had to pick and choose what to chase, bridge, or sit in and hope the others would close. Roughly halfway into the race a break of two consisting of a Trisport rider named Cara Bussell and last year’s winner Chloe Forsman escaped with over a 20 second gap. After attempting a failed attack to try to bridge I knew my best chance would be to wait for the perfect counterattack to clear the field. After a massive attack from Julia Garnet followed by a jump from Erica Zaveta I attacked in the gutter as the field sat up and clustered back together. It was more or less the timing of the attack that made it so successful as everyone at that point was in the “screw it I’m not chasing anymore” mood and I immediately racked up a large gap further discouraging chasing from the Trisport riders as they didn’t want to close on their own rider up the road. From there I put the hammer down and suffered for four laps to catch the two leaders who looked around at me startled as though I’d just fallen out of the sky. For the last 20 minutes of the race the three of us traded pulls (with Cara taking a $100 prime with 14 minutes to go) and the bell lap coming down to the typical cat and mouse game. The three of us were crawling at about 10 mph looking around at each other to see who would attempt an early jump and I decided to get the adrenaline and impulsive behavior flowing with a fake attack which prompted a jump from Chloe that got us back up to speed. With less than a half a lap to go Cara began to ramp it up as Chloe jumped around her in the second to last straightaway to start the sprint. I accelerated in third position, holding as much draft as possible. Chloe and Cara hit the last turn neck and neck and braked in nervous anticipation while I slid through on the inside brake-free with just a little bit of momentum and a slight distance advantage that I carried to the finish line, gritting my teeth and throwing my bike with a half a bike-length for the victory over Cara.

As a self-employed cyclist, I earn anywhere from $0 to $500 an hour. That day I was ballin’ with five crisp hundred dollar bills in my pocket. For the police officers reading this: If you happen to pull over an individual carrying a shady looking envelope containing ridiculously large denominations of bills, there is a very small probability that they’re just a poor, elated cyclist returning from a successful race, not necessarily a drug dealer.