The Dirt Field

It took a while to bounce back from the unmotivated, defeated feeling I had after Nationals; by a while, I mean sometime during the last lap of my first race at this past Saturday. The month between was filled with self-doubt, unhappiness, and lack of motivation – I was no longer confident in my riding, my ability to win, or whether I even enjoyed racing my bike. It seems absurd to have been thrown off so much by a single race, but Nationals was the culmination of a lot of internal pressure, expectations, bad decisions, and learning experiences, and it was difficult to decide where to go from there. I tried being stricter with my routines; getting angry and channeling that energy; going soft and taking time off; crying and talking to my sports psychologist; and period of uninterrupted sulking, but nothing got me where I wanted to be, which was back on the bike, confident and happy with my performance. I wanted to be ready to give 110% towards winning, while also being able to find satisfaction in a strong, non-winning performance. By the time the Kenda Cup East series finale race in Windham, NY came, I had only made it as far in my mind as aiming to have fun and do my best.

The drive up to New York was stressful. Originally planning to leave at 9am, I didn’t make it on the road until 11am because there were shows on ABC Family that I absolutely needed to watch (needed is a strong word). This was problematic because race registration closed at 6pm and Mapquest said it was going to be a 6 hour and 43 minute drive. By 4pm, when I was stuck in slow-moving afternoon traffic several hours from Windham and nearly crying with anxiety and frustration, I decided to call Jim, president of my bike club and regular racing companion. Since he was already at the race venue, he worked with the registration people to sort things out in my absence, and I was able to relax as much as one can in rush hour traffic in New Jersey .

I got to the venue shortly after 6pm, finalized my registration paperwork, and pre-rode a lap. It was an awesome course – climbs broken up enough to be manageable, fun technical sections with lots of rocks and bridges, and screaming downhills with catchy, confidence-inspiring names like “The Rip” and “The Wall”. The laps were also short, and I knew I could reasonably handle the four my race required. After the pre-ride, I sat in the back of my car and ate leftover Chipotle out of a cardboard container that had gone completely soggy and limp from the melting ice in my cooler.

Despite staying at an adorable, cozy inn, I slept terribly the night before the race and felt like absolute crap when my alarm went off at 5:50am. Breakfast was a chore; for those of you non-racers, eating breakfast that early in the morning before a major event is like trying to shove food into a reverse garbage disposal. Nothing wants to go down smoothly, and the combination of nerves and lack of sleep make each swallow feel like a precursor to projectile vomiting. The cold fried eggs on toast I had brought were also a poor choice.

Once I got to the race venue, I set up next to Jim and started my warm up on the trainer. Because I was running late (notice a theme here?), I had to truncate things somewhat but still managed to get in my coach’s required intervals. At five minutes until the 8am start, I threw the trainer in the car and hauled ass to the staging area. Before I could really register much of anything, the whistle blew and we were off.

As with most races, things get blurry when I try to recall details afterwards. The start went well, I was sitting in a good position and switching up places with the top few girls, and then I started to fade a little bit. A better racer, one that was hungrier to win, would have dug in and been willing to hurt more, but that was not me. I was passed by one girl and then another and then another and despite my efforts to stay with them, they pulled away. I spent a lot of time thinking about how maybe the whiny loser me of the past month was right, that I was not cut out for this racing thing and that I wasn’t having fun so why bother.

Then I got passed by the girl behind me and I realized that seven hours of driving had to count for something, so I pushed it a little and caught her on the early climbs of the third lap. Once I had opened a small gap, I made the mistake of sitting in and even bobbling some rocky sections I should have cleaned. When we came to the downhill parts, the girl passed again smoothly and gapped me like I was dead. It was a sharp reminder that my descending needs serious work and that just because I have a ten second lead does not mean I can nap on the bike.

I spent the next few minutes wallowing in a swamp of mope and then suddenly transitioned into behaving like a bike racer and spanked the next few climbs. I knew that while the girl ahead of me was better at descending, I was a better climber and that as my coach said, the race would be won on the climbs. I passed her and kept hammering up the mountain, trying my best to not slip unconsciously back into sitting in. When the downhill sections came, I rode them carefully but fast, skidding down the drops and through the turns, and in the final flat section, I stayed steady and rode hard.

In the end, I finished 3rd in my age group out of five girls, and 5th out of the fourteen expert women who did four laps. Is that what I had hoped for? No. Honestly, I wanted to win, not only to get the result but also to prove something to myself after Nationals. But I don’t think my riding deserved to win; I didn’t want it badly enough to be willing to suffer the way the winner suffers. When it hurt, I didn’t push harder, I just pushed steadily. The part that makes me really happy about this race, though, is that I fought for my place in the end – I did not accept being beaten by another girl and even though she put up a really good fight, I found it in myself to put up an even better one. That, more than getting on the podium or knowing I beat a bunch of other expert women, is why I feel good about that race. It made me realize that I can be the racer I want to be and that even though I am not there yet, there is definitely potential and progress.

Later that afternoon came the Super D race. A Super D combines cross-country racing with downhill racing, and in this case required riding the ski lift to the top of the mountain before racing down. The courses are not as challenging as true downhill courses and include some flat or slightly uphill sections, but they all go primarily downhill and are fast and technical. Super D races are also often done with mass starts and include some element of the absurd; this time, each group of starters had to lie on their backs with their heads against the start line, jump up and take at least one step, do a forward roll, and then run fifty meters to where the bikes were sitting before jumping on and riding down the mountain.

As mentioned before, I am not a confident downhiller, so I wanted to do the Super D to work on my descending and try something new and exciting. The start was entertaining, save for my choice to somersault over a bed of small rocks, and I started down the mountain just behind the pack of girls. My goal was not to get in front and have a bunch of women pushing behind me; I knew that would freak me out and push me to ride beyond my comfort zone in a dangerous way. Instead, I picked my way steadily down the mountain, only crashing once and rocking some gnarly sections, and was still a few minutes up the mountain when the announcer called out the winning girl’s name. When I crossed the finish line (as the last person off the mountain), the announcer called out my name, telling the crowd that it was my first Super D ever and that my goal had been to finish in one piece, and everyone cheered like I had just won. It was awesome, and because one girl in my age group did not finish, I took second place and won a medal.

The rest of the trip went by way too fast. I had a nice dinner at my inn and drank a single, overfilled glass of cabernet that left me beyond tipsy. The night ended earlier than planned when I passed out while reading “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution.” Shocking that I fell asleep.

After breakfast the next morning, I went for a recovery ride around Windham for the simple reason that I felt like riding my bike. Not because my coach made me or because I wanted to work off the huge feast I’d just eaten, but simply because it sounded like fun. (Riding for….fun? People do that?) I even rode back to the race venue and tried the short track course the pro women were about to race. I made it back from the ride just in time to shower, rush back to watch the short track race while sweating profusely in the blazing sun, and leave Windham to sit in traffic on and off for over seven painful hours.

It was a great trip and my only regret is that it took several laps of my cross country race, a lot of introspection, and a quote from Willow Koerber (pro women racer, won the Pro XC race this past weekend) to realize that one of the biggest things I am missing is the burning desire to win. Willow told a reporter after her race: “I really needed to suffer. I was into it, I didn’t care how bad it hurt, I was going to win. Winning is a whole level of punishing yourself. You have to want it, because those girls are really fast.” Sure, I have wanted to win and want to be the best and all that stuff, but I have not been truly, deeply, give up my first-born child and bleed from my eyes hungry to win. When it hurts during races or when girls start to seem stronger than me, I get weaker instead of stronger. The second place pro woman, Georgia Gould, said of Willow , “It was one of those days where she had the fire in her eyes. I just moved out of the way when she came up to me.” Next time, I want that to be me.