The Dirt Field

The Race: Carl Dolan

The Course: An office park, one corner, 10 laps (initially)

The Field: Cat 1/2/3 women

The Finish: Upright

The field at Dolan was primarily the same women from Chantilly and thus started very similarly. No moves stuck, the field reeled in anyone who tried to escape, and we kept a pretty regular schedule of sprint, sit up, sprint, sit up, repeat. I bridged to one attack early on to gauge the responsiveness of the pack, but quickly sat up when I saw the field shutting down the gap. As we crossed the backside of the course on our fifth lap, we came upon a nasty crash from the cat 4 women’s race and our race was neutralized. We rode to the start/finish and stopped to wait for the ambulance to help the injured riders.

Because it took about twenty minutes to clear the course, the officials took it from 5 laps to go down to 3 laps and restarted us on a prime lap. The pack took off quickly and the next two laps went by pretty fast. On the bell lap, I slipped too far back in the group going into the corner and had to sprint up the field on the backside of the course to make up positions before the final sprint. We came into the climb around 500M to go and I was moving up the right side to get into a better position for the sprint, when suddenly several women crashed directly in front of me. I heard loud noises, saw a wheel lying sideways on the ground inches from mine, swerved, and somehow miraculously did not go down. My race was over at that point and finishing was a formality.

I felt pretty much the same way at Dolan as I did at Chantilly: not sure of where to put myself at any moment and riding defensively. Add to that the frustration of the way the race ended and it made for a pretty disappointing morning. But fortunately, I had another race lined up….

The Race: Carl Dolan

The Course: An office park, one corner, 18 laps (initially)

The Field: Cat 1/2/3 men

The Finish: With a pulse…maybe.

My team manager suggested Monika and I double up by racing the 1/2/3 men’s race. This seemed like a good plan, except that I was tired after the first lap, off the back a little after the second lap, and off the back completely by the end of the third. I’ve never been dropped, but I now have a full appreciation for the concept: when you are cashed and sliding slowly off the back, as soon as you lose contact and the benefit of the wind protection, you are screwed. Maybe you can chase back on once (as I did the first time), but then you are even more tired. At that point, I wasn’t so much dropped as forcibly ejected off the back.

But of course, I couldn’t just stop racing, because that would defy my rules about DNF’ing (death must be imminent, etc.), so I rode the next however many laps alone. It was fun for a while, and then just really tiring and painful. The field caught me for the third time as they were coming up to their finish (and I was just trying to go into the light), so I pulled off to the side to watch the sprint, crossed the finish line with the pack stragglers, and called it a day.

There will be days like this again, I’m sure, and it’s all a very normal part of bike racing. But today was hard, everything feels tired and sore right now, and the amount I still have to learn seems pretty significant.

I’ve developed a ridiculous pre-race ritual of having Pad Thai the day before every race; since race after race went well, I had no reason to break the habit. When I got home tonight, I started thinking that I was done with the whole Pad Thai thing, since clearly it didn’t work today, but then it occurred to me that maybe it did. People went down ALL day, including several right in front of me. I didn’t crash, I didn’t quit, and I got to race my bike on a day that turned out to be nice and sunny. Rest assured, Busara. I’ll be back next Friday.