The Dirt Field

Before racing started this year, I had low expectations for the season. Promising, right? It’s just that last year was kind of awesome and it felt like expecting to accomplish the same gains and achievements again without extra time to grow and improve was setting myself up for disappointment. Let’s consider the following figure:

Since I began racing in 2007, I have seen large improvements from year to year in fitness and skill. It stands to reason that the time will come when I reach the point marked by the red arrow above, where a long winter of hard training will result in increasingly smaller gains over the previous year. The first race of every season is like uncovering the new car you just won: if you’ve worked hard through the winter early in your racing career, when you test yourself in that first race of the season, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with a Ferrari. If you’ve worked hard for the tenth winter in a row, you’ll probably find yourself the lucky winner of a shiny new Ford Fiesta.

[I’ll digress for a moment. The good news is that while fitness improvements grow less drastic over time, the extra time you’ve put in on the bike makes you a better rider. On the trails, that means you’ll ride smoother and waste less energy on shitty handling, a concept which eluded me entirely during my brief tenure as a pro-licensed cross country racer. On the road, that means you’ll ride and race smarter and more tactically, saving energy. Thus, your existing fitness and ongoing small gains will be better used to help you crush those rookies flying high on the steep slope of their improvement curve.]

But back to my low expectations and tender feelings. While I like to pretend that unknown numbers calling my cell are London asking me to race the 2012 Olympics (and of course I let the calls roll over to voicemail, because I want that invite recorded so I can make it into a mix tape and listen to it while jumping on my bed and doing the Macarena), I also sometimes vacation in reality. This year, reality meant a season of learning how to race smarter in the elite fields. My sights were set on future podiums that would be earned through the hard work of this year. A pancake year, if you will.

Except that I’m a hungry person, and between me and the dogs, no pancake ever goes to waste. This year’s first race wasn’t too inspiring (I got Giles’d, but learned forever more that if she goes, I go too and keep going until she stops or I drop dead), but after that came the 2nd place at Jeff Cup that led to the Nature Valley Pro Chase invitation. That gave me a focus and some wild hopes for this season. Then came Speed Week and over the course of seven races, I realized I might be able to do more this year than just practice.

At this point, the music should be swelling to a thunderous crescendo in which I mention that I won that race in Walterboro and will always remember it as the best moment EVER and would like to be buried in the middle of the street in downtown Walterboro when I’m dead. (When it was time to do the podium ceremony that night, I squeaked to Erica Allar, winner of basically every crit ever that Laura Van Gilder doesn’t win, “This is the best day of my life!1!!!!11! She looked at me like I was slightly unhinged and smiled politely.)

So this season has turned into much more than I’d expected. And there’s one other piece of news that just came recently: I’ve been invited by USA Cycling to attend the Women’s Endurance Talent ID camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs this August. Success at that camp can lead to amazing opportunities competing with the USA Cycling women’s team at international events. When I got the invite, I leapt out of my chair and then froze, unsure of how to express explosive excitement in a work-appropriate manner. I settled for shrieking at the first person to walk into my office; he just wanted to ask about a proposal draft and will likely never come back to my office again.

It has taken a lot to get to this point – hard work, injuries, tough lessons, tears, anxiety meltdowns, and a lot of obsessing – but this season now feels incredibly promising. There are real chances ahead to ride hard, show what I can do, and make the most of the doors that have unexpectedly opened. I’ve always loathed the expression “Happiness is a journey, not a destination” (last time I checked, both the beach AND the magical land of cupcakes are both destinations), but in this case it sort of makes sense. This cycling career I so desperately want isn’t a destination with a finite end point; it’s a long journey of ups and downs and experiences that are all happening right now.