For Whom The Bonebell Tolls

Sherman Park…Ah another trip to the ‘dark side’. XXX hosted their annual criterium yesterday. Once again a great day was had, by me at least, and well I don’t know about great. However, the whole family was there cheering me on. I did two races, in the very start of the first race, when we were pushing around 28-30mph I thought that was a bad decision. But things worked out ok.

First race (Masters 30+ 4,5): el Maya AND Stiggity toed the line together for the second time in a road race ever. I kept looking for him at different points in the race and just about every time I would look, there he would be, just kickin it. I was feeling just on the better side of ok. The course at Sherman park was originally designed with bicycle racing in mind…or so the popular myth goes. At first glance the course couldn’t be less technical. But what looks like a course that would have a straight shot to the corners would have the riders meandering left and right, just when you think it is time to go straight you are just moving to the right or left, when you don’t quite know why. From what I recall the race stayed together the whole time with nothing more than a few fishermen here and there trying to wet their lines and see if anyone would bite and it looked as though there were no takers on this day. Greg Heck was a prime gobbler taking two. One of them with a jump that pulled a collective groan from the field, nice work. On the back stretch there is a decent bump that has a tendency to make some people go all clown shoes, and do ridiculous things they maybe know they should not do, but they do it anyways. Ride over the bump and take it and end of story, swerve to miss it, CARNAGE ensues. Rider A went down directly in front of me, straight to his left side, sliding to a stop on the asphalt surface. There is no where for me to go, I am surrounded. The only thing to do was say a prayer and go ahead and give’r eh…Just like Cole Trickle in ‘Days of Thunder’. When he’s scared as hell to drive through the smoke, but he has to, there is no other choice. Who knows what’s on the other side. I made it through while running something over, a leg, a bike, a torso I don’t know, but it was clean. As I clear the scene amid the screams and scraps and metal on metal, I notice something out of the side of my left eye. A bicycle was flying about head high along side me. Unscathed, I began to soft pedal, wondering what the f’ am I doing this for. I had no real good reason. Just when I was deciding to pull out due to shell shock, Kyle came by me and said we had to win this one for the dirtbags. That’s what I needed to hear to get my mind right, and my body followed. I worked my way to the front on the last lap. Sitting on the tip of the spear, a group goes off I have no choice but to follow. It could have been the move, but it wasn’t. And we got caught about a 1/3 lap later. The pack swallowed us and I just let them go, feeling no real desire to rejoin the seething mass galloping towards the finish. Newt won, he was strong and effortless in the race, good for him he deserves it. He rides to the beat of a different drummer, and that drummer can wreck the skins. We shall soon see how he fares in the dirt.

Second Race cat 4: It was amazing how much more civilized this race was than the masters 4/5 race. Maybe I need to rethink my position on that category of race? A large group got off early containing a few xXx diesels, and they soon became a locomotive. Not enough to lap the field, but enough that we never saw them again. This led to a rather uneventful day in the peloton. No other team had the numbers for an organized chase so the pace stayed high, but not high enough to catch the break. I fell off the main field as we rolled across the finish line on the second to last lap. It felt awful, ‘hey look, who is that giving up in front of the finish line and all the spectators’? Not this guy. I chased as hard as I could and ended up catching the back on to the group with just over a lap to go. Shortly thereafter I started hearing my name called and finally responded. It was a request for a leadout. Far be it for me to deny such a request, I pretty much knew at that point that the top ten was out for me. So I proceeded to tow Calvin up to the front of the group where a leadout was forming, but a little slow to keep people from coming over the top. I went from the back of the group to the front in one straight-away and drilled out 30+mph for as long as I possibly could. Calvin launched early, due to my early departure. My next thought was to get back on to the group and try to finish with some dignity as opposed to the previous race. I jumped to get back on the field. They started to really whip it up, and I stayed in. Finishing in what I thought was the better half of the group, as my better half and ‘the dude’ cheered us on.