CX 2013 Race #6 - You had to be there!

Back in the day we high school boys would, each of us on one occasion or another, try to tell each other these stories about the super-duper incidents and events we'd experienced or witnessed but couldn't quite communicate using words, and then end this failed storytelling with "You had to be there." I feel that way all the time when trying to explain to people at work, who have never seen a cross race, much less ridden in one, why I had a good race, or a not-so-good one, or why I think it's completely okay to keep on racing with (virtually) no hope of winning a race - in fact, that I feel that placing eleventh is a win for me. It's exactly like "you have to be there" in order to get it. You have to be at a race, to get some sense of it. But to really get it, you have to be in a race.

Southern Cross was awesome! You had to be there! What else can you say to explain it all? That's what I'm thinking as I'm standing in the doorway of a colleague's office and trying to answer his question, "How was your race this weekend?" (He's just bought a cross bike. He likes it. He wanted to try a race this year, but he couldn't this weekend because of family matters. I believe him, I really do.) So, since he's asked, I start to explain about the twelve times riding up the hill, or describe the six times you had to get past the sand - was it faster to ride it? or run it? and that you split the difference and rode it three times, and then decided it was faster to run it for the last three - or explain the race wisdom of always dropping into the faster gear when your "go harder even when you can't" cx soul demands it, rather than giving in to the "take it easy" betrayal suggested by your mind and body's screams asking you to shift up for a break. Even as you're saying all this, you see that he's looking back at you like a nineteenth century portrait, you just know there's no way to do this right. He's just holding position. He wasn't there. He has no idea. He can't, because he's never been there. 

I believe that if Martin Heidegger would have ridden a few cx races, he may have had an easier time explaining and illustrating his version of being in, or dasein. When you ride a cross race you are existentially compelled into the fullness of yourself in the world. You are involved in a moment. You participate fully in it, and then the next one, and so on, one moment after another. You are driven into the breathing in, the solitary gasping, pumping and running and pushing and heaving of yourself into and against the world. On your own on your bike during a cx race you are completely present. You are your own existence and you are lost in it within the world. You can hardly tell the difference between you and the hills you climb or the wind you flout or the barriers you hurdle. You can only be involved in it all then. You can only be aware of yourself there. It's absolutely hellish in its beauty. 

But there you are. And when you stop there are others who are there too. They are with you, and they have their being too, and you have yours, and you are being there together. And it's eye-cryingly marvellous. Stick-in-the-eye-cryingly marvellous. For once you've been there alone, you can be there with the others who have been there too and you can all say bullshit to a bunch of this empathy crapola. You can heckle the hell out of me if you've been there. 

What could be more appropriate than the damned cheering on the damned as they navigate the winding road into their own hellish haven of self-discovery? So bang a gong! 

Hand up a pierogi.

Hand up a beer. 

Give me a hand up when I fall.

You have to be there. 

Absolutely. 

CX 2013 Race #5 - Results

Okay, so this season has been going pretty well for me. At least I feel like it's been going pretty well. Pretty well enough to be seeded to start in the front row for two races! What? I know. I can't really comprehend it either. That's me with my head down. I think my heart knows what the cross gods are going to serve up.

But like I said, I'm starting in the first row. I'm getting good starts. I've got new brake pads. The BeachCross course looks like it should work for me. I'm not sick. I'm not even sick at heart. 

And the start is fine too. I'm feeling good and the right guys are ahead of me, and right guys are behind me and it's already the third lap, and we hit the windy, grassy, leaf-covered section, and I look up and over to see who's coming up behind me (you know how it goes during a cross race where you start meeting the same riders and the same place on the course and you think, Huh, I thought/hoped I was going faster, but it looks like we're actually all going exactly the same speed) and sure enough there's RF about a turn and a half behind and I'm thinking that he might be gaining on me and I'm thinking some more (too much too much too much thinking - stop with the thinking already and keep your eyes on the track and ride hard dammit!) and then I'm watching my hand push its way through my front wheel, and I'm down. Off the bike. 

So I get up and get back on and push forward, but the wheel doesn't turn, at least not easily. Shit. It's probably just the quick release, I think. So I duck under the tape and pull it off the course to loosen the wheel and line it up again and spin it. But there is no spin, there is only a lot of wobble and bind, and I look up then at the line of riders that are long by and into the sand section, and then I'm thinking about stopping.
You know what it's like to want to stop. If you've raced a cross race, you know what it's like to want to stop. You also know what it's like to want to keep going. To need to keep going. Which is what I did. 

This all reminded me of two things. First the wise words of some fellow rider while on a technical mountain bike ride a few years ago: "Look where you want to go! Your bike will follow your eyes." Which makes so much sense. Which I hadn't been doing, because I was thinking about results and about who was behind me and by how much. And then I remembered a race two years ago at La Barriere where I was catching up to JS. I was sure of it. And I was looking ahead at him on the third time through this windy stretch and I was telling myself that for damn sure I was closer to him on this lap than the last one and I really wanted to beat JS because I should! I just should be able to beat him ... and then I was looking at the tape and then at the grass, and then my wheel was jammed against the brakes, and that time I could put it back and it was okay, but JS was long gone, and that was that. 

This is not a moral, this is a fact. Worrying about riding hard and well and watching the course and keeping your brain on the race works. Worrying about results and who's ahead and who's behind can and will fuck you up. So, here's me really smiling while racing. I'm usually looking pretty intense, or pretty gassed. I'm sure it was taken after I went down. After I'd given up the results and just decided to ride and enjoy the course, and riding after a whisky hand up changes things too.

So here's to riding with your kid (!) and recovering with friends, and not worrying too much about results. 

(But I'm terrible at following my own advice, so I'll probably be anxious as hell again, after the Thanksgiving break. Still Southern Cross will be awesome!)

CX 2013 Race #4 - What a difference a year makes!

Mennocross 2012 was memorable and momentous for me (and others, I'm told) because it was hot (30'C) and sunny and before my race was over, I looked like this:

Passed out. DNF. Pale and ugly. There's another picture of me that ran on the front page (online) of a local newspaper:

This picture was taken before the "fallen soldier" image above (snapped lovingly by my good and kind friend and fellow front-end curler, JPD, who then sent me a copy of it, but otherwise kept (keeps) it on his phone for safekeeping - and to show me on occasion as a remembrance of things past, as he did in the bar on the Thursday night before this year's MennoCross. "Remember last year?" he says, and smiles and fuszchels with his phone (a Blackberry! - they need all the good press they can get these days) for a few seconds and then shows me the picture that you have now seen as well) The caption on the more upright picture of me reads "A cyclocross racer competes ..." Right. At the time that picture was taken, and I remember the moment actually - this photographer crouching on the ground - this camera-wielding dude using a flash on the brightest day of Fall - popped it in my face just as I'm thinking, stay with it man, stay with it, just stay on your bike. Just ride and everything will be okay.

And in another minute or so, I was falling off of my bike and losing consciousness in the lovely arms of MS (my Neubergthal neighbour who'd come out to watch no less!) who laid me down and called for help. And then big T came around to help out (a lot), and then GeeVs, and after about an hour, I could stand up again.

But this year! This year! What a difference a year makes! This year the course looked like this ...

... and this ...

... and this ...

... and this:

And at the end of the race, I looked like this:

Pretty sweet actually. Sure I like the sun. Who doesn't? What with its right to claim primoridial authorship for life, etc. Pretty hot stuff. But me, when I'm cross-racing, I'd rather be a rain dog. Make it rain!