Cross 2013 begins or Who's up for a little bicycle BDSM?

Really it begins long before you wake up on the morning of the first race thinking this is the day that it starts. This is the day that I dread to love. This is the day that I will be reminded that I'm not as prepared as I think I am. This is the day that says that there's nothing much more I can do to prepare, except drink water and eat the right food at the right time. It begins long before all this and the loading of bikes onto racks, and the remembering of gear and bottles and tubes and tools and always bringing your pump. It begins long before this, the day of pressure and pleasure. It begins like it might have for my brother T yesterday, when you just happen upon someone you know and trust and care about who says that they're going to race cyclocross today, and if you want to spend time with them, well it'll have to be at the race, why don't you come along? It begins when you say, well I guess I'll try that. It begins when you enter your first open race with that motley bunch of novitiates. It's all starting to sound evangelical here, friendship evangelism in fact - the worst kind - but just because one bunch of crazies uses this tool to its nefarious ends does not mean that it can't become a force for good: Cyclocross racers don't let friends miss cyclocross races.

From a few hours east of Toronto he came for business and pleasure, and like a good old door to door evangelist, I invited him to a cyclocross holy of holies: Dark Cross. And, like a good old dupe, he came, and he rode. Now I wanted to offer a photograph of the brother T and his journeys around the dirt and grass track, but my source has not taken the time to upload any of his pictures. This source assured me that he had images of T, since he's larger than I am, and he was moving around the course at a pace that you might expect of a first-timer. Even T admitted to taking a somewhat leisurely approach, although he did manage not to get lapped by the 15 year old race leader. If you're going to be duped into anything, Dark Cross is a quality master to choose, for, like cyclocross itself, there's not much to do but give yourself to it. As for me, for the last nine weeks I've been a slave of Dark Cross in one way or another.

And for the next seven weeks I'll think about cross everyday, and for seven days of those seven weeks, it will be the only thing I can think about. It's a kind of self-flagellation, a kind of bondage, straight-up submissive sadism - a bicycle BDSM sort of situation. The process is pain and hope and anticipation and dread and ecstacy and it's only after you finish the first race, and the next one and the next one, that you remember why all of that obsession is so magical. Still you're at a loss as to how to explain why you would voluntarily, for shits and giggles as it were, do something so gruelling. The facts are that there's no way to race cyclocross without spending a significant amount of time thinking to yourself: "This hurts. I don't really have to do this. I could quit any time." But it's also true that when you finish the race you would say that you were lying to yourself when you thought those things, except for the part about it hurting. But you really do have to do it, and you couldn't quit at any time, even if you wanted to. 

Dark Cross 2013 - Wallace&Wallace run-up (an ABES photo)

I've stopped in the middle of a race once. I've fallen over unconscious. I'll call it an involuntary withdrawal. I did not choose to stop. My cyclocross soul, that part of my spirit that resides, I imagine, somewhere between my heart and my legs, did not want to stop. My brain and body just stopped working together on the project of moving themselves around the track on top of my bike, and I came to, lying on the ground beside the track. It was not a proud moment, but a noteworthy one: I learned that my cyclocross soul may require more of me than I can deliver, and it's my duty to do my best to push my body to be up to this soul's demands. 

What I'm learning from this, from racing cyclocross, is that the best things in your life, the things that are worth doing, that one best thing for your soul, will make you do it until you drop. Until you've done it good and proper. Until when you're doing it, that is all and the only thing that you're doing. When you let cyclocross into the house, it takes over completely. You're completely possessed by it. The success and the failure. The pain and the love. Sometimes people use sports as metaphors to help them understand, by object lesson, life and living: golf & baseball often get the nod. What boring shit that is though, to imagine life as being about standing around and hitting small balls. I'll gladly take the crazy-assed hard work and real risks of cyclocross, followed by a party with friends! After which you collect yourself, take a day off to recover, and start in on it all over again. 

Navy Sweater, Straw Hat

You bicycle because you want to. Because you can remember  the first time you rode a bicycle with training wheels and the first time you rode without. From Spring to late Fall a day without a bike was a lesser day. Incomplete. Insubstantial. You’ve lied to your parents to get a new one. You’ve lied to them to ride a better one. Going for a bike ride gives the day weight. Materiality. You can say that you’ve ridden for more than an hour, or that you’ve ridden fifty kilometres,  or that you’ve ridden south on Road 1N for two miles and then across on Road 3N for six miles, until the gravel and packed dirt miles cede to an overgrown field lane and you’d thought better of it and turned North on Road 7W, which was newly-graded gravel, and soft and marbly, but the extra work of it made you feel better, and you rode it for another six miles until you turned East on Road 9N and though about completing the square. Covering six square miles – 36 sections, 24 miles. A reasonable ride, for gravel and dirt – the wind coming in at thirty kilometres from the Southwest. You’ve been somewhere, and you’ve been back again.

When you slow to turn South on Road 1W, to complete the square, something about the regularity of it, the predictability, made you decide to ride one more. You had the energy today – the legs, as they say – and you’d seen the arched wrought metal of the Eigengrund Cemetery entrance in front of its lone Cottonwood, set out in the middle of the section, a cornfield to the West, canola to the South, Wheat to the East and Soybeans to the North. An odd patch in the regularized industrial agriculture quilt.

Destinations help. Sure the destination is the journey, or vice versa, however it goes, but a stop, and some time off of the bike, to stand back an admire it, lean it up against a tree or lie it down on the grass and then walk the new land it’s carried you to, there’s simple pleasure in being somewhere else. Somewhere you’ve taken yourself to. Somewhere out in the middle of something, or even toward the end.

The lane that follows from the wrought iron arch that stands at the gravel road divides the cornfield from the canola. The corn is more than six feet high, but not yet tassling. The canola has finished blooming and has begun its turn from green to grey and then to brown. The lane is a half-mile and at the end of it is the cemetery. As you turn in to ride it, you see a pick-up truck at the end of it, and a figure wearing a straw hat pushing a lawnmower. You’re disappointed, but in a way enervated by curiosity. You’ve heard of this woman, Tina Heinrichs, who tends to this garden of the dead. This poetic maiden to the grim reaper. You ride up and she pushes on, the mower buzzes in the heat. She wears a dark cardigan sweater that, at first look, seems black, but as she rounds the corner and passes near you, you can tell that it’s navy – deep deep blue. Whether or not she sees you, you cannot tell. The wide and deep brim of her straw hat covers her face, and she seems intent on the path of the mower. She passes you and continues on to the next corner. She’s nearly finished. The grass around the graves has already been mowed. She’s finishing the edges – one or two more passes will complete the work.

You want to know. Who doesn’t? But she mows on, and you do what you’d decided to do three and a half miles back. You walk to the centre of the cemetery. You walk North along the West edges of the lines of the markers. You’ve remembered and impulsively followed the suggestion of some adult from your youth that you don’t want to disrespect the bodies of the dead by walking overtop of them, so you walk along the lines that must divide them – heads and feet lined up facing East – rows of sleepers in pods waiting for the Lord and his second coming. At the stone cairn in the centre of the yard you stop to read about the unidentified graves that have been marked by six-inch concrete disks embedded in the earth to mark the spots.

The story goes that the living relatives of those buried here, with the help of a local excavator who uses a backhoe with astonishing dexterity, digs pilot holes, exploratories, and notes where the soil is or is not uniform black loam and, by such observations of the mixing of the grey clay with topsoil, knows that these disturbances are signs of burial. Rows of grey disks and a cairn name and place the unknown that a flu epidemic in the 1920s took – children for the most part. My aging father tells me he remembers it well. No vaccine to save them. Not enough water to keep them cool and wet. Nothing to be done, and the children died as though they were the only ones to hear the Lord calling. As though they were the only ones with the sense to desert the hard cold and heavy prairie gumbo. As though they rebuked their parents for this paradox of humility and hubris. And here you stand, still alive (your aging father would have been six or seven years old at the time that he survived, just a half mile North of this spot, while others succumbed) flouting these obvious endings.

The mower motor hums and rounds again as you step away to walk back to your bike. Mrs. Heinrichs looks up as you reach for it, as she passes along in front of you. In that moment you see each other, her small, gentle face lightens into a smile, and you smile too. It was you who had the vision of a harpie, or Virgil, the Medusa grimly circling to introduce you to the horror and consequence of human folly. Rather here you confront the lines and crows feet of a grandmother who tends and gathers memories. She invites. She makes the way. She reminds, sure enough, but she says, there but for the grace of God, and she moves along.

You ride off past her, still mowing between the corn and canola fields, the land now more or less entirely tamed and settled. Death set aside by bike rides for fitness, pharmaceuticals, and genetic modification. And still you smile with her above the hum of her mower and the steady cycling of your feet on the pedals.

How's the kid doing?

The reason I'm out here in Illinois, staying in Woodstock, about an hour and fifteen minutes, by train, outside of Chicago, is to transport, support, advise, coach, and generally accompany GeeVs. She's taken up road racing. Having competed in five races in the Tour of America's Dairyland in Wisconsin (and learning a lot), she needed/needs more experience racing, so we're out here for four races. 

Her first race was in the Sharon Cycling Classic (like mine), racing in the Cat 3/4 race, which is 20.8 miles (33.5 kms). She rode conservatively, and got a conservative result: 8th. Still this placing allowed her to collect more points that, when she's earned enough, will allow her to move up to the Cat 1/2 races in the future. 

The start.

The pack.

Heading through West through town, and then onto the highways. 

 

After a day off on Thursday, during which we spent about six hours in Chicago, she raced the Superior Ambulance Elmhurst Cycling Classic criterium today, in Elmhurst. We'd talked about how to be more aggressive today, and that she ought to make a plan, and then execute it. Her criterium was a 40 minute race around a short circuit of about one mile. They are more intense than a road race, as you are cornering every 30 seconds and then accelerating out of the corner.

The plan was to use her strength and fitness to hide in the front group for the first 30 minutes, and then breakaway with about four laps left. Which she did. She opened up a gap of 15 seconds and then over the course of the next three laps expanded it to between 20 and 25 seconds, and she won! This is more impressive given that the temperatures were up around 100'F (38'Canadian), and there was a stiff South wind on the home stretch!

In the breakaway.

Making a break.

Crossing the line!

Podium!!!
(A sweet jersey, a bag of coffee beans, and $50!)

Need I say more? No. Except ...

Our hosts, Steve Middaugh and Laura Witlox, and their family - Noah, Ethan, Alise, and Lauren - are just completely fantastic and supportive hosts. I can't really say enough about these folks. Steve rides and Laura organized one of the races in the series. 

Two more races to go, tomorrow and Sunday. Both criteriums. Stay tuned. 

My first road race

"They" say better late than never. I have taken this to heart. During my week-long role as support/coach/parent/cycling-buddy for GeeVs, out here in Illinois, I took the opportunity to use my racing license to race in the Sharon Cycling Classic, on July 17, 2013. I registered in the Cat 4/5 race, to be safe, and joined/competed beside/contested with 70+ riders in a 45.6 mile (73 km) road race.

It was hot. It's been hot all week here. 95'F hot. That's 35' Canadian. The course was four laps of the 11.4 mile circuit. We did that in 2 hours and I managed to finished 12th in my category. Here are some pics:

The thing about road-racing in a pack/peloton of 70 riders, on narrow roads, is that you get close to people. And you have to stay on a line, follow the wheel in front of you, and take whatever the road gives you: potholes, gravel, cracks. It was a great experience. I'm not sure I'm up for criteriums out here yet, but I may try them next year, back home.

And how's GeeVs doing, you ask? Check out the next post, or check out her Facebook page.

Muerto Challenge report

This Spring when operacion muerto declared the summer challenge to be to ride from Virden to Falcon Lake, Franklin and I immediately said that we would make an attempt. On July 6 & 7 we began our journey. Below are our words and pics following that attempt.

July 6, 2013

Weather: Wind SE 13km all day, except after midnight when it picked up a bit.

Franklin’s report

7:45am - Left Virden carrying food and 1 gatorade & 4 litres of water

8:12am - Crossed the Assiniboine against a “road closed” sign. Turns out the road was passable for bike.

10:45am - On top of Old Baldy just east of Deerboine Colony. 90 kms in the roads have been ideal.

Unfolding, and checking the map, again.

12:00 - Brandon; lunch at Humpty’s. Had the Classic Burger. Couldn’t eat my fries. Not feeling well. Large chocolate milk & water. Added 2 Powerades & 1 litre of water.

The hills and winds roads of the Whitemud watershed.

A steep one: 7% grade.

Six miles of sand along an conservation corridor (right next to the powerlines!?). 2:15pm - Mile 64N is a conservation corridor … read: sand! The roads in general since Brandon have been loose gravel.

3:15ish - Stopped at a potato farm for water on mile 65N. Added about 3 litres.

4:15pm - 155km in. Not quite halfway. Hitting a wall. Also the last of the big climbs.

5:00pm - Austin for supper: Onion chicken Teriyaki with guacamole sub; 500ml chocolate milk & 500ml of orange juice (2 – 500ml waters in jersey). @200km I hit another wall; not sure how to finish

The first mile of Darrel Rd.

The end of Darrel Rd.

9:33pm - Darrel Road turns out to be a pasture and a field. We can bike through the pasture, but must walk through the field.

July 7, 2013

Weather:  Over night, thunder and rain threaten, but that's all. Wind shifts to come from the West at 20 km/h and by midday it's 30'C (and more).

9:45pm  - The Portage Sandhills Wildlife Management area – the sand had been graded, but we kept breaking through the crust and plowing our bikes. Maybe 4 miles of this. Couldn’t stop because the mosquitoes were terrible. Fell and broke my pedal, so I couldn’t clip in on that side anymore.

10:30pm - Through the Sandhills, on good gravel. Turns out we only had just over four hours to go.

12:30am - Confusion over how to get into the city when the road turns to dirt and grass. We play it safe and go on roads Paul has travelled before.

2:00am - On Roblin Blvd. out of the gusting wind. The lightning storm is chasing us in. We make it in to the perimeter and stop at a Shell station for water. I still have some left. We depart and my bladder hose hooks into the spokes and rips the nipple off. We carry on.

2:45am - Arrive at 661 Campbell for a rest. 335 km in, 15 hours 39 minutes on the bike. Rod & Connie’s place offers showers, food & rest.

6:30am - Wake up, turn on the A/C and go back to bed. Not feeling well.

7:30am - Wake up, tell Paul he is on his own. Call Bethany and go back to bed.

Paul texts later to say he finished at 6:10pm, and went 190 km. Good for him, I couldn’t have done it.

Paul’s report

Everything Franklin reports checks out, as far as I experienced it. I’ll continue with my timeline. Since Franklin had the camera (his phone), the pictures from here on in are limited to the one I asked Brennan to take and email to me at the Falcon Lake Golf Course. 

7:30am - Hearing that I’m on my own, and that Franklin’s okay with me continuing, I make coffee and oatmeal for breakfast.

8:10am - Back in the saddle, heading toward Dugald Rd.

9:25am - Stop at Deacon’s corner for a shit and 2^nd breakfast – coffee, cinnamon bun, & banana. (a little surprised that I can shit)

11:45am - Ride south off the course into St. Anne for lunch and water.

3:30ish - Found the through road (Railway Bridge Rd) from Hadashville over to the road to Prawda. Fuel stop here: chocolate milk, butter tart, apple turnover, water.

5:55pm - The double water-bottle holder attached to my seat falls off (the heads of the two bolts holding the clamp shear off) and it’s water bottles all over the highway. Fortunately there’s no traffic and I can retrieve them. I redistribute my load, stuff the two bottles into my jersey, and carry on.

6:10pm - Pull in to the Falcon Lake Golf Course. A Fat Boy, fries, and a Corona never tasted so so good.

Notables

Ups

- The terrain north of the #1 between Virden and Brandon was beautiful. Riding the hills there was great!

- The fire and logging roads between Richer and the road up to Hadashville were at times super fun (Riding the water stretch was fun; it seems that sand is better for bikes when it’s wet than when it’s bone dry.)

- “saltstick caps” electrolyte capsules – I don’t think I could have found/carried enough Gatorade, etc, to keep my salts and electrolytes up, to make the water and food work – these capsules saved my ass. This I believe.

- The potato farmers north of Brandon who turned on their garden hose and let us fill up with the coldest, bestest tasting water ever. 

- Burgers and fries.

- A tail wind on Day 2.

Downs

- Sandy gravel: The gravel west of Portage tends to be much softer, with a fine fine grit that just sucks the life out of you.

- A broken pedal.

- A headwind on Day 1.

- The loss of a hardworking companion and intrepid navigator.

- Tendonitis in my left Achilles.

Final words (Paul)

I've never ridden this kind of distance before. It was daunting from the outset, but once you're in it, you just keep going. It's the kind of endeavour that, before you enter into the heart of it, you're more aware of the risks than when you're in the midst of it trying to manage those same risks. I'd much rather be in the thick of it moving and working, than standing back and trying to anticipate what might go wrong. Not that preparation and standing back isn't crucial, it's just not real enough to get me going.

Yet, finishing and having ended the suffering is sweeter still than being in the middle of it. Of course the paradox of it is that the sweetness of finishing cannot happen without being in the midst of the suffering. At some point during Day 1 we talked, briefly (pant pant), about the philosophy of suffering. In my religious background suffering is viewed as redeeming when done for righteous causes. I don't buy this approach anymore. Suffering is not merely a necessary evil that happens to you, that one endures. Suffering is to be pursued and then pushed through. It's a cliche to say it - but it strengthens and matures. It is a good all its own.

Maps

Below you'll find images of the maps we used. The route we rode is in yellow. The other markings are notes and failures and possibilities. 

Dirt roads, gravel roads - and it's hot hot hot

In the heat of the day (up to 35'C) I rode today, following this route (although it's not totally accurate because Google Maps doesn't let you map your travel on dirt roads - the route I rode did not include Hwy 30, but it did include the road one mile West of it, going North into A-town).

I took along 2 litres of water, which was probably not enough for this heat. That is, my sense the 1 litre per hour would be enough, will not be enough if it's 30+'C. This is a concern. It will be addressed ... somehow. 

Dairyland Tour

GeeVs has taken up road-racing. For a PauPs who's kind of sort of always dreamed about doing it, but never hutspahed himself up to it, these are proud, and envious, times. But mostly it's just awesome! This past weekend M and I headed over to Wisconsin to catch a couple of her races in the Tour of America's Dairyland. Before we got there she competed in two road races, on Wed. and Thurs. and placed 10th both days. On Friday's criterium she crashed out on the last lap, when she got tangled up with other racers who were being lapped. 

On Saturday's Downer Classic criterium, racing near the lake and the university in Milwaukee, she placed 26th out of 48 finishers (59 started) - she went out a bit soon to take the lead for the second last lap, but couldn't hold it. 

The start

Coming into a corner

Cornering with the group

Exiting the corner

Out front

On Sunday's East Tosa Gran Prix criterium, in Wauwatosa (a community just outside of Milwaukee) she raced better tactically, staying in the pack at 5th to 8th wheel, rather spending time and energy our front. The result was a little better, 21st.

Up the hill to the start - finish

Digging deep in the sprint

Overall, having raced in only 5 of the 11 races, she placed 26th overall, out of a field of 55. Not bad for having only raced in 5 criteriums total, in her life. There is a lot to learn, and the only way to learn is to race more. Which can be a challenge if you're a women who wants to race road, in Manitoba. 

All in all it was a fine experience. We enjoyed Wisconsin hospitality - these are the sorts of Americans that a person could get used to - and the food. And we watched some people riding their bikes like they meant it. Pretty sweet. 

Debriefing after the race

What Would Jesus Drive? If he was in Minneapolis, it would be this.