Tubulars!

The last few days have been very busy and eventful. I had to go to sleep early Friday night so that I could wake up the next morning to get ready for my first sanctioned cyclocross race (a race that counts towards upgrading to a higher race category). I woke up early, drove with my friend to Kingsport, TN and spent the next three hours riding the course, watching races and waiting enthusiastically for my race to start. Lining up for a cyclocross race is a stressful nerve wrecking thing. Being in the front row is what everyone wants but only about 8-10 people can fit. When the official moves out of the way, everyone looks towards him/her, looking for any hint of movement or speech that could indicate the beginning of, "Riders ready? Race safe. Goooo!" From this point it's chaos, everyone attempting to clip into their pedal and then sprint as hard as possible to get an immediate advantage flying into the first turn. Crashing is a common, expected occurrence in cyclocross and so being in the lead is beneficial seeing as no one can crash in front of you and no one can hinder your ability to ride the course the way that best fits you. I've only successfully gotten the "holeshot" and held it for longer than one turn one time, I also ended up winning that race ("holeshot" coming into the first turn after the start while in 1st place). Unfortunately trying to get the holeshot is an extremely good way to send your heart rate soaring into zones you don't want to spend much more than a few seconds in. Often times this leads to a place of no return where you end up losing more places than the holeshots advantage would hopefully provide. That's just a little background to a CX (cyclocross) race.

My race went pretty ok until my chain bounced off the chainring and down in-between the object that was created to prevent that (a chain watcher) and the chainring itself. This happened again in the exact same way two laps later. Each time I had to come to a complete stop while the guys I was racing against kept going, each stop took about 20-30 seconds to fix and the gap between myself and my opponents who I had just been with increased. I was able to make up the difference each time but it left me severely tired and unfortunately for me, the next gap was about 45 seconds, too much for me to close. I finished 8th on Saturday and did not finish on Sunday due to the same issues with my chain bouncing off.There were just too many guys who passed me after the incident on Sunday. I hate not finishing a race but I was so emotionally and physically frustrated with the situation. "Fuck it!" I walked off the course, feeling disappointed in myself for the rest of the day. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Next week... Hopefully then I can redeem myself. I'm not as fit as I hoped to be as this point which is frustrating now but it might be a blessing in disguise later into the season.

If this sort of stuff is interesting or not, I'd like to know. I want to write more but it definitely doesn't have to be about racing or cycling and I feel like it might be more compelling if it weren't but it's difficult for me to tell because I'm partial to it.