iHurt...again

I like cycling cause I'm addicted to the pain. But there are different kinds of pain. There's pain from getting yourself bruised all over AKA "that was stupid" pain. There's also pain from breaking and tearing your body apart AKA "That was REALLY stupid" pain. There's pain from using muscles you never use or didn't even know exist AKA "Old Man" pain. There's pain from heart break AKA "maybe she would've liked chocolates better than a box of powerbars" pain. There's odd, irregular, and scientifically non-detectable pain AKA "Great Aunt" pain. There's screaming and trying to keep it G rated pain AKA "that scar there was from when I had a bull chase me." And then there's pain from purposefully torturing oneself for hours on end AKA *insert epic soundtrack* "*insert corny victory line ie. "We did it!", "Viicccttttooooorrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyy!", "We are the champions!, "as you wish", etc.*"

I did my first bike race...and I'm definitely not the winner. However, I finished, which is quite an accomplishment for this redneck who loves pain. So to put this race in proportion think of this; First think of that big hill in your county that everyone talks about how they lost their brakes on it, how they blew out their engine on it, etc. In this case it was Michigan Hill (by the way, I no longer like Michigan, be it a street, state, town, or hill) About a 400 foot high hill, with a seven percent grade. Now imagine how fast you'd go if you went out the door and ran down the block. If you're not a future Olympic sprinter or sitting in a wheelchair, you should be going somewhere in the vicinity of 10 MPH.  Now connect riding your bike at that speed up that hill...yeah, painful. Now try doing that four times with ten miles of riding at 25 MPH between each time up the hill...yeah, that really seriously hurts. Now insert a guy on a thirty five year-old, steel, road bike, which weighs thirty five pounds (everyone else was riding one to ten year old bikes, which way fifteen pounds)...that's why iHurt...again.

Surrounding this torture session was first getting up at the unreasonable hour of eight o'clock on a Saturday *insert horror soundtrack*. Then eating breakfast, packing up, and driving for better than an hour to get to this aforementioned race. Then the true rituals start, making sure you're signed in right, pinning on your race number (I only got poked twice as my dad stuck it on me), changing into your skin tight, lycra racing kit (bike talk for clothes), eating a banana, warming up, and then the race official bungled up the whole ritual. He walks over, pulls the brakes on my bike, and says "you can't race, go get that fixed." He then gives me directions to the mechanic's station...if you can call a wave of the hand in the direction of a couple hundred parked cars, bikes, and people directions. Long story short I managed to track down a mechanic who informed me that my bike had issues, which I already knew. However he worked really fast and figured out how to fix the the brakes well enough for the UCI guy's liking.

Cool, now that my bike is working where am I supposed to be? I finally figure out that the Cat. 5's (my category) are lined up on the road behind a couple other groups. So I run over there and am the last one in line, grrr. A couple minutes later a race official comes over and tells us not to ride like idiots. From the back we only hear every other sentence, but we know enough to roll our eyes and laugh. Another couple minutes and the pace car starts to go, we all get clipped in and start to pedal...then the pace car stops...we all hurriedly stop and unclip from our pedals...then the car starts rolling again, so we clip back into our pedals and start going. After a two mile neutral start, the pace car takes off and the race/torture session begins.

I managed to hang on until after the third hill, I then watched somewhat happily as the peleton (main group of riders) left me in the dust, allowing me to slow down to a dismal crawl.

I maintained this crawl to the finish line...where I collapsed...except...the finish line is two miles of pure agony from the staging area OOOOOUUUUCCCCHHH! Those two miles were the worst part of the whole race...especially when you add in making a wrong turn.