The Fredericksburg Road Race with my bro
Sunday my brother, Ben, and I did a bike race out in the Texas Hill Country at Doss, TX near Fredericksburg. First, some explanation of technical bicycle terms: this was our first road race and it was sanctioned by USA Cycling. In USA Cycling the racers are divided into Pros and Category 1’s at the top of the food chain, Cat 2’s and 3’s below them, and Cat 4’s and 5’s at the bottom. When you first get a license and start racing, you’re a Cat 5 no matter what. After you do 10 races as a Cat 5 you’re automatically a Cat 4. To work your way from Cat 4’s into Cat 3’s you actually have to finish high in some Cat 4 races and accumulate enough points to move up. It’s like the difference between graduating from college and being released from a mental institution. To get out of the mental institution you have to demonstrate that you’ve improved.
Let me specify that this was not a “ride.” I’ve done those and they’re great. This was a race. For the serious dudes. The course featured two loops of a 22 mile course on farm roads with some cattle guards and water crossings. By some cattle guards I mean about 40. By water crossings I mean 1. There was also a twisty, steep downhill portion and many small hills. One big nasty hill was about 6 miles into the course. I had two goals that Norman Vincent Peale would be disappointed to see were stated negatively:
1. Don’t DNF. DNF is “Did Not Finish.”
2. Don’t DFL. DFL is “Dead Freakin’ Last (I believe).
Everything beyond that, for my first road race, would be gravy.
Race morning found us out at the start line warmed up and ready to go with our group of about 80 guys: Cat 4/5 over 35 years old. It was very warm and humid at 8 a.m., but the pastoral countryside is really beautiful this time of year. This is the Texas Hill Country people fall in love with and write songs about.
The gun went off for our group at 8:10 and we rode out in a dense pack. I’ve ridden plenty in a pace line, but was a little unnerved by having three or four guys on each side of me. A mile into the ride someone’s tire exploded with a loud bang and we maneuvered around him as he slowed down. Soon after that a guy to my left veered off the road and into the ditch. He was shrieking an expletive as the tall grass slowed him from 25 to 20 to 10 miles an hour. I didn’t see how he stopped. I felt like the guy in Jurassic Park who sees someone next to him get snatched up screaming in the jaws of a T-Rex. I just pedaled faster.
To stay with a big group is better for you because you work less – you can get in this mass of moving air and go much faster with less effort. That’s the point of the peloton. The first big hill, though, is where we all started to separate because the fastest guys wanted to shake off all the wheel-suckers. So 8 miles into the race I found myself separated from all groups and I fought like crazy to get caught up to a group of 6 guys. We worked together and took turns in the wind until about the 13 mile point, when, after a hard pull at the front up a hill, I couldn’t keep up with them. I tried, too. When you lose the group, you’re going to go significantly slower.
But I couldn’t stay with them. I was absolutely cooked. They rode off from me. I watched, forlorn, as they pulled away like a train carrying a dear relative. I was now by myself. Normally, the thing to do would be to catch on with another group behind you and work together, but after so much chaos I didn’t know if there WAS another group. I never really seriously thought of quitting. That’d be a DNF.
Completely obliterated and pouring sweat, I started on the second lap of the course, the final 22 miles. I started to re-climb the hills of the first lap and here’s where I learned a valuable lesson the hard way: if the course description contains the word, “hilly,” if the race is held in a place that is called “The Hill Country,” if you suspect that someone in the race may have “Hill” for a last name, make very sure your bike can shift into its lowest two gears. I foolishly did not and my bike, alas, could not. It wasn’t a factor on the first lap when I was fresh and with other riders but now, with my quads devastated, when I desperately needed to shift into my easiest gear (my 25 tooth) to creep up a hill, the chain would dance back and forth between my two lowest gears (25 and 23) and my freewheel would rattle like Uncle Jed Clampett’s truck transmission. I weaved up the hardest hills in my 19 tooth gear, which I highly recommend as therapy for optimism. Early into my climb I saw two guys riding back down the hill toward me. They weren’t lost. They were quitting.
I saw no other riders for the remainder of the race. The natural, magnificent beauty of the Texas Hill Country had become a post-apocalyptic landscape swept clean of human life and viewed through a film of mucus and blood.
I eventually rolled into the finish and saw my brother, who had finished probably 20 minutes ahead of me. I doubt if it speaks well of me, but I could scarcely contain my surprise and delight when I saw that a few guys from our group were coming in behind me, looking like the race had meticulously and thoroughly kicked every square millimeter of their behinds as it did mine. Not DFL.
It was a humbling and instructive experience that put a hurtin' on my like few things I've ever done. So why am I trolling the internet for training tips and another ride to do?
