Oh my god,
where to start. Well, drove to TO to do the St Laurence mkt crit. Great race. Four corner rectangle crit. One downhill into a tight corner, little uphill and voila. Add some high caliber Canadian riders and a flurry of mixed ability M1 M2 riders a couple thousand people watching, eating, drinking, a little rain, and a finish in the dark and that sums it up. I was in a chase group with Eric Wholberg and Marc Walters. They had no interest in in giving 100% to the chase as two of their guys were up the road. So I ended up working pretty hard. But that's the way it is.
I slipped out on a corner, when the rain made a perfect oil patch for me Somehow didn't rip the shorts. It happened so fast , I never let go of the bars, but got right back up, ran and hopped on Cross style, took a couple of laps to get back to Walters, Wholberg made his move, and he's pretty skilled and I just couldn't corner as well after being a little disheveled from this. I probably could have had a free lap, but I was in "squirl mode, looking for my nuts" so any rational thinking was beyond me. Oh hindsight, I love you , but you are a bugger.
So we never caught Eric and then Buck caught us, we rode around and then the pck caught us about 10 feet from the line, neither Buck or myself, or most of the field understood that this was the last lap. Have they ever heard of bells or laps cards...I don't have ESP nor do I have extra special power that let me hear the announcers from the other side of the crit...anyways I guess I needed someone yelling in an ear piece. The radios don't do us any good on my nightstand.
Great race though. It was probably pretty exciting to watch. Lots of people screaming for Jet Fuel, it was pretty wicked. Fans were loving it. Hats off to the S team...man what a unit. Those guys are seasoned pro's. Anytime I'm at a race and they are there, I always give 110%.
I drove halfway to MTL, stayed in Bellville and drove to MTL the next day. Tasha was riding as planned. Slight mishaps, someone crashed and a few went down. She's ok, most importantly., but could not continue the race as her bike was about 150 meters down the road and she was pretty shaked up. Let me tell you, that level, you can't just chase back. It's just not possible. You loose 30 seconds or minute and it would have been suicidal to try and chase on the rest of the downhill.
Oh well, it just wasn't in the cards for us this weekend. If you ever find that your life is boring and want to have a roller coaster of emotions and feel like you are loosing your mind, just race your bike at the elite/pro level and you'll learn a lot about yourself.
Most importantly, Tasha and I are there for each other through the ups and the downs. As funny as it sounds, the things you would think are hard, they are not. Training hard...give me a break, that's the easy part. Driving 2600 km's in a weekend...not that bad. The disappointments after a race where you "could have, would have,should have", for us that's the hardest part. Keeping your head on and not throwing your bike in the river or punching a hole in the wall Seriously, that's what part of me wants to do. The other part just wants to mope. Good thing that the best part of me tells me it's ok, that tomorrow it will be ok. The best part of me tells me she stills loves me, that it's ok, she helps me tie a knot into the post race remorse and throw the negative parts to the curb. I try to to do that for her too.
The skin heals, so do the feelings. When they do you are better and stronger. If it was always good, the greatness wouldn't be so great. Today, I couldn't have cared less if I rode or not. It was not peachy, the duo was kind of bummed out. Yup. But as stubborn as we are we headed off for a ride and saw Vince and C Dodson in the PARC somewhere in between we forgot about the bad and all that was there was the ride, in the rain and mist in the hills. Somehow it all went away when the legs got going and everything was back to normal.
Moral of the story. If something sucks, don't worry, don't stress...just ride.
DSJ
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