[Ed. Note.: Click here to see my full props from Amar on my use of the word 'obviate.']
Disaster! Well, no, not really. About six days before the ride, I got a call from Robby Findler, saying that he would not be riding. Fortunately, we found an eleventh-hour replacement in John Greiner, and team "Compared to What?" was back on its feet. Please don't ask about the name; it arose out of the sort of compromise thinking that inevitably leads to regrettable conclusions. That's my take on it, anyway.
Now that the linear thread of this narrative is completely shot to hell, let me describe the structure of the two-day ride; each day's ride is punctuated by a series of breakpoints; the first day had seven breakpoints, covering a total of 112 miles, and the second day had four breakpoints for a 64-mile route. The first day also featured a lunch break; the second one was too short to need one.
Breakpoint 1 was very nice.
Just before breakpoint 2, John and I found ourselves a good group of three other riders, and we set up a decent paceline for a mile or two, before I noticed that my rear tire was slowly going flat. I stopped, and John stopped with me, to check on the condition of the tire. Since we were nearing a breakpoint, I decided simply to pump up the tire and carry on.
Fortunately, I reached the second breakpoint with no further mishaps, and the good folks at West U Schwinn who were staffing that breakpoint replaced my tube for free. While this was happening, John left without me. Ah well. At least he said goodbye.
Five minutes later, I was back on the road, looking for someone to ride with. Pretty soon, I saw a line in the distance, and hurried to catch them. It was at this point that I discovered a fairly nice tailwind, and managed to catch them by going 22/23 mph for about five minutes. Needless to say, I was exhausted when I got there, but it was just what I was looking for; a solid group of about seven riders from the Houston Bicycle Club, going 20/21 mph. The riders I met there included Barbara, Bill, Ben, Tom, Pete, John (different John), and maybe that's it.
Breakpoint 3 was nice; I wound up with a spooky ghost ring which must have fallen off soon thereafter. I decided to stick with the HBC group, and we had an uneventful ride to lunch.
Lunch was entertaining, if only because it's been about fifteen years since I've eaten in an institutional cafeteria; we had standard institutional-style spaghetti, rice, and red beans with rice. Lots of starch. At lunch, I caught up with John Greiner again, who'd been riding ahead of me for the last thirty miles.
Leaving lunch, John and I decided to ride with the same HBC group that I'd been accompanying since breakpoint 2. The group resolved to skip the next breakpoint, and go straight through to breakpoint 5.
At breakpoint 4, we got confused, and headed into the breakpoint despite planning to skip it. In fact, it wasn't clear, when we turned, whether we were turning in to the breakpoint or whether the route itself turned. In fact, the turn was not a part of the route, so we needn't have stopped. I looped around, and ended up back on the road with a somewhat smaller group of riders. In fact, there were just three of us; Barbara, Ben, and I.
Pretty soon, we encountered Ed from West U Schwinn, who was suffering alone, so we picked him up and then we were four. Then HBC stalwarts Pete and Tom bridged the gap, bringing the head count to six.
Breakpoint 5 was a fine breakpoint, and even included some entertainment in the form of a playground next to a church.
We got back on the road pretty quickly, with only about thirty miles left.
Breakpoint 6 was staffed entirely by medical students; we asked them if they could do lung massages, but they smiled and said no.
Pretty soon after breakpoint 6, I was feeling good (with about twelve miles to go), so I decided to break and run up the road alone. This was exhilarating, and I hit a respectable 34 mph on one fairly long downhill stretch. Feeling pretty good, I decided to skip ...
...entirely. I passed two or three other riders on the hills leading into Gonzales, and finally made it into town. The official estimate of 112 miles proved to be a bit short, and with 112.6 on the clocks, I came across a contestant who was jogging the other way, who told me I had another two miles to go.
At last, I found our destination, a municipal park in Gonzales. I arrived at 2:54, for an on-the-bike average of around 19.5 mph, and an overall average of 15.4 mph.
Dinner that night was fantastic; of course, at that point I would have gladly eaten my desk, with a little catsup. Other afternoon highlights included a shower in a high school gym, and a fifteen minute massage.
We went to bed at about 8:30 pm.
The second day was a great deal more exciting, and a heck of a lot shorter.
At the starting line, I decided to glom onto the bunch in front, to see how the fast guys do it and to hang on for a while. I ended up in a pretty big bunch (about twenty) at the front, and we alternated between single and double file pace lines. At this point, there were some faster and some slower riders in the bunch, and when it was my turn to pull, I took a somewhat over-optimistic pace on the first hill. At the top, I looked behind me and was surprised to see that there was only one person behind me, a fast-looking fellow named Rory. Rory allowed as how it was perhaps a bit early for a two-man break, and that we should wait for a few more riders to go up the road. I was fairly overwhelmed by all of this talk of race tactics, and was more than happy to go with this plan.
A group of three caught up with us fairly quickly; J.C., Tad, and a guy whose name I forget (how embarrassing). Let's call him Jason. The five of us set out down the road at a fairly good clip, trading pulls of 1/2 - 1 mile at 21-23 mph.
To some degree, this is where the ugliness of bicycle racing comes in. In particular, you can't win without others; the guy at the front of the paceline is doing all the work, and a group of five can ride much, much faster than a group of one. So the whole game is to make sure that you're not working harder than everyone else, and the fundamental decision is when to ride away and leave your 'friends' in the dust. A good time to do this is when said friend has just completed a particularly altruistic (long) pull. The only people you can trust are:
We ended up skipping all of the rest stops but the last one, where the decisive move occurred; Jason decided to run up the road, stop for some water, and rejoin the line. This is not unusual; the rest of the line goes a bit more slowly for a bit, and then picks up the pace when the biker jumps back in. In this case, four of us decided to grab some water. The only one not to stop was Rory. We all went in to the breakpoint in a close bunch, and I was the second one to the water jugs. There were two, so I got to fill my bottle immediately. I jumped back on the bike and back on the road, and noticed that everyone else seemed to be dallying a bit. I caught up with Rory, and with only 13 miles left, he suggested that we leave without the others. I agreed, and we cranked up the speed again.
The two of us clearly had the freshest legs, so it seemed unlikely that the other three could catch us, and in fact they didn't. We zoomed along at about 22/23 mph for much of the rest of the trip; one stop light held us up, but not enough for the others to catch us, or even appear on the horizon.
Throughout the last ten miles, it was clear that Rory was trying to get me to do the lion's share of the work; I was pretty sure that his sprint would beat mine, so I wasn't too concerned about this state of affairs, as long as the others didn't catch us up.
With about two miles to go, on a big hill, I broke a spoke. This seems to be an unusual occurrence for most people, but not for me. I break 'em left, right, and center. This one was left. Left rear, to be precise. Rory stopped with me to check on my spoke; I have no illusions that this was due to any debt that he felt toward me; with the other competitors entirely out of sight, he could afford to lend me a hand, particularly as he was pretty sure he could beat me in the sprint.
The wheel turned out to be rideable, and so we rode on. As predicted, Rory's sprint was a fair bit better than mine, and he cruised into the finishing area first ... only to hit a huge bump. He braked in a straight line, and I swerved around him. As it turned out, my swerve was in the right general direction, and I rolled across the 'finish line' a good ways in front of my erstwhile comrade. I think he still considers it a victory for himself, and that's fine with me; after all, I have the private satisfaction of knowing that I crossed the line first, and I'll just keep that to myse... oops. I guess I just told everybody. Ah well.
I finished at 10:40 am. I had an on-the bike speed of about 20.3 mph, and an overall average of 20.2 mph; I didn't really stop at all.
Lunch that day was fantastic. And then we all came home. Whee!
| John Clements / gruesome_incident@brinckerhoff.org |
| last modified 10/25/98; 4:20:58 PM |