Slightly battered and totally worked, but I did it! Finally!
I just finished my post-race meal: baby carrots, cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, a bowl of Joe’s O’s (wish I had gotten the honey ones), and chocolate milk. I wanted a veggie burrito but I was too tired to stop or make one at home, so I went for every easy carb/protein combo I had til I felt full. I’m also still coughing up dust and blowing dirt clods out my nose. Gross, I know, but these are the facts, albeit slightly exaggerated.
Entering a mountain bike race is something I’ve wanted to do for years and up until now have been way too chicken to try. Several months ago, I was lucky enough to find myself dining with a sports psychologist who suggested I think of it as just another regular mountain bike ride since in a race I’m doing all the same things I do when I ride any other day, minus the 300 other riders that showed up! This makes an enormous difference as you inhale dust and narrowly escape crashes for the first two miles. Still, his words definitely helped me move past the block I had to racing, so I am grateful.
And now I present my highlight reel:
I only heard once, “Man, you’re killing me!” (Dude, it’s “woman”, and if I wasn’t in FRONT of you, I wouldn’t have fallen in FRONT of you. I passed his ass on the hill right after noticing that he was in the well-over-50 category which isn’t saying much for me, but I’m taking everything I can get. I’m pretty sure he beat me in the end anyway.
I just about perfected the art of “fall-and-get-out-of-the-way” inspired by the “you’re killing me” old guy (sorry all you old guys over 50, I’m still bitter and need to vent; if you’re out there racing, you’re awesome and definitely not old, just significantly older than me and since that crowd is getting smaller and smaller I’m reveling in that whole situation).
And in one of those early falls, my shifting got screwed up, so I raced about two-thirds of the race stuck in my middle ring with access to only the hard half of the back ring gears (I just ride the bike, I don’t pretend to know what I’m talking about). Anyway, if I was going to suck tonight, at least I was gonna get a great workout without having access to the granny gears!
Near the end of the first lap, I realized (because I was feeling the beginnings of a bonking) that I forgot to eat my pre-race meal an hour and a half before the race. I was so focused on hydrating for the 97° weather and locating the race site (which of course included getting lost), I completely forgot to eat, and it had been 5 hours since lunch. For a long time, I’ve said that mountain biking is my church because it’s where I do the most praying. Now I added “please don’t let me run out of gas” to my usual litany of “please keep me on the bike,” “I’m one with the bike,” and “please stay on, please stay on,” in addition to using the what felt like very few open, flat runs to recover.
I've always thought triathletes look so cool with the Sharpie marks on their bodies. Now, I too am just like them, and it IS cool.
I raced in the Women Sport category which entailed three laps of the 3.75-mile loop. That’s three opportunities to get it right, and I fell on the same steep, super soft, downhill drop every time. This sucks because, well, it just does, and the last time I did it I watched the girl in front of me (who had this long, gorgeous sandy-blonde pony tail – how it looked totally perfect and styled after two and a half laps is beyond me) do it with one foot in the pedal and one foot in the dirt with stellar finesse. So I attempted the same, and at the bottom, I still fell. The good news is in the past, such a bruise to my ego (along with my legs) would have dampened my spirits, but I decided to chase her to the finish instead. (Them there’s life progress points for me.)
So I kept pretty blonde pony finesse girl in close sight, and then I tried something bold… that flopped. On one of the short climbs I caught up to her close enough to attempt a pass. Since climbing is my strength and she was rocking on the technical stuff (where I was praying), I thought this was where I had to make a go at it. So I gave the ol’ “passing on your left!” shout to which she responded while I pushed down hard on my left pedal for the surge only to have my cleat slid out of the clip making me immobile… on an uphill right after announcing my big pass, thank you very much. So, that was joyful and another source of ego bruising, but I still chased her down to the finish… with no luck. She gave me a “good job” though, which was cool for me since she was looking all pro in her matching riding ensemble and she did in fact ride dang good (well).
One of the best things was hearing my uncle, my cousin’s wife, and my baby cousin (who I refer to as my neicin) yell, “Go Auntie Hilary!” on each lap. That still makes me smile. They drove all the way out there to watch my cousin and me, and I can’t thank them enough. It provided a fresh dose of what it’s really all about while I wrestled with my ego in the dirt.
My cousin Brandon and me by the port-a-potties, not that there was a beautiful sunset over the lake going on right then! Geez! Thanks for racing with me, B!
But I loved it – every fall, scrape, blunder, and bruise! And I learned a ton! What a cool sport (this is not news to me)! And I think I’m hungry again, but I’m too tired to do anything about it! Thankfully, I can sleep in tomorrow and I have a pedicure planned… AFTER I take my bike to the shop for post-race repairs.
Thanks to the Over the Hump Series (www.overthehumpseries.com) organizers for a great event and for bringing mountain bike racing to the OC (since I don’t go north of Crown Valley very often)!
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