I've been wanting to Ramble Around Prattsburgh since Tom did it for the first time three or four years ago. The race sounded like stupid fun: cross bikes on a mixed pavement/dirt road/singletrack course. Some climbing. Some descending. Some views. Sounded like it had everything. Everything but me. The race has always been scheduled in April in the past--a shitty month for yours truly thanks to my job of saving the world from misplaced commas and nondescriptive prose.
This year, the race was scheduled for Sunday, May 15--two days after Cheap Beer III. I figured my training would be perfect. Friday, drink cheap beer. Saturday, suffer. Sunday, suffer more. I was right.
I drove over to Eric's about 9:45 a.m. for our fashionably late start to the race. We loaded the bikes, I relayed the fact that my wife's eardrum had burst that morning, and we were off. We listened to Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song" on the way out Catlin Hollow. It's always good to hear about the significance of the pickle.
On the drive up, it rained. As we walked to pick up our race numbers and t-shirts, it didn't rain. As we sat in the bunch at the start, it rained. And it didn't stop. But in spite of the precipitation, I had a blast. Here's why:
The peloton rolled through town in a bunch until we reached the bottom of a long hill. That hill marked the start proper. About five minutes later we turned right into the woods on doubletrack, which led to a fast grassy descent through a field, and then some pavement. Back through town to another climb (sorta like Norris Brook) and so on. The race became a slog fest as crossers and mountain bikers churned up the gravel roads into a gooey, slippery splash fest. Eric and I rode off the main lines most of the way because it was "cleaner" and provided more traction. And there were times where traction was a sought after commodity, like on the downhills with the snaky bends negotiated with two-wheel drift.
As I rode more, I remembered what it felt like to trust my cross bike in the mud, knowing that the bike wanted to go forward more than it wanted to fall over. About half way through the race, I was reveling in the slick conditions. I even passed a guy on a mountain bike on the trickiest descent of the race. Of course, he passed me back on the pavement at the bottom--I was eating, but it still shouldn't have happened--but I dropped him again once we hit the slop.
Eric and I settled into our usual patterns, just like old times at Iron Cross and elsewhere. He blew past me on the downhills, climbed a bit quicker than I did, and I reeled him in on the flats. I appreciated his knowledge of the course, too. It probably kept me from overcooking some turns.
Like all good race courses, this one included what I call an exclamation point, a feature that puncuates just how damn tired you are. Such features make me laugh. This course exclaimed when racers turned left into someone's yard and headed into the woods for what was on this day some prime upstate saturated slick singletrack. More slop, and I found myself riding in the grass to either side of the trail, hoping to keep the tires hooked up and my bike upright. I tried to imagine myself as Sven Nys in a cross race, sliding from one side of the course to the other, showing grace and power as the bike slipped around underneath me. In my head, though, Sven was laughing his ass off at me. The vision vanished when a right turn through a small gully materialized, and I pedaled through water so deep that my feet were going under at the bottom of each stroke. I least I wasn't the guy pushing the tandem with his female stoker walking about thirty feet behind him. Whether those folks were happy or miserable, I couldn't tell. But later they crossed the finish line on the bike, so I took that as a good sign.
A short climb to the pavement, a few more turns through the neighborhood, and I turned right across the finish line, cold, wet, and happy. Rambling around Prattsburgh made me feel like a racer again. Apparently, Eric did too, finishing third in his age group. But we were cold and a warm car beckoned, so we got out of there.
No comments:
Post a Comment