Ever read Ten Points, by Bill Strickland?
Hillsboro-Roubaix; Got Bombed Yesterday
Bicycling magazine editor Bill Strickland spilled out the deepest, most painful secrets of his troubled life in a small but incredible book that contrast these horrific twists and turns, and his process of working through them, against his challenge of winning ten points in the local Crit series in one year.
To earn those points, he learned that you have to learn to love the suffering.
I raced Cat V in the infamous Hillsboro-Roubaix (translation: cobble stone streets here) ride in Hillsboro, Illinois and culminating in a lackluster mid-pack finish, again.
I could blame it on the race course (shortened from 44 to 22 miles for us 5s), the weather, which was somewhat cold and windy, versus last year when it was really cold and windy, my bike, which now is a state-of-the-art Cannondale System 6 instead of last year’s 3-year old aluminum Caad 7 Cannondale – but all of these things should have helped.
Finally, I could blame the race organizers, who frustratingly were extremely cordial and ran the event like a Swiss watch and therefore failed to distract me from my soaring heartbeat, searing lungs, and spent legs. Shame on them.
Oh, and did I mention me and my training mates have been riding more, earlier, and way harder this winter than we did last year?
But what happened was, a certain team of youngsters from a bike club whom I shall not name, except to tell you it said Jokers on their orange and black jerseys, and appropriately so, decided to carpet bomb the race in the first six miles with endless attacks until they’d blown apart the pack.
Team tactics in a Cat 5 race? Every team discusses them before the start. Usually they are vague memories before you reach the end of the neutral zone.
It was only like five guys on their squad, and individually they weren’t unusually gifted - but they actually rode like a squad when nobody else did - and so they took the first 5 places in the race.
What I didn’t like about my performance was the thought that I might have persevered and pushed through my own limits to stay with them ALL THE WAY through those six miles of attacks, and then more comfortably ridden with the lead pack all the way to the end.
It wasn’t like they rode their breakneck pace the entire way, after all. They settled in smartly once they’d established the gap, and me and the other laggards watched them for the next 40 minutes or so from a few hundred yards back, futilely trying to bridge up.
Consoling myself against the prospect I might have hung on longer was that one of my younger, faster, fitter teammates actually did do this, and he got twelfth place. I would not have beaten him on the day no matter whether I hung with the lead group or not, so my opportunity for the day would have been to move from 26th up toward a 13-20ish slot.
Better yet, maybe I could have sucked wheels at the back of the lead pack, not forced to take pulls at the front, instead of working my legs off in a grupetto of 2-4 guys where I had to take my share of pulls even when I didn’t think there were any left in the tank.
Looking at it that way, had I spent more fuel in the first six miles, I might have actually had an easier time over the next 16. Knowing that, hurts.
On the other hand, I’m sure I didn’t have any more fuel for the first six miles. I thought I was ready when we first rolled off, but those Joker attacks were phenomenal. I was physically in the red zone for a long time and stayed with the attack group for a good distance – just not good enough.
Anyway, I’m back to consoling myself with the knowledge that moving up from 26th to maybe around 15th or 20th in a Cat V race wouldn’t have meant that much, regardless.
I’m also consoling myself that in just over one hour yesterday I rode as hard a ride as I can ever remember. I pushed myself to take pulls even when I wanted to sit behind. I forced myself to keep in the grupetto even when my body wanted to sit up and call it a day. I even sat up to go back and get a teammate who dropped maybe ten or fifteen yards off the back of the grupetto, then pedaled hard to get us back in, paying him back for the hard work he’d done that had let me recover earlier. I felt good about having the chance to make the gesture for a teammate, and we caught back up to the others we’d been working with and finished the rest of the race better than either of us would have individually.
Afterwards, I felt better about my performance than I have after any other race. Yes, tons of room for improvement, but, but, but — I experienced what it was like to suffer deeply and keep pushing yourself when you don’t want to.
Bill Strickland’s book, which is touching, poignant, heart-wrenching, at times unbelievably, shockingly sad, and extremely well told throughout, talked about the therapeutic value of learning how to live through your suffering off and on the bike, and how learning this enables you to eventually win. Yesterday, I got a sense of what he meant, and I got a sense of how much harder I’m going to have to train.
Categories: Bikes, Book, Book Review, Hub, Races, Rider Diaries, Road, System6
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