Saturday night I checked the weather forecast for the fifth time, noting the forecasted high temp on Sunday would be a whopping 30 degrees with a wind chill of 18.  Winds were to be a steady 10 mph from the NNW.  None of this was good news.  That it would be dry and sunny out was scant comfort.  Nevertheless, on Sunday morning we loaded into Steve’s car, four guys and four bikes, and headed out for an hour and a half drive to Columbia, Missouri for the always appropriately titled Froze Toes road race.  

Steve and Andy would be racing in the Cat 3/4 and myself and First Time Phil would be flying the team colors in the 5s. 

Lots of running on the treadmill and a respectable number of hours pouring sweat from the Cyclops bike as I grunted out strings of intervals were an investment in a hopefully faster and more successful start to the new season.  On the few outdoor winter rides we’d managed, I’d felt pretty spunky and fit, but today would be when sweat and theory faced the test of roads and actual competition.  

And what I wanted most of all on Sunday morning, was for someone to say, “it’s too brutal out, let’s bag it.”

That’s what I was thinking, anyway, when I texted Steve about how absurd the weather was, and what the hell we were doing going out racing on a day like that and all.  And he texted back that it wasn’t so bad out, really.  Which was equal parts lie, absurdity, hope, and denial, as we’d all come to find out soon enough.

Partway across the state First Time Phil couldn’t hardly contain his nerves and enthusiasm.  “I’m so pumped!” he said, spun up with adrenaline.  We counseled him that it was natural, and someday he’d out-grow it.  Someday we all hoped to out-grow it.  But in truth we were all pumped up.

Arriving at the little elementary school on Highway Z that serves as the launch-pad for our favorite (and only) February race, we bailed out of the car and headed up to the registration area to get our race numbers.  Walking maybe a hundred yards into the brisk wind, we scurried into the building shivering from the cold.  All around were riders donning layer upon layer of clothing, but unfortunately almost nobody seemed ready to do the responsible thing and declare this all insane — whereupon I could happily withdraw to the warmth of the car with relatively little guilt about having wimped out.

No, there was little team-spirit in evidence today.

And don’t get me started about the lady racers.  Last year, our team fielded exactly zero women for this race.  This year, we had a lot of them.  And just when you hoped to count on them for some semblance of sanity, they went Rambo and lined up to race like everybody else.  I still hate them for it.

So I got my number, went back to the car and donned every scrap of clothing I’d brought along.  

Days before, Steve and I had discussed race strategy.  In past years, he’d counseled me to strategically try to not get dropped from the pack.  And I’d clearly not listened to him.  And I’d usually made it somewhere around a third of the way round the course before blowing up and then searching for other inferiors with whom I could finish out the race — struggling both mightily and futilly to limp home for a worse-than-pack result. 

But expectations were higher this year.  Maybe a top-10.  Maybe a top-5.  

So Steve had asked me if I would go after a group if there was a breakaway, or if I’d plan to stay with the pack.  I said I’d try to be near the front of the pack and watch the moves.  If someone solo’ed off the front, I’d let them go, most likely.  But if it was a group move, I’d get in and see what happened.

Imagine the audacity, to think that instead of getting bombed out the back I’d go off the front instead.  The closest I’d ever been to the front of the pack before was as a spectator standing at the start/finish line.  

Now, here I stood at the start/finish of this race straddling my own bike and noting for First Time Phil how my heart-rate monitor reading was hovering between 95 and 105.  FTP wasn’t the only one pumped up with a bit of adrenaline.

So the race got underway and the rollout was gentlemanly.  We coasted in the high teens as everybody limbered up to the work ahead.  And then some little old guy awkwardly cranked his way up from the back of the pack to the front, and the pace rose.  I sensed he intended to be the spoiler today, notwithstanding that he rode ungainly and stiffly on his oversized bike.  The question was whether he’d have company.  Another question was whether he had the legs.  He didn’t make us wait long for answers.

Little Old Guy jumped off the front as we headed up a mellow incline, and soon he had a lead of several bike lengths.  The peloton picked up pace, but not enough to shrink the gap.  In fact, it kept growing.  

At this point, I was sticking with my strategy of not going with any solos.  The fact that we were only maybe five miles into a thirty mile course made this an easy decision to stick with — I had no interest in being out in the wind 50% of the time helping a two-man breakaway for the next hour.  At the same time, I knew there was the possibility this Little Old Guy could go the distance and all I’d have to do was suck his wheel for an hour and get comfortably carried for a second place finish provided he didn’t drop me.  I didn’t waver.  I was comfortably stuck in the front third of the main pack and would remain there unless a more substantial chase group formed.

And so it did.

A handful of riders setting pace at the front grew agitated watching Little Old Guy become even littler as he moved off into the distance, and they began to seriously push the pace up.  I knew the main group would soon get to the snapping point, and we’d start to shed the guys in the back who were there because they were waiting to get tossed off anyway. 

Soon the main pack was yo-yo’ing.  The half dozen lead riders would push, and gaps would form in the long line of riders following us.  Several times I had to move around someone who had lost the wheel in front of them, and I’d bridged up.

But the main group hadn’t completely imploded yet, and when we’d turn down-wind it would tenuously come back together as some number of riders were able to reattach.  You could tell that their connection was very weak though.  Guys were suffering, and finding it difficult to recover.

Every once in a while, you’d hear someone near the front shout encouragement to the other lead riders to work together to chase Little Old Guy.  We still had him in our sights, but we weren’t exactly clawing back any ground yet.  About this time, the main group more or less detached as a half dozen riders simply slipped away off the front. 

I kept myself in the middle of the chase group, taking work when my turn came up, but trying to stay within myself and avoid blowing up or writing checks with my legs that I wouldn’t be able to cash later.  Sometimes I got to the front and pulled off without much effort at all, my heart-rate monitor posting higher figures than it had in all the time I’d owned it.

We managed to get rotations going within our little group, but they tended to be temporary. Soon someone would be unable to take their pull, and the person behind them wasn’t ready either, and we’d drift into a paceline, following whomever had the most gas left in the tank.

At one point the guy behind me said to nobody in particular “we’re only halfway,” and I immediately hated him.  

Looking down at my computer, which I was generally avoiding doing because I doubted it would tell me anything I wanted to hear – like that we were nearly finished, or that my heart rate was actually recovering to a sustainable level – I saw that we were about 16 miles along, or slightly more than half-way done.  I hated anyone who would bring to my attention that we still had a LOT of pain yet to experience, even though I was fully aware of that fact.  It’s just that I didn’t want to focus on it.  I didn’t want to let any thoughts into my mind about how this was hard, and how we might fail, and why I might want to sit up.

Justice was served cold when the inevitable happened.  The guy who had made that unneeded statement folded.  “I’m done,” was all he said, and he soft-pedaled off the back or our group, capitulating.

We were down to either three or four riders.  It varied at times.  We passed a lot of people from earlier groups and sometimes they’d jump on for a bit, but too soon they’d drop back off as our pace remained high.  With a strong crosswind that made hiding or drafting of negligible value, we rolled a 10-mile stretch due-south at speeds of 23-26, depending on the undulations of the road.  I used high cadence to survive the gentle inclines, not needing to trouble my Garmin 705 to know that my heart-rate edged its max every time we crested one.

Someone among our group asked if the main pack was anywhere close by.  I didn’t bother looking back.  I didn’t think there was any way they could have closed the gap, and I certainly didn’t want to waste energy finding out.   And if they had there wasn’t anything we could do about it, other than perhaps sitting up and letting ourselves get swept back in.

What also didn’t matter at this point, was how cold it was.  If my hands or feet were cold, any cries of discomfort were certainly shouted-over by the many parts of my body experiencing far more anguish at the extraordinary amount of stress being put of them.

My mind remained focused on only two things.  Number one was that, by-God, I was Off The Front.  I had never been off the front in a race before — and rarely in training rides, for that matter.  Simply sitting in the main pack for an entire race would have been a first for me.  Being off the front in a group that seemed able to stay there — now that was priceless.

The second thing on my mind was managing my energy.  This entailed trying to stay attached to the wheels of the riders in our group, taking my turn at the front when need be, but not putting in such efforts that I’d come up empty before we reached the finish.  I wasn’t happy about holding back effort when I took pulls, or about times when I waved others forward and said I didn’t have it in me to take another one.  But it was about survival, and if I didn’t manage my resources, I’d be feeling that Off The Back dread.  I’d pop like others had done, and I’d be left to pedal alone to the finish, working hard and going slow, drowning in disappointment.

I didn’t entirely succeed.  

Five miles or so from the finish, I lost the wheels of my chase group.  I’d made the mistake (amateur-hour here, for sure) of taking a pull just before we headed up the one wimpy hill on the entire course.  When I’d come off the front, the others rolled by and I was too bushed to hold the last tire.  Soon there was a bike length between me and it, then two.  I knew well what failure felt like, so I stood and sprinted to close the gap, but it didn’t shrink and I had nothing left to offer.  They crept ahead.  The only thing left to do was settle down and find my rhythm.  Five miles was fifteen minutes, more or less, and it was possibly possible to recover, find someone to work with, and stay out front of the main pack for that long. 

I might have gone two miles like this, recovering and slowly working my way home, when one rider from an earlier group passed by and I caught a draft.  He wasn’t riding particularly fast, but faster than I could go by myself.  Finally my heart-rate started to work its way down to the low 170s as the body finally got on top of itself, and back in control.

A mile further on, still about three miles from the finish, we were passed by another rider who was keeping a much better pace and clearly had kept something in the tank for the finish, so I jumped on his wheel and there I sat until we passed under the banner.

I rolled back to the car where the guys waited, and they asked how I’d done.  I said I thought I’d done well.  The main group hadn’t scooped me back up, and I’d stayed off the front.  I only counted a small number of guys who’d left me behind, so a top-10 was pretty safely in the bag.  We’d find out later that night when the results were posted, that I’d finished 6th in my heat, fully a couple of minutes ahead of the main pack.  All the time cross-training on the treadmill this winter, and the hours checking off intervals on the Cyclops, had paid off.  Who knows, maybe I’ll cat-up now so I can get back to fighting my way back into the pack.

So here’s a tip of the hat to the men and lady racers of Ghisallo Racing out of Chesterfield, Missouri, who braved the harsh conditions and raced their hearts out and their legs off.