Playing it smart, conquering fear in Flatland, USA

I was riding in Flatland, USA again this past weekend. Catherine and I were in Savannah, Georgia for her dad's wedding and decided to join the group ride on Saturday morning. After a leisurely start, the group split up into fast riders and social riders. Quickly it became evident that a few of us made a point to define ourselves as the rolleurs among the 20 or so that stuck on to the A group.

The Saturday Ride from Galleria Cafe in downtown Savannah used to be A/B/C with the groups respectively doing 40 miles fast, 40 quick, and 30 social. This weekend they said they'd be doing a fast 40 mile group and another 30 mile group at a social pace. After the intersection where the faster riders were called to the front, that plan went straight to hell.

From the stop sign, the speed immediately cranked up to about 26 mph, stringing the fast group out and separating us from the gruppetto. It was a blast (for those of us taking pulls at the front, anyways).

We basically said "see-yah" to whoever wasn't planning on keeping up. The speeds caused a lot of people to go straight into the red, definitely, but up front it was as fun as any slap fight can be. Probably the same dozen of us that finished the ride together (of 20-25 or so that did the quick group) worked the entire time with 2 or 3 wheel-suckers that held on but didn't pull once. I'm a cat4, and it was a great group ride for me. I even won the first of the three town-line sprints, leaving the city limits of Savannah on a ~1k flier as I like to do when the weather causes the group to ride like drunken triathletes on amphetamines.

Staying with the front group wasn't purely as much about speed as it was about smart positioning. It was important to be able to come around the guy in front of you when he was sucking wind (literally and figuratively) and opening up a gap. Being able to fight for a spot back near the front of the paceline after taking your own pull was, on this ride, even more important.

A few times the group did splinter in half, then regroup, then splinter again (I even dropped from the top group to the second group early on to help keep things together) but it seemed that if you weren't in the front dozen, you either got stuck on your own or with 3-5 others that were just pooped and didn't know how to work together.

It seemed a lot of people took their pull, then got shot to the back of a very long paceline and were never seen again. The caterpillar effect of the peloton caused gap after gap after gap. Even on dead-flat terrain, lots of people got stuck in no-man's land when the guy in front of them just plain gave up. If you weren't in the top 6-8 riders, you were wasting energy. So you had to waste a good bit energy to stay in the top 6-8 riders.

It's a huge understatement to say that this ride was a bit messy, too. Thunderstorms the previous night were forcing us to ride through soaked roads, so the water spraying off of the wheel in front of each rider was more of a threat than any coming from the sky, but this added an extra challenge to a quick ride. I know too many riders than just can't deal with getting sandy water sprayed in their face at upwards of 30 miles per hour. They let a bigger gap form in hopes of getting a bit of a break from the muddy sprinkler that is their front tire.

If that's you, kudos. But it sure as hell ain't me. I spent hundreds of hours rowing on dirty rivers to care about a bit of icky water spraying in my face. Instead of fighting the wind, you can find me four inches off of the wheel in front of me, smiling like a kid on Christmas. I'll save my preoccupations and energy for when it matters.

Like when things get dangerous.

When things get dangerous, I usually get my wimpy, scared butt out of the way. And I am scared. When I was learning to whitewater kayak, I was taught that there were two types of kayakers: scared kayakers, and stupid ones. I'd rather be in the first group.

On my right knee I have a scar from a biking accident as a kid that never really healed correctly. In 1998, I broke a wrist in a dumb, slow-moving accident making a sharp turn on steep concrete. In 2005 I broke my collarbone and got a bit of rash in a freak accident that involved some fishtailing. My clavicles are no longer symmetrical, and I can't sleep on my left anymore.

Until this year I'd been keeping my bike upright, but I started racing again. In February I scraped my knee and elbow (not the first time) when I had my wheel swept out from under me a mile before the finish at the Wolfpack Road Race. My elbow took a while to heal, too.

A month later at Maryland's Crit I banked too quickly into a turn and decided to ragdoll myself into a hay bail, coming out with only a cracked helmet and a few moments of dizziness. I'll never forget that day - I moronically crashed out of a 6-man breakaway that was lapping the field. That was my first DNF in any race - cycling, running, or rowing - since 1996.

I can't crack the knuckle on my left thumb because of an incident during a Chantilly training race that forced me to ride over a guy's head. During the crash I was just hoping not to kill the guy, who I've ridden with again. He walked away with a cracked helmet and fork. My hands had been on the hoods, forcing my thumbs to take the impact. I don't go to the hospital easily, but the pain that day was enough for me to check: X-rays showed no harm. Still, I didn't have good mobility again for over a month. Needless to say, I made sure that was my last cat-5 race.

On May 22, I took my ugliest spill to date. On a normal Thursday at hains, there was a big headwind that strung out the group. Third wheel going into the sprint, I pulled to the side and made a kick for the sprint line in the saddle. Luckily nobody was behind me, because I went skidding a long time when my chain jumped into my rear wheel. How long is a long time? Long enough that I remember thinking about it before it was over. I tore up a brand new kit and lost a lot of skin.

I spent over $200 during the few days after that buying first aid supplies at pharmacies. I still have burn scars from the road rash on my left calf, thigh, ribs, forearm, and bi-cep. My left butt cheek is forever friction burned a bit tanner than my right (because I'm sure you wanted to know). The knuckles on my fingers all have pink scars from where the pavement had removed most of the skin. And, once again, my elbow got scraped away.

I don't share these to gross anyone out. I think we all have scars to show the cause of our fears. So yes, I have a few scars, but luckily they're all minor compared to two of the guys I was riding with at the Lost River Barn last weekend. I wasn't even on the same playing field when these two alpha males started comparing scars.

Jay, a former pro who guides the trips there, had a foot-long metal rod removed from his shin one month before our trip. Twelve years ago he was hit by a car during a race and suffered a compound fracture. Earlier this year at hains point, an NCVC guy named Dave was the victim of some precarious riding. His body was thrown off his bike like a ragdoll into a sign post, and he broke both lowers bones in one of his legs.

Dave said told me that incident was his first crash in the two years he's been riding and racing bicycles. His wife had been waiting for "the call." Somehow, back at the barn, we were all back on the bike, though, showing off. Most cyclists don't talk about the "c-word" (no, not that c-word you perv). We're all a bit to proud to admit vulnerability to chance. We won't relegate ourselves to become a statistic or a DNF. We just want to ride our bikes and be done with it, so we either forget, or come to terms with the apprehension.

Some people can forget. I remember every last detail.

When I do find myself in a "precarious situation," if that means that I drag my butt to the front and go all-out just to keep things rubber-side down, that's a worthwhile sacrifice, especially on a meaningless training ride. Sometimes, I guess, it's a worthwhile strategy in a race, too.

Down there in Savannah, I was struggling, but kickin' it up front and fighting for better positioning. After each pull I would take a solid look back at the line and find someone struggling, and I'd create space. Some would call it aggressive riding, but they didn't care. They couldn't hold the wheel in front of them anyway.

I spent a whole heck of a lot of energy getting back into line to take another pull last Saturday, it drained me. Why not? I needed the workout. And it's never a bad time to practice arguing with your legs to man-up and drive the pedals down. Especially if it keeps you rubber-side-down at the front of the group.

At the first town-line sprint, the sky was pouring rain and it was obvious by the teeth-gritting silence that the group was at its max. Peter, a regular rider with an Irish accent warned me about the sprint. I told him to stick my wheel. He said it was "too dangerous." I yelled that I was gonna go early. He nodded, as if to say, "Have fun, moron!" When it was my turn to pull, I just took off.

As if I needed a conscience at that moment, this guy was telling me that it was a bad idea to go for the sprint. Maybe it was egotism or just the need to prove something to yourself, but I didn't care how sloppy and squirrely it was. I just hammered. I chose to just forget about the danger. I do not know if anyone else sprinted. Maybe I went so quick, so early that I made it worthless for them to try. But that was the point.

On the next sprint I played the game a bit more like a sportsman. I pulled leading into the 2nd sprint. When a guy wearing a Texas Longhorns jersey grabbed the wheel of a tri-geek in aero-bars for the sign, I got on the wheel, too. As predicted, like a rabid squirrel, they were all over the place. I usually would have found this one to be an easy sprint. They were so locked into each other that nobody knew I was there, just waiting to pull the trigger.

Sometimes, though, there's just no way your mind will unleash your legs and let you go. Your conscience must take over, sometimes. Sometimes you just can't forget.

The final sprint was less than 200 meters after a sharp, gravel-covered right-hand turn. I didn't even contest the lead-out there, knowing after the last sprint that it would be dumb to push the limits on the homestretch. My mind wouldn't have let my body go. However, after the sprint,I did blast past the guys that had sprinted for the Savannah City Limits signs. I pulled for about 5 minutes at my max as they were trying to recover. There was a lot of heavy breathing on those last few roads. I think I made my point.

Thanks for reading.