Milk Ras, Stage 2
(The agony of defeat by: Josh Horowitz)
5/21/01
Well if everything went right for me yesterday then
those same things
went
horribly, horribly wrong today. The Irish might call
it a wee spot of
bad
luck. I’d call it a bloody nightmare.
The day started out good with a homemade breakfast
at the B&B which we
found
out was over 150 years old. The stage started in the
same place where
we
ended yesterday and rolled out of town with another
marching band
leading
the way. About a half mile out of town, the flag was
raised and the
speed
immediately ramped up to race pace where it would apparently
stay for
the
next 85 miles. Once again, I was feeling great with
almost no fatigue
or
stiffness. That is when the trouble started.
Less than one mile after the start, a pile up occurred
which started
with
the rider directly in front of me. I slammed on the
breaks but hit him
anyway. Somehow, I came out of the pedals, leapfrogged
over my bike
and hit
the ground running. By the time I turned around, the
pack was gone at
over
30mph and I knew I would never see them again. I quickly
untangled my
bike
from the rider on the ground (his foot was stuck in
the spokes) and got
my
chain back on. Unfortunately, I then made the mistake
of taking off
after
the pack at full speed. Of course I didn’t come
close to catching them
and
only succeeded in completely blowing myself up after
only a few miles.
The race caravan started passing at that point and
as my team car came
by,
they informed me that one of my teammates had also gotten
stuck and was
45
seconds back. He and another guy caught up to me a few
minutes later
and we
pretty much team time trialed for the next four hours.
Every pedal
stroke
was agony and there wasn’t a minute that I didn’t
want to quit. To
make
matters worse, the three of us were of course losing
dozens of minutes
to
the pack who were putting down a record setting pace
and I knew that in
addition to dropping like a stone in the G.C., I was
going to be
completely
blown for the following day.
If the stage had only been hilly, we surely would have
been picking up
riders as we went, but unfortunately, it was only moderately
uphill
with of
course a sizable head wind. We never passed a single
rider for the
entire
80 miles and no one every caught up to us either. The
only saving
grace was
that a team car pulled up behind us, gave us water and
food and
occasionally
allowed us to draft and even hang onto the side up some
of the hills.
Believe me, you haven’t experienced true terror
until you’ve been
dragged up
a narrow European farm road holding onto the door hinge
of a lorry at
38
miles per hour with oncoming traffic coming within inches
of your
shimmying
bike. However, it’s a good thing we did it because
despite our
unrelenting
pace line for the entire length of the race, we still
only made it in
2:30
before the time cut. It was so hard that even with only
3km to go I
was
seriously entertaining thoughts of pulling over and
packing it in. The
worst part is that I was feeling good and if not for
the crash, I’m
sure I
could have finished again with the lead pack.
Oh well, tomorrow is a much harder day, 184 kilometers,
with three
categorized climbs and I definitely need to have a good
day to get my
confidence back up. I can’t even imagine doing
again tomorrow what I
did
today let alone for the next six days, but I’ll
take it one day at a
time
and just keep racing.
We’re staying in a rather fancy hotel tonight,
so I think I’m going to
head
down to the Jacuzzi and later, our manager is going
to come by and give
us
some massages. A quick word about our support staff.
These guys are
incredible. They are all volunteers (two are local Irishman
and the
other
is a friend of one of the racers) and they work their
ass off for us.
It so
great to just hand off your bike to them at the finish
line and know
that by
the next morning it will be cleaned, the wheels will
be trued, tires
inflated, cog sets switched out and any mechanical problems
fixed. They
are
truly the unsung heroes of the sport. That’s all
for now. Hopefully I
will
have some better news to report tomorrow.
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