A dead Duck. Town.

So, I forgot to update my blog after this past weekend, but it was fairly uneventful anyway, so whatever. Julia and I went over to Ducktown Tennessee for the SERC race that they were holding at the Olympic whitewater center. This was Julia’s first race after she had gotten back, and was forced (without much effort) to race a rental bike since hers was out of commission. We were driving over to meet Tristan and his sister at the course and then planned to drive over to the house where we were staying. We ended up getting a later start than we had anticipated, and a mid-trip Subway stop ensured that we would miss riding with everyone else. After driving for what seemed like forever on narrow curvy roads, and then on larger straight roads that didn’t seem to go anywhere and took forever, we finally got to the race. It was being held at the Olympic Whitewater Center, where, I presume, they held the Whitewater Olympic events. The flags and rings and torch helped my reach that conclusion, but it’s still just a guess.
The course was one that was super fun to ride, but not so much fun to race. It had a steep and long climb right out of the gate, and then eventually headed downhill on a tight, twisty, smooth singletrack trail. After rolling up and down for several miles, you got dumped out onto a false flat road about a mile from the finish. It was fun, but not really my style of racecourse. We rode on Saturday, had a great time, got some dinner, and went to bed for our pre-race beauty sleep.
Race day dawned, and I was not feeling my best. My stomach was all not happy, and I had a whole lot of trouble keeping food down at all. Needless to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to the race at all. We got there and started warm up, and went to the line. There were 9 riders in my field, and I was pretty confident that I would be able to beat all but 2 of them. I got about 1.2 hard pedal strokes in off the line, and realized that this was not going to be a good day. I quickly had a 10ft gap open up in the first 10 yards, and was giving it all that my legs had to latch back on. We hit the climb, and I was able to get the last wheel, but didn’t have the legs to move up. I managed to keep the leaders in sight for the first climb, and I was hoping that everything would magically start working after the descent. No such luck. I quickly lost sight of everyone, and couldn’t seem to keep my bike going in the direction that I was pointing it. This was definitely one of those days that NOTHING was working even remotely right for me, and I couldn’t seem to pull it together. I figured that since I was entirely sucking, I would work on mental toughness in the face of utter breakdown. That worked for a little while… until I hit a little climb that I normally wouldn’t have had any trouble making in the big dog, but today had to shift down to my granny and had a lot of trouble turning the pedals over. At that point, mental toughness went out the window, and I started laughing at how bad I was sucking.
I rolled up to the start/finish, and saw Tristan moving at a walking pace. He had totally flatted, and had already dropped out. We stopped and talked to his parents for a while, watched everyone come by, and then went out for a slow person’s lap. My only goal was to be back before Julia finished, and I was pretty sure that she was moving faster than we were. We ended up seeing her on the road section before the finish, and I decided to ride with her to the line. I struggled to keep her wheel as she was easily putting down more power than I could match. She ended up dominating the competition (no surprise there), and having a great time in the process. I guess her result made it worth the trip, but it sucks to go that far and, well, suck.
I’m just about done with exams, which means that summer is about here, and I can devote myself to riding my bike and getting ready for nationals.
12 Hours of Tsali is up next, and I am really excited to get to race with the super Sycamore team. I’m pretty sure that the shop is sending 4 teams out to do the event, and we should come up with at least one win. Stay posted!