A $15 non-Brazilian, Butt-Waxing. What A Deal!

ah yeah freakadelics!!!!! just returned from the first race of the season: a 1-2-3 criterium. here's the cliffnotes® version:
-i lasted 6 or so laps with the leaders.
-got lapped at minute 25 (out of an hour race); and summarily got pulled.
-thought i was going to have a cardiac arrest. damn!!!
-and lastly: picked up a cough breathing like a cold-air intake...
it was so amazingly fun though. even though it was a dismal display of force on my part; the endorphins are slowly releasing.
it was fast! i haven't gone that fast in forever! it was painful. i love racing the 1-2s because the cornering is like buttuh. no worries at all about people not being able to hold a line or to corner at speed for that matter. the last left hander before the climb was about a beeeeyatch though. here's the cycling dad version...

let me describe the course. think of a rectangular parallelogram, with the top edge shifted a wee bit left of the bottom edge on the same plane. now imagine tilting the top edge towards you, tilting on the mid-line. that's the course. think of the the top, left interior angle as "a". going counter clockwise starting from "a", the next angle is "b" and so forth. the start line was between points "a" and "d". going from "a" to "b" was a screamer. the speed picked up on the blasting downhill to round "c" was technical because it was tighter than a 90° corner; and you had to scrub some speed before rocketing off again up the big-ring climb to "d". i had no problems with bike handling because it was the A group. just had problems cardiovascularly. i knew i was in trouble when i couldn't recover on the downhill. it's all intervals at this point of the season. oh yeah, and my new bike handled like a charm. nothing but confidence in her first race with me. was running some pretty serious chain deflection too: big ring + large cog = no skipping. lovely.

kenny and i hung with the 20 or so leaders for at least 6 laps then mr. redline crept into my cardiovascular system and wreaked havoc on my plans of successfully pack finishing. once a sizable gap formed between our group and them--especially no longer in their draft--the second group literally leading the chase was kenny and i. i say that because nobody else would pull. incidentally another sizable group fell off behind us before we lost contact with the leaders.

so it was like that until we got pulled (from being lapped). when the official whistled and gave us the international hand signal(s) for "you're done" kenny said out loud "thank-you!" and some spectators laughed (as we breathed a sigh of relief); but before that, kenny and i traded pulls like banshees. it felt great! i also notice things when people are in my paceline. i notice kenny pedals slightly larger gears than me (i'm at higher rpms) when big-ring, sprint climbing. okay, back to racing. nobody else would come around us-even the subaru guys in our chase group. even with that, nobody (kenny and me) yelled to take a pull, there were no crazy gesticulations, just racers in the second group (apparently the only group) trying to survive and keeping the technique silky-smooth to save energy. when the leaders did pass us, i had a nutty notion to hop back in (that's illegal by the way), but i was so far gone and they were rolling at a blistering pace, the thought of entertaining that left as quickly as it came.

i felt pretty good about my (lack of) fitness for only getting in six hour weeks (if that!). it was nice too publicly showing (even though we got lapped) how kenny and i could chase (even though in vain) in such a way that other racers couldn't stay in our draft. dang they must be even more hurtin' than my lackadaisical training ways.
this endeavor revealed two things to me: one, i still like bike racing and it reinforced my commitment to race bikes; and two, i am inspired to drop some pounds to get my fat-a$$ over a hill like a mean bid-ness. yeah people were getting dropped but those people shouldn't have been me.

yeah. i'ma do it again next week. this fitness'll be great for my cross-country mountain biking efforts too. wait, do i hear an endorphin knockin'? i believe i do, come on in suckah...