062919
Frantic Race Report
From the desks of Leonardo Masterbeef III and El Conchristador.
Part 1:
Setting: Interstate highway 74 somewhere between Indianapolis and
Cincinnati, our destination for yesterday’s activities. I warn you right now that this next paragraph was written in a fit of High Rage so please do excuse the profanity...
How do you overturn a fucking truck on I74? The line of traffic was just so damned long and I had to pee so badly and Leo was absolutely no help at all because all he had to do was sit there in his air-conditioned passenger seat and look at stuff on his greasy phone. Meanwhile I am about to have a bladder rupture and my teeth are almost ground down to dust. 74 is normally a nice, little pleasant drive with an almost downhill feel to it, complete with lovely trees and farm fields and plenty of hills as you get toward Cinci. But not on this day, no sir, no fekkin way in hell with that idiot who, apparently, for no particular reason, decided to stray Right just that 1% too much and (in my imagination) probably started the terminal fishtail thing-half on / half off the shoulder with all the loose gravel and debris and tall grass and then, POOF, he rolled that sucker right the fuck over next to a wire fence and some trees and a bored bovine who continued to chew cud but was most likely udderly (get it?) disgusted in his or her own way. And I was too. In my own way, which was to loudly curse at the dolt when we finally, after an hour of brake-check slow-driving, wound up next to the bugger as the traffic line finally got its act together and found rhythm and I stuck TWO middle fingers as high as I could at him across Leo’s lap and through the passenger window. Fucking wankmeister…
How do you overturn a fucking truck on I74? The line of traffic was just so damned long and I had to pee so badly and Leo was absolutely no help at all because all he had to do was sit there in his air-conditioned passenger seat and look at stuff on his greasy phone. Meanwhile I am about to have a bladder rupture and my teeth are almost ground down to dust. 74 is normally a nice, little pleasant drive with an almost downhill feel to it, complete with lovely trees and farm fields and plenty of hills as you get toward Cinci. But not on this day, no sir, no fekkin way in hell with that idiot who, apparently, for no particular reason, decided to stray Right just that 1% too much and (in my imagination) probably started the terminal fishtail thing-half on / half off the shoulder with all the loose gravel and debris and tall grass and then, POOF, he rolled that sucker right the fuck over next to a wire fence and some trees and a bored bovine who continued to chew cud but was most likely udderly (get it?) disgusted in his or her own way. And I was too. In my own way, which was to loudly curse at the dolt when we finally, after an hour of brake-check slow-driving, wound up next to the bugger as the traffic line finally got its act together and found rhythm and I stuck TWO middle fingers as high as I could at him across Leo’s lap and through the passenger window. Fucking wankmeister…
Anyway, we high-tailed it, inasmuch as my RAM has a tail, to
Madeira with about 13 minutes to spare before the start of our masters
race. Leo leaped out of the truck, Dukes
of Hazard-style and into his kit in about four minutes. I had to fast-pedal down the sidewalk and
over to the parking lot and register right-quick before my boiling rage
exploded my heart and caused a huge, gross scene in the middle of this festive
event.
But I do love the Madeira
crit. It is probably my favorite overall
crit course of all time. It has all of
the elements of a Conchristador day of pedaling fun. Eight turns if you count the chicane as a
turn (and I just decided to count it as a turn), a section of shitty pavement,
off-camber high-speed 90s, a gorgeous hairpin turn, and one section where you
actually need to veer into a parking lot and just barely avoid an 8-inch
concrete curb on blacktop (which is NOT asphalt). Anyway I love super technical courses with
loads of turns and crap for pavement because it eliminates about 75% of the
competition because they do not know how to expertly maneuver their bikes
through garbage like that. But Madeira
is not garbage. Most of the roads are
actually very nice and the course is set up very well. I love anything with a chicane. And I especially love a hairpin turn at the
end of a nice little false-flat riser where you can pass the entire field, if
you want, because they all play follow-the-leader on the right and really all
you need to do is blast up the left side and then brake-pedal that 180 on the
inside line and then just drive hard for about five seconds and you are
golden. Easy. I love this course. After the 180, you sprint down the other side
of the false-flat and into a very fast 90 degree right hander and smack into a
little kicker-hill that you could almost coast up if you were going fast enough
but what you REALLY need to do is sprint the fuck out of that corner as hard as
you can (if it’s the last lap and there is a field sprint) because the first
person out of that corner generally leads through the next two corners because
the straight sections are only about 50 meters long. And the last corner (corner 8) is the one who
can cause you to die if you are not strong with the lean angle and stuff. It is an acute angle, about 80 degrees or so,
and you are coming off a downhill at high speed and probably cross-eyed from
the exertion and the fact that it is almost always 95 degrees with high
humidity at Madeira for some reason. I
used the word “who” back there because this course has personality. Anyway, if you make it around corner 8 you
have maybe 40 meters to sprint. Wait…back
to what I said about turn 6…that is the one where you will win or lose this
thing. Rail that bitch and go as hard as
you can up that little kicker and just make it around 7 and that’s basically
it. If your tires are in decent shape
and you dial the crazy back to about 9.5, you can juuuuuuuuuust about scrape
around 8 and then about ten pedal strokes later, you will win. At least that’s how I did it a few years
ago. But not last night….. Last night sucked.
LMB3 stayed in and tail-gunned his way around most of the night
and rolled in about as casually as Sinatra at the Tropicana. I basically did not see him the rest of the
evening as I had decided to do the P/1/2 race because of my ignominious DNF in
the masters race due to heat exhaustion due to absolutely no warmup and speedy
initial five laps due to Matt Bole and TRH and company. WHEW what a mess that race was. I was very much dizzy because my heart rate
was somewhere around twenty bpm above what I thought was my max but my legs
were fine. So I kept going and going and
then my eyesight failed somewhere around lap 4.5 and I could no longer discern
friend from foe and LMB3 was tailgunning and it was so fucking hot. So I pulled out due to concern for the safety
of my peers and I hope they all appreciated my gesture because if I had stayed
in there and recovered……well…my legs were fine.
But I sensed that I would not recover. In fact, it took about thirty minutes for me
to actually get out of that goddam black vortex. So I just sat on the side of
the road and chatted with Rice Man about the art of race craft and moving out
of the 5s and 4s and into the vertigo/popcorn machine which is the Cat 3 field
of US crit racing.
Big rest and ride around the block a few times and then back to
the truck for some food and water and squirt out a few drops of very dark
yellowish pee (and as I did, KP comes by and says “strong stream, man.”) and
then on to Starbucks for an espresso and some AC and I run into Josh Richards
who was just sitting there looking Dazed and Confused so I sat down at the
little picnic table and we chatted for a while about who knows what. But I was grateful for the AC and some
low-key conversation.
Part 2:
Big boy race. Very fast
from the gun with the likes of Travieso and Hogan and Drew Dillman and KP and
it was just really fucking fast. I felt
much better in this race and rode just fine for about half the race but I was
just too damned hot and had shit position from the start so I tail-gunned most
of the way until I just really did not want to sprint out of corners any more
so I admit it….I simply pulled the plug again and let them all go and rode
around solo for a few more laps until the Official took pity on me and pulled
me out. I rode over to the fence and
released about three quarts of sweat all over the pavement and just sort of
panted and scanned the area around me while generally looking like an old
jackass masters guy who had no business trying to ride around with
Thoroughbreds and whatnot.
Why had I done this to myself?
I was so dehydrated I couldn’t even move my tongue properly to speak and
I think I mumbled some idiotic gibberish about my desperate need for water and
the lack of shade to Jeff Beaumont, who was holding my phone. I grabbed the thing and jammed it into my
soaking-wet jersey pocket, said Thanks, and hobbled off toward my truck and
LMB3, who was manning the Base. I
quickly surmised that he had been imbibing because he was over by the WRP
Mobile Party Unit being silly and overly chatty with Chris Carr and his squadron
of very fast women. I collapsed on the
ground, said some probably unintelligible words of congratulations to the gals,
and just sat there, motionless, for the next ten minutes until my very happy
companion decided it was time for us to leave.
And then we left. And then the
singing began…
YAAAAYAAAAAYAAAAYAYAAYYAAYAAYYYY!!!!!! ….That is the best I can figure out how to
spell the shit that was coming out of Leo’s mouth vis-a-vis Prince and Darling
Nikki. And if you know the song about
which I write, you will know the sort of depraved individual that my driving
companion actually was. LMB3 wore his
customary 2-day old, 5 o’clock shadow beard and bronze-colored, Frogskin-style
sunglasses with acid-red lenses. A hastily-thrown
on, grey, threadbare t-shirt that he’d purchased at some bike race in the 80s
and a way-too-loose fitting pair of red gym shorts. A true first-class passenger if I’ve ever
seen one. And a darling
conversationalist as well. If you do not
already know this man, I shall advise you as such: Should you wish to ascertain a definitive
answer about any sort of interrogatory you may have posed to Mr. Beef, be
prepared to wade through no less than a minimum of three to four vague and
perhaps even completely unrelated answers before you even begin to approach
something in the neighborhood of a certainty.
To even attempt a serious conversation with this madman is sheer
folly. He is strictly off-limits for
rookies.
And with that last statement, and owing to the fact that LMB3 and
I were truly exhausted after this doomed journey, I shall conclude this
thing.
So, Top o’ the Mornin’ to ye’ and please, someone, bring me some
coffee.
-C
Oh and one more very important thing I would like to mention:
Many of you may know Mike Langan, aka Big Leg Mike, from back in
the day. He is my friend. He and I raced together in the early 2000s
for Heroes and he needs some help right now.
His daughter is facing a battle with cancer and the prognosis is not
that great. Mikey has not been involved
much lately with the Indy cycling community, due to the circumstances in which
he currently finds himself, so many of you may not know him or know much about
him, but I can assure you that he has given a great deal of his time and money
to our community over the years, mostly in a very quiet and unobtrusive
way. I would just ask that if you have
the time and inclination, that you might say a prayer for him and his daughter,
Presley, and maybe even take some time to just be quietly grateful for our
sport and all of the opportunities that cycling gives us.
Okay I am really done now.
Be cool, now…
