How It Unfolded, i.e. How Dougie Folded

We hit the weather-window perfectly and this course was mine, all mine... on just about any other year, but I hadn't been feeling it over the past 8-weeks and so a flat race actually might have suited me better on this day, but as fate would have it we would climb the Cyclocross equivalent of Mount Ventoux 8 times.

Okay, it was only a small hill but by cyclocross standards this was more than a molehill, it was a mole mountain. There were a couple steep pitches as the course wound up to the summit where Running with the Devil was blasted out over the tree-barren landscape and a quad of stairs. Beautiful!


My goal was singular: the jersey or nothing, and so by design my plan was to use my front row start to my advantage and go out hot. Starting right next to me was the man that I'd picked to win the jersey after seeing him light us up in Louisville, and knowing that he'd been training in the milder SE climes for the past few months I expected him to be on fire. At the gun he nailed it, took the whole shot and I followed into the black hole shot of fitness: I was off the map, unsure if I could maintain, but I had a plan and was actually pulling it off now. I took the first turn in second place. Second turn, third turn, then his teammate charged past and it was two Moots on the front, then me, and we had a gap. This pace had us attacking out of every corner and we were alone as the chaos went on behind us, without us. 2/3rds of the way up the climb the chasing riders from the strung-out field made contact with us, and not long later the first rider attacked us. That was it for me! When I saw that dude spring past us, and gauging the pain and burn that I was then sustaining, I instantly knew that I was outclassed and couldn't compete with that. Apparently my Moots comrades felt similarly because they were like spindrift coming out the backside of a cannon, heading the wrong way even faster than I was. The problem with shooting for hot is that its a little too close to that proverbial flame, and I caught fire, crashed and burned. I was a flame out, and the last few hundred meters up to the summit a bunch of dudes cruised past me as my head hung low, my lungs bursting.

I almost pulled out, to be perfectly honest, and our leadout man, the one I'd picked to win the whole dang thing, did. DNF, ouch. His teammate, our number two man for awhile, also self-destructed but ended up finishing barely inside the top 20, I think. I soldiered on, but only because I knew that there were so many people expecting greatness from me and there is nothing worse than the disappointment of your horse not even finishing the race: I HAD to finish on the board somewhere, even if it was on the final page.

I doused out the flames by unzipping the skinsuit and I righted the sinking ship by pulling back on the throttle and letting all that lactic acid work its way out. After a lap and a half of practicing damage control I was finally able to start reapplying some pressure and firing up the furnace once more, and by then I'd slipped back to at least 18th as I was told by the heartless spectators.

The remainder of the race is hardly worth tellling. By the time I found my legs again the race was over, it was going on up ahead, but the worst part about it all was that I could hear the blow by blow through the announcer's loudspeakers, and all the principal players were guys who I'd been racing all season long, and had beaten on more than an occasion. I should have been up there, but the cruel reality of life which is so beautifully re-enacted in the metaphor called cyclocross, is that I was being left for dead and no one cared. And so it should always be.

And so it went! I picked off a bunch more racers and devoured them along the way in my fallen quest, but the real story was happening elsewhere. I cannot make my story any more glamorous than can the wildebeast who is being masacred by a pack of dogs, however even those sacrificed in the game of life have served the holiest and most noble of purpose. Our story goes on, retold again and again in every race that is ever ridden.

I crossed the line in a mere 8th place, defeated after suffering like those starved dogs, but I was the hero reborn again into a new racer with a new chance at victory.