Here's the rest of it! stages 2-8. Read on!
Title: it was going great until…stage 1
So here’s a little race report. Stage 1 was on Sunday and included 100 k circuit race in an area of san Salvador. Nothing too scary, kinda like riding in the park. What was (and still is) scary are the hordes of little brown men who seem to have just learned to ride their bikes yesterday. These guys are hilarious. It’s like putting lance Armstrong in the body of a kid who just got off his training wheels. More on that later. Anyways, somehow I managed to survive the flying central American bodies and finish in the group. Not too tough but really fucking hot outside.
On to stage 2…
This was a 138 kilometer point-to-point starting in san Salvador and ending in Santa Ana. Starts with a long highway decent a la twisty-turny at about 50 miles an hour. Little brown men flying all over, bike parts popping off their bikes from 1985 bla bla bla. Somehow a gap opens open on the decent and the field splits down the middle. I made it in the front group and kept it cool (brown men flying everywhere still). By the time everyone reattached at the back we started shooting up the first climb. This is where I stop making fun of brown men. These fuckers are still all over the place but ZOOMING up the hill. By the end of the 16 minutes there are 2 teammates and myself left in the lead group, everyone else is toast. I was glad not to be alone (yet). So it’s me, dave sommerville (team director) and billy innes (a hired gun from cali who is a two time nationals runner-up) in the front. Away go a few attacks and one sticks with the yellow jersey in it. What gives man? Who let that go, right? Damien, if you’re reading tell Neil his boys from Canada are bad-ass and that his friend Andrew is winning the race so far. Columbia is driving it and we are along for the ride. So now’s the part where I yell into the radio to the team car for water and get no response for 10 minutes. I’M GETTING THIRSTY and have now learned why all of the locals ride with an extra bottle in their pocket. Is that a vulture flying overhead? So now we hit the 2nd climb and it is much steeper than the first. Brown men do there thing and then there were 2. Sommerville has popped off the back end and left billy and me to the sharks. Now, at one end I’m feeling pretty good about my progress so far given the degree of difficulty. Billy took 2nd at the nationals twice and he is right here next to me. At the other end I’m thinking “Christ! This is only the first real race and guys are already fading!” That moment is exactly when some piece of something went flying off of some guata-rica-mexican’s bike and rolled under my rear tire puncturing it. SHIT! Of course this also happened at a time when the group started rolling downhill to the finish, so the speed was real high. So now I’m screaming into the radio for a wheel as I veer to the side of the road and watch the group roll away. Thankfully I did get the wheel changed. Unthankfully I did have to ride in, against the wind, the remaining 10 miles all by myself. BUMMER. That’s bike racing as they say. So now I’m off the lead by 11 minutes or so and will never see that time come back. I’m off to find that brown guy now, more to come later.
Stage 3: team time trial
So by now giardia has completely set in for half the team. I am thankfully one of the few who still hasn’t become fully acquainted with the tile pattern on the wall in front of the toilet. This clearly does not bode well for our result today in the team time trial as half the guys have to exert just enough energy keeping their pants clean as they would riding their bikes. Oh yes, and it’s also 100 degrees outside. On the positive side this stage is only 30 k (about 20 miles), on the not-so-positive side there is another stage to race later this same day after we’ve already killed ourselves in the TT. Anyways, the TT went fine and we decided collectively to ride it on the easier side to go easy on the sick guys. Just for the record “easy” still means hard, just not balls-out want-to-puke hard. Our time was respectable, but our team standings by now are suffering from the day before due to my flat before the finish.
Stage 4: 64 k point to point road race
This was the second stage of the day after the team TT. The distance is not too bad @ 64 k (about 40 miles) and the stage includes 2 sets of sprint points and two King of the mountain climbs. (these are points along a course where riders can accumulate points towards the sprinter’s and climber’s jersey). The race starts with the same descent featured in stage 2 and then hangs a left towards the town of Nahuizalco with an uphill finish. My overall mood at the start is good and I am hoping to maybe do a little damage for once in this race and see some action at the front. So once again we rocket down this hill at a far too ridiculous rate topping off at 55 mph I think. And yes, once again little brown men are flying all over the road. Guys are clearly nervous about a split occurring again so everyone is right up everyone else’s ass. I don’t think I ever want to do that again in hind sight. Way too dangerous with poor road conditions, blind turns and a concrete road divider. Soooo…we get to the bottom and what do you think happens? That’s right, tommy luck shining through with another, yes ANOTHER flat tire. All sorts of curses and profanity are spewing from my mouth at an unbelievable rate as I start wildly waving my arm for the team car. So colorful it was that I think even the little brown men understood what I was saying and took pity on me. “Wow, that poor gringo fuck flatted yesterday too.” They must of thought. Now, what made matters even worse was the 20 rider pile-up that occurred right after I flatted, causing a massive traffic jam behind the race leaving my team car stuck 10 lengths back. I could do nothing but sit there and watch 100 riders float away effortlessly as I stood there, wheel in one hand and my stupid piece of shit bike in the other thinking “I hate this fucking country already and I’m not even half way through this shit.” So 5 minutes later I finally get a wheel through the traffic jam of the century and proceed to ride the entire rest of the stage by myself. Now keep in mind, I can’t just ride it in nice and easy, because I have to finish within the time cut to advance to the next day. I AM HAULING ASS the whole time thinking there’s no way I’m going to make it and I am going to go home early because some bozo tossed his empty bottle of inca cola out the car window where it’s tiny shards waited patiently for my unsuspecting rear tire to roll over weeks later. Even if I do make it I am going to be way too tapped to ride the next stage which happens to be 100 miles. Well to make a long story short the gods were merciful and I did make the cut, but at a huge expense of calories. I am now exhausted. Perfect.
Stage 5:
This is the longest stage yet and runs from the town of Ilopango to San Miguel, which is considered one of the hottest areas in the country. The distance is 187 k with a huge steep climb in the middle. I am genuinely scared at the start line. I have already consumed 4 bottles of water today and I have yet to take a leak. We’re all packed in at the start line and I’m thinking that this, yes this is the hottest place on earth. Right here, on this little strip of tarmac with this announcer blaring bullshit in Spanish in my ear, is the hottest most uncomfortable place on earth. The gun goes off and it’s balls out right from the beginning. Guys here race like every day is their last. What they don’t realize is that this is quickly shaping up to be MY last. I am still tapped from yesterday and today is HOT. Attack after attack goes and gets chased and goes and gets chased and goes…goes…goes. 5 guys up the road and they are moving. The pace settles a bit and we all slow down to feed. I can’t believe I am already out of water. Rolling back into a caravan of diesel pumping shit-box pickups to get 6 water bottles shoved down my shirt is a unique experience. It’s definitely cool and allows me to fully pretend that I am in the tour de france (minus the Audi) fading back to the team care to receive instructions and food for the team. It is also quite terrifying to leave the shelter of the pack in front of you as you fade into a sea of about 15 cars all vying for a position in the front behind the riders. If the riders decide to gas it I could easily be left in the dust. Anyways, I get the bottles. The job does not stop there because now I have to ride back into the pack and distribute bottles to teammates throughout the pack. Very tiring. We approach the climb and i realize that I was very wrong about something. THIS, (where ever it is) on this mountain side with no trees is the hottest place on earth. No wind, no shade, just heat. Hot mother-fucking heat that won’t go away. I am starting to understand what the “edge” feels like right here on this climb and I don’t really like it that much. Over the radio I can here guys popping off the back meaning that there are only 4 or 5 of us left. Thankfully the course gets easier after the climb and the afternoon passes by and the heat subsides. With 20 k left the pace really picks up and the break away slowly starts to come back. With 5 k left the pace is blistering and it’s starting to get dark. Surprisingly I feel good. Good enough to make a move even. So we’re doing about 30 mph and I go blasting off the front by myself. Wow it’s working! I reel in one guy and we move together. Now I feel like I am racing! Just for a little bit at least because I completely misjudged the distance and we got sucked in with about a mile to go. Bummer, but I am glad to have made it at all as a lot of guys trickled in over the next hour. That night I was so tapped the race doctor administered an iv to replenish my fluids. Apparently this will become a necessity for the rest of the race. Can’t wait.
Stage 6: it gets worse
As hard as all the days have been, none of them, nor all of them combined for that matter stack up against today’s effort. Some of the key words again: hot, heat, sweltering, hills, mountains, peaks, attacking, attacking, attacking, shit, fuck, I hate this country, immigration reform. This stage is the monster of them all. Over 130 miles! Now one would think with that kind of distance the attacks would wait for a while. Nope. Right from the gun these little cha cha dudes are going for broke. All of the climbing in this stage is at the beginning and after that it is dead flat to the end. I am determined to get into a move this time and possibly get up the road. Bad idea. I try to chase wheels all the way to the break and exhaust myself in the process. This was in the first 20 miles. The remaining 100 I held on to the lead group for dear life. Once we cleared the hill we rode full speed, strung out in a line in a cross wind for 70 miles. I shit you not there were vultures flying over head and dead cattle in the road. Nothing but desert wasteland surrounded us for hours and I hardly had time to notice any of it. Just the wheel in front of me. That’s all that mattered. Almost 6 hours later we rolled into the finish and I couldn’t have been more elated (or exhausted). Today I stepped over the line into the realm of exhaustion. True, real honest to god exhaustion. Not the kind that you feel after a long goddamned “day at the office”. Not the kind you feel from “sitting” on a stupid plane all day. I mean the real thing. EXHAUSTION. No more fuel left to burn in the furnace except for important things like muscle and organs. I feel like I left a piece of me somewhere back in that desert that I will never get back. My soul just sort of fluttered away like a butterfly never to return to the confines of my physical being. At the finish line I saw grown men laying in the dirt, crying like babies. Everyone else had the “100 yard stare”, cheeks sunken and eyeballs popping. “Where is the fucking Gatorade girl!” I’m screaming. The cute little thing in the white tank top who stands at every finish bearing those sweet, electrolyte laden bottles of purple heaven. She was nowhere to be seen and I felt devastated, like she had left me for another man or something. After some frantic searching I found her tucked away with the orange cooler. “It must be another man!” I thought. Forgive and forget as they say, because I would have put a ring on her finger right then and there (had she been older than 16) when she handed me that bottle. Nothing will ever taste that good for the rest of my life. I wanted 2 iv’s that night but the doc would only give me one. I think I am getting addicted to iv’s. is that possible? It leaves a rubbery taste in my mouth. Is rubber addictive? I was so tired I couldn’t even sleep. I just lay there and wonder what sort of evil combination of drugs the Columbians must be taking to drive that sort of pace day in and day out. Maybe it’s something even more diabolical like a pact with the devil or some sort of spirt-world hook-up. I’ll probably never get close enough in the race to find out.
Stage 7: El Boqueron-tom vs. the volcano
This is it! If I can get over today than I’ve made it through this race intact. Today’s stage is the one everyone has been waiting for. 100 miles-nothing new-but! This stage totals some 11,000 ft of climbing, most of it at the end with the finish line at the top of a volcano called El Boqueron. The volcano itself is an 8 mile climb up one of the steepest roads I have ever seen. My mentality going into this one is “If I could get through yesterday than I can get through today.” Thankfully I was right. The stage carried itself out without much incident or drama. By now there were only 4 guys from the team left in the race, so we stuck together and just rode it out till the volcano. Now, judging by the ways that these little dudes go up the small mountains I was assuming that the volcano would be a total blow out. I was right. AT the base of the climb the field simply shattered into tiny bits leaving nothing but debris in its wake. I wasn’t even going to try to keep up for fear of a total collapse. Just ride up, wave at spectators, drink some coke and save up for the circuit race the next day. Cresting the mountain was one of the warmer feelings I’ve had in my life. (as you can see in the photo)
I said I was going to finish this thing and I did. Barely, but I made it. Not bad for a guy who was in a hospital bed a few months ago I suppose. Only 60 miles to go and I’m done! Unfortunately I’m guessing this 60 miles won’t be a freebie, seeing as NONE of these miles have been free.Stage: 8 right back where we started
Today is the same circuit race featured in stage 1. 20 laps around a 5 k course. Now, this is central American style bike racing meaning that there is always someone who wants to win. SOOOO, for 60 miles EVERYONE tried to win. The pace was blazing the entire time and all I could think of was a margarita and nachos. I was downright pissed that I had to put in such an effort to just stay in the race. It was so fast that Dave, the team director, got popped in the first few laps. I had had just about enough of the little brown men crawling all over me (again the pic)
for the last week that it took all of my concentration to keep from pulling out. I did it. Finished, finito, voila, whatever. This was, hands down, the most physically demanding week of my life. The body is capable of truly amazing things (especially when forced to do them!) and is a much more resilient piece of equipement than I realized. Ordinary life is going to taste just a little different when I get back home. Not better, not worse, just different. The question is: once the initial shock wears off and I am recovered, will I miss this ridiculous lifestyle? For many riders this is there job day in and day out. Hotels, cold showers, shitty food, harsh climates, foreign languages, no girls, stupid people, annoying people, FASTER people. Bike racing is the kind of thing that isn’t enjoyed until after the fact which is a very strange effect. We forget the pain very quickly which leaves us always wanting more. For me it is also an issue of the grass is always greener. I'm sure wrestling it out with traffic and all the assholes back home for a week will somehow make me miss this torturous event and wish for more. One man's garbage is another's gold I guess. I think in a strange way I will miss it and yearn for more, probably because I think that I could do better next time….so does everyone else unfortunately. Shit! Thanks all for putting up with my sporadic postings. Again, i did the best i could given my surroundings. Hope you liked it.
Tommy
posted by Tommy B at 2:30 PM
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