Grit in Your Teeth

I hit the road around 3:30 am Saturday morning and headed for Jackson, Mississippi. The dawn seemed never to come, and by the time I'd reached Hammond the reason was clear. Actually, the reason was cloudy. The weather went continuously downhill as I drove, finally reaching its worst as I made my way through Jackson onto I-20 for the last 20 miles to the road race location. This was torrential rain sufficient to keep the traction-control light on the dashboard flashing on and off as I sloshed through standing water and navigated around stalled and crashed vehicles. The race was scheduled to start in about an hour.

As you can imagine, the turnout for the road race was fairly low and the weather was rainy, but at least the heaviest of the rain had passed by the time we got started about half an hour late. Rolling out with the masters, everyone gingerly rounded the first corner and headed down the soggy road in a light rain. A few minutes later I felt that old familiar feeling of grit between my teeth. Worse, though, was that I'd forgotten my clear lenses, so there was a constant stream of cold, gritty water right in my face. You gotta love bike racing, eh?

With a hilltop hot spot worth omnium points on each of our four 16 mile laps I didn't think anything would be allowed to get away for the first couple, and I was right. There were a few attempts, of course, complimented by teammembers soft-pedaling at the front, but although I didn't have any real aspirations for this race, I also wasn't willing to just let everything go, so I did a little bit of occasional chasing myself.

Well, after the second hot spot sprint I decided it was time for me to start thinking about actually getting into the race. That's just about the time I felt my rear tire starting to go flat. It's also about the time we were going 30 mph. By the time I'd stopped and the wheel truck had pulled over, I knew my race was done. It was. So I rode the last two laps solo, just for the exercise. After the race, as I was riding around looking for the wheel truck, my front tire went flat too. Lightweight tires. Gotta love 'em.

This morning is the criterium and the sky is cloudy but so far the streets are dry. Hoping for the best. BTW, I hear Howard Luna crashed at the Giro Ride yesterday and broke his collarbone and some ribs. Geez. I think that makes six collarbones this year.