Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Excuses

Sundance



Last week I said winning because your competition isn’t there isn’t much fun.  This week I discovered that explaining why I didn’t win isn’t much fun either.  Here we go again…



Jarom



Jarom is a roadie and fellow Racer’s Cycle Service racer.  A few years ago he used to race, and occasionally win, with the pros in the Intermountain Cup.  Nowadays he shows up to two or three races a year and rips our legs off on the climbs.  He still rides a mid-nineties model orange Fishlips bike with a very squeaky bottom bracket and a fork so old that it’s effectively rigid.  Last year at the race in Jackson Hole I watched him crash four times.  I think that may be the only time I've finished in front of him. 



On Saturday I sat back and watched him pull away from us on the pavement at the start of the race.  I started my chase halfway through the first lap, and managed to keep him in sight, but I couldn’t seem to close the gap.  Until, that is, on the final climb up the pavement back to the finish line when I came out of the singletrack and saw a guy in a Racer’s kit about 10 seconds ahead of me.  He was struggling up the last hill. 



I put my head down and stood up.  My plan was to sit on his wheel until 30 feet before the finish when I would surprise him with a final burst to the line.  He would never know what hit him—a bit like my finish this year at Five Mile Pass



It took quite an effort but I did catch him.  That’s when I noticed that this guy was riding a red Gary Fisher.  The following thought interrupted my mental fantasizing of standing atop the podium again:  “Did Jarom trade his orange Fishlips for a red Fisher in the middle of the race?”  Rational thought is one of the first things to go during a race with this much climbing, right after temper control. 





Joel



When rational thought returned I realized I had given an all out effort to catch Jarom’s younger brother Joel, a sport rider and all-around nice guy but certainly not someone I needed to beat.  I nodded as I went by, trying to conceal my disappointment, and strolled to the finish line 55 seconds behind Jarom. 



So once again I was second in the Expert class.  That's the third time this year.  I’d rather be able to say something like what Rich said about his performance in the Draper race last week:

It is great to have a finish where I can say, 5th without asterisks, parenthesis, or caveats. 



No comments:

Post a Comment