Thoughts on Racing in a Post-Covid World

I raced. A bike… ???

After roughly 16 months of using bikes as an outlet to keep myself grounded, exercise, get outside, keep a schedule, last Friday night I set my alarm for 4:45am. I pre-made coffee. I set out a pile of spandex. I piled all my stuff into the car at 5am, and hit I-95 destined for the Fair Hill XC race in Elkton, Maryland.

The NJ rest stop Starbucks apparently didn’t survive the pandemic, but Wawa was there for me by the time I rolled through Delaware.

By 8, I pulled into a grassy field filled with parked cars. It was like no time had passed at all. I got weirdly emotional as I walked to the registration pop up tent. I didn’t even wince at having to use the porta johns. I kitted up. I warmed up. I… saw… people… I knew. It was amazing how content I was with the routine of the thing.

I’ve been vaccinated for months now, so my skittishness around people has largely worn off, but I still noticed that people were relatively distant, and wore masks when they needed to get close. It felt safe and fun and good to be in an empty field with so many people who also like to get up wildly early to punish their bodies in pursuit of $50 and/or glory.

And then, four hours after I woke up and as many states away, suddenly I found myself racing. It was exhilarating. I mean, obviously my start was terrible. I missed my pedal and I was on the outside of the group as we rounded the first corner, more than a 90 degree turn. I was playing catch up before we even hit the first single track. But hoo boy, I was racing!!!

I made every error I could have. First and foremost, I was racing a course I’d never preridden, so I was crashing around every corner not knowing what was coming next. I pulled too much brake into the first stream crossing, which lost me the wheel in front of me as she pulled around a slower rider just before a tight turn, shutting the door on me.

A mile into the race I realized I hadn’t hit start on my wahoo.

Another mile later I was chattering down a long descent filled with small jumps, my bike bucking wildly beneath me. Too early to put the issue behind me and too late to do anything about it I realized that in my eagerness to get a good start I had locked out my fork. (Oops.) I do not have a lever on my bars for that, so I had to sit my ass back in my saddle and wait out the decent. In an effort not to lose the wheel in front of me I took the worst, most aggravating lines because I couldn’t see far enough ahead and I didn’t know where I was going.

Image: First Place Photo

We hit the bottom of the first descent and a feeling came over me: I was racing. I no longer had time to think through the carefully composed mtb riding style that I’d cultivated over the past year. Either my body knew what to do or it didn’t. I just pushed the pedals and went. And went. And went. The first lap flew by, and for most of it I could see someone ahead and hear someone behind. No time to take a breath.

The person behind caught up just when we hit what I would later learn is Fair Hill’s worst feature: a nearly mile-long gravel climb out of the woods up to the finish. I stuck her wheel like my life depended on it. I desperately pawed through my back pocket for some of the gummy worms I had gotten at Wawa. I was 40 minutes in, I still had two laps to go, and at that point I knew I was toast. Like a lightly golden type of toast, though. Still soft in the middle, not really crispy. I resolved to stick her wheel for as long as I could.

I didn’t screw up the stream crossing so badly the second time. I had suspension on the jumpy descent (fun!). I followed my competition through the much more chill rock line. I was RACING, and it was so fun.

Somewhere around halfway through the second lap, as I felt my legs giving out through a twisting climb, ignoring the alarm going off in my head saying I was losing that wheel, I noticed that the “ft. climb” datapoint on my computer had a 1 in front of it. Not 100, but 1000. Quite a bit more than 1000. We were less than 10 miles in. I was so busy racing the first lap I didn’t actually notice how much climbing I’d been doing. Let’s just say it’s not my forte. I do not put the mountain in mountain bikes.

That’s around where my legs started having a little less push to give every rise. My eyes were crossing. I choked down some more gummy worms. Took on some water. I lost Lauren, the competition, but god dammit if I wasn’t still racing. As my legs stopped working, my brain actually engaged. I knew the course by this point, and I started to enjoy the flow of the course, concentrating on being smooth if I couldn’t be fast.

The second time up the gravel climb I thought I might die. I actually almost crashed into a bridge because of the dumb gummy worms (stuck). But I kept pedaling. My legs felt like they might fall off, but as upset as I was to have lost my wheel, I also didn’t see anyone behind me (in the good way that I was well ahead of people, not in the bad way that there was no one there).

The third lap was a blur of thinking about how fast I could be when I wasn’t pedaling. It was painful, but, somehow, I was still reveling in the fact that I WAS RACING.

I crossed the finish line. I fell over on the ground. I didn’t get up for a long while.

Feels good to have racing back.