Cruel Mistress

First off sorry for the lack of communication, my phone died about a week back and the internet in our hotel in Arkansas died out too! So to my friends and family who sent emails and text messages of support (my phone came to life long enough to see a lot of love from those close to me) thank you all very much.

I am currently on my way home for a week of relaxing and training, sitting in a Panera Bread catching up with the outside world, which luckily did not implode in my 72 hours of ignorance of it. I will update at greater length when I get home, but I still have a good 5 hours ahead of me and probably need to stop pounding down dark roast and pound out some miles… so here’s the quick and dirty Joe Martin re-cap.

Ty and I cruising over to Joe Martin in "Kendra" our sweet team car.

Stage 1 uphill TT – whoa them dudes went fast in the top 20! I rode as hard as I could, blew a little at the end and rolled in for 90th or so, good thing I rode hard too as about 30 guys were time cut and not allowed to race at all after that, HARSH but the reality of the sport.

Stage 2- I had a good start at the front, and was taking turns with Jonny and Russell following moves, the field was smashing the pace and as I followed a move well above 35mph I threw my chain off the chain-rings, both feet flew off the pedals and I landed squarely on some of the more sensitive areas of the male physique on the toptube of my bike. So no both of my feet are dragging behind me, I cant reach the breaks and I am barely in control and “crotch surfing” down the road in amongst 140 or so other guys who are either laughing hysterically or swerving out of my haphazard path like their lives depended on it, because they did! I am trying to make light of it, and it was quite funny I’m sure from the outsiders perspective, but it hurt like hell and could have severely hurt me… as it stands I got away with one bigtime, a bruised tailbone (not broken as I initially feared, just swollen up real good) and definitely a bruised ego. I got back on the bike easy enough and heard quickly on the radio that our GC man Jake had had a mechanical and was behind the bunch in the cars, so Ty and I do our job and drift back out of the peleton to get him. At first we thought nothing of it, just routine stuff, a flat tire… whatever, we would just get him and pace him back in and continue the race. But as time went on it seemed something else had gone on, we waited and waited… coasting down to maybe 15mph waiting for him, starting to get nervous as we watched the peleton ride away… the break was still establishing itself and the pace was just stupid fast and now we were no longer in the race caravan at all, Jake had to get a bike change and now we were in regular traffic, outside of the race officials, maybe a kilometer adrift of the racing. At this point it was panic mode, pull the fire alarm, drop the hammer, don’t look back and get our skinny-crookedelbowed GC man back in the race. We dragged him back from the dead and into the safety of the race caravan and them both (Ty and I) blew to pieces and DNF’d the race. DNF. Did Not FINISH. My least favorite letters in the alphabet.

It sucks having to do something like that, but such is cycling at this level, had we not done anything we would have been nowhere on GC and just another packfill team picking up scraps from between the teeth of the big teams in attendance. It was (is) really hard on the pride to have to ride back to the hotel and get changed knowing full well there is still another 3 hours of racing that you will not be attending.. it doesn’t feel good and its hard to intellectualize something like that by saying, “I did my job,” but I’m doing my best. So again thank you to those who have expressed their understanding at my frustration, and simply acknowledging the sacrifice Ty and I both put forth, especially Jake who was clearly emotionally moved to have team mates for the first time in his career do something like that for him.

Stage 3- I was out of the race and now officially director sportif. It was sort of fun racing around in the peleton in a car instead of with my legs, motor pacing guys who had flats, joking with our mechanic Tennyson, and helping the guys left in the race as best I could over the radio, doing my best Johan Bruyneel impressions, “eat and drink… stay at the front, you guys look great, your going to kill these guys in the sprint!” I thought I had a pretty solid appreciation of the work that our racing staff puts in behind the scenes, but this experience totally rocked my world, it is SOOOO much easier being a rider than a staff member, and I have a whole new respect for our managers, mechanics, and suiognerus (probably butchered the spelling here, too much coffee!!!!!!!) Our bad luck continued and Jake took a hard fall and broke his collarbone with 10k to go. He is now out for about 6 weeks. If you see him or read his blog (linked from mine) please wish him a speedy recovery.

Stage 4- in progress… not sure whats happening.

We at Kenda have had our fair share of bad luck. In fact I think we have had enough bad luck to fill a few seasons worth, so possibly we have a little money in the back for the years to come. There are plenty of wise sayings that I feel really apply here, I’ll paraphrase, life (or cycling) is a nasty, cruel, unfair, test of your will. Things will go wrong, very wrong, you will get smashed, crushed into the ground, your body will be broken in a million ways and your spirit crushed in 10 million, and this will happen to the best and the worst of us, and what makes us great riders or great people is what we do when it comes time to pick up the pieces and move forward. So I’m going to go home, celebrate a late mothers day with my mom, mix up a new playlist of weird northern European heavy metal and train with a red hot fire, because that’s the only part of this crazy sport that a person can actually control!