Back in the swing of things: Tour of the Catskills

While racing this weekend's Tour of the Catskills, I decided that I might just quit the sport.

OK, I probably won't quit the sport, but it was the kind of racing that makes me wonder why I do what I do, and think seriously about getting myself down graded to a 3. Or a 4. Or maybe I'll just say fuck it all and become a track sprinter. Probably not, though, I like the road too much.

Things didn't start poorly: I did pretty well (for me, anyway), in the opening day's time trial, and beat all three of my team mates. But then I got dropped on the first climb in Saturday's 96-mile road race. I'd been in the peloton for all of six miles, and couldn't manage to hang on when the road turned skyward. It was truly pathetic, and I've scarcely felt less like a bike racer.

Still, there was one more day, so I soldiered on, riding with others who were having similarly crappy days. Eventually, it started raining, and then we turned into a soggy collection of unworthies just in time to scale the punishing heights of Devil's Kitchen, a steep, winding Catskill ascent with sustained grades skywards of 28 percent. Once over the top, mercifully, it was only a short hop to the finish line in Tannersville.

After flogging the others off the back, and putting myself out to about my limit for a ride of that length, I managed to miss the 20-percent time cut by about a minute. I knew it was going to be close, and pushed myself about as hard as I could to get up the Kitchen, and was a bit perplexed when I looked back and saw two of the others I'd been riding with walking up the climb. Thankfully, I had a 26 on my bike, and made it up the climb without dismounting. Of course, the officials took pity upon us pathetic, dropped riders, and allowed everyone to start the next day, even though we all technically should have been out. In retrospect, I'm not sure if I should really feel thankful about that.

On walking up the climb: it's one thing for a beginner to walk up a climb, but I never would have thought I'd see it in an elite race. I've never previously done a race where just staying on your bike is an accomplishment. I suppose there's a first for everything. Actually, it was a day for two firsts, as I've never before had to worry about missing a time cut at a stage race, so that was fun.

But still, I had some excuses at my disposal -- I recently broke my wrist and am still on the comeback swing, I hadn't eaten properly in the morning before the race, I didn't get a good warm up, the climb came much earlier in the stage than I'd anticipated, etc. And, since the officials had taken mercy on me and allowed me to continue racing, I assured myself and my team mates (who all did much better than me on Saturday) that Sunday would be better, and that I'd fix all of my mistakes.

Of course, it didn't go better.

Actually, it did go better, but not much better. On Sunday, I did fix pretty much all of my previous day's mistakes, ate a better breakfast, did a good warm up, and carefully reviewed the stage profile. I survived the initial flurry of attacks to get to the top of the descent down Route 23, and survived the descent, although I (purposefully) missed the breakaway. At the bottom of the descent, I was able to sit comfortably in the peloton, which was rolling along at a quick, but not absurd, pace. Then we hit the day's first KOM, which was, like, a million miles long, and seemed to climb into the sky. I made it about halfway up before getting spat out the back, for a grand total of about 26 miles raced.

See, better than the day before, but not by much. I didn't summon the gumption to finish another stage off the back, and instead did a second trip up the first KOM, and rolled back to the parking lot in time to watch the finish. I had lots of company dropping out of what was, unquestionably, a really difficult race. But still, it's clear that I have a lot of work to do if I ever want to be competitive at the elite level of this sport. Weekends like this are discouraging, for sure, but I suppose the name of this game is coming back from a discouraging weekend, and getting right back into the swing of training.