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Dog breath: Dreck in Breck'
"You're entering a world of pain." – John Goodman in "The Big Lebowski.”
Big John wasn’t talking about cyclo-cross. He was talking about bowling. Specifically, he was talking about shooting a fellow bowler for allegedly crossing the foul line during league play. But he could have easily been talking about this past weekend’s Brecktobercross, where I would’ve been happy to cross any line, foul or otherwise, if someone would have been kind enough to shoot me.
I hadn't raced any sort of bicycle in nearly three years, so a cyclo-cross at 9800 feet was probably not the ideal venue for my big comeback. Still, I had a free hotel room in Frisco, thanks to the wife’s relentless on-the-job accumulation of Holiday Inn points, and the Breckenridge Brewery is barely a Huffy toss from the course, so I figured chasing a bunch of fast old farts around the Breckenridge Nordic Center for 45 minutes beat chasing myself around Monument Valley Park for an hour.
Well, yes and no. I got to see a whole bunch of folks I haven't seen in a good, long while, and several of them aimed hands in my direction in order to shake one of mine, rather than punch my stubbly head, which is always a pleasant surprise. But many of them also rode quickly away from me, once Dean Crandall said, "Go," as though I had slipped them a palmful of Limburger or a Bush-Cheney 2004 leaflet.
You have to expect this sort of thing when you haven’t raced since we had a federal budget surplus and weren’t annexing new states full of guys named Osama and the biggest thing we had to fear was a little presidential DNA on an intern’s dress. And besides, it was a science experiment, and I plan to seek federal funding for it once I figure out the national-security angle.
See, I'm not big on numbers, being more of a words-and-pictures sort of guy. But I thought it would be interesting to chart the different levels of effort demanded by a cyclo-cross training ride and an actual race (although in my advanced age group, where everybody knows they have to go to work on Monday, ’cross is more like a brisk round of golf in really bad weather).
So I strapped on a heart-rate monitor on Thursday for an hour of brisk ’cross training in Colorado Springs, at just under 7,000 feet, and again on Saturday for the 49-minute race in Breckenridge, where the bighorn sheep carry albuterol inhalers. Average training HR: 150 bpm. Average racing HR, chasing Lee Waldman: 169 bpm. The lesson to be learned here is this: Do not chase Lee Waldman. Instead, have John Goodman threaten him with a firearm, along with the five guys in front of him.
Actually, finishing seventh – as close to the middle of a 14-man pack as a guy can get - ain't bad for a 49-year-old wino who hasn't pinned on a number since late 1999, when I finished DFL at the state championships after running a half lap to the pit while wearing a dysfunctional bike. Especially since the course in Breckenridge really didn’t suit me, which is to say that it was a race course, with actual racers on it at the same time I was.
The Brecktobercross began with a downhill start in soft duff, and so I lined up at the back out of respect for those who can descend and corner in company without wetting themselves. I managed to pass a few guys on the climbs, when they were busy trying to steal inhalers from the bighorns, and never got lapped or fell over. And it seems like no matter what shape I'm in, I always end up racing Lee Waldman, so it all felt very comfortable and familiar and I couldn't imagine why I had stayed away for so long once I decided that I really wasn’t going to barf after all.
But it definitely was a world of pain. So, John, call me. If Hollywood ever decides you’re passé, I have work for you.
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