Bicycle Racing. Again.

I know! I thought I was done racing my mountain bike three years ago. 63 years old and getting my ass handed to me by a 10 year old at Churney Gurney* was as clear a sign as I'd ever likely see from God that whatever I was doing, I should probably stop. 

And I did stop. I focused on improving my bike handling and riding more for fun. "Riding with Gratitude" is what they call it. Not a bad term. I did more "flow" trails, spending most of my weekends lurking around Wheelerville's beautiful trail system up in the Adirondacks. Short rides that were fun, fast, with pleasant people to talk to. All good things. 

But history is littered with the battered corpses of people who simply couldn't accept that it was time to hang it up and I'm no wiser than those departed souls, so last August found me off the couch and lined up with 4 other 60+ racers at the Churney Gurney again. 

I want to stress that those of us who don't know when to retire will invariably show up with reasons for our behavior. In my case, I knew the trails well and had done the race a couple times before. I was looking at the race registration online and saw that the field was small. It's a fundraiser for the Under the Woods Foundation, which provides grants for summer outdoor programs for children with special needs**. I figured I'd add my race registration to the cause and do the short beginner course for fun. It was an act of charity! What could go wrong?

Oh... Lots.

• I'm not in shape to race. I've been riding Zwift a few times a week and getting out most weekends for a few hours of trail riding but none of this counts as "race training". It barely counted as exercise. 
• I'm 66 closing in on 67. A mountain bike race is generally not an encouraged form of exercise for someone my age.  
• I showed up on my heavy trail bike without paying any real attention to it. I think I checked the tire pressure. l did not check my suspension, which was locked out. I was essentially riding a 31 lb bike with no suspension for most of the race. 
• I was overloaded. A full hydration pack and water bottle on the bike were unnecessary.  I should've left the hydration pack behind. I wasn't out there long enough to need all that liquid. 
•  I'm incapable of racing for "fun". Even in my depleted state, I'm still going to go as hard as I can and try to get in front of anyone ahead of me because it's a race and I'm stupid.
• I live in Upstate New York. Unlike most races in Oregon where courses are long and trail sections are interspersed with fire road stretches where you can spin and recover, pass people, hydrate, and generally get your racing marbles together; Upstate NY races constantly send you up and down short hills full of roots and rocks on narrow trails, so there aren't many places to pass, recover or gather your lost marbles. 
• It was starting to rain. Not really the worst thing for me - I wouldn't overheat. But if God had thrown a Hail Mary last ditch sign to me that this wasn't a good idea, I clearly missed it. 

There were just a few of us on the starting line, the younger riders having left ahead of us. The race director politely said "Go" since yelling "Go" or blasting an air horn at 4 guys over 60 might have unintended consequences. I promptly shot off like I was time trialing the thing, got ahead of everyone, blew up 12 minutes later, got passed by just about everybody and spent the next hour alone in a world of hurt.  

To be honest, that's pretty much how I've always raced. In the springtime of my youth (OK, my early 50's), I'd fall back, recover, find my pace and start reeling back position. At 66 what little recovery I could muster was offset by my back and arms giving out. That was new. I've been lost, crashed, bonked, dehydrated, overheated, under-fueled, and cramped up in bike races, but I've never suffered from "old age" in a race. I was racing Cat 3 which was one lap on a six mile course. Four miles in I felt awful, walking even short hills and technical sections. I've never has so much back  It was embarrassing. 

Fortunately,  I've had enough embarrassing races in my past to not take it too personally. And I wasn't surprised. It was only six miles, but it was relentless and I don't have the fitness base I used to. 

It's been 3 years since I tied a number plate to my bike. Those 3 years brought home a reminder of one of the inescapable truths of aging. It arrives at different times and in different ways for all of us, but we all slow down. I've been feeling it for a long time. I published a blog post in 2014 describing myself as an "old man", and I meant it. But I see it in how my body isn't just out of shape; it's changing shape. I'm 2" shorter than I was when I wrote that post. I have early osteoarthritis. My left knee randomly decides not to work. At some point in the last 5 years I had a very small heart attack***. Some of this stuff I can work on. Some of it I can't. 

So if I know I'm way past whatever prime I had, what's the point of racing? It's a fair question and one I thought I'd answered 3 years ago.  I assumed There was no point. But sitting at a picnic table at the finish waiting for my heart rate to come down, I felt something I hadn't in well, 3 years. Talking to other racers, the organizers, family out to cheer for their spouse or kid, hearing stories, taking in the energy of other classes of racers coming in or going out; I felt... good. I felt a part of a shared experience. I suppose riding a popular trail system or a bike park can be a shared experience but for me it's very solitary. Not a lot of people my age do thisIt's great to talk to people at the top and bottom of the trail system but the experience isn't really "shared", at least for me. A race by definition is an engagement with others. The willingness to be test oneself against others in a race makes you part of the community. 

I've never been good at groups. I always wanted to be. That desire always took a back seat to a small but insistent part of my mind that can't stand trying to fit in. Races keep that part of me in check. I don't have to fit in. I just have to pedal fast. All those strangers on the course may not know it, but they're my people. I was never going to win that race but I wasn't going to race "just for fun" either. The agreement between us was that we would all try as hard as we could. So I went as hard as I could for as long as I could. 

As rough a day as it was, I belonged. 

I also managed to wheeze my way to 2nd place! 

Yes, that's blood on my shins.
I'm rethinking racing on flat pedals

 

Of course, the guy who came in ahead of me was 70 and he finished 20 MINUTES ahead of me. He had enough time to change clothes, clean up, have a beer, answer a few emails, maybe start a new hobby but hey, it still counts! The 3rd place guy came in a couple minutes behind me and the other guy in our group DNF'd so yay me for sticking it out.

 

*You're probably wondering why anyone would name a race "The Churney Gurney". Let me explain: The race takes place at the Gurney Lane/Rush Pond Trail system up in Queensbury. I don't know who Gurney was; maybe the person who invented rolling hospital beds? You look it up. Anyway, the trail is rooted, rocky, with short, steep hills and no place to recover; so "Churney" makes sense, though I might have gone with "The Gurney Churn" or something else that implied personal harm. 

**I think. Their website is offline. They're on Facebook, but it seems their online representation is something of an afterthought. 

***My cardiologist thinks it might have been caused by a virus but she's not sure. The only evidence was some thickening of one of the walls of my heart. The only lasting side effect is I seem to have a cardiologist now.