In the parking lot having arrived at the race venue. Note the
Disney themed Mickey & Minnie Mouse jersey worn to strike fear into my
opponents. The Graber shield on the bike rack had a hard time with Autobahn
speeds. I had to heavily reinforce the shield's backside. Frankly, it's a wonder that
all the hours over 120mph didn't tear the whole bike rack off of the car.
The 1994 US Military (Europe) Cycling Championships
The US Military Cycling Championships were 3 days of racing. The first day was a 30km (18mi) time trial, which I had a chance to do well in because time trials are essentially what we train for in triathlons. Just you against the clock.
The second day would be a 50km (30mi) criterium which is a
race of multiple laps of
desperate sprints around a short course with sharp turns. I had not a prayer in the criterium. Training for a
long sustained full intensity effort is far different from training for a race of short
sprints, glued together by wrestling in a tight chaotic pack. Jumping
out of the saddle for short sprints every couple of seconds would crush me in
short order, and I was completely unskilled in the constant and aggressive
wrestling match that characterizes the pack in a crit.
The third day was a 100km (62mi) road race. I had the legs to do ok
in the road race, but I wasn't good at "strategy", and I couldn't sprint to save
my life. So it would be a matter of picking
the right "breakaway" and then trying to wear out those that could sprint.
Day 1, the time trial. In a time trial a rider is started every minute. At the start you stand on your bike with someone holding you up, and when the timer beeps you launch forward. Since a rider starts every minute, it's hard know how you're doing against the competition. Certainly if you pass someone, you've smoked him because, in starting before you, he had a head-start. If you get passed, then you knew that guy was kicking your ass, because you had a head-start on him. But there could easily be a guy that started five minutes in front of you or after you, that is smoking you like a cheap cigar and you'd have no idea.
Time trial start. Pic is from the year prior, the 1993 US Military (Europe) Cycling Championships.
It takes a lot of concentration to push, every second, just has hard as you
possibly can, as if your opponent is right by your side and slowly pulling
forward and away. At the same time, however, you have to carefully meter out
your reserves of strength because the race is over an hour long.
The year prior, the 1993 time trial, had been a heartbreaking loss. I took 2nd
place, or first loser, to Major Herb Crites, my training buddy. In the hour +
race, I lost by one motherfucking second.
1993 US Military (Europe) Cycling Championships, the year prior to this story. At left, the time trial winner, Herb Crites. At right, first loser, Scott Gress.
Herb was a great guy, 7 years and, as a Major, considerably
senior to me. He was a terrific and reliable training partner. We rode a zillion
miles around Bavaria together and it was really fun. Since that loss in 1993,
though, hidden deep inside, I seethed about losing to him in the time trial. As
a triathlete, I was supposed to be somewhat of a time trial specialist. Also,
and I say this humbly, I thought of myself as pretty hot-shit. As a
result, I really took 1sec loss in the 1993 time trial personally. I was
embarrassed. Had I had any idea that I was only a second back from Herb, I'd
have found that second easily. In an hour long race, you can find a damned
second.
Now, in the 1994 Cycling Champs, I was going to
beat Herb in the time trial or fucking die trying.
From start to finish I rode that Time Trial like a maniac. Full out all the way. I don't think there has ever been a ride as mentally disciplined, before or since, as that effort. Under normal race conditions, one's mind would wander and they'd lose focus briefly on a couple occasions. But for this race, I never lost focus, I never eased back on the intensity, not even a second. A year of irritation over my loss had created a huge reservoir of resolve. I poured it on and poured it on and gave it everything I had. Every couple of seconds my mind was screaming "ONE SECOND, ONE SECOND, PUSH GODDAMNIT PUSH!!!" I kept imagining that Herb was right next to me and about to pull away.
I won the time trial. That was very unexpected. Even more
crazy was that the nearest competitor was over a minute back. There were
a lot of really serious cyclists in attendance, and as a triathlete type,
cycling was only one of three sports that I needed to train for. All I had been
focused on was avoiding another loss to my buddy Herb, so I was very surprised
to have won the whole thing. I did my best to maintain a face of stoic, and
totally fake, humility, as the win got communicated to everyone else. Inside I
was jumping up and down, whooping and hollering.
1994 US Military (Europe) Cycling Championships. On the very fast, yet skittish, Time Machine and heading for the win.
Day 2. The criterium. My nightmare. I traded in the hellishly skittish Time
Machine, for the trusty and true Road Warrior--my faithful
companion for many thousands of miles.
To paraphrase Hobbes, a criterium is nasty, brutish, and short.
Crits are multiple, 1-2 minute, laps of a short course with many sharp turns. On
many of the laps, there is an award for being the leader at the end of that lap.
As a result, everyone is constantly battling to be near the front of the pack,
because being near the front gives you the option of charging forward to win
that lap. As significant, being near the front of the pack means you can
get through the turns much more economically. This is because there is a slinky effect,
as the pack's pace is disturbed by the sharp turn, that
slows down everyone but the leaders. The farther back you are in the pack, the
worse the effect is. As a result of those slowdowns at each turn, the
back-packers wear themselves out, between turns, accelerating hard to catch back up to the
leaders. Those hard accelerations occur a debilitating two or three times
per minute.
Finally, crashes are common in criteriums and if you're near the front, the
crashes are likely to be behind you. Therefore you're often either in the front
or in the crash.
It's so important to be near the front that everyone is constantly working to
move forward. If you pause the
pushing, shoving, and clawing to move forward for 10 seconds, you'll have lost a bunch of
positions and will be in danger of being spit out the back. Simply holding your
position requires constant aggression.
The whole race is "accelerate hard, fight, brake, accelerate hard, fight, and
brake. It's torture.
I wasn't a "constant aggression" person. I was a "ride up to you, give you a
wave and a big smile, and then ride so hard you can't stay with me," person.
I’d done very few real bike races. As a
result, I didn't “read” packs well, hadn't learned to fight for position
well, and couldn’t sprint to save my life. As
a triathlete, I just didn't practice on those things.
I rode the criterium like a weenie, conserving energy while attempting to not make it too obvious that I wasn't really trying. I'd rode very hard the day prior in the time trial and I needed some recovery time if I was going to have anything for the day 3 road race. At about the 3/4 point in the criterium, the hellish sprint after sprint really started putting a hurt on those not used to so much sprinting. I took that as my cue and pulled out of the race.
The third day was the road race and I had high hopes that the other guys were a little more tired that I was, me having goofed off in the day 2 criterium. On this third day of racing, fatigue was becoming a huge factor. On the other hand, competitive cyclists train for multi-day events, and triathletes don't.
We started the day 3 road race challenged by rain and wind. In the previous year, on the same course, I'd been knocked off the road on the back stretch by a wind gust. I'd been on someone's shoulder to get some shelter from a stiff 30deg headwind, but doing so had put me at the edge of the road. Then an unexpectedly strong gust hit and I was knocked me off the road. The wet grass was slippery as ice, so I was screwed. Still hauling ass, I slid down into the ditch, the front wheel stopped in the deep muck, and once I quit summersaulting I was 30 feet away laying in the cold muck under 10 inches of water, with a surprised look on my face.
This year was going to be
different. I had a lot more confidence. I was pretty sure that I had the
strength to stay with the leaders, I just needed to be a bit more cautious about
other perils. My focus was to watch for breakaways among the leaders and to
choose the right one to go with. Then I'd hang with that breakaway and, so my
plan went, help them stay ahead of the pack. As we got to the final miles of the
race I would try to encourage the breakaway to ride especially hard so that it
might be whittled down to a small size. Hopefully small enough that even though
I wasn't much of a sprinter, I'd end up on the podium.
15 minutes into the 62 mile race, I was in mid-pack drafting tight on someone's left shoulder
trying to stay out of a cross-wind. I was at the left edge
road, but I had an honest 12 inch buffer, to the road edge this time so there
was room to react to the unexpected. I was keeping my head up, watching the
front of the pack, and looking for an opening to sneak a little further forward.
I happened to be in the exact same place where I'd been blown off the road a
year prior when, once again, a big
gust of wind blew me off of the road. Oh for christ's sake.
I was determined to not go into the fucking ditch this time. On the road's shoulder, I managed to keep the bike on the thin line of wet gravel just shy of the slippery grass. Recovery was a problem though. If I tried to simply turn a bit right, I hit the edge of the road and go down, so that wasn't going to work. Instead, I leaned my weight hard right and jumped the bike back up, and about 12 inches rightward, on to the asphalt. "Christ, that was so close," I thought. I jumped out of the saddle and accelerated hard to catch back up to the pack.
At about the 40 mile mark, call it 90+ minutes into the
race, a lead pack had formed as the slower riders
dropped back. Not
being very skilled at working in a packs, I was paying a lot of attention to
keeping decent position, and I was watching everyone around me carefully. I was
trying to identify who was particularly strong. It wasn't about going with a breakaway, it was about choosing the right
breakaway to go with. And for that, I had to watch the body language of these
guys closely and make decent guesses as to how much they felt the strain, of how
much they had left. There had been a handful of breakaway attempts by 1-3
riders, but I'd not gone with them, calculating that they were not going to
succeed. Sure enough, the lead pack had all sucked them back in.
I had plenty of strength left so I was just biding my time. If I chose wrong,
and a person has about three seconds to decide whether or not to go with the
couple rides as they bolt forward out of the pack, I wouldn't be with the leaders
when they finished. If I delayed 4-5secs after the first guy launched out, the
breakaway might already have enough gap that I'd have trouble bridging up to
them.
Oddly, a lot of people were getting flat tires. There was a sag wagon following
us that had everyone's spare wheels, but there were so many flats that the
single sag wagon was swamped.
I didn't own a set of spare wheels, so the sag wagon had nothing for me.
At the 55 mile mark the
lead pack was working together and hauling ass. There was only about a dozen of
us left and we probably had only about 20
minutes left in the race. The fast pace of the lead pack was discouraging
breakaways and it was also tiring everyone out. The fact that everyone was
working hard, and therefore tiring, and that I was still with the lead group,
was playing out perfectly for me, the strong cyclist but crappy sprinter. Every
minute or two another person fell out of the lead pack, and that meant one more potential sprinter-threat gone.
Then "BOOM", my rear tire blew. "SHIT!!", I exclaimed.
As I fell back and over to the side of the asphalt,
there was another BANG. Another guy had flatted and dropped out of the pack. He
hollered for the sag wagon, but it was no where in sight, being back helping other
riders to change tires. As I came to a halt, I looked up and could see that it
was his front tire that blew. On impulse, I popped my
front tire off and ran to him. When he saw me with the wheel, he understood my
intent, stayed on his bike and unweighted his front end. I swapped out front
wheels in a about 5secs, gave it a quick spin to confirm it cleared the brake
pads, and then I moved to the back of his bike to give him a running push back
into the race.
In the final sprint for the race, the subject of my Good Samaritan gesture blew my tire
just short of the line. Undeterred, he kept on it and finished on the podium.
It turned out that the abandoned air strip that made up part of the course was starting to deteriorate and the asphalt was breaking up into sharp little cinders. I had a dozen razor sharp little pyramids of cinder working their way through those two flat tires.
One medal and $160 worth of flat tires.
Call it even.
The guy who finished with my tire gave me my wheel back. It would have been nicer,
however,
if he'd have also handed me $80 for my tire that he blew. $80 in 1994 is $140 in
2020.
It would have been just as fair for him to give me his rear tire, but that never
came up. I was on autopilot when I gave him my tire.