It is quite an experience but that’s about all I have to say for the races yesterday and today at the U23 Cycling National Championships here in Augusta, Georgia. Today I toed the starting line with 150 of the fastest under-23 cyclists in the nation, and some in the world. I rolled into the staging area with a racing heart and shaking hands. I just recently acquired these intense feelings of uncontrollable nerves, I guess maybe due to the increased pressure this season.
I made small talk with a fellow cyclist while waiting to roll up to the starting line of this downtown race. The entire town lined the streets to watch us race, to watch me and 150 others battle on the .8 mile loop. Having raced mediocre in all of my cycling races this season, my recent upgrade to a category two rider was surely going to be interesting.
At the beginning of the bike leg, I had decided whether or not I wanted to watch the race lead ride away from me. Now, on the run, it was time to decide if I wanted to win. I had started the 5k on my own, leading the race. But Ben Bartlett from Arlington, Virginia soon caught up to me repeating what happened when I had tried to race away on the bike. While I expected and hoped to look over my shoulder and see my teammate, Ryan Peterson, he was not having one of his usual dominant days.
I looked Ben in the eyes and remembered that turning to look at your opponent meant admitting defeat. But that was not what I intended to convey. It would have been a lie. I jumped behind him and sat in the tiny amount of draft a runner can give. It was effective enough, I was able to hold his pace. Just before the turn around I tried to make a surge to take the lead and keep Bartlett from surging out of the turnaround but he wanted it more. He rounded the turnaround first and surged out of it, putting a hurt on me to stay with him.
I would be returning to Lynchburg, Virginia to race the same course I had raced as my first triathlon over five years ago. I was fifteen. Over a fourth of my life I have doing these multisport races and since then I have done in the vicinity of fifty of them. My goal five years ago was to win and not only that but beat the course record, held by Michael Harlow, a triathlete who would become my coach a few months later, a man I would realize is VERY hard to beat.
Last night at Relay for Life I was overwhelmed with people’s attitudes towards life and disease and death. So many times throughout the day I heard people use the phrase, “lost the battle” and “lose my mother” and other such phrases. I don’t understand that word in this context.
A few years ago my aunt died from breast cancer. She was buried on my birthday. I do still have both my parents but I do feel I can be somewhat empathetic towards these peoples situations. It wasn’t easy at all when my aunt died. In my lifetime I have watched four people I have been very close to pass on. But I am not mad or angry at the diseases or illnesses that brought them to the end.
When I arrived back at my house on Sunday night, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. My performance had been less than what I had hoped for, less than what I was capable of. We as a Virginia Tech team had just accomplished three huge achievements. It was the best placement for Virginia Tech male triathlon team in a long time. Placing 8th out of eighty male teams was ridiculously better than we had hoped for. We destroyed Naval Academy for the first time in any record of collegiate nationals I can find. Also, as a combined male and female team we placed ninth overall. In every Collegiate nationals result I can find, the girls crush the guys and the girls result gets brought down by the guys. But this year, (represent men!), the dudes scored higher. Oh yeah and we annihilated UVA.
The 2011 Collegiate triathlon national championships is in nine days. I will be heading down to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the same place I raced the Age Group National Championships just six months ago.
My training is tapering. My body is resting and waiting. My mind is focused on the goal that rests ahead, a long road ahead, a massive distance of pain and suffering and challenges ahead. And my heart is inspired, fueled, and charged. Let me toe the starting line. Let me stand shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of other guys who have been preparing for this just as long as me.
In the beginning it is only the percussion. After the other men bring in the instrumentals, Siouxsie glides onto the stage to the cheers of nearly 100,000 concertgoers at the inaugural Lollapalooza in 1991. Put yourself at the show. Go back to 1991 and imagine you are there witnessing this song. Sure her get up is a little strange but they had just transitioned into the nineties. Give her gypsy attire a break. When she reaches the microphone, she hushes the crown with seductive silence.
I ate my cereal in a seated position for the first time in days. The sloppy mess I made on my first day of trying to hop the bowl over to the table turned me off of that challenge. I had become content to instead simply stand where the meal was prepared, directly above the dishwasher I hovered eating my breakfast every morning.
But today I wanted to sit. So I slid the bowl over to the table inch by inch, went back for my cup of water, and repeated. I am really tired of this. On crutches I have no hands, with no hands I cannot carry anything. Without being able to carry anything, pretty much everything is in the same spot it was the day I sprained my ankle.
I barely slept last night. I tossed and turned trying to find a position where my ankle was stable. It didn’t happen, even when it was neutral it still throbbed to a delayed pulse of my heart beat. The couple hours I did managed to rest, my dreams spiraled around the pain at the foot of the bed. I dreamed of toeing the starting line of my race on March 5. A friend looks over and questions me if I am really capable of racing with an ankle that swollen.
