Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Maybe You Get the Picture

Just a warning, what follows is a probably embarrassingly sentimental post. Very high mush factor. If that's not the sort of thing you tune in for, you might find that something else is a better use of your time. I'm not embarrassed about writing it, mind you, but some folks aren't too comfortable watching others display deep emotion in public.

Yesterday we received Chris Rice's lastest CD in the Mail. It is titled Run the Earth, Watch the Sky and is excellent. In the last twelve hours I've listened to it about six times. Its pretty much exactly what you'd expect from Mr. Rice: beautiful, slightly elliptical lyrics about deep,personal topics with melodies that are both sweet and intriguingly interesting. Like my favorite diet cola...Light, Crisp, Refreshing...without being cloyingly sugary. If you listen to Christian radio you've heard "The Other Side of the Radio" but, as is often the case, this isn't the best song on the album. That honor probably belongs to "untitled hymn". I won't spoil it for you but if you get a chance to listen to it you may weep with joy as I did. I would love to sing the song for my church but I'm not sure I'd get through the song without choking up.

The other song that really, really speaks to me is the last song on the album, "Circle Up". The song is a great tune about what heaven is going to be like but is has a lot more meaning than that to me. When I was a Boy Scout every meeting and every campfire would end with the words "Circle Up". No matter what had happened over the course of the day, no matter what had been said or done, we would come together as a troop; fathers and sons, brothers and friends, leaders and followers. We would join hands and someone, usually one of the dads, would lead us in a short "devotional". It usually wasn't religious in that God was specifically mentioned but it was definitely spiritual. It almost always centered on character and was deeply contemplative. I'm sure that a lot of the thinking I've done on the man I want to be was begun during one of those devotionals. Then we would sing, all together, a song meant to lift us up and encourage us. Oftentimes it was Kum-bye-yah. I know that the song gets made fun of a lot, but standing in that cicle by the fading light of the campfire with a day full of memories rattling around in my head it never seemed cheesy. It seemed noble and good and right. It lifted what we were doing out of the realm of the everyday to much, much more. The time inspired you to try to be better not by browbeating you but by helping you understand that you could be better.

There are a lot of pictures of heaven. Many of them involve golden streets and mansions on hilltops and the like. I don't like those pictures because they are too much like the valueless things we value here on earth. Who cares about golden streets when you get to spend eternity in the Love that is God. In the Revelation of John there is a picture I like a lot more. All of His children with all the angels and other heavenly beings around the throne of the Lamb, singing. As I listenened to "Circle Up" I was given a clearer picture of what that might be like and it made me cry with joy. In fact, each time today I've thought about it I've become very emotional. I usually get emotional when I take the time to think of heaven and the song really helps me see heaven clearly. I can see God, like some infinitely kind and wise Scoutmaster, asking us all to Circle Up around the throne. In His own unfathomable way He'll say the devotional and then we'll sing. We'll sing Kum-bye-yah and Holy, Holy, Holy and all the other songs that have ever been sung about God and the Lamb. We'll never grow tired of singing and we'll never want to stop listening to that heavenly chorus. Who knows, maybe He'll let all of us Scouts sing a song together. I'd really like that I think.

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Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Raccoon Mountain

This was the race I wasn't going to do and then decided to. I was originally going to take a rest week off after the Pines MTB race but the thought of getting another mass start and getting one race closer to getting out of Cat V was too much to resist. The course was rumored to be hilly and a check of the course map proved those rumors to be true. That meant that the race might just go to the strong men rather than the sprinters. So I signed up and went up to Chattanooga to race.

Our field had over 70 in it. A Cat V field with 70 is a frightening thing. Everyone has limited race experience and jittery nerves. Crashes are endemic as egos override common sense and everyone tries to jockey for position. Even more frightening is that we were just the over 30 riders. The under 30 Cat V men had gone off 15 minutes before us. Still, though, sizing up the competition at the start line I felt pretty good. A lot of the guys were packing a lot of extra weight. They'd get around the course but the hills would take their toll.

Since the first couple of miles of the race course were pretty choppy they nuetralized us through that part. Neutralized means no racing but a good warm up. So when the race officials let us go we were off and running or riding as the case may be. One guy took off right off the bat. He reminded me of me but with less power. We let him get aout 100 yards off and then slowly pulled him back. For about 4 miles we let him fry on the front, right up to the first tough climb. The first climb was supposed to be a steep .5 mile jag with a fast decent. What we found was a steep .5 mile jag, followed by a short descent follwed by another less steep .5 mile climb. Everyone made it over the first bit but the second bit caused a lot of consternation in the middle of the pack. From what I was told, three or four guys blew up pretty bad. And then there was an accident. One guy, riding up the hill, rode over another guy. At 12 miles per hour. Going up hill. Now you see why I want to get out of Cat V so badly. I, having a bit of racing experience, was riding in the first 5 or 10 riders and missed all the fun. But when we got to the descent they promised, there were only about 25 guys left. Now this is more like it I thought.

Next up was a 2.4 mile, stairstep climb. That means you go up, it levels out and then you go up again. We did this seven times. I sat in at third wheel and just pedalled, watched my heart rate and tried not to get dropped. By the top I was in a very select group of six. Once we saw we had a gap we put the hammer down. For the next eight miles we held a rotating paceline at over 30 mph. US Postal we weren't but no one was going to catch us. So it was left to us on the final climb. I hung in as long as I could and only got popped off the back after a late surge in the front of the group. My heart rate was 190 at that point. According to all the literature, the max heart rate for a guy my age is 184. I like having the heart of a younger man. Nevertheless, the weeks of work without as much recovery as I needed finally cuaght up with me. Still, I managed to hang onto fifth place and record my best road race performance yet. Best of all, now I get to start my recovery week.

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Monday, April 07, 2003

Finally

I finally got a podium result in a mass start event. This last weekend was the Georgia Pines mountain bike race which is a part of the Georgia Association of Promoters race series. The event was held at the Macintosh Reserve Park outside of Whitesburg, Georgia on a fast, somewhat muddy course. Though I got out of the gate a little slow and got caught up behind a couple of early crashes, I found that I climbed better than about anyone out there and I had good stamina, at least until the last couple of miles. It was a two lap race on a six mile course with a surprisingly large number of sharp hills. I led the race for most of the second lap but a series of mechanical mishaps and small crashes cost me the win. I ended up taking second and I think I've moved up to about fourth in the overall GAP standings for my class (beginner) and age group (30-39). The guy who beat me had taken second in the first race of the series where I finished eighth due to poor tire selection (you can't use hardpack specific tires on a sloppy course) so I don't feel too bad about losing out to him, though if I had remembered to put a couple of gels in my jersey pocket I might have had the energy to hold him off. The next race is at the end of the month up on the 1996 Olympic course in Conyers. I'm pretty excited/awed to be racing on a course designed for the best names in the sport. Hoperfully I'll get a couple of chances to ride the course and see what awaits me. My next road race is this weekend around Raccoon Mountain outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. There's supposed to be a bunch of climbing so it'll be a good test of my fitness at the end of this training cycle.

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Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Brooks

This was the big start to the season. This is where I was going to find out if all the hard work from last year and this year had amounted to anything. This was the proof of the pudding. Last year in Brooks I had struggled to a mid-pack finish nad a 3rd place placing in the time trial. This year my goals were top five in the road race, winning the time trial and a top five overall in the Omnium. I had high expectations. So high, in fact, that I nearly made myself sick on the day before the race. On the positive side, IU was going to ride with my former student Daryl Reynolds. He's riding for UGA Cycling now (and Team Bling Bling) and we had decided to support each other in the road race.

The Road Race This was a wild ride for everyone. The D-Man and I decided to try to get away early and often. We attacked and attacked and attacked. At a couple of points we had good gaps but each time the Bicycles Unlimited riders closed the gap and then sat on our wheels. was it frustrating? Yeah, but they were doing their job. I was hoping one of them would bridge and work with us but they had other plans; they had a sprinter. So with about 6 miles to go, Dary;l and I shut it down. We let the pace slow up and we rested up for a sprint. Daryl was near the front and I was about eight riders back. In fact, I was set up on the BU leadout train's wheels. If they weren't going to let me get away, I was going to co-opt their lead out from their sprint guy. I had strong legs and I knew that I had put the hurtin' on everyone else. With 250 meteres to go I was in a goo dposition. I was about 4 deep behind the BU train ready to roll. Then the stupid thing happens. Some idiot has to make a move. A wheel gets clipped and up ahead is a crash. It was a bad one. I had to hit my brakes and by the time I recover twenty people have passed me. Still, I spin up my sprint to see if I can make it back into the top 15. Not quite, I finish 17th. Still though, had it not been for the crash, I would have been top 10. Rumor has it we finished with a lap record time of 1:04:15. 24.2 miles per hour. Over the last 6 miles we had gone slower than that so D-Man and I did a goodly bit of work on the front. I was pleased with my effort but disappointed with the result. Daryl, who was in front of the crash, took the win with a strong sprint.

The Time Trial To say I flew was an understatement. A new PR, 24.5 mph. Last year I averaged 23.0 and was over 1:30 slower on the same course. The result? Third place again. I was 21 seconds behind the D-man and 2.3 seconds behind a BU rider. Great effort, same result. I was bummed and exhilirated. Losing to Daryl didn't bother me but when will I get to the top of the podium/

The Crit This was going to be my first crit ever. Having heard the crash stories, I was really concerned about doing the race and almost chickened out. Daryl and my wife talked me into it though so I went. At first, my legs just sucked and I couldn't corner. So I hung at the back of the pack and decided to just try and finish. Three laps in though I began to find my legs and I saw that I was climbing up the front stretch a bit better than most. So I began to devise a strategy. Get position on the climbs and try to hang on in the corners until i got the hang of that. With three laps to go, I was sitting in pretty well but that's when everyone tried to get to the front. On the last lap I sprinted up the final hill and ended up taking 8th place. My first top ten road finish, in the discipline I always thought I'd hate to boot.

So, I finished 5th place in the Omnium and left with some hope for the rest of the season. Next time, maybe I'll avoid the crash and my road race placing will be indicative of my fitness. Until then, its work, work, work.

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