It’s nearing midnight in the middle of New Mexico, I have no
clue what town I’m in, and I’m driving rather quickly up a windy mountain road.
Egged on by some excessively loud music and the realization that our
destination is close I peg the gas pedal just that bit more out of every
corner. I’m tired and, even in the moment, I know this is a terrible idea. As a
stereotypically risk averse individual my current venture to the “dark side” is
very uncharacteristic but, at the same time, somewhat exhilarating. At least
the feeling of tiredness from only a few minutes before has now been replaced
by a slight boost of adrenaline…
To lend some context to the situation, up to this point our
travel day had been something of a shit show and I wanted nothing more than for
it to be over. After a delayed flight in Arkansas, teammate Taylor Shelden and
I missed our connection to Albuquerque; prompting the question of whether we
would even get to Silver City in time to start the Tour of the Gila which began
at 9am the next day. Fortunately, we were able to get re-booked and arrived in
New Mexico four hours after we initially planned with a two hundred fifty mile
drive still to go. After three hours of sitting behind the wheel I desperately
wanted to be at our hotel and sleeping. Sadly, we still had an hour to go.
As the song being blared out the stereo ends the car is
filled with a moment of awkward silence while the next track gets queued up.
Despite lasting only a few seconds, the short-lived reprieve from audio
bombardment resets my brain a bit and it finally sinks in just how Darwinian my
current activity is. I take my foot off the gas pedal and coast until the
odometer reads within the speed limit. It feels exceptionally slow but I tell
myself that’s OK—after all, killing yourself to save five minutes is pretty
silly when you really think about it. A few miles later, we reach the summit of
the mountain and I pull over to the side of the road and let Taylor take the
helm for the final leg to Silver City.
Despite the ominous start, the Tour of the Gila did not go
nearly as terribly as I thought it would. Following a fairly brutal wake-up
only a handful of hours after arriving at our hotel, I managed to pull off a
decent result (in my opinion, anyway) on stage 1—finishing 11th in
spite of feeling like total shit (no surprise there). In fact, feeling sub-par
was probably the most prevalent theme of Gila. While stage one was by far the
worst, I just never felt comfortable during the week and had this continuous
feeling of lethargy when racing. I could tell my body wasn’t totally acclimated
to the altitude (over the last five weeks I’ve only been in Boulder for seven
days) and racing Joe Martin the week prior definitely left a bit of a dent.
Fortunately, my legs came around pretty well the final day and I managed to
make all the selections over the major climbs—most of which included only five
to eight guys. With a bit more organization from the group (including myself
who dogged a few pulls) maybe we could have rolled it to the line—who really
knows. Instead, there were quite a few regroupings in the final 30km and a
group of twenty or so wound up sprinting to the line. I got sixth on the day
and tenth overall.
Of all the results I’ve had this year, this past week is
probably the one I’m most proud of. Sure, I didn’t win but the fact that I
remained competitive despite not feeling amazing is something I’ll hold my head
high for. They say good bike racers are good even when they’re bad; and while I’ll
leave it to others to create labels about just how good of a bike racer I am, it’s at least
nice to know I don’t totally suck…even when I feel that way.
