"You suck, go home!"

Saturday was my first big cycle race of the season: Transcollcerola. Collcerola is a string colls directly behind Barcelona. If you don't know what a "coll" is from the Tour de France, it's a hill or a mountain depending on where you're from. I'm not from Nepal, so I'll call them mountains. This particular event offered an 80k "short course", and a 150k "long course". In keeping with last week's "I can't do that. Sign me up!" attitude I signed up for the long course despite a phone call I got a couple of weeks ago from Miguel Angel (the fastest guy in the club) asking, "Are you sure? All that way? The whole 150 kilometers?!" Cavalier, I said, "Well, it's all above Barcelona anyway, if I die, then in all likelihood I'll probably roll backwards downhill and wind up at home anyway." So I signed up. No problem.

Below you see the short course profile (for reference, the tall one on the right is about 500m tall):
And the long course, seen above (the second picture), looks like two tits, with one hill just below 500m tall and the next one just above 500m tall. See, if you are intelligent you would assume that the long course map was in addition to the short course map, and you would be right. I'm not so bright, though, so I thought, 'only two climbs, up and down, up and down the hill I do once a week anyway? No problem! I love tits, this is going to be great!' I was, of course, wrong, but we'll get to that.

All 450 or so participants started facing downhill on a short decline with a 90 degree turn about 50 yards away at the bottom. Generally I'm not too comfortable biking in crowds so I was freaking out right from the start. It didn't help that people shot out the gate at about 100 miles per hour and kept going 100 miles per hour through the first several miles of the course. Here's what it sounded like in my head, 'uhhh huff, uhhh huff, get away from me, uhhh huff, get away from me, slow the f&%# down, get uhh away huff from uhhh me huff!" And then there was another sound, *clang-cla-clang tickaticka...(silence)* as my chain fell off the outside of my big chain ring. I pulled over to put it back on and watched the back-of-the-packers fly by. Thus, right from the beginning I was relegated to the chunks of people who are constantly questioning if they're going the right way because there are no other cyclists in sight. And there I stayed.

I bought my bike with one of those "granny gear" chainrings (I'm sure it has a real name, and you're screaming it at your screen right now, but I don't know what it is). In the name of "saving my energy" I immediately switched to this chainring every time the road headed for the skies. Well, Saving My Energy was my excuse anyway. I passed a couple of chicks on the first coll, and then came the first white-knuckled, heart-in-your-throat descent. There's something unnerving about how your bike naturally swoops a couple of degrees closer to the pavement when you go around a turn at 30 miles per hour. I know I have good cornering form because it usually works out pretty well for me when I have the balls to trust myself, but I always second-guess myself and feather the brakes, which makes me swerve ever-so-slightly, which makes me freak out, which makes me go rigid... and if I'm lucky the turn ends before the freaking-out process smears me across the pavement. And you know when you're flying down a hill (and you're barely in control) and a car swings around a curve in front of you? And they're usually not even in danger of hitting you anyway because they're on their side of the road and you're on yours and there's plenty of time to avoid each other? I always jump out of my skin and swerve when that happens. Not good, kids. Well, we got to the bottom and the guys that were with me said, "Did you see those beautiful views?!" No, actually, I didn't really notice.

I don't know if this is good or bad, but when my legs are shaky from a climb (even if it's small), I like to keep them moving. So once the hill starts to tip down again I flip up a chainring and get the wobbliness out of my legs. It feels good. Most of the day I'd been floating along a few feet behind the boys, but once we were pointed downwards I would pull ahead. "Take it easy," David said, "we still have a long way to go!" David tries to be my Jimminy Cricket, always telling me how I should ride. "Stick yourself to his back wheel", "Slow down, you'll tire yourself out", "Stop at that stop light" (when no one else does), "Don't wear a camelback, you only need one bottle of water", "Do this bit on your small chainring", "Take the shorter rout today". As a general rule, I don't pay any attention to David. Maybe some of his advice is good, and some of his advice isn't so much, but I can't get the sneaking suspision out of my head that he's telling me to do this stuff because I'm a girl. Girls need to be protected. Girls don't know how to ride their bikes. So I ignore David. But today I was in a good mood and I paid attention to David and took it easy. I tried to enjoy the scenery.

In a flat section where everyone shook out their numb hands and reached in jersey pockets to try and find food we came to an intersection. The volunteers asked, "Are there many more behind you?" What the fuck kind of question is that?! How the hell should we know? Are we that far behind? Do we suck that much? Sheez. Gimme a break, I'm going as fast as I can. "No idea," said Patrick.

The whole event was circling around one town away from where I live, but until the third hill I didn't see anything that I knew. It was the hardest hill thus far, but at least it was something I had done before, and finally I came over a crest and the Barcelona skyline finally broke over the edge of a ridge. The climb seemed to last forever, and every time I thought it was over and we were barrelling downhill David would say, "Here comes a break". I was thinking "What do you mean a break? Isn't it over yet?!" But still, because I knew where I was, I was on an upswing. I convinced myself, I can do this. We stopped and grabbed some more water (which I mixed with Accelerade, "What's that?" David asked) and as we were picking our bikes up again two chicks pulled into the aid station. "Let's go," I said. And then we flew down a hill that I knew. Reluctantly I feathered the brakes. I knew every contour of this hill, and it frustrated me to stay behind David, but it didn't frustrate me so much that I was going to risk my life passing him on a hairpin turn.

And then we were gliding into Sant Cougat (where the race was based) again, and there were volunteers with flags waving us to the left. "We're doing the long course!" yelled David. The guy with the flags waved away and said something inaudable. When we were on a straightaway again I yelled ahead to David, "Are they kicking us out?" "I don't know, maybe," he said. Of course when we turned right and found ourselves face to face with the finish line at exactly kilometer 80 we knew the answer. We crossed the finishishing strip and the timers beeped as it registered our finishing times. Shit! Game over. We found Miguel Angel who was already in his street clothes and went to find out our results. The first chick, a girl that I'd beat easily a few months before had come in 8 minutes ahead of me. Right behind her was another girl, putting me in third. "Why were you dawdling so much?" asked Miguel Angel. "You could have won". "We stopped to eat, we didn't know that we were going to be classified on the short course,". "That's the last time I listen to David," I said. "Yeah, don't pay any attention to him," said Miguel Angel. "I won't," I said, and meant it.

David, Patrick and I were all in the same boat. We'd been sticking together, Taking It Easy for 3 hours, 30 minutes and 22 seconds (give or take), and essentially we'd all been disqualified together.
David: Why don't we get a snack and keep going?
Patrick: I came by train, I might as well be getting back to the train station.
David: Why don't we just ride home, the course takes us through the cemetary and then you'll be back in Barcelona.
Patrick (thinking about it): Alright, why not.

We took off back towards Barcelona again and someone pulled up next to me. "Hola," he said. "Hola," I grumbled and looked over. It was some guy (I don't know his name) from our club. "Dude! HI!" I said. "I waited for you guys at the top of X Coll. You never showed up," said... whatever-his-name-is. "They kicked us out," I said. "They wouldn't let us do the long course". After awhile whatever-his-name-is pulled up to talk to David and I found myself next to Patrick. "Are you sad?" I asked. "Well no, sad no," he said. "But if they wanted to have a competitive race, I wish they had told us and I wouldn't have signed up, you know? I can ride these roads anytime, why am I going to pay for it if they won't let the likes of me finish? It just leaves a sour taste in your mouth." He was totally right. That was exactly what I was feeling without having the words to say it.

The path through the Collcerola cemetary is especially steep on shitty pavement that eats all your momentum. I have never made my way over it except in my grannygear chainring, and that's how I got over it, watching the boys disappear in front of me. I lost sight of them and heard a car growling behind me. I hate that feeling, knowing that a car's grinding away up a hill in first gear behind me waiting for a chance to pass. I waved him around a couple of times, but he never passed. Finally I came to a fork in the road with no sign of David and Patrick in front of me. Left went down, right went up. 'Well fuck it,' I thought, 'what else has this course done all day?!' and I turned right up the hill. The growling car passed me and I got a chace to get a good look, it was a hurse with a giant three-foot wreath of red roses attached to the back of it and a whole train of cars following in the funeral party. 'Fitting,' I thought, 'I've been being followed by a funeral procession'.

I'd chosen the right rout though and the boys were waiting for me a little way up the road. "Wouldn't it be better to wait for me at the intersections?' I asked (ironically). "There aren't any intersections until we get to Barcelona," said David. I didn't feel like explaining the encounter with the funeral march, so I just shut up. "Maybe I'll go back into Barcelona with Patrick," I said. I was sick of this game, and I knew my girlfriend would be pissed at me for being away for so long. "Alright," said David, looking crushed. But when we got to the intersection where Patrick had to go down and David was going back up I realized that I'd left 100 euros in David's car so I went back up with him. It's amazing what money can do. I'm sure if I were a professional, sponsored athlete I would have even won this thing.

We were climbing and I clicked back down to my granny gear. I was totally over pushing myself. "You go ahead," I said to David. "I don't want you losing any momentum just to keep up with me, it's easier to go at your rhythm uphill than to slow down". "Don't believe it," said David, "I'll get behind you, you decide the speed". "Stop being a prince, I'll meet you at the top, anyway, you're making me nervous." He seemed a little hurt by that. Backpedaling: "No, I mean I don't want you to waste any energy on me, I feel bad, but I don't feel like pushing anymore". "Don't worry," he said, "I'm tired too". So we went up together and I looked at the worn-out part of his pants seat and wondered if he was wearing checkered underwear or if he was wearing something else under his shorts. Who buys checkered underwear? I was just so sick of climbing and descending, climbing and descending.

I know I could have finished the long course, my legs were fine, but I was so pissed that they wouldn't give me a chance. We were on track to do a 7-hour century which isn't anything to write home about, but with all the climbing I don't think it's anything to sniff at either. While we were riding to the parking space I clicked over to 112k at a total of 4 hours, 58 minutes and 59 seconds. I had spent the whole day hanging back, and the one major regret of the day was that I still had no idea how I could have done. I could have gone faster on the short course. I could have pushed harder on our course (equal except for one climb). I could have finished the long course. But I wasn't able to get any of those notches in my belt. I understand that we were on heavily-trafficked roads right outside Barcelona and they didn't want cyclists on the road after a certain time, but David and I went there anyway. There are always cyclists around in Barcelona. So, I mean, what the hell? You know?