Playing in the garden

His eyes were wide, round circles and his mouth was frozen open, some grass still hanging between his teeth.  A frozen instant we were a few feet from each other, face to face and my eyes were likely as wide as his with the thought of running into a twelve point buck at 40 miles an hour. 

I live a few miles from this moment, and it astounds me every time it happens.

Five times around the Garden of the Gods.  Each loop the same glorious backdrop of high desert and red rocks, Pike’s Peak denting the horizon, each loop the foreground changing from a mule deer in velvet to something else. 

A fellow with cerebral palsy, his body twisted like a clenched fist, rolls along the bike lane, a red umbrella shading his chair and his wife/girlfriend/sister smiling a good morning in unison with him as I roll by the first time, a second time a third time.  They cover the two and half mile loop and we intersect along the way, me feeling a bit guilty as I roll past the Kissing Camel overlook. 

Later, three people on Segways, in the bike lane on the long climb.  What is the point of this?  They dramatically wave me out of the bike lane; we’re all going about 8 miles an hour.  I dramatically ask the leader if he qualifies as a bike or pedestrian. This question seems to surprise him. 

Third time up the climb and I pass some runners.  The woman starts to veer off the path onto the grass to give me room.  ‘No problem, we’re all going really slow.’  This strikes her as really funny. 

Last time up and I move in between a dotted line of older fellows on road bikes.  One is skinny and wearing a Front Rangers jersey from Denver.  He’s about a quarter mile up the climb and is my rabbit.  I catch him before we crest and we chat.  He must be a tad winded as he says ‘So long, have a good ride.’ before I indicate that I’m moving on. 

Each time up the descent, I question my need to do it again.  After the run down to the turn, I forget this, and the all of the other unpleasantness and think, ‘Hey, let’s do that again.’  The fifth time this doesn’t occur to me and I turn up Ridge road, not the last climb before home. 

It seems easier now.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

I have a recurring nightmare.  I’m twenty years old, taking an undergraduate linguistics class at the University of Wisconsin.  In my then-major, German literature, it was an elective.  The prof was basically reading from the book each class and I slowly stopped going.  First it was one day, then I missed two classes in a row.  Then I didn’t attend for a week and a half.  When I finally showed up, she was handing out the mid-term exam and there was a big smile when she saw me darken the doorway to her room.  My dream always ends there, anxiety, panic, an intense desire to run away; it never goes to the next part, where we get our tests back and I have an A-.

Last Saturday was the Colorado State time trial championships in the beautiful countryside north east of the Denver International Airport.  In Britain, a time trial is known as a test, and it is.  Basically, you go as fast as you can for the specified distance.  On Saturday, it was 38 kilometers.  My first season racing in Colorado has also been a test.  In many ways I feel like I’m starting at the bottom again. 

The land around the airport is a bleak prairie landscape.  I can remember the four or five trees I passed fairly clearly today, dark shapes two miles away.  An old parking lot was the hub of the race activity, burned out shells of an RV and many cars lined the western side and tall, steel garbage bins lined the periphery.  We were an oddly nomadic clan of lycra-clad people, walking between a smattering of brightly colored pop-top tents with very expensive, strange looking bicycles. 

People were friendly in that excited way right before something big happens.  Chatty and focused at the same time.  I parked on the edge of the lot, within site of the RV, next to a fellow from the Colobikelaw.com team I recognized from Arkansas.  Couldn’t remember his name, but I was too embarrassed to ask directly, hoping he would offer when he asked my name.  Didn’t. So he will be known as Friendly 55+ guy with the mustache. 

I warmed up on the rollers and then made my way through the rocks at the entrance and rolled back and forth on the dead-end paved road going towards the airport.  Twenty others had the same idea.  Fifteen minutes until my start at 11:24.  Then ten minutes.

Five minutes.  Time for another roll around. 

‘Chris Sauer?’  a loud voice shouts as I roll up towards the start line.  ‘Twenty seconds.’  No time to panic, have second thoughts, worry about what it was I was forgetting.  Clip in and go.

And I’m off and it’s beautiful.  A  wind is blowing right up my butt as I pump out the ten seconds of creatine in a smooth sprint to get up to speed.  I glance down to see the speed… ‘BAM’ That’s the sound of a carbon wheel hitting a pothole.  Holy crap, my right extension is now a few inches lower than my left one. 

I turn left on 120th and head directly west.  The wind is moderate out of the southeast, so this is my tailwind.  I hold my speed at 28, effort is near threshold, but I want to hold back a bit.  The road trends down and I imagine the reverse when I do a u-turn in five miles.  There is paint on the road.  Red is easy, two red lines mean ‘if you hit me, you will be walking’.  But then there are green lines as well.  Green is good?  or bad?  I hit another hole in the road and learn they’re good, the hard way.  Aim for green avoid red.  But then there are yellow lines.  Do I avoid them?  Ride over them?  Or do these mean ‘good luck, you’re on your own?’  I learn later from the fellow from Aspen that we learned about the lines when we were being held up at the start.  I guess twenty seconds wasn’t enough.

I’m passed by someone after the turn-around, and this is disappointing.  I was hoping to hold out longer than 5 miles before being passed.  Soon I’m passed again and again.  Usually as I struggle to maintain speed on a climb.  I feel so fat.  If I lose twenty pounds…  if I lose ten… 

In French, contra le montre, against time.  Against the psyche as well.  There’s so much to think about.  Am I pushing enough?  I glance down and see my heart rate has dropped five beats below my threshold; I push harder.  The rate moves up to 160 and I feel better.

I finish last.  Not in the race, but in my group.  This is disappointing on its face.  My time is twenty seconds over an hour, a respectable time for a big guy I suppose, but I expect more.  There is no hiding in the tt, no way to mask the weakness as it’s exposed.  This is good, but not pleasant.  In me, it creates a resolve to do better.  Unlike the A- on the exam twenty five years ago, there isn’t an amazing outcome.  Everything seems ordinary.