I just finished stage 1 of the venerable Fitchburg Longsjo Classic Stage Race, and all I can think was “what the hell was that all about?!?”
Seriously…it was by far the most bizarre FSR stage in all of my 12 years of racing (to be precise, I have only raced Fitchburg a total of 10 times previously, this year is number 11, as I skipped it last year, but whatever, moving on).
First – we had over 90 starters. And we did not have many of the major North American pro teams present as we had in years past. This is somewhat confusing for me, as we are lucky if we can get 15 women to show up for any local race during the season, yet we somehow manage almost 100 riders at Fitchburg. I realize we do have quite a few Canadian teams and others from around the US, but we also had a fair number of New England based teams who have been MIA at all other races this season. (I realize I avoid races too, but I am not a team of 5 or more riders, I am one person, so I figure I won’t be missed if I don’t show up..but when entire teams are consistently planning a race schedule that avoids 75% of the races in our area…it doesn’t help the participation levels in the sport, you know what I mean?)
Act 1: Staging
So, the start. We staged on Highland Ave across from the first turn. I got there early. I was on the front. Then they said “when the Cat 2 men finish, there will be at least a 5 minute wait before you will proceed on the course.” And when the Cat 2 men went by with 1 to go, the entire women’s field literally rushed the edge of the road. The guy came back and repeated his statement about the 5 minute delay. Then they finally removed the wooden crowd barrier to let us through as Richard Fries announced there would be no call ups of other unnecessary histrionics, and the women literally sprinted forward to get to the start line. Awesome, now I was at the back. I was wondering if they realized that the course was quite wide and relatively easy to move up on and what’s the deal with this aggressive pushing to line up at the start of an eleven lap race?
Act 2: Laps 1 and 2, or The Crash that Never Happened and The Ravine
Nothing happened on lap 1, but on lap 2 there was the strangest non crash I have ever witnessed in my life. We were on the back stretch after coming out of the chicane, and we were just riding along – nothing aggressive, nothing unusual – when all of a sudden, a bunch of riders on the left side of the road appeared to just ride right into the right curb. Or something like that. It was like they didn’t realize the road started to curve back to the right and they were all just headed straight towards the left. So of course they all panicked, which started a massive swelling to the middle, which then caused the riders on the right side of the road to start to move towards the right edge. And I was on the right. And the riders in front of me did a combination of lock up the brakes/put a foot down. And I somehow managed to avoid riding into them by allowing myself to be forced into the dirt shoulder on the right. Except – this was no ordinary shoulder. It was about 4″ wide, very soft soil, and was bordered by a series of cement fence posts connected by a metal cable, forming some sort of a guard rail. And the reason for the guard rail? There was a ravine on the right hand side of the road. In the 10 previous years I had been in this race I had never noticed the ravine before, but seeing as you are literally at the highest point of the course, and probably the highest point in the city, and everything slopes downhill away from there, it kinda makes sense that there might be a ravine. And all I was thinking at that point was “great…I am going to crash down this ravine, but not before clothes lining myself on this metal cable. Awesome.”
And then I managed to steer back onto the pavement and chase back onto the back of the pack as they were turning onto John Fitch Highway just before I would have plunged to my imminent death into said ravine.
And all was well with the world.
Act 3: Someone let a Gap Open
Lap 3 was a sprint lap and it was fast, but nothing unusual and I was having an easy enough time on the Pearl Street climb. I was, however, really struggling on John Fitch. I was spinning out my 53×12 (remember, I have 650c wheels, and at the speeds we were hitting on that section I was in need of an 11t cog). I do not ever recall struggling with that on my Terry, but my Terry weighed about 4 lbs more than my Orbea, and I was about 2 lbs heavier then, so the combined weight loss of 6 lbs is apparently a detriment to my descending. Then on lap 4 (or maybe it was 5), we went through the start finish and then through the feedzone and chicane and things were strung out. The front of the pack was driving it pretty hard (Thanks, Colavita!) and suddenly as we got onto the backstretch, there was a separation. Riders were losing contact, and anyone left in the back half of the field was about to get gapped. I looked up, saw the gap, and thought “Oh….swell…” We chased around the offending gap openers and tried to close it, and at one point I decided to shift down another gear when I realized I was already in my lowest gear – the 53×12. And I was spinning it out. I stood up and sprinted, but it was futile, and I watched as the front of the pack rode away.
Act 4: The obnoxious loud mouth woman
I found myself in a small group of about 5 riders. One of them immediately decided as we rounded the corner onto John Fitch to start barking orders at us to chase. She insisted we chase. Then she would take a monster pull, sprinting downhill, and expect one of us to come around her. And of course, none of us did, because if were actually capable of doing that kind of a pull, we wouldn’t be back here, now would we?
I can say this about my long storied career in cycling – if there is one race I know, it’s this one. And I know that once you lose contact on that course, you are not ever getting back on. Resistance is futile. And in reality, that is ok. You can finish over 2 laps down in this race and still make the time cut. My rationale for how to approach getting dropped in this stage is to relax and save it for tomorrow. After all – it’s a stage race, and once you get dropped, your GC is screwed…might as well go for stage results rather than flogging yourself repeatedly to try and chase back on to a field that is never coming back. But the loud mouth woman in my group was having none of that. Oh no.
Act 5: The Chase Group Grows in Size
Eventually we picked up more riders from the front who were getting dropped, and some more came from behind. Now our group was 10-12 strong, and pacelining became more of an exercise in maintaining a respectable speed without overworking ourselves rather than an exercise in futility. And we were pretty good about maintaining the pace line…except for the loud mouth, who suddenly shut up and made no more appearances at the front. During an uneventful trip through the feedzone (why do we even have a feedzone in this race? It’s 35miles and takes less than 90 minutes to complete…can’t everyone finish this on two bottles?), the loud mouth woman started yelling to us that she needed a cold bottle. I think she said this in anticipation that one of us would magically produce one from the depths of our jersey, or perhaps retrieve one from a feeder and hand it to her. When no one responded, she rode over to the feed zone people and actually asked someone who was holding out a bottle if they were offering it to anyone in particular. As if there are just shit tons of people working the feedzone in the circuit race offering neutral cold water.
Act 6: The finishing laps
So with 2 to go, our group of 12 riders actively pace lining suddenly became 4 riders actively pace lining, with 8 more just sitting on. One of my former Terry teammates Ann Guzman was among the 4 pace lining riders, and she yelled for anyone with ideas of sitting and waiting for the sprint to knock if off and just pull through. Apparently her words fell on deaf ears, and it remained only 4 of us doing the pacemaking. And of course, with our final trip down John Fitch, a certain loud mouth woman came barrelling around our group and launched herself to lead up the hill and distance herself from our group to take the coveted 56th spot, at a whopping 5:53 down. Oh yes, that was definitely worth sprinting for.
I crossed the finish line and saw quite a number of riders already standing there, riders who I was surprised to see had finished ahead of me (later on I discovered that they had been pulled and were actually one lap down. Happiness and Joy – I do not suck as bad as I thought!). Dejectedly I rode to my car, where I had to quickly change and get the bike packed up because I had a phone interview for a job prospect at 4pm and this was the only time they could do it today. The phone interview took longer than I thought and successfully drained all of the life in my cell phone battery. At one point a team of women who were parked next to me began a rather loud conversation that led to the comment “well of course we’ll be using a condom for back up protection”, and just as that was uttered, I noticed the person on the other end of my line conducting the interview hesitated briefly. “Oh, wonderful…I’m trying to do a phone interview and the girl next to me is talking about safe sex.” I had half a mind to say to my interviewer “can you hang on a minute” and then shout out to my compatriot on the next car “YO! Enough with the sex talk, can’t you see I am on the phone here?”
But I just kept my mouth shut.
July 2nd, 2010 | 
