How to race yer fuggin’ bike
March 7, 2018 § 2 Comments
One of my best friends on Planet Zebulon (not to mention earth) sent me a report from the cockpit after the UCLA Road Race this past weekend. G$ is one of the best bike racers there is. He wins time trails, hill clumbs, crit thingies, and most of all, toughballs road races. He is a nice guy but not really because what he does to other racers isn’t nice.
At first blush you might think what follows is a race report. However, I ran it through the Wanky Bike Race Report Transmogrifier in order to interpret it for us mere mortals. I’m reprinting below in segments, along with the transmogrifier’s output.
Race Report: It was supposed to be a rainy, dark and stormy morning, and in Venice at 7:00 AM, it was. I’ve gotta admit I was looking forward to a nasty weather race filled with cold, snow, wind. I knew that bad weather would thin the field, and only the stupid and the strong would bother racing, both, actually, and sometimes in the same person.
Transmogrifier Output: Twiggly Jeff K. and others with crashophobia would be home in bed.
Race Report: This year the promoter took away the 55+ category, so I was stuck racing with possibly the fastest non-pro race category, the 45+.
Transmogrifier Output: G$ was going to be racing against twiggly climbing hammers twelve years his junior. In old fart years, one year equals seven younger fart years.
Race Report: As I drove the 1.5 hours to the race it rained for the first hour, but the last 30 minutes it was dry, cloudy and threatening, but dry! And not that cold, maybe 51 degrees whereas it was supposed to be 44 and rain, with gusty winds, and huge turd squalls, hailing meatballs. It was windy, and I was pretty happy that it wasn’t cold and rainy! And so many of the guys who thought it was gonna be nasty, all stayed home! Better for me!
Transmogrifier Output: G$ is a bike racer. Many other licensed riders with very expensive equipment and fancy clothing are not.
Race Report: Tom Doung had set up a little Big Orange team campground; nice! Tom and our race committee are awesome.
Transmogrifier Output: Big Orange team genie Tom Duong is the best dude ever. Sets up the tent, prepares the traditional goulash stew, brews the Body of Beach Performance elixir, and ensures that all Big O racers are lavishly cared for. Other teams can only dream of this level of professional support.
Race Report: It was so nice weather wise, I changed my whole plan, and went with basic SoCal morning gear: Bibs, jersey, arm warmers, and I did have my clear rain jacket for an emergency meatball storm. Pro tip from a non-pro: The clear rain jacket that stows in your rear pocket is super key for rain racing, since the officials can still see your number thru the clear jacket and you can keep it on while you race, if you need to as the meatballs hail down.
Transmogrifier Output: Don’t race in your down jacket and ski goggles.
Race Report: There were a few really fast guys in the race, LaGrange hammer James Cowan, tough guy and national crit champ Matthew Carinio, and of course my nemesis, Thurlow Rogers, world road and time trial champ, Olympian, etc., and his teammate, Tony Brady, who has won the 35+ San Dimas time trial, and regularly beats us all in road races. Great …
Transmogrifier Output: This race was gonna be so fucking hard it made your legs hurt just looking at the start list. You’d be better off in a dungeon chained to a rack than trying to contest this lung-busting, leg-shredding, ego-shriveling death march.
Race Report: As we started, it was a pretty good headwind up the climb, and we all climbed pretty slowly, since everyone believed it would damage the leader more than the followers. Nevertheless, the hill is super hard at any speed and we lost most of the 25 or 30 brave souls who drove all the way out to this place to ride by themselves, so now there were only six of us.
Transmogrifier Output: Everyone got dropped in the first two miles. Out of the toughest of the tough leaky prostate racers in SoCal, all were dipped into the wood chipper ten minutes in. Now doesn’t a 48-mile windy, hilly solo TT sound funnnnn?
Race Report: The descent was fast, and cross-windy. I hit 55 mph, yikes!
Transmogrifier Output: You or I would have crashed and died.
Race Report: As we hit the bottom of the downhill, we entered a rolling section, about five miles long, which led into the 1-mile climb where there was a KOM award for the first racer up the hill to claim. So as we rounded the corner and began this section, Tony Brady accelerated, and rode away with no response from anyone. I couldn’t believe it, I was sitting fourth wheel, you could see everyone thinking, “It’s certainly not my responsibility to chase!” Unless of course, you just wanted race for second. “Guys! He’s not coming back!” I yelled, hoping that someone would hit the gas for even ten pedal strokes and bring him back, now it was more like twenty pedal strokes, and he was up the road! I should have gone but I would have just given everyone a free ride up to the leader, and I guess everyone else was thinking the same thing. I yelled again, “You guys really just wanna race for second?” I heard only one response. Thurlow said, “You mean 3rd?” Meaning that he would beat to bits everyone in our little group. Smartass!
Transmogrifier Output: G$ hesitated and everyone (four other mostly dead riders, one of whom was the leader’s teammate) waited for him to close the gap. He didn’t.
Race Report: Well, Thurlow was in the ‘ol catbird seat and that’s because, he could do the least amount of work in our group, and whatever we did, if we chased, he could sit on, and if we didn’t chase, he could sit on. Either way he would be the freshest at the end to win the bunch sprint, and if we didn’t catch his teammate, their team would win and maybe get second, too. And if we did catch his teammate, Thurlow had a great chance of winning because he is a fast finisher.
Transmogrifier Output: Bike racing arithmetic is pretty simple.
Race Report: Oh, and guess what? Nobody could work, it must have been a national holiday. “I’m too tired,” “I have a hangnail,” etc. And there was a guy in the group wearing a plain blue jersey, who I didn’t know, whose two race numbers were flapping around like open parachutes! A rookie move, using only four pins, one in each corner, creating two little parachutes on the rider’s back, and noisy in the crazy wind. Were we rationing safety pins or something? Rookie or not, he made the split and was in with the front riders, and of course he wasn’t working either.
Transmogrifier Output: A hangnail is a truly painful, bike racer career-wrecking condition. Unless you have an inhaler. Also, flappy numbers please stay home.
Race Report: So, I got in the wind and kept trying to keep the pace high, and every so often, I’d put in an attack, when the others let a gap open up behind me. But oh man, those guys were all tired as heck and had major hangnail issues preventing them from taking a turn at the front, but they could triple the watts in a flash to chase me down. That really drives me crazy. If I could have just slipped away from those bloodsuckers I would gladly have put my head down and made a real effort to catch the one-man Brady Bunch.
Transmogrifier Output: G$ made the race so fucking hard that people were barfing hairballs. If he was gonna get second, or third, it was going to cost the sitters a liver.
Race Report: Tony had one minute and twenty seconds on us as we started the main climb, and we had 3 laps and 37 miles to go. I set the pace up the climb, and then again on the stair steps, with very little help from the others. Thurlow was glued on my back wheel and I wasn’t going anywhere without him. Thurlow is a funny cat. I have beaten him year after year in the uphill San Dimas time trial, by a lot! Sometimes in the 1-minute gap area, but in a road race, he can lock onto my wheel, and I can climb my little heart out, but he will not lose my wheel! He can suffer like no other! He is also a 4th Quarter kind of racer, for instance the last two years at the Mammoth Gran Fondo, by mile 80 I was in the front group, consisting of pros and former pros, and we dropped super old ex-pro Thurlow Rogers (58), but he chased back on, and beat me both times. We’ve only raced each other for the last sixteen years.
Transmogrifier Output: Thurlow has won more bike races than the rest of the field combined had ever entered.
Race Report: Anyway, up the climbs we kept losing a guy or two, and they they would chase back on during the downhill, and we get Tony back to just under one minute, continuing our dysfunctional chase. Flappy looked strong, and he would sometimes rotate through, and take a hard pull, even up the climbs, so he really had my attention. He was mostly sitting on, but showing that he can really lay down the wood. With two laps to go, and just after the main climb, I hit the jets hard and tried to escape our small group, and I did! I thought I was free but here came Flappy, and guess what? Because he didn’t want me to be lonely he brought all his buddies with him. So, I have to admit the race was getting to me, and I was angry that these guys could smash such hard efforts to chase me but would barely lift a finger to chase the danged leader of the race. I yelled at Flappy, “What the heck was that?” and he responded, “Did I do the bad?” with some French or Russian accent, and I responded “Yes, you did the bad! Why are you wasting so much energy chasing me when you won’t even help chase the leader?” It occurred to me that he might not have had any idea what I had just said to him, but since I had been bitching to all the guys in our group for the last two hours, you’d think that he would be apprised already that I was less than pleased with everyone sitting on watching me do the work. All the while Thurlow was just laughing, and enjoying my little show, knowing that he was gonna mop us all up for second place. Meanwhile Brady Bunch was two minutes ahead. The moto official was giving us updates two times a lap, which was really cool.
Transmogrifier Output: Bike racing is hard and frustrating and miserable and nasty, which is why we do it.
Race Report: Anyway, I really can’t remember now as I’m writing this what the hell lap we were on, but I do remember that Flappy started to help! And with a lap to go, he was taking some real meaty pulls, that if you’d put tomato sauce on ’em and served up some pasta you’d have had dinner for twelve. Now there were just three of us. Thurlow, Flappy, and me, and as we hit the top of the main climb for the last time, I was getting tired. Thurlow attacked hard and got a little gap, and everything I know about Thurlow is that he doesn’t come back without a fight. Luckily, we entered that little downhill portion just before the stair step climb, and I slammed it into meatball gear, and Flappy and I caught back on. Now Flappy puts it in his meatball gear and sets a stinky hard tempo up the climb, and we dropped Thurlow! That never happens! I mean, we really lost him. You could have sent out a St. Bernard and it wouldn’t have found him. As we crested the top, I couldn’t see him. We prepared for the long downhill, and I really wanted to stay on the gas because nobody goes down a hill like Thurlow. More meatballs! We did not let him catch back up!
Transmogrifier Output: Every time you finish a bike race ahead of Thurlow, light a candle, circle the date on your calendar, and make sure you have a photo because no one is gonna believe you.
Race Report: We rolled fast down the hill, and there was no sight of Thurlow, I think we even lost the St. Bernards.
Transmogrifier Output: At the end of a hard hilly road race against top-shelf competition, Max and G$ still had enough meatballs in the pot to ride harder than they did at the start.
Race Report: When we got to the bottom, Flappy said, “I will not challenge you for the place of second, my name is Max.” Well, you could have knocked me over with a mini-meatball, mostly because I was roasted, but also, because that was a really unexpectedly cool gesture.
Transmogrifier Output: Flappy is a good dude, ergo, not really a bike racer.
Race Report: Moto guy said we were only fifty seconds from the leader, so, more meatballs!! Max and I worked together over the rollers. We got to the bottom of the last climb, both on fumes, but now we were forty seconds from Tony and there was no possible way to catch, unless he fell off of his bike, and maybe not even then. As we approached the finish line, Max fell back a bit and let me ride across ahead of him. Racing … for … second … place.
END
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Much more brutal than I imagined…and I was there!
Pretty much the best race report ever. The translation helped this non-racer tremendously.