by Natalia Gardiol
Nervousness before a ‘cross race is something I thought I had gotten over. The butterflies and clenched throat in the staging area….old hat. But, for some reason, lining up for the women’s 3/4 race at Quad Cross on Sunday morning, I could barely stand up from the metallic pressure that was seizing my stomach. We staged for an interminably long time. Why was I such a wreck? Going in to this race, I had the rare sensation of feeling like I had an actual chance for a decent result. My fitness was better than last year’s, the field was comprised of riders with whom I’d ridden well in the past, and…despite my sore throat and the previous night’s 1am chain installations, I felt like I could be at the front of the race if I didn’t screw up. So that would explain the nervousness…it was go time, no excuses.
The whistle blew, I stomped on my pedals– no way I was messing up this start. I landed at the front going into turn 1, and a mysterious clarity invaded my psyche. My usual cross race goes like this: jump! pedal pedal pedal! furiously! to the front! and then wait, clinging like nails to a bedsheet, for the inexorable slide backwards. The only question, usually, is how long until sliding time. That could not happen today. I had to trust that over the summer my lungs had learned how much was tolerable…how much was enough to keep a gap, but not dip into the red-zone…at least not right away. The rest of the race is, honestly, a blur of focus. I remember only the pressure of keeping the gas on, of linking up the s-turns, of sprinting hard on the pavement to get that “free speed”…
(photo by Natasha McKittrick [pedalpowerphotography.com])
In fact, I was so focused, going into the downhill s-turns before the first pavement section on the last lap, that I didn’t realize I’d plowed straight off-course. Something was wrong. Where had the course gone?! I looked all around, only to watch the 2nd place rider duck into the left-hand curve…behind me. I realized later that something had broken the course tape at the base of a turn, and I’d ridden right through the downed section. It didn’t matter. I was now in second, with 1/2 a lap to go. I was going to have to catch up.
I backed up onto the course, pointed the right way, and sprinted for all I was worth. Catching her wheel just before the pavement, I sprinted and sprinted and sprinted until I’d passed her and was diving into the right-hander past the pit (and the howling masses). And sprinted and sprinted and sprinted. Down the gravel, around the slick hairpin barrier, up the nightmarish wheel-sucking mud, back through the last pavement section, up onto the grass, and up the grind to the finish one last time. I imagined she was on my tail coming into the line, that she would come around me at any second…I was out of the saddle, lungs scorching, seeing nothing. Finish. Finish. Finish.
