Day 1

Things started off kinda bad, as I heard what sounded like a gunshot and a few seconds later I saw through the splitting peloton one of my teammates sliding on the ground after his tire blew. Bad first kilometer of a four day race.

I felt like a pile of poop today. I tried to help defend some attacks early when it was flat and rolling with a cross wind. If an attack had guys from three teams that we had discussed earlier, then we had to go with.

The climb today was tough. I felt like people were flying, and every turn had more climbing. I was in the red for a full 5 minutes until the end. Definition: "`the red"' means I'm breathing with practically every pedal stroke, my upper body swaggers back and forth to try and muster any energy I can, I'm cross-eyed with pain. Ugh, it hurt and hurt bad. I was maybe halfway in the pack, which was spread over a distance of maybe 500m of the hill. I was happy with that at the moment. But I hadn't saved any for the descent and quickly lost the wheel I had worked so hard to stay on. I had a hard time recovering on the descent with one other teammate, and after pushing more still, we were swallowed up by maybe 15 or 20 riders who were motivated to get back with the front group.

From then on, I was hurting. I had poured too much into the hill and against all advice, I lingered at the back of the pack hiding from the wind as much as I could. An hour later, the inevitable attacks came with a change of the winds, things got guttered (single file inches from the side of the road as people try to get as much draft as possible). I got gapped and fought back through the cars after grabbing water and getting motivated by his shaking head. But things didn't get much better as I joined up with 15 others that had been gapped in the crosswinds as well.

More suffering. The kind of suffering where you just want it to end. You want to get under the finish line, grab some of the free Coca Cola, lay your bike down in the grass, and take a nap. All the little excuses pop up.

The champions are made from those who are strong and brave enough to hammer with the best, attacking and defending and winning and coming close, not caring about how tired they are, not caring about 5 years down the line, not caring about tomorrow.

I've realized that if you are on the brink of cracking, you have three choices. This is important because you have to deal with this decision for hours at a time every day. You can: 1) Stop, get in the car, and face the disgrace. 2) Try hard and fail, just barely losing the wheel ahead of you, getting shouts from riders behind you, and possibly riding alone for the last 50km of the race. 3) Push through the pain, mustering everything you can to stay on the wheel, and get carried a few more kilometers closer to home.

When you haven't done your job, your manhood shrivels. When you haven't done your job and you know you could have, your manhood shrivels more.

After the race I felt terrible. Chills, nauseated, ready to lay down and die. Having my parents here was great, but only encouraged my self-pity. I let myself feel terrible for a full 20 hours. Wanting to hide in a bath, or in a closet full of fluffy blankets, or even crawling into a hole would have done fine. Just wanted to spend a few days somewhere else. No more Spanish, no more racing, no more anything. Just wanted to escape. If there had been a taxi outside, I would have jumped in.