Wildflower: The Bike

I was pretty excited to get out of the water and onto the bike, since I felt good. Before my swim start, wandering around in the transition area, I had almost been run over by some pro's doing their bike-to-swim transition - for them all it consisted of was ripping of their wetsuit, clipping on their helmet, grabbing their bike and running to the bike start line - their shoes were clipped onto their pedals, and I guess they just jam their feet in once they are on. This is nuts, not to mention sockless. Have I said already that I think one of the coolest things about this sport is that you are in the same race as the best people in the world at it? Not that I would say we are competing. They are just there, being freaks, quite close, and that's interesting.

So. I ran to my rack, I ripped off my suit, pulled my jersey on, socks on, shoes on, gloves on, sunglasses on, helmet on, grabbed my bike and ran. James and Justin were right at the mounting line - neat again! Here's a picture they took! I'm the one in blue looking way more action-y than whoever THAT is next to me.

Weird energy took me up the first mini-hill standing and through the first mile, just until I began the ascent up Beach Hill. Then I did what I normally do when met with scary hills on the bike: can't stop my eyes from going all big and scared, wonder how I'm going to make it, put my head down, and start pedaling. Look, sorry reader, but Fuck the Guy who put a 1 mile climb + less severe but still WHAT climbing for another 3 miles after that right after I get out of the water. DID YOU SEE? I SWAM A BUNCH? WHAT'S YOUR ISSUE?
Point being that even though I powered up Beach on the practice weekend, on the day I actually pulled over, put my right foot on land for 30 seconds, WTF'd a couple times, and kept going. WhatEVER.

The special thing about being a good swimmer and a mediocre cyclist is getting passed every 5-10 seconds for basically the entirety of the bike course. Meh. The weather was nice, I tried to enjoy myself, and I was averaging about 1.5 - 2 mph faster than I had a month before. There's just not much to complain about.

As the miles counted up to 41 and the dreaded Nasty Grade, my brain got a bit cloudy. I was doing a lot of negotiating with myself - I essentially accepted that I would be walking my bike up Nasty, but left a small sliver of a chance that I might surprise myself. I think this sort of giving up was the only option I had besides berating myself for not believing in myself outright, and so was some perverse respite and good mental survival option. Have I not explained Nasty Grade and the black cloud it built in my brain? Here's a course elevation:
You don't need to understand much to see that piece of crap matterhorn towards the end. GROSS. They - the tri community, universally - call it Nasty Grade, no article. That's its name, it's personified. You know the only soulless things that get names like people? Demons. The point is I was ready to walk the last bit of Nasty.

The way Nasty works is this: you start climbing, and its a good, consistent grade for about 3 miles - you (if you are are me) can go about 10-11 mph up this - down from a usual 17 or so. The breeze drops away, so there is suddenly no noise but your gears, your breathing, the leather of your shoes heaving, and your inner monologue. The road winds, and as you turn corners, the pack of cyclists goes in and out of view - a scattered mass of backs in colored jerseys, rhythmically humping up and down as they slowly power up ground you have not quite reached, which part of you doubts you will reach as they have reached, which part of you takes their having reached as proof that you can reach, a scattered mass that understands you but is not doing this with you, that you are part of having your very private struggle. The experience is not unique, but the struggle makes it very specific, and this sense of going in and out of individuality and community is strange - I think it is a pendulum of continuance as much as the muscles.

Nasty turns a few times, flattens out slightly a few times - has a water stop just before the last big surprising turn, where kids are handing out water bottles and high fiving, which is as cartoonishly heartening as if I were a marooned WWII paratrooper being given bread by village children. The kids really helped. JESUS I KEEP SWITCHING TENSES AND VOICE. That's a sign of trauma, right??

So the real dirtbag thing on Nasty is there is this steep climb that leads to a sharp left - its one of those turns that disappears off and to the left in a way that just has to be a crest, it has a telephone pole at the top that looks so alone that the wires can only be falling off to where you can't see, and this. just. has. to be. the end. You ride up, using the pole as your goal - when you get there, you're there, you're there, and you crest and turn...and there is this unbelievably straight, dishearteningly steep...climb...still ahead of you. Betrayal is palpable, and the wrinkles in your brain become question marks - why is this happening? What haven't you proved? Why was that turn built like a trick ending? So this is where I had told myself I could walk. I knew the trick turn was there, and I was convinced I would be tricked by it. I turned the corner, and my memory of the sight of this climb and the actual sight of this climb left their red and blue corners of the ring, ran towards each other and became the 3D knowledge of the climb that I was really on. While those reckonings met, I found myself still pedaling, all the heaving backs ahead of me pedaling...I don't know why I didn't stop. The climb was surely not what I had made it in my head, in weeks of anxiety; not that it wasn't a beast, but not the beast I had expected. A guy in a speedo on the side of the road holding an inflatable woman told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'll tell ya - platitude as pure jet fuel - the power of just a bit of humor to put the worst suffering into perspective! I could see a teammate up ahead, powering up standing in her pedals, and I was climbing at 4.5 mph - a month earlier I'd been barely managing to keep my bike upright at 3 mph. I have no idea where the will comes from, but it bubbled up, and like anonymous cyclists had called out to me in the same spot a month earlier - Nasty didn't last forever.

The rest of the ride was still climbing, still struggle, and not comfortable at all. But it just doesn't need recounted - that is, my self doesn't need to remember and relive those last miles, because they weren't where proof happened. The hill was the hill and the hill was what I made it, and I got up both.