CX Nats 2012

The 2012 Cyclocross National Championships were this week in Madison, WI. I was there. Here's my story.

Monday, January 2, 2012:

I left Marietta with two bikes, six wheels, two boxes of spare parts, a tool box, a stationary trainer, a gigantic plastic tub of cycling clothes, a suitcase with regular clothes, my computer, three helmets, three pairs of cycling shoes, mud boots, tennis shoes, Whole Foods honey roasted peanut butter, rice cakes, and a good attitude. I drove to Evansville, IN and spent the night with my cousin Lindsey, her husband Brian, and their children: Kaden (human), Bella (canine), and Bentley (canine). They fed me lots of good food and took great care of me. Thanks, Blanchards! I love you guys!

I also made a quick stop to see one of my biggest fans - Grandmommy.

I woke up early Tuesday morning and drove to Madison. The drive from Evansville, IN to Madison, WI is boring.

When I got to Madison, I went straight to the course and rode a few laps. It was frozen and terrifying. I went to bed feeling a bit freaked out about Wednesday's single speed race.

I woke up extremely early on Wednesday and went over my bikes. After I had them both dialed in, I headed to the course. I was happy to find that course had thawed quite a bit. By the time the single speed race started, the sheet ice had turned into ice/mud. I can ride ice/mud.

I only did one single speed race this season (which I won), so I had to start in the back of 56 guys. I spent the first lap and a half escaping a scrum of crashes and bottlenecks. When I reached the front of the pack, the leaders were already well up the road, so I set the throttle to cruise and rolled in for 15th. I was expecting top ten, but considering my start position, I was satisfied.

After the race, I had a beer and a salad at a local brewpub and then headed back to my hotel, where I washed my bike in the shower. It was a pretty good day.

On Thursday, I did a few more laps of the course and then drove to Plainfield, IL (near Chicago) to stay with Joy and Aaron and their fantastic two-year-old daughter Emma. When I got there, I found that my thermal skinsuit had shown up. It was supposed to show up before I left Marietta, but when the company called me to tell me that it wouldn't ship until the day I was to leave town, I told them to ship it to Joy and Aaron.

I wondered out loud if there was a screen printing company nearby, and Joy immediately picked up the phone and got the number of Rocket Imaging from her brother in law! I mocked up a quick jersey design in preparation.

Sarah flew in that night, so we picked her up at the airport. I was unbelievably happy to be reunited with my other half.

Friday morning, I awoke to unseasonably warm temperatures. I dropped my skinsuit off at Rocket Imaging and then had some coffee and breakfast. After that I headed out for a ride... in shorts... in January... in Chicago. I found some great bike trails and XC ski trails and spun the cobwebs out of my legs. On the way back to the house, I stopped by and picked up my newly customized skinsuit. I think it turned out pretty good.

For dinner, we had Chinese at the house. Another good day.

We spent Saturday touring Chicago. It was awesome!

I went to bed early Saturday night.

We left Joy and Aaron's at about 8:00 and headed to Madison. We got there around 11:30 (pregnant wife + lots of coffee for me = lots of rest stops).

I took my time getting dressed and looking over my bikes. I finally started riding around about 12:30. My A bike, that had felt fine on Saturday, suddenly wouldn't shift. I turned around to head back to the van, and the chain broke.

I pushed the bike over to the expo area to find a chain. All of the SRAM guys were busy in the pits, so I stopped at the Shimano trailer. I asked a Shimano tech if he would sell me a chain. He said no. The largest bicycle component manufacturer in the world would not sell a chain to an elite rider sixty minutes before the start of nats. Shimano, thank you for making your customer service policy clear to me.

I jogged back to the van and asked Sarah to head to the local bike shop for a chain. When she got back, I put the chain on, and the bike shifted fine. I hurriedly changed out of my warm-up clothes (without ever having warmed up) and into my new skinsuit and headed over to staging.

I was called up in the last row. There were around 100 guys in the race. Before Wednesday's race, the largest race I had ever done was 40 guys. No problem, right?

The gun went off, and I passed a few guys right away. As soon as the group hit the grass, people started crashing and getting tangled in course tape. The bottlenecks were amazing. I spent an unbelievable amount of time completely stopped with nowhere to go. After the first lap, I had moved up about 15 spots and crashed four times. As I started the second lap, I thought now the race starts.

I was wrong.

When I hit the grass again, I could tell that something was wrong. Every time I hit a rut, I could feel something moving that shouldn't have been moving. When I picked up my bike to run around an especially slick 180 turn and my rear wheel fell off, I identified the source of the problem. Somewhere in the first lap, my quick release had been flipped. In twenty plus years of riding bikes with quick release skewers, I have NEVER had that happen. In addition to my wheel falling off, my chain had derailed and wedged itself between my chain guide and my frame - another first. In my semi-hypoxic state, I fumbled with the wheel and chain for what felt like half an hour. I moved over to the side of the course and struggled with my bike while all the guys I had passed flew by. When I finally got my equipment together, I put my foot on the gas, but I must have forgotten to put my hands on the steering weel. I crashed about a million times.

The 2012 Cyclocross National Championships taught me a few things:

1. If you know that you will be called up at the back of a 100 person field, don't get your hopes up. Unless you are EXTREMELY gifted, you're not going anywhere.

2. To be good in mud, you must race in mud. Grass crits and mud races are ENTIRELY different beasts. I can fake it well, but at the top level, faking it doesn't work.

3. I'm sure more stuff will come to me as this experience sinks in.

After the race, I was not a happy dude, so Sarah and I got dinner and hit the road. Planning to drive through the night, I drank a sugar-free NOS after dinner. After 200 miles, Sarah became very uncomfortable in the car (remember - she's 27 weeks pregnant), so we stopped at a motel in Bloomington. Due to the NOS, I'm up at 2:oo am writing this blog post.

Stuttering in the Classroom

Have you seen this?

Elizabeth Snyder, a college professor, asked 16-year-old Philip Garber, a stutterer, not to speak in class "so we do not infringe on other students' time."

Are you kidding me?

I do not advocate giving stutterers special treatment, but the classroom should be a safe place for all students. It is where today's students develop the confidence and skills that they need to become tomorrow's professionals. If this student has something to add to the class discussion, he should be allowed to do so.

As a stutterer, I would tell Snyder to show kindness and patience. If Garber's experience is anything like my own, he gets knocked down enough without his professor adding to it.

In Spite Of

A few days ago, Sarah and I stopped by my parents' place to see their new furniture, and we sat down to chat. I was having a noticeably difficult time with my speech, so I said something like "stuttering is kicking my ass lately."

Everyone agreed with my assessment and said encouraging things, but my dad said something that made me think:

"People always tell me that they are impressed with what you have accomplished in spite of stuttering."

In spite of. That phrase stood out to me. I began thinking about the accomplishments of which I am proudest, and it hit me that most of them were done in spite of something. For example, I have only won bike races in bad weather or with some kind of mechanical problem. When the sun is shining and my bike works perfectly, I can get second or third, but I have never won.

Last weekend, I drove four hours to a cyclocross race in Fayetteville, TN. There was a prime (cash prize) on the first lap, so I took off at top speed. I quickly got a small gap and poured it on. I was going to get the prime easily... or so I thought. I overcooked a turn and landed on my right shift lever. It broke off and left me with one gear and no control over my rear brake. To make matters worse, I was using a different front wheel than I had planned to use, so my front brake was not set up properly and barely touched the rim when I pulled the lever.

While I assessed the damage to my bike, the whole field passed me. By the time I got going again, I was at least half a lap down. I rode easily to the start/finish line where I planned to pack it in and head home, but when I crossed the line, something clicked in me. I didn't drive four hours to do one lap. I was going to finish this race, and I was not going to get last.

I began to pedal like a man possessed. I couldn't brake going into turns, so I would unclip my inside foot and try to slide. I was riding "tape to tape" with a good amount of speed and little to no control. Things weren't going well - I was in my element.

As the laps ticked off, I made steady progress. The crowd was great and cheered me on every lap. In spite of three more crashes (due to my lack of brakes), I managed to finish in fifth place. Right after I crossed the line, the race promoter handed me some cash even though I had finished out of the money. "You put on a good show," he said. "You got back up and kept racing in spite of a disabled bike."

There are many afflictions that are far worse than stuttering, and I don't pretend that my life is any harder than anyone else's. In fact, my life might be easier because stuttering has taught me how to succeed in spite of.

Now, if I could just figure out how to act when things go right...

Happy Tuesday, everybody.

No more small talk

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I've been busy. Hopefully you have too.

Last week, I was at the start line of a cyclocross race, and I noticed that a fellow racer was running very narrow tires, so I asked him what size they were.

Me: Are th-th-th-th-those t-t-t-t-tw-tw-twenty eights?

Him: No, they're th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-thirties.

About half of the racers started laughing, and I turned my gaze toward the ground. When the race started, I decided to go all out for the first lap to "get back" at the guy. I must have been fast, because after the first lap, there were only three of us at the front, and he wasn't there. After the adrenaline wore off, the wind went out of my sails. It hit me that the one place I was safe from stuttering (my bike) was no longer safe. I rode the rest of the race halfheartedly and finished third - last of the selection that I had created.

After the race, I didn't hang around for the podium. I just rode back to my car and drove home. I felt like an inhuman shell. I was not a bike racer. I was not the guy that rounded out the podium. I was the guy who couldn't talk.

I guess that's what I get for trying to make small talk with strangers.

Ouch.

My wife and I picked up lunch for my family today. My mom and dad wrote down their orders on a piece a paper, and Sarah and I went to Subway.

When we got there, I took the piece of paper up to the counter and began to read. My mom had requested a six inch turkey sub on whole wheat with everything except hot peppers. As I stuttered through the list of ingredients, the woman behind the counter strained to make out what I was saying. It was touch and go for a moment, but the sandwich was completed.

Next, Sarah ordered her sandwich: tuna on wheat with lettuce, tomato, pickles, vinegar, salt, and pepper. I caught myself feeling jealous about her effortless delivery.

I was up again. I began to recite my father's order, but the woman behind the counter could not understand me. She apologized and seemed genuinely upset that she was unable to decipher what I was saying. I tried again... and again, but as my tension level mounted, my stuttering became worse. I did something that I never do.

"Sarah?" I looked to my wife, and she immediately knew what I was asking. She gently took the piece of paper from me and read it to the patient sandwich artist. I looked down at the floor in shame. "It's OK, baby," Sarah said.

I couldn't go out like this. I began my own sandwich order, and I stuttered like a fool, but I got the idea of a chicken-salad-on-flat-bread across to my friend the sandwich artist. She smiled sweetly and made my sandwich. That was the worst part.

When someone makes fun of me, I can choose to let it go, or I can choose to get angry. If I let it go, I am not bothered. If I get angry, I can deal with it. On the other hand, when someone is sympathetic, I feel crippled. I feel like someone for whom people should feel sorry. That is hard to let go. I haven't had to ask someone to speak for me since I was a child. Today, I felt like a child.

After a hard ride (and one or two adult beverages), I feel OK, but today hurt.

Disappointment

Last week, my wife and I drove 1000 miles to a pair of bike races in Pennsylvania and D.C. We arrived at our hotel on Friday night, and we were so tired that we left my bike locked on our car and went straight to sleep. After a wonderful nine hours of sleep, we made coffee and walked down the stairs to the car. Much to our surprise, we found that my bike had been stolen.

A police officer came and took our information, but he made it clear to us that the bike would not be found. It was gone. I was supposed to race that night in a race for which I had trained for months, but I did not have a bike.

A wonderful company called SRAM allowed me to use a bike that night, but it was not a good fit, and I finished anonymously in the pack. The next day was even worse. I borrowed another bike from SRAM, and I was involved in a crash. I hurt my knee pretty bad and got a concussion, but I managed to get back into the race and finish anonymously in the pack once again.

If it weren't for bad luck...

People often tell me that I have bad luck. They might be right. Within the last twelve weeks, my house burned down, my bike got stolen, and I crashed bad enough that I have to see an orthopedic surgeon. Sarah and I seem to go from one crisis to the next, but it never seems to affect me. I deal with disappointment well. Stuttering strikes again.

Life as a stutterer is a series of small disappointments. I picture myself telling a joke to a rapt group of friends who laugh hysterically as I deliver the punchline, but in reality, I stutter so bad that they lose me halfway through the telling of the joke. I picture myself ordering lunch without having to spell out my chosen menu item four times, but in reality, I end up getting extra onions instead of no onions or two kinds of cheese instead of no cheese because the server just can't understand me. I pictured myself saying my wedding vows clearly and loudly, but in reality...

All of these little disappointments have taught me that there is light at the end of the tunnel (if only so another tunnel can begin). No disappointment lasts forever, and I only lose when I stop trying.

Sorry I haven't called...

So... it has been a while.

I could give a whole slew of excuses for my lack of posts, but I will not. I will just say that much has happened since the fire and leave it at that.

I'm back. Will you have me?

Good.

The last two months have made up what I like to call a "bad speech cycle." My speech has been garbled and strained, and I have endured more than my share of awkward encounters. For example:

I leave on Thursday for a pair of races in Pennsylvania and DC, and my bike needs a new bottom bracket bearing. This specific bearing is a little bit hard to find, so I had to call every shop in my area on Saturday. Almost every single shop hung up on me or told me that I was "breaking up." Each time, this made me a little angrier. I would call back and say "hi, I just called looking for a bearing and you hung up on me. I stutter. Please stay on the line."

Each time, the person on the other end of the line would say something along the lines of "I'm so sorry" or "I didn't mean to offend you." They didn't mean any harm, but damn - a new bearing for my bike shouldn't cost me my dignity.

I have experienced countless other similar encounters recently, and I'm starting to lose my sense of humor. I mean, yeah, I can be quite a spectacle, but is stuttering really so rare that people just don't know how to respond?

Enough bitching - time for some good news:

Sarah and I are finally about to move into an apartment, so it looks like we'll have greater stability. That means I'll be back to blogging. Let me know if there is a specific topic you would like for me to discuss.