“I have no template for resignation;
I don’t even own a white flag.”
This essay is a follow-up to Goin’ Up on a Tuesday: A Question of Ethics and Advantage for a Record Ride.
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The original radiator in my 1985 finally popped steam when I was headed to work on Friday morning. The wind was going to be adverse for the second available weekend I had to attempt the Katy Trail fastest-known-time, so I spent those days in the garage and at a cyclocross race instead.
Standard, but still a sharp reminder that the altitude of my goals and my fragile little life sit at opposite extremes.
Still, I drove that van two hours to Clinton immediately after work on Tuesday. Google maps rerouted me down winding and dark county roads and my small block “pinged” on every steep hill (tuning a carburetor is another thing I’ll be learning to do.) I arrived at my motel alone in a vehicle I did not trust, ate half a wrap as the food aversion set in, and got ready for my third run of the 239-mile-long trail.
The next morning, I found that the van was once again hemorrhaging antifreeze.
Okay, future me problem.
In the dark and on the bike, Google once again took me for a ride to the “trailhead” behind an industrial complex and “You have arrived” me at a chain-link fence. I backtracked and found the real one and staged myself next to the bell at the terminus; my headlamp highlighted the thing like a spiritual relic.
At 5:50 a.m., I started my music and rang that bell with nobody else to hear it.
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I found cruise control immediately, as I tend to, and left Tuesday in the parking lot and let Thursday remain a hypothetical.
But those opening 70 miles felt nothing like I remember them in ’22 and ’23. Every 3% grade between Sedalia and Boonville was an adversary, I kept thinking about all the people I wanted to punch, and lamented how breakable life felt despite the fact that I was here, again, on this route that has been a large factor in me not having left the state yet. I needed to reach Boonville at a 16.0mph average speed with zero seconds spent above heartrate zone 3 for my strategy to hold, and I got there at 16.1.
Yet I felt doomed.
The second stage of the plan was to get smooth and slowly lift the pace for the flat remainder of the course until it was time to let go of the reins at mile 200. Unfortunately, the faster side of the trail shut me down as the SSW wind was coming out of the east along the river. By mile 87, I pulled the plug, accepting that my clean run was gone. I had gotten here faster, more experienced, and more tenacious than the previous two rides, but the killer was once again the damn wind.
I sat down in Rocheport and had a coffee.
I didn’t realize it until I rode home (127 miles total) and uploaded to Strava that I was moving faster than both prior years while feeling inferior. In hindsight, those opening 70-miles were gorgeous and flawlessly executed against my former self.
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Dear reader. The game is different now.
I no longer see this record as a pure test of athleticism, but one of who has the most mobility to capitalize on advantages within the rules. Getting a good-enough day is straightforward; getting a breakout one is, well, my perspective hasn’t changed.
These are odds I already don’t do well with, if you set aside the fact that my participation alone is arguably miraculous.
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I began racing bikes in 2016 knowing very little about it. I wanted to be good, and I was on my way there for a moment. But a decade later, I feel older than 31 while having significantly less than you’d expect. The bike has become such an outlandish quest because without it, this isn’t a life I want.
The bike is what I have influence over the most. I will the machine.
“Wow, you take this so seriously, Genna.”
Absolutely I do. What’s your point?
That Katy is this strange, deceptively hard corridor that is the opposite of what my life’s experience has been thus far: a free, unobstructed stretch of fresh air that reflects back to you exactly what you put into it.
And because I’m plagued by this horrid unrest with letting something just be done,
I’m awaiting the next viable day.
I’ll probably keep repeating that loop until I am physically incapable. And if that sounds like it’s self-destructive,
try telling me that.
