My Rockwell Relay Prediction: We Will Lose

06.11.2015 | 3:47 pm

Greetings from the SBR Sprinter Van, currently en route to Moab, Utah.

Lynette and The Hammer, talking and laughing. Laughing and talking. And laughing.

Team SBR-WBR is on its way to the Moab city park, where we will be grilling the 500 bratwurst we boiled in beer yesterday (shown below):

I’m very excited to grill all this bratwurst, to talk with racers, to raise some money for World Bicycle Relief, and to hand out some Root Beer Gu Energy Gel to anyone who donates at least $5.

I also am excited to conduct a secret research project as I hand out all this food, the results of which I will share with you sometime in the near future.

And then, Friday, I’m excited to race — for the fifth year in a row — the Rockwell Relay.

Unfortunately, Team SBR-WBR is going to lose the Competitive Coed division. And we’re going to lose badly.

The Problem With Team SBR-WBR

Team SBR-WBR is made up of four very strong riders, when compared to other coed teams comprised entirely of members of AARP.

Our average age is 51. For realsies.

But our age isn’t really the problem. No, our problem has more to do with who we are.

Allow me to explain.

The Problem With Racer 1

The biggest problem of Team SBR-WBR can actually be best understood by the fact that the team’s name is “Team SBR-WBR,” not “Team Fatty-WBR.” 

Which is to say, my team isn’t called “Team Fatty” because I lost a bet. And that bet is that I would get down to racing weight before this race began.

Which is to say: I am not at racing weight. Not even close. I am strong, but fat. Fit-fat, if you will.

Fortunately, being strong-but-heavy is only a problem if the ride you are doing has a lot of climbing. 

Unfortunately, the leg of the race I’m doing has pretty much nothing but climbing in it.

Even if the rest of my team raced perfectly — and maybe they will — we will lose. Because of me. Because I suck.

The Problem With Racer 2

The Hammer is Racer 2 in Team WBR-SBR. She has been training for The Rockwell Relay in a novel way: by hardly ever riding her bike.

Her focus this year has been on running, so she could do the Squaw Peak 50 Trail Race. And that focus has paid off handsomely: she took second in the Masters category last week.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: doing a 50-mile trail run with 10,000 feet of climbing in it will sometimes make your legs a little bit fatigued for a few days afterward.

Fortunately, when The Rockwell Relay starts, she will have had a full five days to have recovered from the Squaw Peak 50. I’m sure the fact that she hasn’t been riding her bike coupled with the fact that she did a twelve-hour long race less than a week ago won’t impact her riding this weekend at all.

The Problem With Racer 3

Cory Borup is the guy who I placed the weight-loss wager with. Unlike me, he hit his goal, losing around forty pounds.

He looks fantastic, doesn’t he? He’s worked hard to get so light. Which is awesome and impressive and admirable and stuff. It’s also why our team name starts with SBR his Bike / Tri shop — which goes very nicely with the van we’re currently sitting in:

 

Yes, ownership of a Sprinter van is a prerequisite to my friendship.

Anyway, it’s great that Cory has lost so much weight. Unfortunately, he has done this at the expense of the ability to maintain any momentum whatsoever on the bike. He is now a frail husk of a man, easily knocked off his feet by a light breeze.

He used to be a remarkable TT specialist. Now, air resistance poses a serious challenge to him. No, not wind resistance. air resistance.

The Problem With Racer 4

The fourth racer in Team SBR-WBR is Lynette. 

Lynette is one of those people who has done more Ironmans than she can count. She’s fast. She has great endurance. And she has, for the past couple of years, averaged one collar bone break per year. 

Staying upright has been a problem for Lynette as of late.

It is our fervent hope that she will abandon this new hobby (i.e., crashing her bike) now that she has run out of collarbones to break.

The Competition

Now, I’m not trying to anti-trash-talk here. OK, maybe I am, but the fact is, even if our team was perfect, we’d still lose. Because there’s this other coed team which will — and we are quite confident on this point — crush us.

Team Infinite Stamina.

Now, I’m not saying that other teams will not also crush us. The very likely will. But it doesn’t matter. As long as this one team is out there, we’re sunk. How deeply sunk isn’t all that important.

Here’s why Team SBR-WBR is in trouble:

• Racers 1 and 2: Team Infinite Stamina is racing its two women in slots one and two. Really, anything I could say about these two racers can be better said in this picture, from the podium of the 2014 Lotoja Classic, a very popular 200-mile road race:
  You see second place there? That’s Marci. And third? That’s Mary. And they’re on the same coed team. That could pose a significant problem to Team SBR-WBR.
• Racer 3: Troy is Racer 3. He was actually the guy who introduced The Hammer and me to The Rockwell Relay. Each year, my team has beaten his team. I can tell he wants to win this year. Wants it real bad.
• Racer 4: Danny is Racer 4. Honestly, I don’t know anything about him. But I choose to imagine him as an eight-foot-tall giant of a man who crushes rocks for fun and is not a professional cyclist only because he didn’t find it difficult enough of a challenge.

Luckily for me, I’m not at all interested in the competition aspect of this race. I’m just doing the Rockwell Relay to see the sites, enjoy others’ company, and have fun.

Yeah. Right.