2016 Rockwell Relay Race Report, Part 11: Everything Comes Together

07.18.2016 | 9:38 am

A Note from Fatty: The new very-limited edition FatCyclist gear goes on sale tomorrow. I’m just nailing down the catalog language and making sure ordering works. 

It was the beginning of my second leg of the Rockwell Relay (our fifth of twelve legs, in case you’ve lost track). And there three things I needed to know that I simply didn’t know.

How far ahead of the Beauties and the Beasts (BatB) team were we? Would it be enough for me to remain ahead of them, or would Nate catch me?

How far ahead of the Z5R teams were we? So far, they had been a no-show on the course — after the first three minutes of the race, we had literally never seen one of their riders on a bike —but it would be foolish to count them out. After all, while The Hammer had put in an extraordinary effort in her leg of the race, she had done so alone, while there were three Z5R riders — all men — working on this mostly-flat leg together. It was entirely possible that they had closed a lot of the gap we had built in this race so far. 

How angry was The Hammer? I knew she was mad about being left on her own for a big chunk of her leg, and I suspected she was made about the botched exchange we had just been through.

How was I going to tell Cory about the incredible near-miss with his van? Every time I thought about this, I felt a little ill.

In reality, all of these problems existed purely in my own head.

Unbeknownst to me, The Hammer had turned our three-minute lead on BatB team into a twenty-two minute lead. And the three men working together on the Z5R teams for forty-five miles had managed to bring back a mere five minutes against The Hammer, who had TT’d the whole thing. Our lead on them as I left Hanksville was a solid eighteen minutes.

Thanks to my incredible teammates, we were winning, and by a very respectable — although by no means unassailable — lead.

As to how angry The Hammer was, well, that question was resolved within twenty minutes of my having started this leg of the race, as the van rolled by. The Hammer, smiling big, leaned out the  ringing her cowbell for me and yelling, “Go Elden! I love you!” 

And with that, I felt about 80% better. The other 20% — telling Cory about the van mishap — would have to wait ’til I had reception again, most likely after the race.

And meanwhile, other things were going my way, too.

Meeting Tom, Resolving Problems

At the end of the most recent installment of this story, I had started the leg just a moment in front of a rider from the Mike Nosco Memorial team: the 50+ group we had been tied to since, essentially, the third leg of the race.

For once, I thought, I think I’ll try to race using my head instead of just my legs and lungs. 

So I sat up for the fifteen seconds it took for him to catch me, then introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Elden; how about we work together on this leg?”

He said his name was Tom and was happy to work with me. 

“One minute pulls?” I asked.

He nodded. Tom was an easy guy to work with, super lean and fit, with a very smooth, efficient, practiced riding style.

I let two rotations go, riding hard and in silence on the slight incline. Mulling.

I pulled up alongside him.

“So, your teammate confronted me and my teammate after leg three,” I said. “He seemed really mad, like we had betrayed an alliance or something.”

“Don’t worry about it. He’s just intense when he’s racing,” Tom said.

“I get that, I’m kind of the same way,” I replied. “But I want you to know that we had to do that attack in order to ensure the other team in that group didn’t have our wheel for the next leg. We figured our team could put time on their team, but not if they could sit in and draft.”

“Well, your rider certainly did that,” Tom said. “I watched our racer try to catch her for forty-five miles and he just couldn’t do it. She is strong.”

“Yeah, my wife is pretty amazing,” I said.

“She’s your wife?” Tom asked. I’m not sure if there was incredulity in his voice or not. I kind of think there was. I get that pretty often. 

“Yeah, we’re a family team: my wife, my niece, her husband, me. Anyway, let him know we didn’t mean anything against your team by that attack, we just didn’t know how strong the other coed team is and couldn’t take chances. Even so, their number-one racer is rocket-fast and is likely to catch and pass us before the end of this leg.”

“We should probably talk less and ride more, then,” Tom said.

Tom had a point. We dug in.

Meeting Jim

I’ve been obsessed enough with the interaction of my team and other coed teams in this story that it might seem like we were the only teams on the road. But in fact, during the past couple hours we had begun passing other teams regularly: the noncompetitive division teams — the teams that were doing this race strictly for fun and were hence not bound by race rules or concerns about timing. These teams had started a couple hours earlier than competitive teams, and now, as the sun sunk low, we were just beginning to roll past them, giving them encouragement as we went by.

Usually, Tom and I would just nod and zoom past. 

But one guy latched on. 

“That’s fine,” I thought. “He’ll hang on for a rotation and then drop out.”

But he didn’t drop out. He took his turn pulling — and pulling strong — for rotation after rotation, cutting the amount of time Tom and I had to spend in the wind down by a third.

“What’s your name?” I called out. 

“Jim,” he shouted back.

“Welcome to our train!” I said, and meant it.

Hey, this “alliances of opportunity” strategy thing was working out just fine.

The Train Grows

Tom and I were riding pretty hot, and Jim was beginning to struggle to hold on. “Just take shorter pulls,” I said. “Ten seconds, then drop back. Stay with us; we’re faster with you than without you.”

Jim stepped it up, digging deep to help our group stay fast. I was impressed.

We pushed along, a fast rotating paceline now…and passed five guys, stopped. Four of them standing around while one of them changed a flat.

The Hyperthread teams. We were right with the Hyperthread teams. 

“You guys OK? Need anything?” 

“We’re good,” Spencer — the head honcho of Hyperthreads — called back.

Tom, Jim, and I rolled on.

And then, maybe three minutes later, the Hyperthread racers — all five of them — caught us, just swept us up into their fast-rolling train.

Suddenly, we weren’t just a choo-choo train. We were an express.

The Train Derails

The light faded and I turned on my helmet light…only to discover that this helmet — not the helmet I usually use with a light mounted — doesn’t work really well with the light mount strap setup I have. It slid forward, pointing straight down, brilliantly lighting up the tip of my nose.

I adjusted the light. It slid back down.

I adjusted it again. It slid again.

Finally, I lost patience and tilted my helmet back very far on my head. This worked, but at the expense of making my helmet a completely ineffective safety device.

Oh well, I thought. A helmet tilted like this may not do me any good in a crash, but having no light is much more dangerous.

Meanwhile, the Hyperthreads guys were slowing down. Spencer was suffering with a bad Achilles tendon, I think. “Guys, I gotta keep moving,” I said. “Are you OK with me going on ahead without you?” I was aware, even as I asked this, how strange it felt to be asking a question like this of a team that had no claim on me. But I was trying to be Mister Public Relations, so thought it couldn’t hurt.

“Sure,” one of the racers said. “We’ll see you later.”

The ride had turned uphill; I pushed on alone (Jim had dropped off a little while after the Hyperthreads guys joined our group; I’m not sure why Tom didn’t keep going with me).

One Last Pull

I was down to the last few miles of the ride, and so far Nate from BatB hadn’t caught me (I’d find out later he had flatted during this leg of the race), and the Z5R trio of teams hadn’t either. It was beginning to look like the situation I expected and dreaded — that during my leg we’d move into second or even fourth place — wasn’t going to happen.

And then somehow, out of nowhere, another rider appeared on the road, just ahead of me. 

I jumped, managed to catch him and grab his wheel. Held on. Barely. I had a new riding partner, though I didn’t grasp where he could have come from.

“Where did your team come from?” I asked. 

“Oh, I’m in a non-competitive team,” he said. “We’re just sort of doing some of the legs, jumping forward, riding what’s interesting. I haven’t ridden that much today, to be honest.”

“Well if it’s okay with you,” I replied, “I’d like to just hang on to your wheel to the end of this leg of the race. I’m smoked and am in a team trying to stay ahead of a few teams that should be beating us, but aren’t.”

“Just hang on,” he said.

And I did. I hung on while this kid told me about how he’s going to college and how running is really his main thing, and what it’s like to race the Boston Marathon. I was happy to let him talk, because it meant he was using some of his air to talk, which meant he wasn’t dropping me, which otherwise he most certainly would have.

I pulled in, and Lindsey pulled out. No botched exchanges this time.

I gave The Hammer a hug and said, “That was a fun leg.”

“How come you went so slow?” she replied.

My head spun around. “Slow?” I asked.

“Yeah, you looked like you were just having a good old time with all the people you were riding with.”

Then I understood. For the first time ever in the Rockwell Relay, The Hammer had seen me actually working with other riders. In fact, I had done the entire leg with one rider or another.

“Oh,” I said, “You’re just not used to seeing me ride smart.”

And riding smart had worked. Although I wouldn’t know it until later, I not only limited the damage I expected the Z5R and BatB teams to do to us; I had increased our lead. Not by a lot — we were now ahead of the Z5R teams by twenty-eight minutes (a ten-minute increase) and the BatB team by twenty-five (a three minute increase). But still: where I had expected to put our team in danger, I had instead built on our lead.

And Lindsey was on a mission to grow that lead as much as she could.

Which is where we’ll pick up in the next installment.