Three Thousand Dollars and 1/2 a race.

Saturday 20 November:

Finally I had my bike ready and it worked perfectly during the now infamous race: a ninety km, fourteen checkpoint hurter in still two degree Celcius air. Nadir had hooked up the Red Bull sponsorship to the tune of an off-the-scales $3000 winner-take-all. I went into it with sore ribs from an idiot slamming into me on his mountain bike last Monday; sore ribs really last, I assure you.
I wasn't over-excited about the whole affair (just very, very excited), as I haven't been training for months and knew a long, cool-weather sufferfest was in order.


Even before the first checkpoint, the police were on us, chasing the race on Wellesley East en route to Jet Fuel Cafe. Kuz took one for the team like the grand old man he is, by pulling over and admitting that "a little race" was underway. I hopped the curb and passed by them on the sidewalk (he ended up flatting twice over on top of this). From the Fuel, it was to the very end of Leslie Street Spit, a good three flat straight and dark km's out to the lighthouse, where I found some very pissed off racers from the front group, who'd been waiting for five minutes. JP was there with a car and started signing manifests, barking out directions to Fallingbrook Road deep to the east of us at the very end of Queen street east.

I teamed up with Panama Jack and rode out of the Spit and along the Waterfront Trail to my childhood stomping ground the Beaches, then back onto Queen street, each taking pulls and grinding along at 31 km/hr or so. Then I picked up Ernesto at Fallingbrook (that is, we wasted a minute looking for the actual checkpoint and E. cruised in with Jody from my work doing her first race ever), where we had to stop halfway up the steep hill. That was a mere prelude for the deep push into Scarbourough and the near-bottom of Brimly road, a truly steep, winding dive down towards the bottom of the Bloughs.
I pulled a banana out of my vest pocket to find it massively smushed and threw it away, then ascended marking Ernesto. Overtaking E. ( who'd dropped out of 'cross season after hurting his back) on Kingston Rd, I noticed he stayed back. Onwards I drove it over the rollers of Danforth Ave in the deep dark suburban wasteland, one of those beautiful moments of serenity and speed. But the mind was working, taking in the state of my post-Brimly legs and I could only think of the adjacent subway line. 'Guatamalan rules' Nadir had said at the start-line, and my conscience was clear. I rode to Main station where I knew access would be perfect and cruised inside the bus exit, clattering downstairs. My train came promptly and I chatted with a guy while downing a gel I'd found in my bag. Things were improving.

At Yonge I clattered to the surface and rolled over to Keith MacDonald who looked surprized to see me and declared I was "rocking" four minutes behind fourth place. I was still out of it enough that I kept looking for my manifest after I had already given it to Keith - then I headed to Dundas Square, the leg pains coming sharply. I never get leg cramps but the cold and my lazy days were taking their toll in the chill. Nonetheless the race was back in familiar territory and it was time to step it up with half the distance to go. At Dundas Square I received directions to City Hall, having caught back Charlie, who'd lost his manifest completely. I rode through the Eaton Centre mall towards Bay Street and onto Nathan Phillips Square, spotting Charlie and riding up to JP who announced that the whole thing was over, called off due to massive, cascading organizational failure. (My words, not his.)
Nadir held a post-mess meeting outside his shop to decide what to do, offering us all our race fee + $20. But the guy who'd been winning (apparently 1o minutes ahead) threw a stomping fit about only getting half the prize money for winning half the race. I knew he was one of Nadir's 'boys', and I could see what was happening. Nadir wasn't about to say no to him, as there was egg all over his face; he'd organized the most high-profile messenger race in years and hadn't had enough volunteers to man every checkpoint. Rule number one: never leave your checkpoint during a race. Yet people had to leave to get to another one and disaster struck again and again.

It was a sad end to a potentially great race. Nadir I only felt bad for. He's like the paterfamilias of the messenger scene, giving so much time and energy and now it was a gross embarassment. The party continued with A Man Called Warwick spinning, the specially-painted-by-Futura 2000 Colnogos shone brightly, and the swag was piled high behind a counter. I ended up with a container of massage creme for all my pains. Knappy didn't even race but got a bunch of new Italian tires: there's no justice.
Then it was time for drinks and forgetting.

A Night of Sprints

Last night I made a new twist in my short racing career: match sprints. I am not a track sprinter, though this was well known to me beforehand, I confess.

Upon a darkening service road alongside the major arterial known to locals as Lakeshore Boulevard West, I spotted them. They were few in number but visible slightly with their blinking white and red lights against the darkness of the November night. Having spend forty-five minutes doing warm-up laps around the fairgrounds on the other side of Lakeshore, I felt as ready as my rusted old Paulie bike would ever be. Nadir saw me head to toe in lycra and slapped my hand with a laugh.
I had made my preparations: switched out my old French toeclip pedals for new French roadies, my heavy front track wheel for my twenty spoke road wheel and GP Attack 22C tire, and removed the rear fender. Lycra was applied in club-style layers. All wrong for this underground-style messenger sprinting event, but I thought it best anyway. Everyone else was in jeans and black hoodies, faces pierced and riser bars chopped, as per current styles. Some even raced converted road frames or freewheel bikes; the best time of the night was put down by a guy in street clothes riding something that vaguely resembled the first proper road bike I ever owned, a chipped and scratched Miata with a sagging chain.
I chose to race Daniel, who I used to work with at the Path. A good young guy. He broke his collarbone getting doored in Berlin this past summer. Hey, if you're going to get f#$ed up, best to do it somewhere stylish. I was hoping he wasn't yet fully healed as I too am nursing a bike- related wound. A young twit on a mountain bike plowed into me last Monday evening as I made my way carefully home in the dark and the rain of rush hour. I was just careful enough to slow up at a green-turning yellow where a car was turning into my path in the streetcar-tracked intersection, when Idiot slams right into me, handlebar into ribs. Never mind my two blinking red turtle lights and reflective tape on my courier bag, this young fool saw nothing.

Point is, Daniel had me in the first and second round rematch. My spinney gear ratio, tight chain, bruised ribs (and therefore reduced core strength) were all major marks against me. A loose chain reduces rolling resistance at the start, I learned. I canvassed him for a third chance but boredom/distaste had set in, and I had to make do with a much bigger, younger and faster opponent who dropped me at the start line. Oh well.

A two hundred metre standing-start track sprint really has no subtlety. There is no psychological element around who gets the jump on who - in this case it was about overall times for the night. The guy who won did it time-trialing (14.79 sec.), with no opponent to race against. He beat the guy who showed up in a minivan with a lovely white Cinelli and a $2000+ Zipp disc wheel that made a popping sound when he started, as though it had cracked at first pedalstroke. High tech and light weight = extreme brittleness.
I got closer in the re-match but still got smoked - didn't really even know where the finish was and surged past after it. We actually bumped right after the start, that's how close it was.