|
|
|
Home  Bathroom Reading / News Adam Craig Journal Houffalize World Cup #1
|
|
|
|
|
Written by Adam Craig
|
|
Tuesday, 24 April 2007 |
 What can I say; some times you’ve got it and some times you don’t… The challenge is figuring out why. Kelli, Tom, Elke and I left directly from the San Francisco airport on Monday after Sea Otter, excited to get over to The Continent and settle into a week of relaxing and getting ready to race our AA game on Sunday at the World Cup opener in Houffalize, Belgium. There are two ways to go to Europe to race bikes, fly a week or so before the event to give yourself time to settle in, get over the jet lag, do some training and generally sort yourself out. The other way is to arrive a day or two early, hope you’re well rested and use caffeine to trick your body into racing in the middle of the night…
The first option sounded nice after a couple weeks of traveling and being busy, so we went with it. The direct flight from San Fran to Frankfurt, Germany was pretty appealing too… I can’t remember the last time I had a flight with no connections, it was pretty nice to go from sitting on a plane for ten hours to sitting in the rental car and trying to remember how the hell to navigate around Western Europe after a six-month break from the struggling. The other deal maker was that we had found an apartment to rent for the week, which mean real live home cookin’ from each member of the crew (although Tom insisted we go out to the LeChouffe Brewery for his dinner night)… There was even a deer petting zoo on the premises, the “Parc du Gibier” which provided some entertainment, along with the swingset…
The lazy week flew by, with one minor hiccup. The poison oak I ALWAYS leave Sea Otter with. Except this time I actually got scratched by the evil vines. This meant the case was extra special. By special I mean a left arm swollen to half again it’s origonal size and unable to bend effectively, and rash that, instead of breaking out and clearing in five days, broke out and is still spreading as I write this. Awesome. On about Thursday, Elke suggested that maybe we should get proactive about eradicating the itchy, oozing business before it became a problem for my body to fight. Unfortunately, they don’t have Oak in Belgium (I guess that’s fortunate, actually…) so the selection of products for eradication is limited. We settled on the old wives’ tale that baking soda and vinegar mixed into a paste and smeared on the offending area would do the trick, although I was wishing I had a hair dryer to try Dusty’s home remedy of blasting it dry. Kelli really enjoyed making the paste though. It’s the little things… Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to do much, lending credence to my usual approach; ignore it and it will go away eventually.
Sunday rolled around and it hadn’t gone away. Fortunately, though, nobody else in the party had gotten it (we learned on the interweb that it’s not contagious) so at least Kelli was set up for successful racing on Sunday morning. Turns out the “six days of relaxing and sleeping ten hours a night” approach doesn’t work for her. She made it over the extremely cruel 16% paved start loop climb strong and then settled into the reality of a mysteriously below average day. What are you going to do? She stuck it out for 55th place out of a record 130 elite female starters.
I took my strangely heavy legs to the start line a few hours later and did something I don’t usually do. I tried to visualize myself somehow surviving the start in my #13 position or so and settling into a decent race, combating my strangely apathetic body. Nope. Didn’t lose that many spots on the climb, ended the first lap in 60th or so. Sweet. Actually charged for about a lap and got around fifteen or so guys who were reelling from the retarded start effort before my body suddenly shut down and I settled into the proverbial “small child” state. It was weird. I simply had no strength to keep the bike moving above basic travel pace. I hadn’t been passed by so many guys in a long time. To add insult to injury, my second lap charge gained me enough time on the leaders that I never got pulled, had to do all six laps, complete with four steep grinding climbs and four hacked out dusty downhills per lap (don’t get me wrong, the course is all-time, it just sucks when you suck). I tried to hit some sweet jumps and keep it entertaining but even that took too much effort. And I never got to ride with the fourteen year old riding chase moto on a sweet Gas Gas Trials bike, I was looking forward to that… You do get mad cheers from the thousands of belligerent fans when you’re the last guy on the course on the last lap though. That’s right, I’m pretty sure I finished DFL out of the finishers in 110th or so. Although that means I did beat 140 other guys who all got lapped... Sweet… Except for the fact that I’m stuck with a mid-pack at best start in Offenburg, Germany for round 2 in a month…
Now I’m on a flight home and the first order of business is figuring out how to get rid of this rash that’s itching the life out of me, then it’s time to do a bunch of training and resting that I haven’t been doing for about six weeks so I can come out swinging next time. I’m pretty sure Kelli is on the same program, although she might go for a dirt bike ride instead of getting some antibiotics…
In other “Fun Giant Team” news, our boy Carl Decker is going quite well in his ghetto old Subaru Rally Car, he raced the Oregon Trail stop of the Rally America Series this weekend and was the fastest two wheel drive car there. Had he only had the foresight to assume we was that fast and buck up for the $800 national series race instead of the $300 Northwest series race, he would have won $3600 for a weekend of having the best time going on four wheels. Instead he got some sweet plaques. Well, now at least we all know what we’ve suspected since the pizza delivery days, the boy’s got skillz… |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
