The Box..

Cyclists are all too familiar with boxes. There is "The Box" (the podium), which is the ultimate goal and the reason we jump on the start line week after week searching for those few moments of glory....there is the "hurtbox" which is a common meeting ground for anyone who pins on a race number....and lastly there is the "harden the f#@* up box", a step above the hurtbox on the pain meter. Every once in a blue moon the three boxes converge and visit you on the same day. And those are usually very good days. I'm starting to realize that more time spent in the latter two boxes equates to more time spent on The Box. Perhaps I should be riding the short bus because it took me 2 full years of racing to figure out that little secret. Better late than never I suppose...So as the summer '07 race season winds down (last 4 weeks of racing for me before this American heads Down Under), reflecting back this year, it has been less about results and more a lesson in how to spend time in those two pesky H-boxes. Hopefully a lesson that will see me spending more time on top of boxes in years to come...


Well enough philosophizing and time to get down and dirty with some updates on the last few weeks 'o racing. With Colorado taking an oddly-timed hiatus from road racing for a few weeks in the height of the summer race season, this roadie spent the last few weeks trying out her legs on the off-road circuit...yep, mountain biking. I made the trek to Boulder the last 3 Wednesday evenings mixing it up with the Boulder crowd at the local short track races, and last week finally feeling comfortable enough with that whole riding-on-dirt phenomenon to jump in with the "big girls" after getting on The Box in the beginner's race. Happy to report I did not end up last! Last weekend I tried my hand at my 2nd ever XC race in Snowmass. Having come off a win at my 1st XC race in Angel Fire, the pressure was on and I led the race from the gun and for the next 58 minutes and 10 seconds. Unfortunately that was 50 seconds too short as I watched another girl fly by me on the last mile of the downhill and ride to the finish line and into the Colorado State Championship jersey that was waiting for the first girl to cross the line. Not enough hurtbox that day, I suppose.


Fast forward to this weekend and the venue becomes Winter Park, another high-elevation ski resort town in the Colorado mountains. Considering the longest mtb race I'd done was 9 miles, I was a bit nervous about this 19-mile point-to-point race and also knew that the competition would be steeper with Winter Park's proximity to Denver drawing larger crowds to the start line. Well, bring on the hurtbox, time for this roadie to harden the F up! I found myself bounding back and forth between 1st and 2nd place from the start line, and the effort paid off by getting me onto the singletrack in a good position, but definitely put my legs in the hurtbox and I wasn't sure whether they would recover and cooperate with me for the next 18.2 miles. A group of 4, including myself established a comfortable lead through the singletrack and played cat and mouse for a while trading places and testing each other's legs and lungs. I fell uncomfortably into 4th position and watched as the other girls rode away from me. Hello hurtbox. With roughly 5 miles to go, a screaming downhill on a wide-open fireroad dumped us into a relatively flat section of singletrack. Here I caught glimpses of the 3rd place rider whenever the trees broke and could tell she was dangling a little over a minute ahead of me. First and 2nd place were out of sight but not out of mind. So I put my roadie legs to the test and TT'd through that singletrack, finally catching 3rd place with 2.5 miles to go. Moving into 3rd place, I could see 2nd place sitting 30 seconds in front of me and caught her and blazed by her with 2 miles remaining. I hadn't seen first place since she dropped me 45 minutes earlier, and she was still nowhere in sight but the race was not over and I pinned it through the last 2 miles of singletrack chasing down this invisible rabbit only to see her on the last turn into the finish coming across the line 8 seconds before me. Damn. Well, not a bad day in the end finishing up 2nd place overall and 1st in my age category. Hello Box!


Well, that concludes this long post recapping the last couple of weeks. Now it's back to the road bike for the next few weeks to see if I can transfer my new found love of suffering to some skinny tires. 'Til next time. Cheers!