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| Ceremonial Beheading of the, um, horned animal thing |
Never come to China. Mark it off your list of places
to visit. I think I just saw a dead yak in someone's driveway. Don't clean that
up, it's fine… (going to go ahead and delete the rest of this paragraph of
hatred)
When I get home I'm going to buy 1000 big Macs and
hand them out to people and tell them to cherish their freedom, thank them for
abiding by unwritten social norms, tell them to calm down the communism
rhetoric because that ain't funny, and look at their car and say "hey, at
least it's not a coal powered buggy, those are tough to insure." Enjoy
your America sandwich and ability to breathe the air without a face mask.
Safe to say I was losing it a little. Ok, a lot. Why?
Day 5 (Stage 2): I
DIDN’T MEAN TO GET IN THE BREAK I SWEAR
 |
| Zach's Instagram was on point during my dark times. |
This is the truth. It was one of those, “eh, ill follow
this move” and then the group takes a pee break and you and 2 other poor SOBs
get 6 minutes on the field 20k into the stage. PERK: The first 60k of this race
was lined 100% with people. It was surreal. I don’t know how to do that math,
but if you have a 120k (73 mile) long line of people (both sides of the road)
sometimes with up to 10 people deep, you have a lot of people taking pictures
of you. Riding your bike through something like that is like a perpetual noise
tunnel. Its amazing. I will not forget the first 60k of that race at all.
Then it was to the circuits. 3 laps of 42k. Terrible
pavement. BUT, after 1 lap, we still had 5 minutes. On the second lap, with 60k
to go, the field went hard up the hill (the circuit was essentially a hot-dog
up and down a valley) and the gap went down to 3:30, which is when one of the
break members crashed out. We got word he was chasing so we waited, and by the
time he caught back on and we got back to work, the gap was down to 2 minutes
and our chances were null. Total shame, I could see a scenario where we would
have had 3 minutes going into the last lap and with the hill on the course I
might have had a chance. Instead, someone attacked across the gap, I went with
and it was the two of us with 1 minute at the top of the valley with 20k to go,
and we were absorbed with 7k to go. I was pretty devastated. I put a lot of effort
into that move and came up with nothing. It left a sour taste in my mouth,
which was exacerbated by the actual taste of whatever is on the road in that
valley…
Day 6 (Stage 3):
Yak River
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| Drying clothing after a brutal day on the bike |
The 3rd stage featured a 50k climb up to 10000
feet, where we would stay while making our way to the actual Qinghai Lake. It
was not a hard climb, but it was raining and cold, so it was a hard mental day.
With all the clothing I brought I started the climb feeling surprisingly good
considering the effort the day before and being soaked to the bone. It was
actually a welcome effort as we were all freezing and could use some warmth. So
there we are, minding our business about mid pack, and a Chinese rider decided
he needed to be in front of me, Dave, and Jon, like yesterday. I was on the
ground before I even knew I was getting crashed. Dave and Jon both were very
hurt, my bike was in need of a wheel, bar adjustment, and to put my levers back
in the right spots. All in all, with 3 of us down, it took our team car a bit
to get to me, replace the wheel, fix the bars and shifters, and get me on my
way. Jon and Dave were both looking like their race was over, so I set off
about 5 minutes down at the base of the climb in the rain on my own. Typically,
a commissar would turn his head to a rocket bottle to help a crashed rider get
back to the field, but when Gus got to me, he told me Jon had already been
disqualified for taking a rocket bottle from him, and the draft on the car was
minimal on the climb, so he gave me some food and I chased for an hour and a
half before I caught a group of guys at the top of the climb who were about a
minute back on the lead group. We hit the top of the climb and my group was so
unmotivated to ride that we never saw the leaders again, and it was a slow cold
100k to the finish bleeding and bummed.
That night I felt feverish and was pretty banged up on
the right side. I dressed all the wounds and got some sleep, crashing sucks, I
was pissed off, and I knew the hardest days of the race were still to come. Why
do I call it Yak River? Well:
Day 7 (Stage 4):
Why you no let me race?
An early Category 2 climb on the stage split the field
into a front group of 30, which I made, which then spent about a half hour
attacking itself to death until 8 riders got away. I mustered up my anger and
sprinted as hard as I could and made it across to the group. Typically after
such a big to-do, when the break goes, it goes to the line. Today? Nope. Astana
missed it, and chased it down, because FU Jim and break friends! The stage was
a field sprint. I started to feel incredibly tired and angry during the stage.
That night I was running a high fever, coughing up yellow
and green, felt like puking, and my leg was throbbing. It was clearly infected,
and since I saw a dead yak on the road, I figured the river I crashed into
after skipping off the road the day before was full of dead yak. Henceforth my
infection was referred to as “the dead yak in my hip.”
I emailed Annie that night that I was 90% sure I wouldn’t
start the next stage. I felt horrible, and my mood reflected it. I was
impossible to be around. Dave was sharing a room with me, already out of the
race with suspected broken ribs, but I bet I was winning the pity party by
about a mile. Or 1.61 kilometers, depending on who you is.
 |
| A small crowd gathers to see Sam mostly naked and bleeding |
Day 8 (Stage 5):
We rode all the way to Utah?!
 |
| Red Bull Anyone? |
After much stubbornness and complaining, I took some antibiotics, a ton of ibuprofen, two
5-hour energy shots, and mustered up a stage 4 start. It started with a HC
climb that topped out at 7k into the stage, and if Drapac, UHC, and Kolss would
not have neutralized the first 5k of it, I might have never seen the field
again, but to my beer owing pleasure, with some chasing on the descent, I was
in the peloton and in the race, despite the odds I had set for myself the night
before. BACK TO IT!
Half way into the stage there was still no break
established, just another day of status quo racing in China. So I started to
participate after my teammates had throttled themselves going with every move
of the day. In pure Tour of Qinghai Lake fashion, something crazy and
unexpected happened! I got away with our GC rider Chad Beyer, a guy from La
Pomme, Astana, and the yellow jersey from Kolss. I pull off the front after the
attacks and see we have a gap and that Chad is with me, right then, the Yellow
Jersey passes me and I point at him incredulous and look at Chad with a “what
the hell is going on in this race” look.
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| The Yellow Jersey?! |
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| Chad goes "Its all you man." I put my head down |
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| The race situation, Yellow jersey 26 seconds back, field 3:20 back. |
The 3 guys with Chad and I take each other off the back,
probably because the Yellow Jersey was in the break and that's crazy, so Chad and I were left on
our own, that group of three 26 seconds behind us, and us 3:20 up on the
field. It is at this time I flick Chad through and hear “nope, its all you
man!” I immediately understood the tactic. There was a HUGE climb coming up,
and I was to ride as hard as I could to the base of it and give Chad the best
head start that I could. So I did. Infection and all. I sang songs in my head
like I do in training, and sure enough, an hour later, pulled the plug at the
base of the climb with Chad 3 minutes up on the field. He ended up getting
caught, but it was worth a try. I spent the next 2.5 hours on my own, eons
ahead of the grupetto, and eons behind the lead group. It was a 50k descent
into the finish town, which was down a valley that looked like Southern Utah,
hoodoos and all. It gave me time to think, ride easy, and talk myself into the
rest of the race. I crossed the line only a minute ahead of the grupetto, but
the time alone pedaling easy was so valuable to me. I think it reset my head
for the rest of the race. I would call it the end of the dark times. I
apologized to my team for being so difficult to deal with, and they kindly
dismissed it as reasonable considering the circumstances, but watching Mike
Woods deal with his crash over the last 4 days (I write this the evening before
the last stage of the race) I am seeing that I lack grace in the face of
adversity.
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