Eugene Celebration
prologue:
it was hot. it was humid. a 3 mile uphill time trial with the primary goal of making sure no one entered the next day’s road race with a fresh smelling jersey. at least i think that was the point of it….
stage 1:
it was hot. it was humid. jersey had a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ going on with it, though i will say it did not yet smell horrible. 2 laps making up a 37 mile loop. i may have uttered an ‘FTS’ or 2, and refused to chase the pack on the first climb. i picked off a couple stragglers who also couldn’t hold on as i went in to lap 2, met up and traded pulls with a lone sorella for the rest of the ride, and that was that. nothing exciting.
post race– no one in eugene seemed to know about the eugene celebration stage race, mostly because none of the races actually took place in eugene. eugene celebration is actually a music/food/art/hippy fest, which is why downtown had become one giant pile of dreadlocks, dirty feet, and kamikaze unhelmeted bicyclists. i shoved a pile of thai food down my gullet, and spent the afternoon napping in the park.
post nap, i stumbled around until my contact lenses were unstuck, and walked into the subway store near our motel to utilize the facilities. i bought a cookie and soda, then asked for the restroom key. DENIED. it is a new tactic to boost sandwich sales. ‘buy a sandwich or you can’t pee in our bathrooms!’ (i am totally. 100% serious about this. i didn’t waste a lot of time arguing my point with the airhead behind the counter, but did tell her that if the restrooms were reserved for paying customers, that i would like my cookie and soda to be free and we could call it even.)
fortunately, the ninkasi brewery had better customer service skills, and i had no choice but to show my appreciation with the purchase of a pint or 2.
stage 2:
it was hot. it was humid. jersey is encrusted with dried sweat and can nearly stand up and walk away by itself. i almost wish it would, because it smells horrible. this stage was a flat 15 mile TT. lots of fancy bikes, helmets, and aerobars. given that i don’t own any of the aforementioned fancy gear pieces, and that i’m a little too lazy to bother with the hassle of them, i just went out and rode my bike. nothing exciting. i was glad when it was done.
in between stages: ate food and napped in the park.
stage 3:
it was hot. it was humid. jersey smells worse than horrible, but no longer stands up by itself since it is still wet from the morning TT. wriggled my sweaty unshowered self back into my sweaty smelling spandex while attempting not to flash anyone in the parking lot–no small feat, by the way. this last stage was the crit, which would probably have been much more fun had it not been out in a dusty industrial park in the middle of nowhere. the race was painful-ish, but not horrible. i took my turn pulling on a couple of laps, tried unsuccessfully to sprint for a prime, and failed to catch back up to the pack post sprint with 3 laps to go. Came pretty close, but when they all started off again halfway through the last lap, i was cooked and had nothing left.
rolled slowly back to my truck to prepare for the drive home and see a text message with a picture of green subs drinking post race beers on a grassy lawn.
can i get a do-over of my weekend plans? kruger’s looked and sounded about 500% more fun. congrats to everyone who raced—it was great looking through the race results and seeing that so many peeps went and battled it out at the kermesse!
looking forward to an upcoming 2 weeks of absolutely zero competitive activities. (i am opting out of the david douglas cx race in favor of a mtb/camping trip to oakridge with some friends leaving thursday night, coming back saturday evening. there”s still an extra seat in my truck if anyone else wants to join…)
