The pain vault, pain locker, pain bank, pain cave. Call it what you will, we all have concept of a physical place where we store the pain from training so that we can draw on it on race day. I’m kind of thinking that my balance is overflowing from this past year, but unfortunately cyclocross uses a whole different currency that I was not saving away as conscientiously. Wednesday night cross practice informally started at 5:30 this week, but we were mostly puttering around until 6. There was a solid group, such that the starting sprints actually had the feel of a real race and I made a point to take a few starts from the second row, since I’m unlikely to be further up that that at any point this year. The exciting addition to cross practice this week was Tig’s new wooden barriers. It’s a whole different story rolling into a wooden wall that will hurt when you hit it as compared to flimsy PVC tubing that you can run straight through if need be. By the end of an hour I was whipped, in a good way. I had finally made a serious deposit into the cyclocross pain bank. Its a bit late, kind of like starting to save for your kid’s college fund when they’re in highschool, but with any luck I’ll be able to convert some of that long distance fitness that I have in spades.
Thursday night saw another concerted effort to revive the weekly trip to Otto’s. I made a long night of it, starting at 6:30 and heading home at 11. I started the night off reliving the PBP stories with my spiritual mentor. For a long time I was sure that Mike was full of s#!% for years when he told me stories of racing bikes 30 years ago. The fact that his wife never contradicted him was puzzling, but I figured the was just indulging hist flair for exciting story-telling. But he trumped all doubt a few years ago when he showed me the race program from the 2nd Athen’s Twilight Criterium which listed him as “one of the riders to watch” and featured him in an ad for Lowenbrau in full kit looking like a extra from Breaking Away. His stable has been slowly dwindling over the years (and I’ve benefited from some from some of the housekeeping) as mine has been growing, and (despite some sketchy accounting) we are finally at the point where we have the same number of bikes in our garage. So we are equals on one level, but I defer to the master on most others.
