Redlands Bicycle Classic

"pedalchick" wrote in message
...
H Squared wrote:
can't answer your question, but i see that weldon is 24th after stage
4.
hopefully she'll post about the race after she gets back.
heather
ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but anonymous posters
get no rbr glory.



If you're referring to me, I wouldn't consider myself rack-obsessed.
Really, I just would rather see jugs than read senseless suppositions
about the Tour de France... but you're entitled to your views.

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my identity in order to
tell a story that probably shouldn't be told, but I feel the need to get
it out into the ether and off my back since I will have no opportunity
to resolve the problem otherwise. It's really long, and I apologize. But
I want to hear the truth. Was I way out of line? I certainly paid for it
if I was...

I joined a team for Redlands as a guest. I didn't know at all what I
would be riding for - I assumed they would want my absolute best
performance. I thought I'd be going to RACE. So I trained my ass off all
winter. I worked extra super hard, knowing that I'd have a team that
might not be happy with someone struggling in with the gruppetto for
80th place every day. I figured my only chance for personal glory would
be the prologue, so I wanted to ride well that day. I had heard the
women I was staying with were notoriously late all the time, so I stated
firmly that I would like to arrive at the course at least 2 hours before
my start, and that would be the only thing I would ask for. This was met
with resistance, since their director didn't want them hanging around
all that time, and insisted that they only needed a 30 minute warmup.
they basically told me, you're a guest, you don't have a say. You do
what we want you to do.

Regardless, they ended up leaving extra time for traffic and there was
none, so I got what I wanted, got there early and got a good warmup and
proceeded to have the best race of my life to date. I took over 40
seconds of last year's time and while I was out of the money on the
stage, I was up there with some big names - I was really pleased.

I told the team that as a guest, I didn't expect them to ride for me.
What I didn't expect was that I would be lowest on the totem pole even
though I was top of the team on the GC, if only by a handful of
seconds... the next day in the Crestline race, I was given the duty of
leading out the sprinter for the bonus sprint. Fine, I was nervous about
getting to the front as I am notoriously bad at moving through the pack,
but I said I'd do my best. I had also been given the role of protecting
the team GC leader.

The roll-out was exceedingly nervous. I was terrified. 140 women,
tailwind, roads with cracks and reflectors and medians. I was just
trying to get into a good position and not get killed, and I have to
admit I completely forgot about the rest of the team, I was that freaked
out. After a few miles, I was forcefully reminded of them when I was
pedalling along on the left side of the pack and one girl from my "team"
came crashing into my bars from the left side, nearly knocking me down
into our GC hopeful. I managed to keep my bike upright, but was pretty
freaked out.

I recoverd, got out into the wind to pull our GC hopeful up to the front
to keep her safe. Attacks were flying, and the pace was high. We were
getting squeezed constantly with medians and oncoming traffic. Finally,
we took a left turn and I had to brake to avoid a median and got pushed
to the back. The QOM was coming up, and I had to haul ass to get back up
to the front over the top, risking life and limb to move up for the
sprint point on the descent. I looked around a bit for the sprinter, but
I had been told it was her reponsibility to find me at the front, so I
was simply concerning myself with getting back up to the front.

With two miles to go to the sprint, I radioed for the sprinter to find
out where she was. I couldn't hear jack on the stupid thing. I was AT
the front. Looking around. Nobody. Then the one who tried to crash me
earlier screams at me that the sprinter has a flat, and I need to go
back and get her.

Now, I am a climber. I thought I'd be protecting our GC rider, and with
the stage ending on a big mountain, I thought it very odd and rather
strategically wrong to send me (someone who is small and not great in
the cross headwind we were experiencing) to go back for a sprinter when
the only sprint bonus of the day had passed. But, with all the screaming
this woman was doing at me, I soft pedaled to filter back. She screamed
at me to go back faster. Not wanting to jam on the brakes to do it, I
kept soft pedaling.

I spent the next 25 miles on the back of the pack and in the caravan
radioing to the sprinter who apparently had a broken microphone and
couldn't respond. I saw at least a half dozen women in that time who had
either crashed or flatted chase back on and move up past me. No sign of
my sprinter. For all I knew, she had climbed into the car and gone home.
I wasn't about to get behind the caravan and spend all day chasing for
nothing. I guess that's the sacrifice you are supposed to make for a
team, but they weren't really my team. They didn't pay my way out. They
weren't going to give me any support if I flatted, and ****, I had just
had the best TT of my life, my form was hot and I wanted to be in the
pack for the final climb, dammit.

So I gave up on the sprinter after the feed zone, where I was about a
minute behind the peloton in a small group. I hauled our group up to
another larger group for a mile or two. I caught my breath, and drove
that group up (we're entering the caravan now) to yet another group,
containing the screamer. I ignore her, and drive the crap out of the
group to the base of the final climb and then drop them.

I'm climbing steady, feeling awesome. I start catching people, and about
halfway up I find my GC leader and another from the team. The GC leader
is cramping. I try to pace her up, give her encouragement. It's clear
she's hurting. I stay with her for the middle third of the climb (I am
setting what feels like a ridiculously easy pace for me but I keep
dropping her). Finally, I'm setting a moderate tempo and I look back and
she's way down the climb and the other woman has left her, too. I then
figure she's told us to go on and ride, and so I do. I finish a couple
minutes up, ****ed that I had to spend all day at the back of the pack
in the caravan because I was freakin' flying and could probably have
placed top 20 or 30 on the stage and moved up in the GC if I had started
with the leaders. Now we're all below 50th place.

I get screamed at for many minutes after the stage, and everyone is
really angry with me. I ask another friend for a ride off the mountain,
because I'm being treated like I just ruined everyone's life.

That evening back at the host-house, nobody is any happier. It's clear
that if I stay and do the rest of this race, it's going to be one huge
conflict the entire time. I don't get paid for this crap. I paid my way,
took a week's vacation time from my job and I absolutely refuse to be
treated like trash just for a freakin' bike race. So after a heated
"team meeting" where I'm the target for all their frustrations and they
just lay it all on me, I blow up and it is decided that I'm going home
and not finishing the race if I can't just unquestioningly follow their
orders. I figure even if I do, I will manage to do it wrong somehow
because nothing I do will ever please these women. So I pay the extra
$250 to get a cab to the airport while they go to race and soon enough I
am home and much happier with cat, husband and house.

It was just a doomed relationship from the get-go. I'm sure these women
will do fine this year as a team, they seem like they have some talent
and they get tons of support. Perhaps it was just bad chemistry, but I
certainly don't regret anything I did. Maybe I wasn't a good team player
in that situation, but I know in my heart that I am a good teammate. I
just am not used to being ordered around like I'm some third-class
citizen and being treated with zero respect. It just ****es me off.

That's quite a story! At least you are a good climber. Good women climbers
are few and far between.

pedalchick wrote:

H Squared wrote:

ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but anonymous posters
get no rbr glory.

If you're referring to me, I wouldn't consider myself rack-obsessed.
Really, I just would rather see jugs than read senseless suppositions
about the Tour de France... but you're entitled to your views.

but you knew it was you i was thinking of, so i reached my goal. plus i
wanted to tease bj. but anyhow, if i had known that things had been so
awful at redlands for you i wouldn't have made the joke. sorry.

and i'm sorry you had such a crappy race (team mate wise). i've never
been on a team, so i would be talking out my ass (even more than usual)
if i started making comments on your story, interesting as it was.

hh

Sierraman wrote:


Are you doing STP again this year?

well, bruce, what this has to do with redlands, i don't know. but i'm 35
years old and i didn't train a lick in october, november, december or
january. it would be fun, but i don't know if i can pull it together in
time.

(funny thing though- today i did a short thing on mercer island down
thru the renton airport, and a cyclist told me i was "brave" to be
skating there. i had to bite my tongue over that.)

ok, that's answered, and now i would much rather read things like
pedalchick's race report than talk about this anymore. sorry bj.

hh

pedalchick wrote:


I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my identity

sorry, one more thing- will you post under your real name now, or do you
want to keep it secret?

heather

In article ,
pedalchick wrote:

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my identity in order to
tell a story that probably shouldn't be told, but I feel the need to get
it out into the ether and off my back since I will have no opportunity to
resolve the problem otherwise. It's really long, and I apologize. ButI
want to hear the truth. Was I way out of line? I certainly paid for it if
I was...I joined a team for Redlands as a guest.

Maybe it's just me, but what you described seems pretty shortsighted on
the part of that team. It looks like they were more interested in their own
personal results and following an established team pecking order. Isn't
part of why a team like that exists to get the sponsors name out? You were
carrying the sponsor's name closer to the front than any of the rest of
them, it seems like they ought to have appreciated that. Plus it sounds
like they couldn't think on their feet. "We have an established game plan,
and we're sticking to it, no matter if it makes us go backwards".

How'd you end up getting hooked up with them in the first place?

--
tanx,
Howard

Q: Why did the metalhead cross the road?
A: Because he's a gullible moron who'll buy
anything with a skull on it.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

pedalchick wrote:
I want to hear the truth. Was I way out of line?

Maybe a little but not way; however, we've only heard your version and, as
my mother-out-law used to say, no matter how thin the pancake it still has
two sides. What'd'ja think Victor Hugo Pena shoulda done while he was
wearing yellow last year?

That said, teams have a tricky dynamic (especially that one, it seems;
you've given us more than enough clues to figure it out) and my experience
is that if you go through life getting along with every member of every
team you've been with, you're not trying hard enough; and I'm not just
talking about cycling teams. Sometimes, figuring out when to walk away is
the toughest decision you can make. Other times, it's pretty easy. Did you
make the right decision to walk away? I don't know, but it sounds like
they made it pretty easy.

BTW: asking rbr what it thinks? Hmmm. I'd worry more about what that says
about you than the Redlands incident.

h squared wrote:
pedalchick wrote:


I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my identity

sorry, one more thing- will you post under your real name now, or do you
want to keep it secret?

Whether she posts under her real name or not, it's no longer secret.

Robert Chung wrote:

Whether she posts under her real name or not, it's no longer secret.

ok, of course not to you, but it may be to people who are too lazy to
try to figure it out, or to people who think they figured it out but are
wrong, or to people in the future who come here and have never read that
post, or to people who only read scattered posts and miss that one. and
the other thing is not everyone wants their real name connected with
this place. even i wanted to stop posting with "halvorson" in my name.

hh

h squared wrote:
and the other thing is not everyone wants their real name connected
with this place.

Completely understandable. I use the pseudonym "Robert Chung" because I'm
trying to keep my real name, Henry Chang, from being connected with this
place.

On 03/29/2004 04:52 AM, in article , "h
squared" wrote:



Robert Chung wrote:

Whether she posts under her real name or not, it's no longer secret.

ok, of course not to you, but it may be to people who are too lazy to
try to figure it out, or to people who think they figured it out but are
wrong, or to people in the future who come here and have never read that
post, or to people who only read scattered posts and miss that one. and
the other thing is not everyone wants their real name connected with
this place. even i wanted to stop posting with "halvorson" in my name.


I came up with 3 different names that fit the bill, but narrowed it further
using other resources ...

But my suppositions could still be wrong, as could yours RC.



--
Steven L. Sheffield
stevens at veloworks dot com
veloworks at worldnet dot ay tea tee dot net
bellum pax est libertas servitus est ignoratio vis est
ess ay ell tea ell ay kay ee sea aye tee why you ti ay aitch
aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash double-you
double-yew double-ewe dot veloworks dot com [four word] slash