Retirement from Road

Yep. I’m done racing road.

I’ve only just started telling people, but the truth is that I’ve known I’m done for a long time. There was an exact moment when I knew. It was the Menomonie Road Race at the North Star Grand Prix in 2014, when I guested with Les Petite Victories. I had had an asthma attack during the Minneapolis crit the night before, and my lungs felt like I had inhaled cayenne pepper. I wheezed and coughed every breath and could not have expected to finish that race. In fact, the only reason why I started was so that my LPV team could have the minimum number of riders for a follow car. Early on, the pace was relatively easy but Colavita was moving up, and I heard Olivia Dillon discussing a potential attack. A lot of green jerseys mobilized at once. I followed as closely as I could. Things got a little chaotic, I heard yelling, and a bunch of riders went down right in front of me. I have no idea how it happened, the race in front of me just went sideways. I shifted my weight back, emergency braked, yelled “crash left”, and…

Every other time in my career I would have looked right to merge away from the crash, then turned my eyes up the pack to make sure I could go with the attack that would inevitably follow. In fact, throughout my road career one of my favorite times for an attack was right after a crash. You take advantage of the chaos and sick worry in the pit of everyone’s stomach to split the race. It’s cruel, it’s insane, it’s unfair... it’s bike racing at its best. I sadistically loved those moments. But my time had come. I saw Whitney Schultz, one of Colavita’s ace riders, on the ground. I looked into her eyes. They weren’t tracking well. Her teammates were cursing. Probably a concussion. Maybe a bad one. My race brain raged at me, “What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!!” as I got off my bike and put it sideways in front of her, directing other riders so that they could go around without injuring her further.

The Colavita riders were of course shocked that I would get off my bike to help a rider who was not on my team. I explained that with my lung problems my race was probably over before it began and she looked badly hurt, but the disappointment I felt in myself for giving up was overwhelming. The knowledge that I was truly done was crushing me. I was more somber than the Colavitas were, having just lost their protected rider. I didn’t say much, just stood there with my bike sideways to the field for what seemed like forever until their team car pulled up. It was probably about a minute.

Ironically, this situation is what enabled me to finish North Star. Because the Colavitas had just lost their protected rider and several of them were stuck back behind the chase group (yes, the post-crash attack did happen) they decided to practice on me. I rode with them back up to the chase group as a surrogate protected rider. The Colavitas were friendlies; our Chicago area local hero Jessie Prinner raced for them, I met Lindsay Bayer and Kim Wells racing Speedweek, and I knew Lenore Pipes because she was a nerd like me- a grad student in biostats at Carnegie Mellon. My lungs still felt like they were full of pepper, but it was very easy riding with these strong gals. We rolled up to the chase group, and the Colavitas made it clear that I wasn’t going to do any work. Everyone was OK with that. I was absolutely no threat, and gals reassured me all afternoon. “Just breathe. We all know you, you take your pulls. Today you just get to ride.” My LPV teammate Cady Chintis took a lot of extra pulls and encouraged me and others with her kilowatt smile. That chase group felt like my bike racing funeral, but it was a damn fine funeral and I enjoyed it, riding along with my respected competitors, joking, and encouraging each other. I wouldn’t want to go out any other way.

I got through 8 laps of the Stillwater crit the next day. I rode cautiously and got it done so that I’d have nothing left to prove. I cannot say I “raced” Stillwater but I did complete it, and therefore completed the North Star stage race.

For over a year I tried to convince myself that this feeling of being done with road racing was just temporary burnout. That crazy compartment syndrome injury and emergency surgery happened two months after North Star, with the strange upside that my “asthma” turned out to be a lung infection that was completely cured by the IV antibiotics. I told myself and plenty of other people the story that I wanted to be the truth: I’d take a season off from road racing to recuperate, then come roaring back stronger than ever. I had some great times riding, including strong performances at the Dirty Kanza and Lumberjack 100, during that “year off road”. Meanwhile, my teammate Kelly Clarke was racing Charlie, loving it, and doing very well. It made me happy to see the best race bike on the planet still being raced by a rider who was as aggressive as I was, and who loved that bike as much as I did. I recently sold Charlie to Kelly Clarke. Look out.

So what now? I’m learning a lot from this retirement thing. First of all, the mental part of it hurts a lot. It is a loss of a big part of my identity. After all, the blog, my twitter handle, my instagram- they’re all called Ricebikeracer, right? Rice is not a bike racer anymore?! That refrain has echoed in my head till I am sick of it. I am grieving this loss, and the longer I grieve, the farther forward I move from it and the surer I am that I am done. Two things about that: first, I want everyone to know that I wholeheartedly support local Chicago womens bike racing in spirit-- especially CWEC-- even though I’ve been noticeably absent and will remain absent for a while longer. I loved, and continue to love, this sport. It’s just a little too painful right now. Second, from here on out when I hear about athletes retiring and freaking out, I’m not judging. This is really hard.

Aside from the deafening mental noise, my body the “bike racing machine” was in very rough shape. Mismatches in strength between my right and left side and between my upper body/core and lower body were leading to limitations and injuries. It has surprised me that getting physically back on track has been about as tough as training for pro bike races was, but it has also been a good distraction and focus while I deal with the mental part of retirement. I have also been surprised by satisfaction I’ve gained from transitioning from an elite-level cyclist to an all-around healthy person and well-balanced athlete again. I’ve spent the last 6 months or so working with a wonderful PT team at DePaul Novacare and a genius personal trainer/massage therapist at DePaul (Jose Aguilar, Body Peace Chicago) to repair the strength mismatch and to improve overall body strength and balance. I can’t believe I’ve been in PT all this time, but the mismatch between my right and left legs isn’t gone yet. I’ll probably be done with PT sometime this spring, and will continue working with Jose as long as he’ll put up with me. He is phenomenal.

Between PT and working with Jose, I trained strength almost exclusively all fall and winter with a few skiing weekends thrown in for variety. I made 5 sessions of a VisionQuest class and other than that, I have not ridden indoors once. At VQ they did the usual bike numbers, and mine are a disaster: I’m 10 lbs up and 45 watts down from my 20 minute threshold power during my bike racing days- which means I’m done whether I like it or not! Those numbers don’t tell the real story though. I didn’t get sick all winter this year. My arms and back are strong again. Just in the past couple of weeks I’ve been able to run 30 minutes at a time without any pain, a real victory that has reminded me how much I enjoy the zen-like simplicity of running.

Last weekend I skied the American Birkebeiner for the third time (56K classic cross country skiing). A race, yes. But the Birkie is a “completer” race, not a “competer” race, to borrow a phrase from Robbie Ventura. This is my off-season sport and I get out to do it maybe 4 or 5 times/year. It was a warm, wet, sloppy slog through the snow. It began very well for me; my form was good and my head was positive. As we went through the power lines, high point, and OO I kept saying to myself, “Oh yeah, this is my favorite part of the course!” By the time we hit the final set of hills at ~40-50K (Oh yeah! My favorite part of the course!) I realized that I was having a very special race. I remained completely powerful and positive. My form was still good. As the snow conditions went from bad to worse to laughable, I went from my best to better than ever before to better than I ever could have dreamed. Out there on the course I got a hug and a cheer from Ernie St. Germaine, the one skier who has done every single Birkie since 1973- one of my greatest athletic heroes ever. I shed a few tears when I crossed the finish line about an hour before I thought I would in those conditions, at 4:58- 5th woman in my 40-44 age group. I needed that! It gave me confidence that the training I’m doing now is right for me.

I’m still high from the Birkie, and I haven’t decided what to fill the bike racing void with, now that skiing is over and it’s “bike time”. The feeling that I need a “goal”, some race somewhere, still gnaws at me. I’m open to suggestions, but I have no plans to focus my training on anything other than getting stronger every day and enjoying every moment of what I do to get there. Bye bye bike trainer.

And I am definitely done racing road. I don’t know if this “news” will surprise anyone in the Chicago road scene or not. I may be the last to know? Besides, I was probably never a good enough bike racer to have to write an ego-tripping retirement statement?...Haha and the ego trip part of it’s worse than you might think because I’m writing this for myself, not others ;) … I am all in my head again. I guess the point of writing all of this is to convey that a bit.

If you’re a roadie and reading this makes you sad, that’s good because it means you’ve still got the fire. I love you for that. Race your bike. When it gets horrifically hard because of weather, wind, hills, crashes, or whatever else happens out there, briefly remind yourself how much you love it… and then attack the living crap out of the field with everything you’ve got. PTB!