Brian Canty
Well it’s over for another year and Rás Mumhan 2012 for me, and many others, will be remembered in that most unforgiving of three-letter cycling acronyms, DNF.
DID. NOT. FINISH. The only thing that’s worse than a DNF is a DNS and that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to decipher its meaning.
I’m sitting here now after the race, still shivering, and thinking, did I make the right call? I spent the last 25k thinking, will I regret this decision in the car on the way home, next week, the week after. When people ask me how did that race in Kerry go for you, my answer will be, ‘ah, okay, it was hard.’
To the uninitiated that will draw out the next question, ‘where did you finish?’ and I’ll say ‘I didn’t...’
I wondered how I’d feel when that conversation moves swiftly onto something different because that’s what will happen. It’s hard to draw positives from a situation like this. But, as strange as it sounds, I’m quite content and I’d do exactly the same thing again. My head is up, not down. Why?
Well the race was as hard and as fast and as dangerous as I’ve ever experienced. It could be mental, it probably is, but rolling out of Killorglin this morning and the rain lashing off the road made for a miserable enough mood in the bunch. Everyone knew there would be casualties because during the rolling start down the hill in the town, wheels were touching already — the race hadn’t even started yet though. Some lunatics (one of my team-mates included) decided on carbon rims over aluminium rims!
To a non cyclist, this means you might as well not have brakes on your bike! When it rains hard, it pelts a greasy road and forms a slick on the surface that makes it difficult to control a bike. When this gloopy paste is on your rims, it’s even worse. Factor in the man-hole covers and pot holes that were full with water (so you don’t know there is one until you hammer into it) and it just amplifies the hardship.
After three days’ racing, I could see from the start that bodies were tired and heads were down. In physiotherapy terms it’s called ‘compensation’- saving energy on some muscles to use somewhere else. It sounds like a mad concept but there’s proof in it down here.
At every team meeting last night, including our own, the message was, ‘get to the front and stay out of danger at the start’ but as I mentioned in an earlier post, 180 or so riders trying to be up the front is a recipe for disaster.
Now, I wasn’t in the race long enough to see or hear a crash but I know from experience that this thing happens all the time and I’m just not ready for one. If I was high up on GC, I’d stay here and suffer but down around 100th place or so, it’s just not worth it.
So when my legs gave out after a fast start, my head went and I said, ‘I don’t need this, I don’t want this’. There’s a long season and coming into this race under-prepared, I’m not sure what else I expected but it’s just one of those unforgiving moments.
Team cars pass you by and it’s funny, you have heads and arms and limbs sticking out the window offering you a bottle, a push, a rain-jacket, probably a bible there somewhere as well if I looked but nothing can save me now. I credit those with their hands out but my race is run. I’m cooked. I cannot pedal one more metre. I have exhausted every ounce of energy and I am fried. I don’t want to get burnt because I might not pedal for six months if I do.
So, with one hand on the handlebars and the other waving the respective team cars onwards to catch up with the race, I pull over, and say ‘that’s that’. A bus passed me at the most inopportune time and drenched me with splash-water but I just laughed. C’est la vie. Donncha had a similar day to myself, his body just gave out. He wasn’t p***** off, he gave what he could and that’s all we asked of ourselves at the first meeting.
To my team who rode incredibly all weekend. Longy, Dave and Ryan, they all finished and resembled Joe Frazier after ‘that’ fight with Ali. Puffy bloodshot eyes, drool pouring from the corners of their mouths, shoulders slumped. But they put our team, Finance First/Wills Wheels/Cork County on the radar with 12th on the team classification, out of 28 teams.
To the background team of our masseuse -Colm, our ‘mother’ for the weekend (she has asked me to keep her name anonymous) and to Ger Long our manager, a big thank you.
Colm and his partner had a baby six months ago but he left them in Dublin on his first Easter to be here for us, giving us nightly massages, making life easier for us. He’s there first at the finish line with a kind word, a warm jacket and a drink. He owns Fitnessworx gym in Douglas and could have made more money for less hassle at home or with his partner. Not Colm though.
Our ‘mother’ cooked three meals for eight men every day. Decent meals too. She would have trimmed the fat off the meat if I asked her. She cleaned up, washed up, had the water hot and the porridge thick, because we asked her. An incredible performance!
And Ger Long; no wonder he was smiling because his son rode his socks off for the team and finished just outside the top 20 but well inside many pre-race favourites. He said the right things, did the right things, and when I threw the bike in the corner after the race, he clipped off my race number and returned it to sign-on, because we faced a fine otherwise. No fuss. That’s Ger.
Finally a massive thanks to our sponsors for making the weekend happen and everyone who supported us over the weekend!
Thanks for reading.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/WjWIIvGdd4M/post.aspx
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