Since Saturday, I have been feeling a bit under the weather. I have a slight sore throat that’s been threatening to turn into something more substantial—sort of like a Linus Gerdemann-esque upper respiratory infection. Due to the ominous threat from this sexy, sexy virus, I have been not doing any training. I have only been racing. As a result, my energy levels have begun to resemble those of a character from a boxing video game, my "life points" go down whenever I race; I then rest up after races to a point where I can stand back up again, and then I race again—only to get knocked down by Bald Bull in about 15 seconds.

I spent all of Sunday and Monday recharging my "life points" in anticipation of Tuesday’s FBF race, so I was tentatively hoping to feel OK for the race. I had two teammates in the race, Christoffel and Jaime, and our plan was to shake the tree and see what happened. Stoffel was obviously very excited at this prospect, and shook the tree as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He jumped away as we came across the line after one lap. I was right next to him at that point, and I had a moment to consider whether I should jump with him; but I decided against it as it always excites the field when two teammates get away together. Therefore, Stoffel got away alone and then proceeded to hold off the pack by himself for the next 5 laps. Back in the pack, there were jumps and chases, and I got across to a few of them—even one that included series leader Chris Castaldi. In hindsight, I should’ve gunned it there and tried to get up to Stoffel and brought Castaldi across—as his team would’ve worked to control the pack behind, but I was lacking in aggressiveness at that point—I was looking out for the eventual upper cut from Bald Bull.

Stoffel was eventually brought back after his solo endeavor. Then there were futile jumps and accelerations for a few laps. Stoffel jumped again with about 3 laps to go and dangled off the front again, prompting another chase. The pack collected him at the start line with two to go, and that’s when I counter attacked. I got a gap right away and was committed to riding it out to the bitter end, unfortunately, I was left to face the bitter end by myself—and since I had no Wonder Wheels along with me, I would face a chase from their 99 man team.

Whenever I escape by myself, I always lament my inability to turn invisible. As I’m riding hard enough to alter my DNA, I always wish that the pack would just forget about me, and go about their business of yelping at one another to pull through. But they never seem to forget about me, and as I passed the finish line on the bell lap I was still all alone. I turned the corner into the wind and began to ride myself into an out of body experience. Racers describe getting tunnel vision when they put in an extreme effort—and I was no exception in this case. My perception of the world around me resembled that of a county fair house of mirrors, with the road undulating and getting blurry, but there was no friendly ink-smudged carnie to pull me out in my moment of distress.

Instead I was joined by Jackson Wandres of Wonder Wheels and a BVF guy in turn 2. When I am in moments of agony during races, I tend to swear more than I normally would. It’s a bad habit, and my habit reared it’s head when Jackson caught me. I implored him to "Fudging (but I didn’t say "fudging") pull through!". To which he replied—and rightly so—"I just fudging (he didn’t say "fudging" either) caught you!" We became a fudging threesome together. At this point, it was critical that we immediately form a cohesive trio, but I was looking at my distorted mirror reflection and Jackson had just brought up the BFV guy. We didn’t fall into an immediate rhythm, as Jackson and I were breathing like fish on the beach and the BVF guy didn’t (or couldn’t) take any initiative. We delayed the inevitable knock out punch from Bald Bull until the middle of the straight between turns 3 and 4, and then we were collected like Tuesday’s garbage.

In hindsight, I probably should’ve tried to go across to Stoffel with Castaldi, but I waffled, and if I had someone along with me on my late move, we probably could’ve stayed away—but hindsight, if you break that term into its root words can mean "looking at ass"—and that might be an apt metaphor for how my race night went.

schmalz race report

Bite me, Bald Bull. A four.

The head song for the night was "The Good Ship Lollypop" by Shirley Temple—if you can’t ride fast with that song going through your head, there’s no hope for you.