Thats me, front and center leading the break on the first lap
It’s the level that Dante forgot. That wheel, that forsaken bit of rubber, it’s just there, no more than a few feet away, and yet – it’s like a mirage. It may as well be on the other side of the universe. You’ll never make it. Dig deep, dig even deeper, it’ll still make no difference. When you’ve gone, you’ve gone. Simple as that…
Had he been a cyclist, Dante would definitely have included it in his Terraces of Terror, squeezed in somewhere perhaps between the Lake of the Treacherous and The Virtuous Pagans. `The Wheel Of Torment`, he might have called it.
What on earth am I dribbling on about? Good question.
Sunday saw the first of the twelve race J-Tour Pro/Am series get underway with a 162-kilometer jaunt around a roller-coastering 6-kilometer course up in Gunma Prefecture, a sleepy little place in the mountains about an hour outside of Tokyo. An hour before the start the sun finally made an appearance after 2 days of rain and started to dry out the road, which was timely, as the course was an accident waiting to happen, with narrow, tight bends on the descent leaving little room for the 160 riders crammed onto the tarmac.
The gun went off and I charged to the front, primarily to get safely down the hill first time round, but within 3kms a quick look over my shoulder revealed that I was somehow leading a group of 10 – an early breakaway! Surprising, and completely unintentional. Despite having no time for a decent warm-up though I felt good, and soon we all got into a nice rhythm, the line buzzing along smooth and crisp. Six laps in and we had a lead of 2.20 over the disintegrating chasers. I reminded myself to eat and drink regularly, tried to calm myself down as much as was possible at 39km/hr per lap, and was really starting to enjoy myself! There I was, the only amateur, mixing it with the big boys! Around 70kms in I had one of those moments, one of those treasures – Jean Bobet, in his wonderful book `Tomorrow, We Ride`, describes it as `La Volupte` - some might call it an epiphany, a transcendental moment.
Bobet does a much better job than I could of putting into words…
…it is delicate, intimate and ephemeral. It arrives, it takes hold of you, sweeps you up and then leaves you again. It is for you alone. It is a combination of speed and ease, force and grace. It is pure happiness.
There I was, experiencing something like that. I was flying. And as soon as it came, I thought, `Oh, this cannot last… And it didn’t. At 120kms our lead had been cut to 40 seconds by a rabid, frothing-at-the-gills pack of chasers. My legs were going, almost imperceptibly at first, but there it was, that telltale ache, deep in the thigh muscle, on the last few yards for the umpteenth time up that pesky little hill before the finish. I tell you, 27 laps of a 6km course is no picnic, the psychological drag of knowing what’s coming really starts to take its toll. Yet still I felt reasonably good. Still, I dreamed, I might just sneak a win here…
The Blitzen-Utsonimiya team with the race winner Takayuki Naganuma
By 140kms they were getting closer, we could see them through the trees on the hill, but still the legs turned, still the wheels whirred and the kilometers fell away. We increased the pace, dropped two more guys from the original 10 to leave us at 4. Then at 148kms, the chasers, 6 of them, they finally got us, and yet, and maaaaaybe, I might just make it. One of them attacks, I follow, another comes, and another, I chase back on, just 12kms to go, twice up the hill, then the finish! Another attack, I’ll just follow this one and then maybe I’ll
Oh no you won’t. You’ll do nothing of the sort. They’ve gone. The riders have gone. And the legs have gone. Spaghetti. Overcooked, cheap, old spaghetti. Not a bean left in the engine. Hit the wall? Hit the ceiling more like. Dropped from a very great height onto a concrete slab, more like. Some guys came along and I tried desperately to grab the last wheel, with every fiber straining, my face contorted like a monkey on hallucinogens, but to no avail. That ship had set, and off she sailed…
Three members of the Massa Team
In truth I’d been on the rivet for a few laps before the spectacular implosion, but the adrenalin had been coursing to such an extent that I’d somehow overridden my fatigue. I had the power up to about 120kms, but the course was just too much, too soon. Back to the training grounds it is, before my next visit to the Wheel of Torment!
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