you don't fear the height, you only fear the fall
I was lying in a field in western Massachusetts at the end of a long, hot Saturday afternoon, reposed in a state of pulsing pain. My legs had been seized by cramps and were slowly unknotting. The middle and index fingers on my left hand were paralyzed by nerve damage. My shoulders and upper arms felt battered, but I was smiling.
There are geological layers of scar tissue on my left leg from having it ripped open by a couple of bad bike crashes. The first one was on a dirt road ride four years ago in 2008 that also left me with broken teeth and a lattice of scar tissue across the knuckles of my left hand. On cold days the index and middle finger on that hand would sometimes seize and cramp up, leaving me unable to hold anything. The second bike crash was also on a dirt road ride from last summer that left me with stitches on my face, and in healing from that I had started to think to myself that one such accident might be misfortune, but two might be a trend.
I've liked doing dirt road rides. There's a beauty and peace that comes from navigating these hidden spaces in our communities, and there's a wildness to places that are seldom touched by cars. Also, the challenges of navigating such terrain can be intriguing, though such challenges come with commensurate penalties for failure. It's easier to lose control and crash, and if you were to crash, it's harder for help to get to you. After my second crash, I had started to think that this pursuit had become less worthwhile. I had a few good rides and great memories, and it was probably time to leave this behind before the damage got really serious.
I signed up for this ride at the last minute after getting word of mouth from a friend. It was an 84 mile ride in the middle of the Pioneer Valley, raising funds for a local scholarship, and run by a retired racer with the help of his parents and friends. At first I thought it was some small town affair for the local college clubs, but then realized my mistake when I arrived and saw that the participants were all of these top local cyclocross racers and off-road aficionados. The start itself was just a few miles from the traditional start of the D2R2, the big ride where I had my first crash. This was dirt road country and I should have known.
I had an urge to bail, to think that I was done with this stuff, but I never liked the fact that my last off-road ride had resulted in a crash, and the taste of defeat that had left in my mouth. So, I unpacked and rigged up my bike, getting ready to get on with the rest of my day and whatever it may bring. But ... yeah ... I was nervous.
In the years since my 2008 crash, I had gone back to the D2R2 and completed it successfully, and done a few other dirt road rides with friends and learned from my mistakes. I was taught to unlearn certain instincts. When the road is rough, we'll tend to partially stand up, to use our legs as suspension and keep our asses from being battered by the road, but on dirt rides, you want to keep your weight down and back, so that you can keep wheel planted on the road and maintain traction. You have to keep pedaling, especially on descents where you may prefer to coast, because if you start to coast then it's easier for your wheels to get stuck on a piece of deep sand and for you to lose traction again. I forgot that last year, and paid for it.
So, when we hit the first dirt road segment, at mile 11, I was repeating a mantra to myself. Weight down. Keep pedaling. Weight down. Keep pedaling. We hit the gravel at speed, coming off a fast descent and there were craters and ruts in the road that bounced us like steeplechasers. Water bottles that bounced off the bikes of those who had come before us littered the road and made things even more interesting. And by interesting, I mean momentarily terrifying. One of my own bottles went flying, but I managed to catch it between a thigh and my bike frame, then grabbed the bottle and swung it back into its holster. I was feeling rather slick for that maneuver, but then subsequently hit a bunch of loose gravel and nearly crashed my bike again.
I kept going, and as the first gravel descents came, I started riding my brakes, trying to slow myself down and buy some time to read the terrain and find safety. I kept pedaling. Kept my weight on the saddle, but my mind was filling with memories of how all of this looked like places where I had crashed before. I was afraid, freaking out about crashing again, but then remembered articles that I had read about how soldiers and firemen, people who routinely put themselves in high-stress situations, would do long breath exercises to calm themselves down. So I focused on the long exhales, blowing air out consciously over six or ten seconds, the length of an entire descent.
Somehow, I stopped riding the brakes so much. I started trusting my bike again, and I stopped thinking about crashing and instead started looking for the best lines on these trails. My body loosened up, became like liquid and flowed down the hillside like it was supposed to.
Still, it was a long day, a hot day, and the sun had risen past its zenith. As one steep climb came after another, the muscles in my quads and calves had started to cramp up with stress. I had been doing my best to stay hydrated and keep fluids running through me, but in truth my summer training had been haphazard, and my legs weren't really ready for a ride with this much climbing. In addition, three hours of bumpy, gnarly dirt riding had started to take their toll on my hands and arms, which were absorbing all of the shocks coming up from my handlebars. The fingers on my scarred left hand were spasming between all of the braking that I was doing earlier and the battering that they had taken across the day.
About 2/3rd of the way through the route, as I finished another long climb and could see the beginning of a new descent, I realized that both of my legs had seized up and my left hand couldn't squeeze a brake. So, faced with the fact that I could neither pedal nor really control my bike, I pulled to the side of the route, dismounted and sat down. My legs were angry knots of dehydrated muscles and it took me a while to figure out a seating posture that wouldn't give me intense pain, and I sat there, in the sand, trying to massage them back into some state of cooperation.
One of the ride leaders caught up to me as I was working my muscles back and he asked me if I was ok, and I said that I just had cramping issues that I was working out. He asked me if I needed fluids and I said that I was fine. He offered Gatorade and I said that I had my own electrolytes. He said that a support car was coming up and I'd be welcome to sit in there and get some air conditioning, and while I knew that he was just trying to be helpful, it just sounded a little condescending, and I wanted to punch him in the throat.
But, no, dude. I'm a randonneur, trained and developed, and I know how to take care of myself.
Eventually, I got my legs functional again, and kept going. The last dirt road segment was a three mile goat track with a bunch of deep sand, the exact sort of terrain where I wiped out last time, and while I nearly wiped out while fishtailing on a turn, I managed to keep pedaling and retain control. The rest of it was like playing a familiar videogame, and the right moves were coming reflexively, and as that segment ended and I turned on to pavement, I felt a bit wistful that it didn't last a little longer.
Still, my body was wrecked, and I realized that even if I could do more rides like this without crashing, this terrain still took a toll of its own, and it was still best that I leave this behind. I was grateful for long smooth stretches of asphalt, where I could take my hands off my handlebars and shake off the tingles and beatings that they had to put up with for the last few hours.
And so, that's how I found myself at the end in this grassy field, sitting with friends, these long-distance riders who raced cross in the autumn, all talking about our pains and joys in the same voice of quiet pride. The smell of barbecue was wafting up to us from a dinner tent downhill and within that tent there was the promise of beer. There was talk of an after-party, but most of them were just wanting to go back to Boston and take it easy. Someone, I think it was Wilcox, asked me what I was going to do.
My legs were spent. My fingers on my left hand were paralyzed. It was a struggle to raise my arms, but all the same, I thought to myself that it was nothing that a bit of dinner and 30 minutes in a hot tub couldn't fix. There was a burner dance party on the banks of the Charles that night, and it had been a long time since I danced to some good drum'n'bass. It seemed ambitious, but I had just killed one of my demons, and I felt, at least for that afternoon, that I could do anything.