Who Needs a Small Chain Ring
Saturday, April 12th was a day that I'll remember as having my ass handed to me and being told to wear it as a hat. Not so much from physical exertion or agony of defeat, but in terms of being reminded that life ain't going to happen as you think it should. That was the day my friend Rod and I drove to Hemingway Butte south of Boise and took part in the Barking Spider Mountain Bike Race. This type of race should not be confused with anything like NORBA or World Cup that you see on OLN, however, when Rod and I saw the pro class racers leave on their race, we realized there were hard core people at this thing.

Rod and I were racing in the beginner class (there were 4 classes: pro, expert, sport and beginner) which was one 9 mile circuit around the various trails on the butte. It was mostly hard packed single track with occasional pits of loose sand that would send your rear tire fishtailing like a Pinto in the Southwest parking lot in January and lots of motorbike created dips that if you weren't careful would send you shuttling over the handlebars. The climbing was nothing vicious and we probably gained no more than 250 vertical feet (although there was one short pitch that was so steep Rod and I wondered how anyone could ride over it, we bailed as soon as we reached the base of it and hiked it) and the course really wasn't that technical. But, as I soon learned, racing is different than going out on a Saturday afternoon and trying to test yourself, racing is testing yourself WHILE dealing with 40 or 50 others trying to test themselves.

I took it easy out of the gate and when I approached the first climb, a pitch that would be important for "thining the heard", I felt good. I had gears to spare and the legs were ready to bite. Some people bailed right at the foot, choosing instead to hike it, and while I knew the climb wouldn't be easy, it was deffinitely doable. However, a third of the way up, surrounded on all sides, the guy in front of me had to bail. With nowhere to go, I had to bail myself, and full of adrenaline from a climb unconquered, I started running with my bike up to a spot on the climb where I could remount and hopefully get infront of the walkers. I did get it going again, 20 feet from the top, the pitch really steepened and with others breathing down my bike, I knew I didn't have the room on the trail I need to push it, so I bailed again. The next section was 2 or 3 drop and rises that required good gear management. Somewhere in there, I had to bail again, I think because I was coming up hard to a summit and someone had to bail right up in front of me. I may have tried to shift late to make it around, but everything still seemed fine with my bike.

This was all in the first 2.5 miles, after that we descended from the butte and started up a long gradual climb. Seeing that things were going to be less "roller coaster" I must have gotten excited and shifted up to middle ring, maybe, once again, with the drive train under too much stress and I felt my chain go slack and the crank jam as it bunched up in the chainring. I'm not even a third of the way through the race and I have a mechanical... DAMN! I back-peddaled, got the chain re-wrapped around the gears and tried shifting on the rear sproket again. By now I could hear my chain rhythmically grinding against my front derailuer and after a few cranks, it slacked and jammed again. Thankfully, the trail had mellowed out and I could baby the bike along as I tried to get my bike settled into gear. I finally got it into my middle ring and although it sounded terrible, I could at least keep it going. However, my small chainring (the smallest gear in the front that comes in handy for climbing) was unreachable as the derailer mount was twisted so much that the bike "thought" I was in the lowest gear.

So, I see the trail starts climbing up again and for a brief moment I consider turning around and calling it a day. I don't know the trail and I'm not sure if I want to do it without my 8 easiest gears. Then, I though about Ernest Shackelton, the Antarctic explorer, and his credo, "Endurance". For him, endurance was not a successful journey to the south pole (something he never did) it was surviving over a year stranded in Antarcitca without a ship and navigating an open boat over 600 miles of open sea for help. I thought of the Japanese word for endurance: shinbo. The Chinese characters for shinbo are "difficulty" and "embrace". Originally my goal was to stay with the pack for most of the race, have reserves but not be passed by everyone and their grandma. I was going to come into the last mile full of charge, pushing myself to edge out some rivals and finish below an hour. Instead, I would finish it in pain from having to grind it out in a higher gear and I would finish it last in my age group, 4:00 behind the penultimate 20 to 29 year old male and I would finish with an official time of 59:50.

While legs were churning and burning up that climb, gobbling up a gear ratio bigger than I preferred, I kept thinking how similar this was too life. You aren't always going to have your "granny gear" but that doesn't mean you have to stop riding. And it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the pain.