If the Gateway Cup has a queen stage, the Giro de la Montagna would be that stage. It's been happening in the same neighborhood for over two decades and everyone there has come to expect and enjoy watching the race. The race has adapted to the neighborhood too. It starts later in the day so that everyone can go to the small Italian-American church and after lunch they can turn to watching some top notch racing.
The Hill is a perfect little Italian neighborhood and reminds me a lot of some of the places on the southside of Chicago where my Mom grew up. The grass out front of the stoops of the little houses is perfectly manicured and lush. I was watching another race and heard a passerby remark to the owner of the house I was sitting in front of how nice her grass was. The woman who owned the house seemed to beam with pride when she heard that, as if someone had just told her that she had won the lottery.
The last time I did this race I was joined by a blonde-haired New England woman of Italian decent. It was her first trip to St. Louis and she fell in love with the neighborhood. At one point in time she turned to me and said that "we" could move there and just be so very happy. That's the kind of neighborhood The Hill is, a warm and inviting place where you forget about cell phones, traffic and political corruption. The race through it however is not that kind.
It's a four corner race with narrower streets than the two previous days. Aptly named there is a long slow hill that rises up on the backside of the course and that you quickly descend on the finishing stretch. Along the backside someone was nice enough to string a sprinkler along a telephone wire which stretched over the road. When you passed under it the cold water which came down gave you a refreshing "take your breadth away" shower.
This race was a battle of survival, not from the fast pace, but from the million crashes that seemed to happen for no good reason. No doubt the guy who won was the guy who didn't crash. The crash that I got involved in was going up the hill. I'm not sure what manner of stupid one has to be to crash while going up a straight-away on a hill, but the two guys right in front of me where that manner of stupid. I saw it slowly develop for about 30 feet. One guy leaned into the other. Then shoulders came together, elbows followed and finally handlebars locked. I looked to my left and to my right for an escape but there were guys on either side of me. When the two in front of me went down I joined them.
The field dodged us but a few others joined in the fun. A spectator asked if I was "ok." I responded by saying yes just "fine," but that I was going to have to get a beer from him after the race was over to be "good." A quick smile on his face and I took off to cut the course and head for the pit. The pit was located at the bottom of the finishing stretch where the field would pass with the most speed. This made it a little hard to get back into the race at the front. About 2/3s of the field passed me before I was able to get up to speed. I spent the next 10 minutes fighting through crashes (I counted a total of 7) and corners to get back to the front.
My plan had been to slingshot into the first spot through corner 3 at the top of the hill and then jump going into corner 4 for the sprint. It's still a good 400 meters from there to the finishing line but it was all downhill from there and it would be hard for a lot of people to come around me. I took the outside line in corner 3 and found myself rubbing elbows with a guy who thought he could go even wider than the road would allow. A 4 inch tall curb separated the pavement from the grass and he found himself dancing along it scratching his carbon wheels up for good measure. A little angered by this and all the other crashes I started my sprint for the front from midpack. A top 20 finish in another 140+ person field made me fell good and helped ease the pain of a cut up elbow.
Still missing the elusive victory story I resigned to try again the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment