The composition of pain

When I do housework, my mind usually drifts off with the fairies into La La Land. It wasn’t any different on Friday while sweeping the floors. Then I passed Alberto in the hallway.

“Are you alright?”

I was deep in thoughts and Alberto's alarmed expression on his face brought me back to reality.

"You look exhausted."

The time trial championship had been on my mind. All I could think was "I don't want to hurt, I don't want to torture myself tomorrow morning ..." Tight feeling in my stomach, I was resisting the pain badly and feared the agony of body and mind. Time trials mean suffering. Of course I wanted to win and I knew I had to pull out something special. Maybe it was that pressure that I put on myself that made me so anxious.

I oiled the chain, attached the time trial bars, moved my saddle forward, changed the brake pads so I could race the carbon deep dish wheels, adjusted the strap of the new time trial helmet - anything that would help... and got almost excited when I looked at my race-ready bike. It hadn't looked like this in over eight months.

Fast forward to the race start! I rolled up to the marshalling area only a few seconds before my name got called out. The warm-up on the rollers had me dripping with sweat, even though the morning was still cool. The timing was perfect as it gave me no time to get nervous and no time to cool down again.

The course - a hilly out and back 33 km - starts with a gradual uphill. My heart rate went from 120 bpm to 170 bpm in 45 seconds. My legs felt good, my cadence was up in the nineties and all my worries were gone. I wanted to race!

It didn't feel like 170 bpm at all. I wasn’t even breathing heavily but every time I looked down, there was a big fat 172 staring in my face. I knew my heart rate should be around 162 bpm but it just didn't feel that high. Why back off when it feels so good? My legs felt good, and the cadence was high and I was flying and I loved the feeling of flying up that incline at 28 km/h, steadily closing in on my 30 second girl.

Five minutes into the race and I passed her. I strained my eyes to see the next one up the road but there was just empty road ahead of me. I felt great. I kept going, heart rate now, 15 minutes into the race, at my threshold heart rate of 162 bpm.

I was missing my iPod. No one ahead of me to keep me focused. The next hill, and another one - I tried to remember how many there were to the turn-around point. Twenty five minutes into the race and another longish incline - 25 km/h - 23 km/h - 20 km/h – and my legs felt uncomfortably heavy. Out of the saddle but that just seemed to flood more lactic acid stiffness into the quads and all my worries were back. Oh, the pain! I pushed through it and knew there were many more climbs to come.

I had studied the results from two weeks ago and I knew I had to aim for 1:02:00 hour in order to have a chance of winning. My best time on this course some two years ago had been something over 1:03:00 hour. I approached the turn around point and half an hour hadn't passed. If it just wasn't for my damn burning quads I would have been really excited but I was fearful of the pain of the return leg.

And then, completely unexpectedly and out of the blue, my 30 second chase girl caught me just before the turn around. And she slowed down way more than I would have at the turn and took ages to get around and then she slowed down more and took her water bottle out to drink and I stayed behind her - politely.

"Shit! What am I doing? It's a time trial - me against the clock - remember?"

So I passed her again, up the next incline and I notice a shadow slightly behind me on the road. It stays there. I try to ride away from it, burning legs and everything. It's glued to me, this shadow to my right. I try and ride harder. The shadow stays - till I finally turn around and tell her to stop drafting on me. I was hurting, not just my legs, but also that burning sense of disappointment of having conceded 30 seconds that I would not gain back. I was upset, my rhythm was broken, and I stopped pedalling for two seconds to force her to pass me. I had given up for those two seconds.

And then I told myself to keep pushing harder. I told myself that didn’t really know what pain was and to give it all and I stayed behind her, sometimes ten meters, sometimes thirty and the last long climb before the run down into the finish I looked down and there was the 28 km/h again and my legs were screaming but I didn't care.

I didn't care about winning or loosing nor did I care about anybody else in the race anymore. It was just me and the clock and I knew I had pulled out something special.

My clock stopped at 1:00:31 hour. I didn’t win the club time trial championship but I had just posted my best time on this course … and only six weeks into my training.

Now, if I could just learn how to pace myself…