Fear and Loathing on the Tour of Ohio, Part I
by Will McLaughlin

Prologue

July 1999. I’ve been a category III racer since 1995. The expected transition from learning experiences that come with being a newbie to the solid results of a seasoned racer has not come to pass. Instead of glory and victory I have fear, anger, frustration, and an endless litany of hero-to-zero efforts that are too embarrassing to recount in such a fine family publication as the one you are reading. Category III racing is a meatgrinder, don’t let anyone tell you differently. I’m not seasoned, I’m bitter, and still a III.
With fitness gains inversely proportional to my loss of weight this winter I decided to forego the usual III/IV racing and go all out with faster, steadier, and harder I-II-III racing. Now, what usually happens in this transition is that your typical (no, not Andy Hague) hotshot III racer with palmares up the yingyang jumps to category II and immediately becomes pack fodder… On a good day. It must sting, physically and psychologically.
I, however, am not typical. The jump from pack fodder in III’s racing to pack fodder in I-II-III racing has been, while physically exhausting at times, psychologically painless. My transition had been so smooth that Steve McGregor (coach, hockey puck, etc.) felt sorry enough to ask me to take part in a study. I would get to race the Tour of Ohio for FREE (1) as long as I took supplements, gave blood, time trialed on the computrainer (2), and raced the I-II-III races at the Tour of Ohio….

7/8 Fostoria – The Criterium of Fear – part 1

While some of you (eight, I believe) were enjoying a wheelmen race at OOIP, Jeff Ray and I drove down to Fostoria to take part in the first leg of the Tour of Ohio. Upon arrival we surveyed the course and felt that it was fairly straightforward: A figure-eight course, seven corners, 0.8 miles long. It was no big deal, except for the sixth corner, it was bumpy and slightly off-camber. Our intrepid (and talented) juniors warned us that it was "slippery".
I got dressed, warmed up, and headed off to the start/finish line. About 65 to 70 racers lined up. Judging by the horsepower I could recognize, it was going to be one of the fastest criteriums I had ever done.
The officials got through with the standard platitudes, the racers started, the starting gun went off (3), and we were going Mach 10 in 100 yards. Now, any bicycle racing manual worth its salt says that you should race at the front. I say (write, whatever) to you now though, that there is no getting to the front when the entire peloton is in single file, or (at best) two abreast. We were in single file more often than not.
I got myself into the rhythm of the race quickly: Pedal at speed through a left hand turn, Pedal at speed through a right hand turn, grovel in a bumpy gutter (slight crosswind, noticeable at 30+ mph), coast, lean hard through bumpy right hand corner, jump hard (read: ‘sprint’) to stay in contact, pedal through left hand turn, brake, accelerate through a right hand turn, etc. Fear came into play on that sixth corner.(4)
I have two words for what happened there: Ten Crashes. In a I-II-III race. On that corner alone. Crashes happened in the front, middle, and back. Someone would get too excited, take the corner a little too aggressively, hit a depression in the road and slide out. Several people would be taken down in every incident. I didn’t take any chances, I took it easy on that corner and eventually drifted to the back.

To make a long story short…Tailgunning got old really fast. I could handle the accelerations and the whip-cracking, but I had a death grip on my handlebars thanks to the bumpiness of the backside and the infernal sixth corner. I was getting tired and nervous, but I wasn’t going to drop out, even if I could only move up ten positions from the tail.

Then it got hard….

With about 25 (of 65) laps to go, people started pulling off.

Now, your usual (obscene gerund) nimrod (5) will usually drop out of a race after opening up a ten foot gap through a corner and accelerating poorly, thereby opening up a ten YARD gap. This person will then pull off and gesture for others to pick up the slack. Chaos. Sprint. Naughty words. Naughty gestures. The sixth corner. There were a lot of (obscene gerund) nimrods in the race that day.
With about 15 laps to go the Go-Mart team decided to start chasing down a two-up breakaway that had gotten nearly half a lap ahead.(6) Instantaneously, the pace cranked up to ludicrous speed. More people fell off the pace. Ouch. I heaved (hyperventilated) a sigh of relief, though, when Go-Mart sat up with about five laps to go. The jockeying for third began and I wanted no part of it. I was too paralyzed with fear and cramps, so I rolled in with what was left of the field. End of story.

7/9 Lancaster

I had to work a little late today, so I couldn’t make the three hour drive. It didn’t matter. The race was called due to inclement weather.

7/10 Galion

This race wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as Fostoria. The backside of the course was a little bumpy, that’s all. Just the same, I was tailgunning again after two laps. We went just as fast as at Fostoria, but today I was able to make significant movements through the field. I even saw the front of the race. Three times. Boneheadedly.

(1)During a lull, I jumped from dead last to bridge up to a breakaway. The move worked for half a lap.

(2)A 12-15 man split had gotten about 50 yards on the rest of us. I went to the front and brought it back. Obviously, a lack of work ethic in the split.

(3)With ¾ of a lap to go I jumped from dead last (again), cut a corner, pissed off a Go-Mart leadout, and had a 50 foot gap with 400m to go. I cracked with 300m to go. (7)

The interesting thing about this race was that Jeff Ray had broken his Campy Record Ergo levers in a crash on lap 2. I chauffeured an extremely agitated Jeff back to our residence, cracked open some Heinekens, and began scrounging about the house for some spare parts to convert from Campy to Shimano.
At about Midnight (five hours after returning form the race) we had a workable (8) racing machine. I’ll just say that it had been a frustrating night for all involved (9). I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

7/11 New Bremen

This was a TIGHT course. Eight corners in one kilometer. With a downhill, off-camber final corner. (10)
I found myself in my usual position when I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. I noticed that I was taking the corners fractionally slower than everyone else. When a gap opened up, I would just accelerate back on. I had the fitness to do it again….and again…and again…and again….and again. I could pull it off, but it really pissed off Joe Holmes. He got ahead of me as soon as he could.
With about 20 laps to go I saw the pace car approach us from the other end of the figure eight. I hadn’t even seen the move go! (11) Andy Hague did, though. He was the guy motoring the move. He’s the man, I guess.

7/13 Delaware

Finally! A course that suited me. A rectangle with a false flat and a downhill. It was fast as Hell, but with the false flat I could make up five positions every lap, and did! I even saw the front and motored for an entire lap. I got my name announced on the speaker. The good people of Delaware know me and the Wheelmen!
I talked with Jeff after the race. He expressed his envy at the fact that I could motor about the field at whim (except for the finish, of course) whereas lighter guys like Jeff and John would suffer just keeping up with the accelerations on the flats. My mass paid dividends today.
Andy Hague finished in the money again. (12)

7/15 Marion

I’m not sure what it was, the lack of sleep (5 ½ hours on a good night), stress at work (they just don’t understand), or the 3 ½ hour ride in Michigan with Jeff Ray (13), but my legs were stiff. Bad sign. Bad sign for a wide-open course with a nasty surprise: A right turn followed immediately by a steep hill, followed by a wide dragstrip back to the finish.

There was one neat thing about this race, though. The local constabulary had placed a radar gun on the bottom portion of the first false flat section. The ones that say: "Your speed is…". To this day I am not certain weather Tyler had greased a few palms to get that gun there or not. It was like he wanted to play with our minds. It certainly played with mine; not seeing a single reading below 30 made me want to click my cleats together and say: "There’s no place like the Sun Oil refinery, there’s no place like the Sun Oil refinery".
Throwing the hill into that mix made things extra-painful, but it was good to see that others were suffering more than I was. I knew that if I didn’t do anything stupid, I wouldn’t get dropped. It still hurt, though.
Jeff and John, however, were having a field day. The hill was just what the doctor ordered for the waif-ish twosome. Pipsqueaks. Ouch!
John made a nifty little maneuver with about ten laps to go. He just kind of quietly slipped away with another rider. Nobody reacted. A sizeable gap materialized. I took it personally. There was no way I was going to suffer this hard just to see two people slip by with nary a jump. I went to the front and motored, dragging the field up to the leaders in about a lap. As I pulled over Brad Watkins cursed at me, wondering what I was doing.(14) I chuckled a megalomaniacal chuckle. I was in agony, and I was still a cat. III, dammit. I felt like sharing the love.
I was field fodder in the finish, but Andy Hague got a top-10. What does he have that I don’t? (15)

7/16 Granville – The Criterium of Fear part II

The three hour drive was bad enough, but Tym Tyler had a nasty surprise for us in the 1-3 race…
Granville is a quaint college town, and as I observed the 3-4’s racing about a rectangular course I reckoned it would be an extremely fast, but quaint race. I got registered and dressed, talked about life and stuff with some 1’s and 2’s from Cleveland, and spent some time discussing bike racing with some spectators. (16)
I headed off to get a feel for a clockwise, rectangular (17)course with a cobbled descent.
The course: Proceed 200m from start/finish. Left(!)turn. 180 degrees(!). Return to start/finish line. Right turn. Watch out for open construction ditch! Bumpy. Left turn. Cobbled wall(!!). Wheels slip. Right turn. Road narrows to five feet across(!!!). Climb more. Downhill. Bumpy. Uphill. Right turn. Long, gradual, fast downhill. Right turn. Cobbled descent(!!!!). Right turn. Bumpy. Wheels lose traction. Skid. 300m to finish line.

Porca misero! (18, 19)

I rode back to the car, ranting about how Tyler was a reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade. Nobody was really sympathetic. Like duh, Will. Of course Tyler’s a sadist, didn’t you know that? To tell the truth, I did. Intellectually. Today, I knew deep down in my soul.
I exchanged my rear Rolf wheel for my training wheel,(20) got back on the course, and steeled myself for the ordeal……..

Go To Part II

Last Updated 03/19/08