Bailed out on Thursday for a couple of reasons:
1) Lack of training nearly guaranteed a less than mediocre finish
2) Lack of desire to ride in a Cat 4 race and listen to fellow Cat 4s yell "hold your line" at other Cat 4s that have comparable bike handling skills.
3) Since I also entered mountain bike races for the next couple of weekends, I'd rather spend my weekend ride time on the trails getting ready for 2 weekends of mountain biking.
and the main reason,
4) Sonya signed us up to go see David Sedaris in Baltimore Saturday night, so I knew I wouldn't get much sleep the night before.
Ok, I could've made it to the race, but in the time since I signed up for the race, I've decided that Crits and Circuit Races aren't that appealing right now. It probably goes back to a combination of reasons #1 and #2. I really have no desire to get dropped or be involved in a big crash.
So, I still did my volunteer time as a road guard during the Women's Cat 1/2/3 and the Men's Pro/1/2/3 races. The race was in a large office park with four lane roads. 2 lanes were blocked off for the race, while riders warmed up on the outer lanes. I sat road guard next to the outer lanes, protecting the racer from those over achieving, I've gotta work on Sunday, workaholics at the USA Today HQ. Since it's a crappy paper, it has very few workaholics, and the lot was empty Sunday....making my job easy.
It was interesting to sit and listen to the teams warmup and discuss 'tactics' as they passed. These guys think up some elaborate crap, that really means nothing, as the race didn't play out that way. Also got to hear the women recap their race as they cooled down...basically a lot of "i could've, should've and would'ves."
I decided to sit at the edge of the sidewalk to get a little bit of shade. The sidewalk was very wide, and not a lot of people passing on it. At one point, I look over to see a large dude on a hybrid hauling ass down the sidewalk. He yells something. I'm leaving plenty of room on the sidewalk, but he buzzes me as he passes. I tell him he's cutting it a little too close. He yells back in his Australian accent "......Fucking Nitwit". Since I've never been called a nitwit, I thought it was funny, so I asked him "What?"...he says ".....blah, blah...Fucking Nitwit!" again. I can hardly contain myself and ask him to say again and he calls me a nitwit again. By that point, he was out of yelling range, so I didn't get a chance to have him call me a "silly ninny" or any other harmless insult.
I did want to tell the guy that he did have plenty of sidewalk if he insisted on riding on sidewalk...or that he would be in compliance with local laws if he rode on the road instead.
In 3 years of riding and running in Hawaii, I never had an incident where a fellow cyclist or runner yelled at me. In 8 months here, I've had 3 incidents. In Hawaii, Mr. Nitwit would've probably given me a Shaka. The guy at the National Marathon would've said "Excuse Me Brah"...the Fred would've said "sorry Brah"...or something.
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