What self-respecting amateur athlete would turn down the opportunity to ride from Santa Barbara to Buellton with a pro cycling team?
I pounced on Team Type 1’s offer.
My quads were pissed.
They knew, in their little quad world, that the only way out of Santa Barbara would involve a climb. They voted to secede.
My quads aren't always so ornery. However, they had just completed the hardest 150-mile ride they had ever been on in their entire quarter-century of being less than 48 hours before the proposed Pro ride.
What could've been a chance to prove triathletes don't suck at road riding turned into a massive battle between my brain and my quads—a loosing battle.
At the first slight incline, my quads signaled that they had nothing left. We’d been riding for 10 minutes.
At minute 15, I was dropped.
The women’s coach told me to hang onto the team Audi, then proceeded to drag me back up to the peloton. I had a fleeting vision of the Silver Bullet (my bike) and me being sucked under the car's rear tire.
When the car stopped to help a few riders, I charged on, hoping to gain some ground. 5 minutes farther up, I made a sharp left to be faced with what looked like a wall. Holy crap! I am actually going to roll backwards.
My quads couldn't turn the 21 cog, my smallest. I briefly dreamed of a bike with a granny gear. Just as I topped that little chunk of road, up came the car to drag me along again.
The team regrouped at the top of the climb and I struggled to find a Gu in my pocket. It would be the only thing I'd eat on the entire 3-hour ride; I was too terrified to take my hand off of the handlebars long enough to fish around my jersey for food.
Then began the descent down a very sketchy and very narrow road.
The bumps snapped my front water bottle cage, making the bottle ride sideways and whack my right leg. Then a bump popped my back bottle out, which I miraculously caught between my legs. Later on, I locked up my back wheel.
It all wouldn't have bothered me, except I was being watched--by a pro women's coach.
I imagined he was horrified--that he was the Mama Bear and the peloton was his cub and I was a dumbass human standing between them. As the gap between me and the peloton grew, so did the gap between the Audi and the peloton, effectively making the team leave their coach's protective bubble.
The car drove up beside me. I wanted to ask for directions, to tell him that I'd eventually make it there, he could go on ahead. But before I could, the rear window opened, the mechanic leaned halfway out of the Audi, stuck his hand on my ass, and away we went.
Being pushed down a highway by a car will teach a cyclist to hold her line in an instant. Either that, or give her a heart attack.
When we finally pulled into Buellton, the women's coach was ready to pass out from the terror of watching a tri-ton trained cyclist wedge herself into his pro peloton.
* tri-ton (n): (a) a group of cyclists consisting of you, yourself, and your thoughts or (b) a group of cyclists consisting of one or two other triathletes, often to whom you are related, and in which at least one person has aerobars.
I drove home to LA bleary-eyed with visions of becoming a pro cyclist, and thankful for the day’s opportunity. No other pro team would have been as nice to a hairy rider with no quads, pink socks, mountain bike gloves, tri shoes, and a chamois that sticks out like a duck bill.