Photos courtesy of Rory O’Toole, De Ronde social media pages, Brendan Slattery and Sean Rowe, the article from Brendan, with thanks to you all!!
ONE WORD (this week’s CX race at De Ronde van Cork Cycling Club was dedicated to our friend, Tomás Mulqueen (above). This piece is in honour of him.)
OF ALL THE FEELINGS, this was not the one I was expecting. I would never have expected it. Maybe because of recent illness, maybe because of a lack of training. Maybe because my bike is 40 years old and I’m 10 years older. It really wasn’t there at the start, you know. It came with the pain. That lung and leg burning pain that questions everything. Yet, the race has begun and we’re through the straight, drop, straight, turn, sprint, oh God…bank!
Grab! Grab at the handrail and pull the bike over the embankment just when the last thread fills with mud. Suck in the oxygen after that last breath was forced out by a thud. Celebrate steering the bars to the sand on the right, despite the tyres suggesting left. At the hell raising descent, leave the brakes to the last minute, or, better again, leave them alone, and use the turning front tyre to act as a foil to falling off.
After the up and over, imprint that one divot into your mental map, especially when you are an inch from the wheel in front of you. At the off-camber, challenge yourself to sprint and stay-up, pulling a sliding rear wheel back into line. Defy gravity. Concentrate on the corner near the pits (“not many going in today” you think). Be part of the show when the crowd calls your name. Show what makes you a name when you wince and inhale.
Behold the feeling, the feeling that despite your mental fatigue you have it in you to find a one inch rut in a sea of mud. Temper pace with technique as you roll over the pumps. Allow your shoulders brush the wooden stake rather than career into the tree on the other bank. Call a truce with your nemesis as you dismount at the boards. But war breaks back out at the lip of the bridge.
Between these helter skelter moments of a cyclocross race come the straights. It’s here that our skirmishes are lost, or won. Forcing blood back into your head, you make the right decision for gearing into the wind. Force blood back into your legs to ride faster with the tail wind. And it was here that it hit me. That feeling that despite everything; the burning lungs, the burning muscles, the mental strain, the loss, the gain. I am here. In this space. Just one word, just one feeling:
Grace.
B-Race
Women’s , and underage races
