Tales from the Saddle......: October 2013

The Pune bicycle championship edition no 5 was held at Lavasa on the 20^th of October, 2013. This would probably be my last race of 2013. Was really determined to win this one. Dedicated 4 mornings of every week to improve my climbing. Waking up at 5 and climbing up Sinhagad at least twice a week, then one day Katraj hill climb and Lavasa at least once every week. This complemented by spinning which helped me shed some unwanted weight which in turn improved my climbing prowess.

The Poster

I had borrowed Nachya’s mtb to use for the race one week before. My 29er was great for practice but needed a lighter machine for the race. Couple of modifications later (stripping of all unwanted things and fitting sleek tyres with ACs help of course) I achieved my personal best timing of 36.04m at lavasa (Hotel Prasad till the top). Thus shattering my previous best of 39m to smithereens. This gave me a nice confidence for the race which was pretty much needed when news arrived that Sangli boys had registered for the race.

Team lifecycle (me, Luda, Sushil and AC) had planned to reach the evening before the race and stay the night near the start point so that we get more rest and head start in warming up. So me and Luda took 3 bikes on my car thanks to Nachi’s bike rack. While on our way when we approached the Chandani chowk climb the top hooks of the bike rack became lose and the bikes fell on the road still attached to the bike rack which in turn was still precariously attached to the car. I was constantly checking on the bikes through the rear view mirror. One moment they were there and gone the next. Fortunately I was going dead slow and there wasn’t much traffic. The bikes were unharmed. But it gave both of us a big heart attack. Put on the bike rack back on, this time made sure it was on properly fitted.

Reached our destination without anymore drama. The rooms had been booked at a Bhakta Nivas (Hotel for Pilgrims). The rooms were clean and adequate and comfortable, more than I expected. Did some last minute checks on the bike, ate dinner and slept off early by 9. But for some reason getting sleep that night was harder than climbing up lavasa. I was getting the pre race jitters. Did not sleep at all that night. Even went out for a late night stroll. Kept imagining myself climbing each and every turn of lavasa. Hardly an hour of uneasy sleep I would’ve got.

Woke up early and the first thing I did was check out the bike. Was surprised to meet Sunil Chatekar and his company of volunteers who had slept off in the car all night as we had occupied all the rooms. They weren’t really in a happy mood. Got down to the start line as fast as possible. Reported and started warming up. Got chased by 3 big German shepherds, which was a nice warm up. Disaster struck when the front shifter stopped working; however AC came to rescue and fixed it in no time.

The race was flagged off at 7 am sharp by Milind Soman. This showed the awesome time management of the organizers. The first ones to go were the road bike category which had Siddhartha Gadekar from Team Lifecycle. His practice timing was enough to get him on the podium. Then the next group to go was the Hybrid category with Sushil Dhende as favorite from TLC. And he proved himself by dominating the race. Then came the moment of my flag off; the MTB category. The biggest category in the race with more than 50 participants. The moments before the flag off were full of anxiety. Getting ready to explode needed intense focus. I just closed myself to the world took a deep breath, everything went silent , I saw the flag go down and bang I exploded.

On the offensive

I got delayed by 2 seconds which I needed to get my shoes hooked onto the pedal clips. Once in I went all out on the highest gear, my legs pounding like an engine’s piston in smooth easy circles. And within seconds I was leading the race. Nobody seemed to be interested in working at the front of the peloton. With me as the pacemaker, I dropped the hammer and attacked like crazy with hardly 2 mins into the race. Only 3 other riders managed to latch onto me. The 2 boys from sangli (which included the National level cyclist Hussien Korbu) and a strong American rider Malcolm Brown. Nobody seemed to be taking the lead, so I kept attacking the stuff out of them. It was taking all they had to latch onto me. My strategy was working perfect. The attack was hurting the climbers. Soon Malcolm started helping me to increase the pace and we tried to throw off Hussien and his crony. Hussien on the other hand had a nice strategy; he had his crony as a pacer all along till the dam where the climb began. Just when the climb started Hussien’s domestique quit as he had exhausted himself. I was afraid that Hussien would attack anytime soon, so was hyper alert for the impending attack. And there it was he attacked right on the steep slope which marks the start of the lavasa ghat. Behind him was Malcolm and then me. Malcolm seemed to be suffering and couldn’t catch him soon enough, however since I was expecting the attack I managed to stay on Hussien’s wheels.

He was setting up a steady pace which helped me recover and also Malcolm caught onto me. Soon we reached the Dam top and I was feeling all fresh and awesome. I knew there would be an ease in the climb soon, a perfect place for an attack and obtain a decent lead. Both of them were looking stuffed and my attack would have been successful. But alas things aren’t always perfect in this cruel world. Just as I got up and shifted onto the highest gears the sudden surge in power caused a chain slip. I had to stop and put on the chain then back on the bike and clip my shoes back into the pedals. This delay set me back by at least 40 seconds on Hussein. The two soon disappeared amongst the twisting labyrinth of lavasa. I could not see anyone behind me, so I knew I could come in third just by riding comfortably to the finish. But who wants that, the crazies in me wanted to bust a gut and get back my lead. And bust a gut I did. Regaining ground on the lead two was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I rode on 2-6 gear combo all along. Everything in my body was hurting. With some powerful riding I soon caught up on those two. I bet they never expected me back. When I saw them Hussein had developed a lead of about 30 seconds on Malcolm.

Setting Malcolm as my primary target, I got off my bum and pedaled like crazy until I caught up to him. He wasn’t giving up easy; I barely managed to hang onto his wheel. He even covered up to me after a mediocre attack. I couldn’t sustain anymore long attacks. So I just settled on his wheel and kept pedaling with whatever I had left in me. Hussien was now just a little beyond reach. Covering the ground had depleted my energy reserves. Just before the short flat short section Malcolm found second wind and hit me with slow spurts of speed, which worked as I fell off from his wheel and he got a 15 second lead on me. I was running pretty low myself. But I knew that these attacks must’ve left Malcolm depleted and vulnerable for an attack. So I just steeled myself, shut the mind from the pain that was gonna come. I get off the saddle, get on the highest gear combo and start pedaling like crazy; again I catch him, the flat bit near the finish point had helped in recovering a bit. Now only a meager 50 meters were left to the finish. I just couldn’t accept coming in third. There were people who seemed to be shouting and cheering. I even saw dad near the last hairpin. But I couldn’t hear anyone. Everything was quiet, the pain became distant, the loud thumping heartbeats became quiet, everything became slow, all I could see was the finish. This lasted only a moment, but the next moment I attacked and zoomed past Malcolm who did try to catch me but couldn’t hold on (I have no idea how I got that power, amazing what the mind can do). That attack threw me in a world of pain, drowning in it; lungs exploding; heart beating at the speed of light; head bursting; stitches were severely stretched and in this moment of intense pain I got a cramp. It was so severe that I couldn’t keep myself from screaming. It was an intense flash of sharp sharp pain in my right calf. Still I kept going for the last 20 meters of the climb. Looked back to make sure he wasn’t coming in before me. Mind was blank when I crossed the line, couldn’t even breath. Slowed down to some random stranger who I told to hold me as I couldn’t unclip from my pedals. Did that and just fell on the ground trying to get back to reality. Someone poured water on me. Recovered in about 10 minutes. At least enough to walk and talk. Malcolm came up and congratulated me, what a nice fellow!! Great competitor.

Then it sunk in that I had come second, was a bit depressed for losing out on the first spot. But then again realized I had just managed to trouble one of the best cyclists around and make them sweat. That was rewarding and the thought made my day.

On the Podium

Team Lifecycle Racing. Sushil got first in Hybrid cat, Luda got 3rd , Prashant got first in seniors MTB and AC got first in seniors Hybrid.

The race organized by Lifecycle was organized very well. No room for any complaints. The new sponsors SPRINT and GIANT gave away some awesome prizes. The breakfast hosted by Lavasa corp was lavish as always. PBCh a great race to participate and win!!!

Getting my prizes from Giant Sprint CEO Pravin Patil and Lifecycle's Nachiket Joshi

Cheers

Another race coming second. Its frustrating to lose when you dominate the entire race especially if you are stronger and faster than your competitors.

The race was on Sunday the 29th of September. Had been training for it right after coming back from rugged. It was Luda's idea to run the race. Did a lot of training on Sinhgad plus ran outside my office after work. My running really needed some work if I was to keep up with Sushil n Ludmila. Luda due to her recent Ladakh trip was super strong and I was desperate to not be the weakest link.

The race was gonna start in Velhe village, which is at the base of the historic Torna fort. The village is surrounded by a jungle n a huge river flows by one side. Very laid back village, no coverage disturbed only by the steady stream of trekkers to Torna fort. Its about 40 kms from Pune right at the edge of Sahyadris.

Me, Luda, Ashok Captain our coach/manager, Sushil's wife Priyanka all left for Velhe the night before the race in my car. Reached early, had a nice dinner of chicken cooked on choolah. Man that taste can never be replicated. So delicious it was. They had allocated a separate room for us, Captain's magic, otherwise all the other participants slept in a big hall. Sushil joined later at night.

Wanted to talk with the missus (who's in Australia) but no coverage anywhere, so tried to walk all through the village to get a signal to send a text home; no luck. There was no phone booth with international connection either. So just took out the car and drove 5 kms out, all the time holding my phone out the window for one fucking signal; no luck again. Drove back. Finally gave in to Luda's insistence of using her phone which had some signal.

Yes AC does sleep, despite popular urban myths

Had a nice sleep in my sleeping bag with the calm sound of a creek running near by. The next morning was oh so beautiful. The mountain was covered in clouds and they were fast descending on us. The locals said it gets very foggy late in the morning. Was surprised to find the village full with athletes. Didn't expect this kind of turn up. Met some fellow cyclists too. But Captain told us to be focused n we went on a short warm up run. The race got delayed for about 2 hours, finally we were let off at 9.30. By that time it had started to rain pretty hard. The terrain which we had to run was all through muddy trails n fields.

The Map

Started with a nice steady pace, with Sushil leading , Luda in the middle and me bringing up the rear. The trails were super slippery due to the rains. Very very hard to run, was all wet in minutes. Shoes got heavy too. Thanks to our training, all this had little affect on us. The scenic route to the first control was alongside a huge backwater area (Gunjawne Dam). We had to trudge through knee deep creeks and ankle deep mucks of paddy fields. The rocks were slippery too, almost slipped couple of times. The swampy land was slowing us down considerably and I wished for the mountains which I later regretted. We were the first to reach the first check point. All along we were closely followed by a team of super strong athletes. After the check point they made their move and overtook us. We however maintained a steady pace and tried to keep up with them. They were way too fast for us, soon they would have put up a nice lead on us, but the girl in their team unfortunately slipped and scraped a knee. That slowed them down and we took back the lead.

These pics hardly do justice to the Terrain!!! (Pic courtesy Sunil Nanaware and Santosh Zurange)

Soon we hit the mountains and we had to run up steep slippery slopes. The pace reduced to almost a crawl now. Luda got a little winded here and I pushed her up the slope to get us going faster. Sushil strong as ever could hardly feel a thing. After a particularly steep slope we reached the third control which almost made us crawl on all fours. The route then went down a mountain side. And there we thought going down would be easier than climbing, haven't been so wrong. Descending was almost as slow as ascending, thanks to the slippery terrain. After a brief slope down the mountain we hit a totally deserted woods, no sign of civilization for miles. It was here that we got lost. Things got worse when the fog came down on us. All I could see was Luda running in front of me. So hopelessly lost we were that we had to stop and think for 5 minutes (that's a lot of time to keep still in a race) . There were no other teams who followed us there. It was all very frustrating. We went down the wrong path twice, wasted at least half an hour until we finally managed to find the arrows on the road again. Once back on the road, we soon came down to the village and the tar road. Discouragement had set in. But we still managed to increase our pace in our hurry to make up the lost time. While going through one of the fields a small lamb hardly 2-3 months old started giving chase to Luda. The cute little thing did not let up for about half a km. Sushil had to stop and get rid of it as its owner was cursing us to stop. Just after the third check point we hit another steep climb. The climb was very slippery, even walking up there was a task. It was here I started to get cramps in my groin muscles. Had a 2 minute break at the top, drank lots of water which took care of them. But my leg muscles were screaming to stop. All the hammering and pushing Luda had taken its toll. Kept on running even though in pain. Soon we reached the last check point. It was all downhill until the finish from here. So we increase our pace and soon enough I can see the finish all the way down the mountain. Here the formation changed a bit, I was leading, Luda in the middle n then Sushil. While descending a steep patch I look back to make sure Luda is following me, only to see her slip and was hurling towards me, I catch her just in time other wise it was all hurts for me and her.

Soon we cross the finish without anymore drama. It took us 3 hours and 1 minute finish. The First team finished 10 minutes before us. Coming in second was a huge disappointment. After some stretches I had a huge lunch. Got into dry clothes, and by the time we collected our 4 grand prize it was already evening. Had a huge dinner at Velhe and soon left for home. Once in Pune , went out with Luda to meet the Pune Rando peeps over a stubbie, then dropped her home. It was almost midnight that I finally got to rest my tired ass.