The actual race comes back to me in snippets, like quick short glimpses of what I was thinking and feeling during the race.
I was wet before we left the line. We had a very short neutral section as we rolled out but as the race began I was already being gapped. As we headed out I was thankful that I had raced in the rain during our National champs earlier in 2021 and that gave me some confidence that I could race and handle my bike in the rain. The first section of the circuit I was well familiar with by now as we had raced it during the time trial and I had trained on it before competition had begun. Having already fallen behind and riding on my own I could just focus on my cycling. By now I was really happy to be taking better racing lines (I hardly get to practice this skill because the roads I ride on are open to traffic), although I was a bit more cautious in the rain. I was enjoying being able to further hone my skills on the bike and in the wet. (When it rains I often don’t go training, so being able to race in the rain on by now a familiar course was great and would give me more confidence next time I had to race in the wet.)
My next snapshot was going up the hill just before the pit lane. Early in the week, during training, I had already identified this as a place where I wanted one of my team to be standing if they needed to hand me anything. During the practice Gill had tried to get out there but someone said it wasn’t allowed. In the time trial I saw a few of the other team personnel standing there with refreshments and wheels etc. This was the perfect place now to get my bottle from Pieter because your speed was reduced due to the hill and that is why I had identified that spot. Now during the road race the slopes of the hills was abuzz with team personnel spread out to refuel riders. A quick scan of the hill gave me my answer – my team hadn’t made it to the hill again. (I probably should have asked them again to check the rules but I had other concerns on the day. ) Despite my team not being there, I think it may have been either the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, or English support staff that encouraged me as I worked my way up the hill. Once I reached the top of the incline and was trying to pick up speed it was almost time for me to start looking for Pieter. The pit lane was so full of people standing and supporting the riders that I couldn’t see where he was standing. Due to the fact that this wasn’t planned I had no idea if he was in the beginning, middle, or end of the line of people. Suddenly I saw him step out into the open and I had to slow down. As I was slowing down he started to run and we almost missed each other! I remember him actually asking why I had slowed down. It was a mess! Not once in 6 years of racing had I ever been refueled mid race or even had serious talk on how it would work so I just didn’t know how it was done.
At the same time as all this was happening I had another problem to deal with – somewhere in the last 1km or so my right shoulder had spasmed up and was sore. I was only about 3km into a 26km race and my shoulder was already not playing ball. As I picked up the pace after the bottle saga I was met by the steepest downhill section of the race. I had done this in the dry but today. . . Well my mind immediately went to a friend from the USA who had sadly come off his handcycle in the time trial and ended up in hospital with a concussion and unable to start the road race on what I assume was this hill. Ricky was our manager and team coach for this trip had already given me permission to ‘take no chances’, so right here and now I was going to listen to him and get down here still on my trike.
My next flashback is just about 1.5Km later I was going down a more gradual but longer downhill when I saw the leaders of the race already coming up on the opposite side of the road. They were almost completing their first lap and I wasn’t even out the race circuit! I was amazed and almost gutted. I knew I was behind but this was almost embarrassing. Carol’s words of me being lapped were spot on. As the first five cyclists passed me I wondered where Carol was. She hadn’t come past ! I knew she would be in the front group and when the latter riders passed as well I knew one of two things had happened, a crash or a mechanical breakdown. (I only heard afterwards that a few cyclists lost control and crashed into one another on a slippery wet steep downhill corner and Carol had to swerve violently to avoid the pile-up, skidding off the roadway into roadside brush. She was taken to hospital and had to stay behind in Tokyo when her team-mates returned to Aussie.) As I continued down I left the Fuji race circuit to ride the section of the course that was outside the race circuit. This part of the course was more unfamiliar to me. I had done this section on the Sunday before the race had begun on the practice day, but due to the hills I had only done it once because it was just a few days before the time trial. On the day the route was dry so I had no feeling of it in the wet.I knew I couldn’t catch the front ladies but without knowing how far from the rider in front of me I was I just to race as best I could while being safe. I do remember seeing a sprinkling of local standing in their driveways in raincoats watching us race and I wondered just how different the route would be had we not being in Covid times with all the restrictions on spectators.
I couldn’t remember on which lap it was but I know exactly where on the course it was: I was once again climbing, about 2-3kms from entering the circuit again, when I happened to look down at the road and I saw the streams of water flowing down in the opposite direction to where I was going. Looking at my tire I could see part of it was under the water! My first reaction was like ‘what the heck am I doing out here ?!’, another might have been this is what it means to race in the ‘big leagues’ where you don’t only race in good weather. I might have also thought that swimming upstream was nothing I wasn’t used to and so this was just ‘normal’ to me.
Another 2 or so kilometers later is where Stuart Jones found me. Now a lot has been said and written about our ‘ride’ together but let me give you my tired brain workings at that moment: I hadn’t ever met or interacted with Stuart before this moment. He, on the other hand, knew me through Carol, his teammate and my cycling coach. He knew I wasn’t as strong on the hills as others and as he found himself out of medal contention he decided to stay with me and encourage me up the hill. I think the first reaction when I heard him was that I was in his path. I kept to the one side, ensuring that he could pass me. When he came up beside me and spoke some words of encouragement to me, I thought he would then push on and leave me. When that didn’t happen and he really started to get comfortable in his new ‘role’, I found the strength to say ‘go!’. If he had any ambivalence about staying with me I hoped my ‘Go’ would give him assurance that I wanted him to go and race his best race. When he replied something to the tune of ‘No, I am good just here’ my brain short circuited. Weren’t we racing the biggest race of the year, perhaps of our lives? I certainly wasn’t on my best day and I knew he could do much better if he went up ahead. I got my strength and oxygen together and pushed the word ‘why’ out my lips. I am not sure if he answered my question but from then on I knew he would be with me for a while. I decided to stop wasting my energy on trying to talk and rather make my legs do the talking. If this guy, who I knew was an Australian tricyclist, wanted to cycle with me, I would cycle! Covering the remaining distance of the first lap with Stuart encouraging me in colourful Aussie lingo and almost coaching me, definitely made the ride more interesting, and if you had seen my expression as we crossed the line you would have seen that despite being tired and soaking wet I had a big grin on my face, after he once again shouted something to me. The downside of having Stuart with me for a while on my first lap was when he pulled off (he had done his two laps) was that the second lap was very quiet and lonely.
You, the reader, might be saying ‘WAIT, did I say: second lap?’ Indeed I did! As I approached the finish line I started looking around for the marshal who would say my race was over. I saw no official stepping out to pull me from the race, neither did I see any of my support crew ready to say ‘ok, you are done.’ From previous experience I knew an official had to pull me off and I was not to stop until they did. As I crossed the line I had such mixed feelings. I replayed the whole route in my mind and my heart dropped: did I really have to do the whole lap again alone in the pouring rain – my heart cried - someone please run after me and pull me off! But in the next moment I felt immense pride – I wasn’t being pulled off because I had not been lapped! Here I was once again exceeding expectations of people who knew me! I realized that people might look at a last place finish as a failure but those who really know me and my journey would understand. Suddenly I shook myself and sat up straight and resolved to finish this race.
On the second lap there were less people lining the route because most of the racing was finished but they hadn’t stopped me so I was going to race until they stopped me. When no one is around and conditions suck it becomes more of a mental battle but that is where my determination and mental strength kicks in. I train indoors alone, I often ride on the road with just a back-up vehicle behind me, and in SA I always race alone – this was what I was used to.
Climbing up the last little hill just before the finishing straight I knew I had done it. I had successfully taken my trike around two laps of a very wet Paralympic road race. I would be returning home as a Paralympian who had finished both her races!! Disappointment hit when I realized they had already closed the main straight and finish line and they were funneling me into the pit lane to finish. I could not see the woman with the finishing flag so I tried to stop at least twice before I saw the flag ahead of me and that meant I couldn’t finish as strong as I would have liked. I also would have liked to finish by crossing the official line!
Next blog: Putting Toni back together.