Get The Bacon

With cyclocross ...

Sometimes you suck really bad. Sometimes you're mediocre. Sometimes you feel good. Most times not. Sometimes you win. And sometimes you lose pretty badly. Me, mostly, I'm usually pretty mediocre. I guess you could say I'm consistently pretty mediocre. And then once or twice a season I'll have a really fabulous race.

But yesterday, I have to say, I was the suck. I got owned. I never felt like I got into a groove. And I felt a little out of control the whole time.
Maybe it was the wine hangover. Maybe it was the cold weather that caught me off guard that I didn't dress appropriately for. Maybe it was because I had the wrong bra on. Or maybe it was because I felt guilty for racing while Lulu was curled up in a ball in the camp chair barfing, with the onslaught of the 24 hour flu.

The nice technical stuff was fun and twisty and swoopy and rooty. But with the kinds of swoops and twists where you feel like you're constantly on the verge of doing an endo. And then there was the long, long, long, stretches of pavement which was just, well, long. Not to my advantage I tell you.
So I made the best of it.

And by the third and fourth laps, when I'd calculated that I was in LAST in my field I took the bacon feeds and the beer feeds and heckled back.

So spectacular was my slow motion crash into the tree because I couldn't get either foot into the pedal and had both feet up in the air as I rolled into it, that I mumbled some bad words. But at least I stayed somewhat up right. At the same time I was jumping off the bike to run down and back up, I noticed two other women on the ground, bodies flailing under bikes, muttering similar words.
So I ran around them.

And did the swoops and hills and sand and at the top of the hill where you feel like barfing, and there it was, the bacon. Which caught me off guard the first time - and I couldn't get close enough because I was actually trying to pass people and keep my head above water.
But after the next few laps, I was ready for the bacon. It was time for bacon. It's bacon time. And I took the bacon, after climbing that awful hill. And ate it. And immediately started gagging. And thankfully, someone saw, and gave me a can of tecate. And that washed the bacon down.

On my last lap, they yelled out to me to GET THE MONEY! GET THE $5 BILL!
And I didn't see any bacon. So I yelled back I DON'T WANT THE MONEY, I WANT THE BACON. And lickety split a bacon bottle was set up right as I arrived and they all yelled GET THE BACON! And I got the bacon. And they cheered SHE GOT THE BACON!

(bacon pic by scotty paz)
And then I put the bacon in my shorts. And I finished my last lap with bacon in my shorts.