Cat's Hill Classic

I'm Blaming the Boulders


This past Saturday was the Cats Hill Classic, held just off downtown in the toney hamlet of Los Gatos. It's a tough, classic course, ironically set in a very well-heeled neighborhood. It's a race contested on bumpy, cracked concrete roads and features a block-long climb at a calf-sapping 22% gradient on a tight ~1km course. The race also has history; they've been running it for 34 years. Lemond raced it as a junior. Who knows? Maybe even Major Taylor too. But recently there has been a residential protest to cancel the race, which strikes me as odd because in my mind this event is one ot the most redeeming and genuine things about Los Gatos.


Laurel Green - of Earlybird women's team fame - and I carpooled down together, she finding a parking spot and expertly manouvering her small car to fit in a space so tight that she could have trapped a bagel between the bumpers in front of and behind her. With manual transmission, too. We considered this to be an excellent omen for the racing day.


The fancy towns that gird the valley have their own collective vibe - the leafy old-money neighborhoods. The solemn procession of predominantly German cars slinking along the congested downtown corridors. The 40-something babes cultivating the deliberately casual look with uniforms of fancy jeans, earth-toned form-fitting t-shirts, high-end makeup, glossy pedicures and small dogs. Its as close as we get to Dallas in Northern California I suppose. 


Warming up on Laurel's rollers on a narrow sidewalk I was able to watch a lot of the aforementioned Los Gatos gentry squeeze past me. Then an entire marching band brushed past, bass drum, baritone, the works. While I, legs spinning, sweating profusely, going nowhere of course, feeling trapped in my own metaphor yet again. Just one mime short of being in a Fellini film.


Under threatening skies, our full field exploded out of the start, a large aggressive blob rapidly elongating. Hey weren't we supposed to be the old guys? Masters' 35 and 45 racing has long since abandoned the courtly gentlemen scene one would associate with a fellas golden years. 


I had trouble getting my foot in the pedal so lost several places at the beginning and was stuck about halfway in the field. The first time up the climb was a rude shock indeed, the whole road wide with guys trying to figure out how best to make it up the steep pitch. Chains snapping on cogs, poor idiots trying to shift from the big ring to the small mid-hill, some thinking the big ring at 40 rpm is the way to go. It's sort of darwinian when you think about it; the best approaches get rewarded.


For my part I had my hands full on the climb, just staying mid-pack. Later, I started moving up place by place, and was negotiating the rough descent when quite close to me I heard a loud bang. Some poor sap just got a flat on the first lap, I thought. Then I felt my front tyre go immediatly soft. Oh shit that was me!


So in the pit they lash on my training front wheel, and when the race comes around again the chief ref throws me in a little too late. I'm trying desperately to accellerate in time to catch the tail end of the race coming past me at twice my speed. I had to go flat out just to catch the splintering tail of my race ... And this was just lap two. Oy.


So now I'm back in the race trying to find a way to be relevant. I can't sugar coat this though -- my back was killing me up the climb each lap. I had been making a rock wall most mornings this past week and I guess the lifting caught up with me. Should have stretched. Damnit that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. So for every several riders that I could outmanouver on the rest of the course, I would be passed by about that same number on the climb. The climb-and by extension, my back-was my impediment to moving up in the race.


A group of three got off the front meanwhile battling it out for top honors, Kevin Metcalf (Specialized) taking the win again. I saw but had no response to the last lap detonations of Chris Wire (SJBC) and Larry Nolan (Specialized) who both placed highly. I rolled in mid-field for a mediocre 15th in my category. I had definite intentions of doing better. But, as they say, that's bike racing.


Laurel and I kept each other company on the ride home with tales of doing worse than expected. The great parking job was the highlight of the day, as it turned out.


Postscript: I tried a "Five-Hour Energy" shot prior to the race. Well I gotta say you do get five hours of energy, they just don't tell you which five hours you get. For me, my five hours started at 2 am. Ugh.