PARANORMAL is THIS SATURDAY, 10/2

 What-what?  What.  WHAT.  The Paranormal is THIS Saturday, 10/2.  

What can I say?  We're still in a pandemic, yes.  But they had a broken keyboard.  So I bought a broken keyboard.  And The Paranormal lives on in 2021 where 600,000+ of us do not.  Make of that what you will.  At least we'll have masks on.  Like, actual costume masks.  And the other kind too if you're scared of the jab, you chickenshit shell of a soul.    

Full disclosure, The Paranormal happened last year too.  I won.  Just me in a vacant field and out onto the course with no one around.  A sad day in the history of human existence, but a triumph is a triumph.  As James Gist likes to say, "there are no asterisks in the trophy case." 

This year, it would seem I will have to surrender the crown, as the registration list has been filling up with legit comers and takers.  And it won't take much to take it from the likes of me.  The title felt good while it lasted (and slightly empty) but it will return to the shoulders of an actual athlete Sunday night vs. just the only person who rides a single lap in a plague year.  

In case you don't know how the Paranormal works, I'll try to sum it up with a schedule here:

Weeks ago: you started getting your costume ready.  Also you decorated your bike.  You look amazing, though your cape keeps getting caught in your drivetrain and the Dr. Doolittle Glasses that are actual prescription strength are dangerously inconvenient to ride a bike with.  But I repeat - you look amazing.  

1:30 PMish, race day: Show up to The Paranormal Field and start POUNDING candy, which flows from the very creeks around here on race day.  Getcha' Costume on.  Socialize.  

3:30 PM - Observe actual athletes with carefully planned, aerodynamic costumes, about to kick your ass.  Make a mental note that next year you'll get into that kind of form.  Remark to the woman dressed as an M&M next to you that those guys don't look half as fabulous as you do.  

4 PM - The race goes live.  It's a show.  

7 PM - Lights on, one more lap before you dip into the lunchables that you forgot to bring.  Looks like you're buying 6 or 7 burgers from the CAMBC tent and supporting local trails after all.  

9 PM - Around the bonfire by this point with the likes of you.  Every now and then, Richard Serton shoots past, heading out for another lap, like a bullet.  Are these Dr. Doolittle prescription glasses making you dizzy, or is it really that boozy around here?  Should you still be acting in character?  Try to re-establish reality from fiction, remind yourself this gig is kid friendly.  

10 PM - Race ends.  But The Paranormal keeps going.  

Onward - Free camping.  Big sky full of 1,000 stars.  And justice for all.  

It won't hurt any feelings if you haven't left by noon the next day, especially if you can lend a hand for course cleanup.  

Remember, costume is mandatory.  The last person to show up without one, Shawn tied his helmet to the front gate and made the guy do a penalty lap and start like 10 minutes after everyone else.  That was in like 2017.  So don't show up without spirit.  And a good set of lights is pretty necessary if you plan on staying out past 7 PM.  

The rest, just details.  Humanity lives on.  

See ya Saturday.

Up, up, UP.

Asymptomatic

You're fat, but you don't know it yet.  You haven't been tested.  You are, as they say, asymptomatic.  

But that's all about to change.  

Why, though, would you, a former XC champion of the tri-county sport class duathlon events series from 2004 even so much as pause and consider yourself fat?  You were great once, you really were.  You trained.  You won some stuff, races that were important to you, races that other people attended and also tried to win in their own way, while still prioritizing having fun, nearly two decades ago.  You still ride.  The Pandemic, sure, has limited your ability to do so, but class never leaves a rider, right?  Fitness; it's a monument, something you erect out of stone.  It's still in there, right?  Right?

Look, you don't know. Without adequate testing, you can convince yourself you're OK.  But face it, the warning signs are all there:

Let's start with your behavior.  For the last year, it's been 2 training rides per week.  At least they used to be training rides.  You're with your buddies, after all.  Buddies who, just like you, used to train, ride hard intervals, fit into their kit a little better...but don't anymore.  Fat is contagious.  Did you know that?  You did, but you didn't mind; these "training" rides you've been going on together during the Pandemic, sprinkled with laughter and shenanigans like the pepperoni on your post-ride pizza.  Athletes go for 45 minute shreds and then stuff entire pizzas down their necks, right?  You're fine.  

Or your appearance.  You threw the bathroom scale out long, long ago, which was wise because the numbers that it was starting to show you were obviously incorrect.  No one can ride like you do and weigh 200 lbs.  And when you see yourself in the mirror, that's basically the same guy who looked back at you two decades ago, minus a little grey hair, minus the strange lighting that's flashing wrinkles and shadows around your eyes, minus a little flesh around the edges.  You're still you.  You've got this.

So you pile yourself into your kit Sunday morning, slightly annoyed at how much it has obviously shrunk in the dryer these last few washes, but fully convinced you're OK, and ready for the test: Pantani.  

At the start, in the field, you're hot.  Clammy.  Sweating through your bibs, but also somehow too cold to take off your vest.  It's just nerves, you tell yourself, and maybe an extra layer of clothes.  Certainly not an extra layer of you.  Certainly not.  Off you go.  To face...THE SWAB.  Fox Mountain.  

You've managed to hang on these first few miles, rollers and pavement and some sloppy gravel.  It's been hard, but you've felt ok.  Right?  You're OK.  But when the road tilts upward on The Fox, just for a couple hundred feet at 6%, you notice some things.  Things that are not good.  Something is bulging out of your jersey and dragging against your upper thigh.  It's impeding your breathing.  It's tight on your thighs, your knees, your shoulders, everywhere.  Is there a raccoon in your jersey?  You stop to check.  No.  It's just you.  You resume riding, and near the top of The Fox, a climb that is moderate by the standard of which you'll have to ride later, you hop off and walk.  What is happening to me, you wonder?  Am I fat?

Over the top and down down down, you shred the back side of fox mountain with proper form.  You know the lines.  You've ridden down this thing near the front of a stacked field of riders before.  You were fierce, you were.  Surely you're OK, right?  You try to convince yourself, but like it or not, the swab has been taken. Results due back...in a matter of minutes.  We'll let you know.  Here's your swab number.  We'll call you near the mailboxes.  

Across the rolling terrain, paved and dreamy, up the mission home climb, down, and onto Simmons gap.  You're halfway through this thing.  You don't feel good, of course, and any delusions of grandeur you had earlier have been packed up and sent back, address unknown.  But you're not fat, are you?  

Up Simmons.  It's awful.  You hurt in places you don't recall ever being a problem before.  The outside of your knees.  The bottoms of your feet.  Your saddle has shrunk.  Your food, all gone.  Who ate all my food?  Who switched my saddle? 

Phone rings.  You're near the top of Simmons, where it gets steep, hard, awful.  You didn't know you got reception up here.  It's your fat test results, you fool. 

You look down.  Spilling out from under your jersey, where a fit racer once existed, your belly is dragging your top tube, wrapping around it like a wet coat on a drying rack, distended and grotesque, like an alien.  You're overcome with horror.  Ripped from the swelling, your clothing is bursting at the seams.  Your corpulence, expanding from the middle of your belly button outward, like a balloon inflated from the very center of your pandemic-laden soul, all those beers you just had to drink because there was little else to do.  You are literally blowing up, three times your former self now, swollen around every orifice.  You struggle to breath through your own face flesh.  You're asphyxiating.  

"On your left," comes a small voice from behind you. You're swerving all over the road.  A young lady rides past you, scowling at you, determined to get the fuck around this monstrosity before it pops.  You turn your huge head to try to look at her and, disgusted, she pulls her mask up over her face.  She double-masks at the very sight of you, and rides...beneath you?  She goes right under you, that's how big you are.  That's how huge you have become, rising above the old dirt road you thought you knew, upwards, floating out past the mailboxes and the observatory, up up up, out over the top of Shenandoah river where you look down and see your reflection, echoing the awful truth coming from your phone:

Your fat test came back positive.  I hate you.  

Then you wake up.  It's Sunday, nearly 9 AM already.  It was all a dream.  Wasn't it?

One way to find out.

Up, up, up.  

Misattribution

 My memory fails me: was it four or five years ago that the Pantani ride rolled down Markwood Road at 10 AM in 10 degree weather?  It was cold; cold enough in the field before the start that you already couldn't feel your toes, and you had to wonder, legitimately, if perhaps this was not safe.  It was cold enough that your tires popped and cracked over the hoarfrost in the gravel when you first hit Wesley Chapel, cold enough to make you gasp when you took those first few, ragged breaths on your way up Fox Mountain.  

When I went over the top of Simmons gap, past the mailboxes, and down into Bacon Hollow that year, the perspiration in the sleeves of my coat froze instantly, and unable to bend my elbows, I had a hard time steering.  A while later, having my annual emotional meltdown as I trudged up Brokenback, I realized it was going to take me greater than 5 hours to finish that year, and I hated The Pantani ride.  Pantani was dead.  This was dumb.  It was too cold. 

We misattribute our adversity sometimes.   Only Humans, we are prone to this.  We get carried away by the moment, how hard it seems. I've found myself doing a lot of this lately, hiding out, waiting for Covid to roll back and life - in some semblance of what it used to be - to resume.  It's been tedious, for all of us.  

I sat with my daughter a few days ago, and we played with her tiny stuffed animals on the floor of her bedroom, just the two of us, for an hour.  Her imagination sprawled across the white carpet from the bathroom to her bed, a huge world of Unicorns and puppies and elves and fairies, where she has complete control.  Her tiny friends live busy lives, bustling back and forth from the cardboard box that is their house, to the pile of books which is school, and then out to their extracurricular activities, soccer, hiking club, cooking classes, etc, only barely making it home in time for dinner and bed, only to do it again the next day.  They are inordinately busy.  She has complete control of their lives, and for a moment, her own life.  When we sit together, cross legged on the floor, I see how big her feet are getting, how tall she is now, even sitting down.  I find myself inspired by her wild imagination, the very resilience of the human spirit in times of sustained crisis.  And I'm also profoundly sad that this is all she has right now.  Is it enough?  

My wife ran Pantani about a month ago.  Running.  On foot.  The whole thing.  48.5 miles of swinging her arms and picking her feet up and down - that kind of running.  When she first told me about the idea, I doubted her for the first time in a long time, something I almost never do, mostly because I didn't understand it.  How would that even work?  Do you get a hotel half-way through?  Is there a shuttle?  She walked me through the basic math, how long it might take, where she'd get support, some bizarre concept she called "training" whatever that is, and pretty quickly I came around.  

Then she did it.  

After it was over, she distilled the experience, and her reasons for doing it, down to a few words, "It was better than not doing it."  If 2020 were a bumper sticker, that would be it.  

Pantani this year can't happen in the traditional sense, that being 250 of us getting a little rowdy in the field together before a mass-start down Markwood and...whatever usually happens after that.  But it can still happen, I think.  The plan, at this point, is that I'm going to open the gate at dawn or therabouts on Saturday, Feb 13th, prop it open with the shovel, and not close it until Sunday, February 21st.  Somewhere in there, you can ride Pantani if you want to.  The duration, I hope, will be enough time to space people out sufficiently.  We've all been doing this whole Covid-Dance long enough to know what to do.   It takes space, and time, but I think we've got enough of that to give this a try.  Also, as an added bonus, someone with the right kind of cycling computer and motivation might log a finish time of just shy of 9 days.  

For, the vaccinated elite, do whatever you want together, I guess.  You're living in a different world than the rest of us, and I'm not your mom.  

The rest of us, those waiting until August or whatever for the jab, I ask that - while parked in the field and out on the roads - you maintain your space, ride safely, sob into your own mask, and if you can't be cool, at least act cool for the duration of the experience.  I really don't care what you do or don't believe.  Abstract though it is, someone's life might literally be counting on you.  

Back to my original point about misattribution - I have drawn up a schematic (like most years, on a napkin, where brilliance happens) that I hope will be a helpful tool for you as you navigate the differences between Pantani in normal years, and this year's Covid-Pantani.  As you'll see, the differences are marginal. Pantani sucks either way.

Like most years, since there's really nothing out there, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.  And McCardell.  But mostly yourself.  Will it be enough?  

Space yourself, pace yourself, friends. We will get there, but it's a long way back to the top.  

Up, up, up.  

The plan is there is no plan

The plan is there is no plan.  

It was almost always that way with Pantani.  Most of the days when he attacked, even his supporters were left scratching their heads.  Even in hindsight, "Why there?"  

Instinctive racing, today - in a peloton of 150-some guys staring at their power meters on every uphill - is remarkably ineffective.  Even for Pantani 20 year ago, it usually it didn't work.  But it wasn't just his brand, an athlete's brand in the modern sense being something they craft.  Today an athlete must put an awful lot of thought into things.  Not Pantani.  

Pantani let it rip first, then thought about it.  

That's one of the ways Pantani differed from Armstrong, Ullrich, many others.  Ullrich, in particular, when he went up the road, he went with a purpose.  He'd force it if he had to, the big German.  Lance would too.  It was often bitter, joyless bike racing, but at the very least, someone drew it up ahead of time.  

When Pantani attacked, it wasn't a calculation.  It was the way the sun finally came out over Tuscany after a long day in the rain, and he felt the guy behind him move to take off his cape.  Or, it was the way the smell of damp rosemary hung in the fog on the backside of a climb he'd never seen.  It was the way the poppy fields of mid-summer in France, so slow and gold all day, finally leaned against his shadow in the ditch beside him, goading him.  Everything seemed to whisper, Go.  Just a split second and he was gone.  

The effect Pantani had on fans of the sport was one of mesmerization.  You might, as a viewer, believe in yourself a little, that if a tiny, poor kid with big ears from Cesanatico could make that move stick under those conditions, with the rest of the Peloton in full pursuit to no avail, that maybe you could get up at 3 AM again and feed your baby and get to work on time.  To watch Pantani was life-affirming, even in his failures, even after he was gone.  

I think about that a lot now.  In a year with so many tragic departures, Pantani remains a hero - the Shakespearean kind, for me right alongside Macbeth, and Hamlet, and King Lear.  We have learned something, I think.  Take, for example, Pantani2020, our own little gravel worship of these and other tragic flaws, which drew something like 250 people.  In hindsight, and by 2020 standards, it was enormous.  We were flying a little close to the sun, weren't we?

Many of you have reached out in recent weeks as you try to plan your upcoming year, to ask if we'll be giving it a go again here in 2021.  

As Pantani always rendered it: the plan is there is no plan.  

But maybe it will sort itself out on the road, eh?

Up, up, up.