Luck: When preparation meets opportunity

Big Fish
Originally uploaded by furryblackcat.

If you don't want to hear the sappy story, than beat it.

Before I began racing bikes and was living in Boston I was a pretty serious surfcaster. Basically a "surfcaster" is someone who fishes from the shore rather than by boat. It's obviously much harder. You need to find the places to fish, the tides to fish those places, how the moon affects those tides and what lures to use. I used to target the type of fish in the pic, the striped bass. These fish grow up to about 70 lbs but the kind of "holy grail" is a 50 lb fish among surfcasters. For you bike racers it would be similiar to winning an NRC race in your category. The world record from shore is 78 lbs. These fish like to feed at night when they feel safer coming closer into shore and like to feed where there is really good structure (like rocks, ect.), deep water and strong currents. I used to fish 4-5 nights a week, all night long, depending on the tides and how the fishing had been. Slowly I really got good at it. I began building my own rods on carbon fiber blanks, making my own lures and keeping extensive log books. Some nights I would catch a half a dozen fish over 20 lbs, up to the mid 30's. That would be a rockstar night. Most guys would keep the fish since it's a great table fish but I really just enjoyed letting them swim away and hope they would return when they got bigger.

2001 was my first year in St Louis and EP hadn't got me into racing full on yet so I planned a 2 weeks in June to go home and fish based on my logbooks and moon phase. I went home, got my gear ready and started to find where the fish were. 4 nights later I caught this one. 2 am, no one around, current moving at 5 knots on a lure I made. It all came together. This one was 47" long and weighed in at 40+ lbs. Look at the size of the mouth and tail. This was one beast.

I don't remember how I got so into it because my dad didn't fish at all but he would always go with me to seminars and stuff like and I remember this old timer having a hard time believing the sucess I was having and saying I must be really lucky. I'm not to good at remembering quotes but I distinctly remember my dad saying,"You know Dave, there's no such thing as luck. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

So this season I was preparing on another big race. I won the sport class mountain biking state championship my first year racing, I won the 12 hr race my first attempt, I won the state road race as a cat 3 and I beat my own time at the 12 hr race when I tried it the second time. I felt confident that if I planned for it I would be able to do well at Joe Martin. I knew that planning to win Joe Martin was totally unrealistic, so I was shooting for top 10. I won my first race this season the week before and was feeling like it was all coming together. Boy was I mistaken.

The road race started off as I thought it would. Attacks from the big teams. About 10 miles in 2 guys got off and were out of site. Nobody could believe that they would hold it. The finish to the road race is crazy. Big 4 lane open road with a slight climb at 1k and a downhill finish. It's a drag race. I was feeling good and was able to get on a leadout which blew up at 250 m just in time to jump on 2 more hot wheels. I sat in and came around one of them on the line, less that a length from the field sprint winner. That's it for the good times.

I showed up to the TT and my head wasn't in it. I was really hot and was getting on and off my trainer when trying to warm up. Anyone who really knows me has seen the amphetamine effect that I get on race day. I usually am over-amped. Not that day though. I came out too strong and caught my 30 s man about 1 mile in, then I decided to stand up and drop him like a road race. Bad idea. I crossed the line at 10:50. 20 seconds slower than last year. Very bad.

Sun morning was more of the same. I just wanted to get out of there but knew that since the GC was so close from 8th place to 30 th place that the crit could change things alot. I was 25th overall and less than 1 min off the top 10. I was having more trouble with the eye of the tiger though. Nothing was getting me amped up. I lined up at the front and went into the 1st turn on about the 5th wheel. Things started to thin out quick but by 2 laps in I was totally cooked and having trouble holding wheels. I didn't feel any of the legs I've had this season. Game over. I ended up finishing up with a very small group 1.5 mins back. I attacked them before the last turn and dragged one Tyson guy with me whose teamate was yelling "don't work for these guys go for the sprint." What the fuck? There's a group of 5 of us trying to chase and he's going to save his legs for the 24th place field sprint! It didn't matter, and he did take me by less than a wheel length on the line.

So, on to the next one. Unfortunately this type of racing is probably the last chance I had at the little big time; watching some super strong local cat 1,2 guys suffer made me realize that.