Jessica Prinner Cycling

I guess I’ve been putting this report off for too long since school has started and I’ve gotten sick of telling everyone over and over again what place I got at the Jr. World Championships in Moscow.
To follow up on my previous report about Day 1 of the Jr. Worlds (I know, it was really long), I think I’ll just make this short and sweet as a final closure to the event that has ruled my life for the past month.  The World Championship time trial was held on a major six-lane highway passing right by the famous Kremlin, a.ka. the Red Square, as well as this really big fancy looking building.  I was later to find out that the really big fancy looking building was indeed a hotel, and not just any hotel, but instead a hotel dedicated to (and perhaps planned by) Stalin himself.  To my surprise, the highway was not only completely closed down to traffic, but also surrounded by guards, each standing rougly 100 yards apart for about 8 miles.  Batons seem to be the fad in Russia these days. 

The actual event was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  Each country had its own respective tent to camp out in, and team U.S.A. was well-kept by a suanier (I think I spelled that wrong) named Simona who took fantastic care of us.  Her job was pretty much everything–she prepared the food, massaged us, accompanied us to the start gate, wiped us down, lubed us up, you name it, she could do it.  She even spoke five languages, which proved helpful since our mechanic didn’t speak a lick of english, so aside from exaggerated gestures on my part to communicate, Simona was there to break the language barrier. 

It was almost strange not having to worry about all the little things I usually have to take care of at a bike race.  The food was there, electrolyte drinks were made, tires pumped up, bike washed down, and protein drinks even waiting in the cooler.  So I, being so unused to the professional treatment, insisted on making my own drinks anyway before leaving, and packing some extra food just in case.  I felt quite silly when Simona looked at me funny as I filled my ABD waterbottles with gatorade mix, going through my usual pre-race ritual.  I think it was more for the comfort than anything else, since Simona was already prepared with an arsenal of waterbottles and a table full of food.

So thanks to such incredible support, all I had to concern myself with was fending off the pre-race jitters and warming myself up.  Mentally I was flying; I was about to compete in the largest event so far in my cycling career.  This wasn’t just any typical bike race:  it was the Junior World Championships, and I was one of the chosen few to be there. 

When my start time loomed closer, Simona walked my to the starting tent to get checked in and have my bike measured and rolled out.   With all the stress of being in a foreign country and huge expectations on my shoulders, I was glad Simona was with me all the way to the starting gate, keeping a a calm and cool face so as not to freak me out any more than I already was. It also didn’t help any that just two days prior I had been stung by a bee right smack-dab in the middle of my forehead, and me eyes were irritatingly swollen, almost to the point where I looked like a different person.  I tried to ignore the dull throbbing as the official called my number, and I climbed the ramp and swung up onto my bike in the ready position.  All I could see was the broad road ahead of me, as I breathed in and out, willing myself to relax and focus.  My mind funneled on one task only, and suddenly nothing else in the world existed or mattered but what lay ahead of me, –

“JESSI RELAX”

Then Jessi Prinner just about slipped off her handlebars in fright from the sudden blaring of the megaphone behind her. 

I had forgotten that Ben Sharp, the Jr. Endurance Manager, was right behind me in the follow vehicle with a loudspeaker strapped to the side.  From then on out Ben Sharp would be my brain for the race; he pretty much told me what to do (when to speed up, what side of the road to be on) for the entire 13K. 

And, indeed, it was the hardest 13K of my life.  The course was incredibly flat and wide open, so bike handling was the least of my worries, but with that said, most of the times of that day were just milliseconds apart.  I finished with a time of 19:20 in 21st place, and Coryn finished with a time of 19:16, in 16th place.  That’s a difference of 5 places in 4 seconds.  After I crossed the finish line and waited for my bike to be rolled out, some random guy ran up and excitedly started taking pictures of me.  He didn’t really speak english, but he kept saying “photo, photo” and I figured he wanted me to pose on my bike.  He even made me take my glasses off.  Apparently seeing an American over in Russia is like spotting a blue tulip (in case you don’t know, natural blue tulips are almost nonexistant, and are worth thousands of dollers).  I felt like a celebrity, just because I had “USA” printed in huge letters all over my skinsuit. 

Two days and about -20 degrees later, the day of the road race had arrived, and it was FREEZING outside.  Actually it was only about 60 degrees (Fahrenheit, not Celcius–that seemed to be a major factor of confusion over there) but I abhor cold weather in ever way shape and form, so one can imagin how I feel about Russia in general. 

The road race course was actually the same course used when the Junior World Championships were in Russia about 30 years ago.  Since their is only a total grade change of about .5 inches in all of Moscow, this course was specially selected due to its artificial hills.  The 16K two-lane road winds around an artificial park, and finishes by dumping us off on a major highway (in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Moscow is mainly comprised of major highways) where the start/finish line is located  The race totaled 81K, which came out to be 6 laps.  The terrain was created by the extra dirt displaced in the building of the major stadiums build for the Winter Olympics.  So as a result, we had to climb about 5 or 6 gut-wrenchingly steep hills per lap throughout the race. 

As we made our way through the check-in process (roll-out and sign in) and over to staging, each country was called up to the line by name in alphabetical order.  I could find no reasonable explanation for this as first, until I realized that the Russians had strategically chosen alphabetical order because, inevitably, the United States of America was dead last in the alphabet of countries.  I could almost hear the Russian team chuckling ahead of us in the peloton. 

At first I didn’t notice the significance of this because I had started in the back of fields before and managed to get to the front, but little did I know that Junior National Championship races work differently.  If only someone had given me a heads up beforehand of the chaos that would soon ensue, I would have at least put my medical insurance card in my jersey pocket.  After the announcer (or announcers I should say since there were multiple people to repeat things in multiple languages) counted down the time to the start (and they made sure to start RIGHT on the hour, not a second too soon or late) and the race commenced at the sound of the gun, all the deep, philosophical thoughts humans were supposed to believe in suddenly disappeared and was replaced by shear, primitive madness.  I have to be honest here, all I could think about in the first 500 meters of the race was how I was going to be sent home a broken mess the next day.  In that first 500 meters, EVERYONE wanted to be at the front, but if you know anything about bike races, there is only so much road, and so riders of every nationality were fighting with recklessness for those few desired positions.  Let me just give you a glimpse of what I saw from my eyes:

The mass of riders (62 to be exact) was seething like a cloud of angry hornets (like the one that stung me in the forehead four days prior on that very same course) as girls took frighteningly risky moves just to gain one or two positions.  The peloton flexed and a girl was shoved off the road and into the ditch.  I heard multiple angry screams all around me of girls getting pushed or knocked out of the way.  I decided to swing over closer to the center of the road as riders kept being flung off the road to the left.  I cringed as I saw handlebars colliding, wheels bumping, bikes fishtailing.  From behind me I heard a crash and several screams, and moments later the French girl next to me was upended and I could hear the screeching halt of brakes and crashing of metal as she cleared a path of riders behind her.  In short, frantic, panicked breathes, I began repeating to myself outloud “It’s okay, Jessi, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s okay…”

In just a short time, though, the craze died down and I was able to switch into bike-racing mode instead of survival-mode.  I managed to stay as near to the front as possible, and for the first few laps I was positioned decently, out of the wind, for a good portion of the time.  The steep, grinding hills, though, began to wear on me, and each time I would drift futher and further back from the field.  My legs began to shoot with pain as though I were at the end of a grueling 100-mile ride, and soon all I felt was searing lactic acid and sharp, painful flashes at every grade.  The field would string out on the hills, and condense once it was flat again, with more riders being dropped each time. On the occasion when the Italian team began drilling it up the hills, I got caught at the back when a gap formed, and it was a scattered race to catch back on.  Eventually my dropped group caught the field again, but I my legs felt like had been ripped to shreads, and half-way through the second to last lap, I got dropped for good.  Kendall Ryan, my teammate ended up in the same group as me, so us and a bunch of riders worked together in a paceline, determined to work ourselves into the ground, even for the few meager places we were left with.  Throughout the entire last 16K lap of the race, I was “seeing stars” up every hill.  The pain was so vivid, it was almost tangible.  Somehow, though I felt like passing out, I managed to make it up every last hill (I was actually concerned that I might not make it up one of those times) and eventually the pain was so relentless, I began to only feel dullness in adapting to it. 

For the entire last 1k, I switched it into high gear and cranked out every last juice of energy left in order to do something in the form of a lead-out for Kendall.  After I crossed the finish line, and it was all finally over, I found that I had come in 35th place, roughly mid-way in the entire peloton.  At that point, though, I wasn’t as concerned about the places I had received during my competition at Worlds, but the priceless experience I had gained in the process.

With that said, there’s nowhere to go but up, and next year I plan on doing just that in Italy (oh, yeah, did I mention the Jr. World Championships were in The Boot next year?).

So much for a short report.

Until next year…

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