- HOT TOPICS:
- The new VeloNews.com (BETA)
Rider Diary: Will Frishkorn talks about the pain of a DNF
The pain of stopping a race – there are few things in our professional lives as painful, as frustrating, as depressing and as loaded with the sense of failure.
That said, there are plenty of one-day races where you toe the line with a specific job, and that role doesn’t even put you remotely near the finish line. But those are different: You start with no thought of finishing. You’re there to get IT done, “it” being whatever your charge is on that given day.
But then there are all the rest: the races where either you hope to find a result for yourself, you’re there training, or a stage race where you’re there working for the team; one day fighting it out for the sprinters, another day to position a climber, others on the front, grinding out the kilometers with your leader on the wheel.
These are all roles of the domestique, the category that the vast majority of riders fit into. You’re at a race to do your job. You’re also at a race because it’s what you love to do. The satisfaction of teamwork, is something often misunderstood in our sport. The way that you’ll drive yourself into the ground, knowing that as soon as the throw-down comes, the race will leave you behind. The somehow-fantastic feeling of being fully spent, nothing left to give, that it’s all been left on the road and knowing that all that remains is a crawl to the finish.
Some days the legs are on fire and feel no pain, others they can barely turn the cranks. There are days when from start to finish everything is a pleasure, but those are balanced by the days when it’s purely a job, and a hard one at that. Days when you feel like the luckiest person on earth that your job is to go race your bike, and others when you’re sick, and it’s raining, cold, windy, with mountains looming, and you have to go out there and get it done.
It’s remarkable what the body can endure with a mind pushing it further and further. But sometimes the body just can’t go any further. It’s empty; spent; completely exhausted; the legs just won’t turn another revolution. Sometimes sickness has drained the body to a shell of itself or a nagging injury has manifested into something insurmountable. Sometimes a crash has bent the body to the point where every pedal revolution is like a knife twist to the leg. Regardless of how a rider finds himself there, watching the race leave you behind, pulling to the side of the road, handing your bike to the mechanic and race number to an official, then sliding into the passenger seat of the car – not a happy time.
As you’re watching the Tour these next few weeks and the camera invariably follows rider after rider out the back and into their car, showing their pain, think of all they’ve given, and all their hopes that just went up the chimney. The feeling of letting down all those that have supported them, and the teammates that counted on them, now left one rider down. And then enthusiastically let the camera lead you back to the front, showing the champions at battle.
