Feed Zones
All of the knobby tires buzzed as we roared down the hill towards the sharp turn. I was near the front of a large group of bike riders and while I should have been singled minded in my execution of railing the turn without bumping handlebars or another rider I did have to multitask a bit. So with one eye on the sandy turn and the other eye catching a glance across the intersection I successfully carved the turn and saw my dad standing next to the police woman directing traffic.
I decided to jump into another race and with that came another chance for a family member to do what they have always done; stand alongside a road and watch me race past. This race was a mountain bike race and was part of a plan for me to get to a much longer, harder race in Colorado later this summer. While the event was different than what I’ve done before there was a lot of familiar routines as part of the weekend. A familiar routine was figuring out the best place to spectate where I could be seen a few times over the race’s several hours.
The day before the race my Dad and I went back in time and recalled all of the places he had to stand to watch me race. Back in the road racing days there were always “feed zones” where spectators would hand out bottles to the racers. What a fiasco that was! The feed zones were important because the distance of the race was such that a rider needed additional supplies. You simply couldn’t carry enough on your bike to last several hours; a racer needed to ditch the empty bottles and grab new ones along the way.
As a bike racer you would recruit someone to help with the feed zone. It was a tough sell because it usually meant driving to a remote part of the course, standing in the blazing heat in the middle of a cornfield, and then trying to hand the correct bottle to the correct rider as they whizzed by at 30 miles per hour. Oh, and the bottles you were handing out were special blends of electrolytes and energy…and if you were handing to multiple riders you had to make sure the right bottle would get to the correct rider. No rider would actually stop for a bottle because to do that meant way more work to catch up to the race. The feed zones were also a short section of road and everyone tasked with handing out bottles had to stand shoulder to shoulder in order to fit within the zone. A feed zone was like a giant, fast game of “Whack a Mole” where the participant had to shove a bottle into the right outstretched hand at precisely the correct time while not knocking another rider off their bike. All of this was high pressure and free of charge of course!
So my Dad and I were playing the “greatest hits” of our feed zone experiences. We had successful handoffs most of the time; he had a certain way to hold the bottle and I would usually position myself in the field of riders that I got a clean shot at the bottle. He spent much of his vacation time positioned along the highways and backroads of America, handing out water and special energy bottles to me and any other poor cyclist that needed a kick to keep going. My Mom would jump in and then Jan took the reigns and became quite good at handing out bottles. So good in fact that she even resorted to tossing the bottles in the air to my teammates which was pretty gutsy!
The rest of the feed zones had other dads, mom, girlfriends, wives, and who knows who else trying to hand out bottles. Some were there by choice, others by persuasion or peer pressure. Some had experience handing off bottles to flying cyclists while others were nearly crash-causing with their inexperience. Feed zones sometimes became this collision course of hungry, depleted cyclists giving their all and inexperienced, unmotivated, and perhaps uninterested people attempting to hand out bottles. Carnage ensued. As a rider there were always bottles flying through the air, under wheels, and off of hands in a feed zone. There was cursing when riders missed bottles, dropped bottles, or didn’t have a person at the correct spot. Sometimes a rider would get water when they needed an energy drink and that was a big no-no. There was a LOT of complaining in the miles after a feed zone depending on the luck and skill one rider would have there. Feed zones could go really well or supremely bad depending on the situation and people involved.
As my Dad and I reflected on feed zones it occurred to me that the race always went on. It didn’t matter if I got a bottle or didn’t. The race kept going up the road whether I was prepared like I wanted to be or not. Sometimes the stuff in my bottle made me think that I could keep going. Sometimes having a family member hand me a bottle made me think I could keep going. Sometimes riding through the feed zone and leaving empty handed made me doubt that I could continue and yet I always did. I never stopped a race after missing a feed zone. It was always my race to ride and while I needed others I can’t ask them to ride it for me! Many races I went far even when I thought I lacked what I needed.
Riders that did miss a feed would often react…in interesting ways. I think there were many that lived in their heads after missing a feed and couldn’t carry on in a good mindset. Some would yell at the people that were there to serve the riders…I’m sure there have been many marriages and relationships that had to work through feed zone arguments! Some kept going and would ask fellow riders for a bottle. Others would try to find a random stranger that had an extra bottle and would grab one from them. On a small section of rural road lied a wide range of emotions from gratitude to rage and circumstances ranging from a topped off tank to running on empty!
I wonder if we sometimes look to others in the wrong light in our race of life. There are some people that we will come across and we know we need them for that moment. They are crucial to keep us going. But they can’t run the race for us. It’s our race to run. It’s our cross to carry and God will sometimes use people to help move us along while other times we have to keep going with our faith and perhaps less than ideal circumstances. Sometimes the challenge is to continue to love someone even when we feel they “failed” us! We need each other and yet we need to run our own race, work on our own heart, and learn our own lessons. Sometimes we have exactly what we need beforehand but many times we can only see what we are missing for our race!
Creating a dependency on others to always meet our need only allows us to run the race up to where they stop. It would be like quitting after missing a bottle in a feed zone. That’s not healthy for anyone and it keeps the racer from getting down the road and being part of the race. Stopping when someone fails to meet our expectation or when we miss what we think we need hurts relationships, hurts our forward focus, and ultimately it limits our belief that God can do more than we can. It’s ok to keep going when we are let down. And it’s more than ok to forgive and move on! Our limitations aren’t people, it’s how we perceive our purpose among the people we live with. We are all human after all.
As I rolled through the intersection of this latest race it was nice to have a fan alongside the road. This time my Dad didn’t have to hand me a bottle as there were aid stations where riders could, and did, stop to refill. No need to catch a bottle on the fly. The feed zones were way less chaotic and dare I say more chill than those races years ago. The absence of speed and the perception of a high cost of missing a bottle made the whole experience a lot more pleasurable. I could pick what I wanted and even talked to the volunteers that were there to help. I rode my race and that experience was a lot like life. I was confident for a bit. There were miles I was not in my element. There were a lot of solo miles where I just pounded the pedals without a soul in sight. I took a wrong turn. And yet, through all of those experiences I had my bottles filled and the finish line came fast enough for me to get a spot to my goal race. All I was missing was the potential for blame and shame…and that’s fine by me!
