The Spring of my Discontent...
What with it being winter and all, I thought I'd tell some "back in the day" stories...
It was the spring semester of 1997. I was a sophmore at school in Indianapolis and I was the happiest I'd ever been as I'd just begun the ritual of courtship/dating with Kelly. She asked me out because I was too shy to make the moves on such an ultra-hotty, but that's pretty much irrelevant. Anyway, things were going good. I had trained more than I ever had over the winter and was hopeful for a big improvement in my collegiate bike gaming.
We started racing late February and I was going okay, but not great; you know top 10's, but not wins. A couple weeks later, we were at a road race in Ohio and we got poured on. Like Biblical style, roads getting washed out, and what-not. Not surprisingly I felt like ass the next day and couldn't race. Then, I just kinda didn't get better.
After probably a week, I went to the nurse and she got me checked out for mono. Affirmative. Spent a couple weeks in bed. Kelly was staying at school for spring break (pretty much a ghost town as 90% of the school lived in-state; basically everyone but the cycling team), so I pretty much laid around that whole week. One day the nurse called to tell me about a program whereby I could make some money off having mono. It was something like a grand a week for up to 3 weeks to let somebody run some tests on you. Sounded like a sweet deal, but by the time they come out and checked me I was "too close to healthy", and then, it was like "good, I'm getting better", but "man, I could've used the cash".
Anyhoo, I figured if I was too healthy for whatever, I was probably healthy enough for biking. In stereotypical (back when) Turbo (I'll have to do a blog on the origin of the name one day, but for now, it has nothing to do with cycling.) fashion, I hit it hard as soon as I felt like I had any strength. I did my first race back and got my junk handed to me on a silver platter. Not literally, but the collegiate crit felt about as good as last year's fRedlands crit and ummm, you know, it was a collegiate race, not fRedlands. The next week I was back up around the top 5, though and things were looking up.
Then, I got the flu. Not just any flu. A special kind whereby anything you've eaten, drank'd and any unneccessary organs exit the body with bullet like speed. Not fun. Another 3-5 days in bed and I lost like 15 pounds, literally. I hate to admit it, but I'm not really all that buff and stuff and I think this dropped my 6'4 frame to about 145lbs, so as soon as I could stomach anything I went on the donut and ice cream diet, whereby each breakfast begins with a donut and each dinner concludes with ice cream, and again started hitting the riding hard as hell. People thought I was crazy.
So, I went through the process of getting my stuff delivered again at the next race. The week after that however, was our conference championships. I came good, and rocked a top 5 in the road race, but my inclusion on the team for nationals was tenuous at best, so I needed something good in the crit. Kelly crashed warming up for her crit, which bummed me out. Then, our coach came up and told us "we wouldn't be allowed to travel together the following year" because it was disrupting the team or some b.s. He was pissed 'cause some other riders were dating and had drama. We were definitely of the non-dramatic, however.
Anyway, this pissed me off but good, and I won the crit out of an 8 man break. This was my ticket to nationals. I crashed and then got up and won a Pro 1-2 crit the next week, and then come 4th in a RR the week after that, so you know I had the form. Then, the night before the national crit, the coach sat me down and told me I wouldn't be one of the 3 who got to ride the crit. Right, makes sense. One guy was a senior and rather than ride the best team, the coach got sentimental and that was that. All our guys got popped on the high altitude course (forgot to mention the RR was SNOWED out on Memorial Weekend), and I got to watch them.
Kelly never got mono. Odd, 'cause believe me, I was not "getting around" back in the day. She didn't get the flu either.
The coach got canned the same summer, though it was totally unrelated.