Spokes (3 page)

Knowing the theory and having a helping hand shoving him toward the other riders were two very different things. That hand belonged to a man Christopher
spent a large and growing amount of his waking hours dreaming about, and there wasn't one damned thing he could do besides say
"Thanks," and pedal harder.

They caught up with the peloton quickly, giving Christopher another split to his attention. He had two very important things to focus on, the hand on his
body and the wheels that suddenly closed in by his bike. Only the prospect of wiping out half the team let him concentrate on his
bike-handling--Luca was barely six inches off his handlebars, and the rest of the riders were closer yet to one another. No wonder one stray dog
or spectator could dump fifty riders into a multi-colored pile-up.

Or one rider.
Please don
'
t let me be the one who splatters the team.
He'd have to stay with the peloton of his own
ability, but they were such experts that they could probably recover from any foolish move he might make.
I
'
m at the back--they
'
ll ride right past me.
His shifted until he pedaled only a few rpms faster than Luca, who
looked like he'd go as far as Salt Lake City today before tiring.

Luca pushed him, and now dragged him closer. "Gear up!" he shouted, and somehow that last inch eased Christopher into the slipstream of
the group. The wind went away--the resistance he fought against disappeared. Gearing up didn't seem like a burden now; he could drop
tempo, maintain speed, and keep up with riders who could and had left him in the dirt.

The downside was Luca's hand disappearing too.

Not that Christopher expected a public groping for the next several miles, but it was Luca's hand, the hand he'd been dreaming about,
on one of the spots he'd been dreaming it. Now gone. Rattling over a patch of rough asphalt brought Christopher's attention back to the
road.

"Fun, yes?" Luca could speak easily at this pace, Christopher was both pleased to see and chagrined not to match. He settled for
nodding and smiling, hoping that Luca could see his efforts were going into keeping up rather than speech. "The peloton breaks the wind; we work
the domestique
s
like dogs to save our strength for the final run to the top."

"We can't keep him, Luca," another rider warned. "He can't take a spell at the front."

Oh, God, no. Christopher was working harder than anyone else already, even drafting on the other riders. If he had to take a turn in the front echelon,
neither his strength nor his bike-handling could keep him there more than twenty seconds.

"He can stay with us for now, Laurent." To Christopher, he added. "Today we all lead for a time, but Rolf and I will sprint
for a mountain finish. Exciting."

Good practice for the big races. Rolf looked good up ahead. Didn't look better than Luca. Nobody looked better than Luca. Would love to see the
sprint. Too bad he'd probably be miles behind when it happened.

Even his thoughts were gasping for breath at this pace. Luca never stopped talking to his teammates. "Does this road remind you of the
switchbacks of the
Col du Galibier
or the hills above Lake Como?" he asked one, and they chatted about asphalt quality in France for a
while. "How would the Motorola team do at two thousand meters?" he asked another, and they had a good laugh over training at altitudes
other teams reached only in airplanes.

Luca kept Christopher in the conversation, turning to catch the nods and shakes that were his only contributions. He needed every molecule of oxygen for
his burning legs. Fatigue poisons were building up faster than he could clear them. He couldn't even suggest a local road that would feel like
the cobblestones of northern France or Belgium.

The peloton shifted around them; Luca had to move forward in some prearranged rotation, leaving Christopher at the back. The view was fine, still, although
Christopher's vision was beginning to go a little gray at the edges. The other riders didn't try to talk to him, but no one seemed
overtly unfriendly. Not even Rolf.

They still had six miles of climbing to go when the fluidity of the peloton brought Rolf to the rear. "You're keeping up
well," he remarked. "Do you ride this route often?"

"Yes," was a gasp more than a word. "Not at this pace," was an admission he didn't like making, but it
was better than looking like a liar, since he was so clearly struggling. He'd been pedaling squares for a while now. The riders around him moved
as easily as when they'd caught up to him. Standing up on the pedals would give him some extra power, but he'd wobble, maybe clip
Rolf's bike. None of the other riders were standing on their pedals--neither would he.

"We're going to descend, then come up again. Even so, it won't be as challenging as the
Alp d'Huez
." Rolf sat straight up, riding no hands and taking a drink of water from the bottle that had been clipped to his frame.

Of course not. This was just the road to Ward, Colorado, not the most brutal mountain stage of the
Tour de France
. Tomorrow the smug bastard would
probably want to ride to the top of Mount Evans, just so he could sneer at entire teams for never riding at fourteen thousand feet.

"If we did the Super-Jamestown route it would be nearly comparable, but the road has snow." As if he'd suddenly noticed
Christopher's struggles, Rolf asked, "Can you get to the middle of the peloton?"

Since Christopher was down to wondering just how many more revolutions he could force from his screaming legs, he shook his head. If he'd been in
the middle from the beginning, he could have enjoyed half the wind resistance that the leaders battled. Or brought the entire group to the pavement.

"You lack confidence in your skills?"

Christopher wasn't going to turn his head to see the expression that went with that assessment. The tone of voice was enough.

"You do look very tired."

Thanks, asshole.
Exhausted was about the size of it. Luca should be dropping back again shortly; Christopher hoped to have a few more yards with him, just to prove that
he'd made it this far.

"Ah."
Rolf twitched his handlebars one sharp right-and-left. It might have been rough pavement or a stone, or it might have been
the movement of one particular rider through the peloton. Christopher would wonder about it later--he had just enough mind left to respond. Badly.
Rolf barely veered toward Christopher's front wheel, but it was enough to panic him. Over-responding, he leaned an inch too far to the right. The
air took him like a fist.

He didn't stop moving forward, though the other riders surged away from him as if he'd stopped. Every bit of effort he'd
expended in the slipstream wasn't enough to keep him going at their pace without the shelter of their draft. The climbing would begin for real
once they rounded the big curve, and there would be no keeping up with the team at all once they reached the ten percent grade.

He should stop--Christopher passed his lactate threshold a long time ago and was running his anaerobic tanks dry. Going on would be torture for no
good reason. He pulled off the road, too tired to look for a dry spot. Just a spot with no snow. The bike clanked when it dropped. He dropped beside it.
Missed the sharp rock. Sitting was too hard. Ground cold on his back. Oh well. Breath might come back. Eventually. Legs numb.

He closed his eyes--gray edges around everything. The roaring in his ears subsided gradually. His pulse came down from 200, letting his heart stop
thrashing in his chest like a trapped rabbit. When he opened his eyes again, it was to a full visual field of brilliant Colorado blue with a worried man in
an orange and green jersey surveying the damage.

"You okay? Should I call 911?" The rider held up his cell phone as if it needed only the final digit to call the paramedics.

"I didn't crash--I'm okay." Okay was a relative thing, but Christopher sat up, knowing that to stay on the
cold ground for long would stiffen his muscles.

"What happened?" The stranger offered a hand, pulling Christopher to his feet. "Did you get run off the road?"

"Sort of. I was riding with some of the Antano-Clark guys," he clarified. "Ran out of gas."

"You made it this far with them?" The cyclist looked uphill--they were about four hundred yards below the big curve known as
the Turn of Events. The grade above the curve varied from eight to twelve percent. It was two thousand feet of altitude and twelve miles down to the city.
"Pretty good."

Put that way, Christopher had earned the compliment. He fumbled his water bottle out of its rack on the bike. He hadn't been able to drink on the
way up--that might have given him the capacity to go another mile or two with the team. Which would have let him drop out on the steep section and
look like a weenie instead of a rider who lost the draft. He wasn't sure what would have looked worse, failing a
hors categorie
climb or just losing the group. Had Rolf dumped him on purpose? He couldn't tell.

"Do you need an energy gel?" his rescuer wanted to know.

"Have some, thanks." The pouches on the back of his jersey yielded two packets of a high-carb, electrolyte-laden goo that tasted like
chemical fruit and had the consistency of semen. Christopher sucked the packets flat, chasing them with the rest of the water. Feeling in his legs was
returning, not a good thing.

"You aren't going to try the ascent, are you?" The rider stared at Christopher's thigh, where a muscle jumped
uncontrollably.

Christopher shook his head. "Need more water, and I'll get home about six times faster than I'd get to the general
store." A constant stream of cyclists through Ward had convinced the storekeeper to stock sports drinks, energy bars and gels, and sugary treats.
Another two miles of near vertical made those goodies as inaccessible as moon rocks.

The whirr of bicycles jerked their attention from Christopher's quivery knees to the road, where turquoise and black riders strung out like beads
on a chain, whipping around the big curve and downhill. Crouched low over their handlebars to hide from the wind, they spun by one at a time.

"They've got to be hitting forty-five." Another rider whizzed past, pedaling slowly. At this speed, pedaling was more to keep
his muscles warm than to add velocity.

"At least. Nobody's riding the brakes." Christopher looked for Luca, not able to pick him out. He could have been the first
one by.

"You kept up with that?" The rider gawked at another pair of Antano-Clark riders whizzing by.

"Not on the downhill--I keep thinking I'll hit a rock and smear myself." Thirty miles an hour with one hand on the
rear brake lever was fast enough for Christopher, and still more than fast enough to risk missing a curve.

"Hear you on that. Are you going to be okay to get down?" The cyclist helped Christopher pick up his bike, then threw one leg over his
own ride.

"Gravity does it from here." And a good thing, too, because getting one shaky leg over the cross-bar was plenty of work as it was.
"Thanks."

"Hope I don't find you in the same position on my way down."

"I'll let you call 911 if you do." Any cyclist who passed him on the descent could just sail on down--today.
Competition had to take a back seat to survival. "You're more likely to see those guys coming back up."

"Back..." The cyclist shook his head. "Huh. Take care." He stood on his pedals to get the bicycle going
again. Christopher would have helped if his own ability to move wasn't so limited.

Gingerly pedaling across the lanes to the far shoulder, he steered downhill, being extra cautious in his fatigued state. The gels and water had brought him
back far enough that he could manage and even enjoy the ride. He was halfway back to town when the turquoise and black pack passed him again, going the
other way.

Christopher hoped Luca would whup Rolf a second time.

***

A shower, a nap, and a meal left Christopher feeling vaguely humanoid once more, though every bone in his limbs had turned to lead. Might as well get some
mileage out of today's ordeal. He'd decided to write an article for CycloWorld on the advantages of drafting. The joy of looking at the
round, muscled ass of the rider in front was one benefit he didn't plan to mention, and at least Luca had been ahead of him before his vision had
started to go. He'd gotten about 400 words onto his laptop when his cell phone rang.

"Luca Biondi here. Christopher Nye, please."

What! Christopher nearly dropped the phone, his fingers going nerveless when the sense of the words penetrated. How...? Why...?

"Speaking," he said, through lips gone suddenly dry.

"
Ciao,
Christopher." His name had never sounded so sexy; Luca's light Italian accent turned it to some kind of music.
"I call to see if you're okay after the ride."

No, okay was not the first thought that sprang to mind. "Hit by a truck", "pounded by hammers", or "face
first into the wall" were all more accurate than "okay." "I'll live."

"You should live well. Did you eat something?"

"I had a turkey sandwich." Slapping meat on bread was the extent of his ability to forage once he'd gotten home. "And I drank lots of
water, some sports drink." The "wha?" circled endlessly through his brain--he hoped he'd said the next
sensible thing.

"
Bene.
That helps, the protein and the carb, the liquid." Luca's voice dropped a note. "How high was your
heart rate?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe a hundred and eighty?" He shaved his previous estimate. If Luca's had gone above 120 before
the final ascent to Ward, Christopher would have been very surprised.

"Too high! Christopher, you let us push you too much! How long?" Any flirting tone Christopher thought he'd detected
vanished.

"Half an hour?" he guessed.

"Too long! You are a brave rider; don't be a foolish rider!"

Since Christopher might have less than seven molecules of glycogen left in his muscles, it was too late to avoid being foolish.