JJ: A Tie Is the Same as a Loss

I lost Diesel's wheel near the end of our ride through the rural roads along the Mississippi River in southeast Illinois. We were finishing a tailwind-fueled stretch of miles in which we had maintained speeds of 25-27 MPH. My quads were burning, my face was caked with salt, my bottles were empty—I was toast. But since we were only two miles from the end, I wasn't worried about falling off Diesel's wheel. I'd just coast in.

Suddenly a train whistle shattered my self-satisfied silence. A couple hundred yards ahead, at the crest of a small hill, I saw the long white train crossing gates begin to lower. One gate narrowly missed Diesel's Cervelo as he scooted over the crossing. "Those things are longer than you expect," he said later. I slowed down, resigned to waiting out the train, which I knew could mean up to 10 minutes standing alone in the heat on the side of the road. But as I rolled closer, Diesel began to frantically wave me in. "You can make it," his body language was saying.

About that time my sugar-deprived brain wasn't functioning. I had one mission: Get out of the sun and immerse myself in the icy Gatorade waiting in the car. So I shifted into a bigger gear, stood on the pedals, and hammered up the hill. My face wore the mask of pain.

I whizzed across the double set of tracks—hopping over various grooves that easily could have grabbed a wheel and sent me tumbling--about 100 feet ahead of that train. I saw it in my peripheral vision but couldn't bear to look. The shrill whistles from the engine told the story.

As we eased down the road, I took a deep breath and Diesel glanced back over his shoulder. "Hey, that train was only about 10 cars." Just then the winds began to kick up and I heard voices emanating from the cornfields that engulfed us. "You're an idiot, John" whispered the breeze.

- John