JACKIE was content with her ride that morning. Her pace was good. It was her new favorite route, and she relished every brutal mile. Few straights, tons of hills. She’d been a competitive cyclist for eighteen years and she liked to train alone. Drumming vibrations in her palms, shoulders, legs, buttocks. Wind that stuck to her face as she pedaled. It was where she found solace.
Until Roger.
He must have sniffed her out. Perhaps followed her. Stalked her? She’d never seen him before. And she was besting her best time at the moment. He was youngish, thirty something. White. Baby blue outfit with his name on the front. R.O.G.E.R. with obnoxious periods lodged between the letters. He spun into her sights as she was approaching Bundy Road, the starting line for Tour de Jackie.
Malnourished biking shape, with calves that bulged like drumsticks; veiny cleaving muscles that seemed unnatural. Dark buzzed head. Attractive in the fitness sense, she could tell; twenty-ten vision. The kind of guy who only ate salads and drank Michelob Ultras. If he drank.
Just like Jackie. But Jackie knew how to relax, have fun. Cake on Sundays. She may have been his senior by over a quarter of a century, but she was a better rider. She knew it. Her mission today was to prove it.
Saturday sweltered. He wasn’t gaining, but his pace was constant. This bothered Jackie. She didn’t like riders close behind. Was a fan of keeping her eyes ahead rather than rubbernecking backward. She imagined an apocalypse scenario, where pursuers chased her with the goal of chopping her into chunky pieces using hammers, saws, pipes, rakes. The usual.
All cyclists had a primal inspiration, a friend once told her. Jackie had learned that hers was survival. 

Roger was a predator who was never going to catch her.

Bundy Road spanned fifteen miles. Mostly uphill. Edged by a steep cliff that shadowed Lake Eagle.  

The resolve tester, Jackie called it.
“The first battle. If you can’t fight it, beat it, you don’t deserve to finish,” she told herself every time the road looked down on her; soft, six-thirty yawning sun with its orange belly folded over Bundy’s rolling pavement. She reveled in that bath of sunlit suffering—triumphed, thrice. Always first. The fourth podium, however, might have to be shared with Roger. Unacceptable.
Today, she was no longer training. Today, she was racing.
Jackie tilted forward and started pushing and pulling. Violently. Burning tension pulsed her legs. Fighting gravity, her hands clenched around the Specialized Tarmac SL7 handles. She slid into lower gear and slipped into meditative breathing as she detached her mind from the pain in her body. After a minute, she bent her neck and checked her six for Roger. Closer?  Victory’s addictive chemicals flooded her system and  ratcheted up her  purpose.

Pick up the pace, Jackie. This man is NOT going to pass you.
Whatever it takes.
Her ears rang as if a choir of mice sang inside them. Blood drumming. She couldn’t hear the cardinals or sparrows or chickadees chirping. Or feel the morning hillside mist that mazed the hairs of her arms. For Jackie, nature was a map to conquer, not a world to experience. Cycling was the fifth she slipped out from between the cushions. And personal records were what got her up in the morning. Six days a week, sick or hale, without fail. Sundays were for rest and prepping for Monday.
Bundy’s first peak prescribed a flat-straight sprint for a short quarter mile. It’d be one of the few moments of recovery she and Roger would get. Soon after was the next uphill struggle. Patches of pines lined the winding cliff to her left. She snuck a gaze past their streaking needles; Lake Eagle’s azure blue glittered in golden rising rays.
Water. With one hand she grabbed her green Camelbak Podium and sprayed it on and into her mouth. She put the bottle back, eyes laced forward. Pinkish-brown boulders bulged to her right; smaller broken gray gravel peppered the ground at their bases. They nestled against a steep, charcoal colored ridge that plateaued high above the road, Jackie, and Roger.
She put her chin to her shoulder to suss Roger’s position. Gaining quickly. This man can’t take a hint. 

Youuu. Shalllll-notttt. Passsss! Jackie thought, under the influence of raw defiance. She could have sworn she saw him smirking. That shithead. She seethed into her spite.
The next hill was advancing, growing, looming. Jackie clicked into a higher gear and picked up speed. This hill was a demon. Almost twelve minutes of nonstop climbing. The landscape morphed from loose solids to melted blurs. A smearing of nature. She felt the rise of the road and the pull of the earth beneath her.
The bike pointed at a forty-five degree diagonal. Sweat stormed off her body. Head. Face. A single faucet seeped ceaselessly from the nib of her nose to the flares of her nostrils. Her exhales shortened to focused heaves. She began to murmur AC/DC lyrics, setting a cadence for her pedaling. “It’s a...long...way...to the top...if you...wanna...” She dropped to a lower gear, feet churning. She looked behind her, very cautious, balanced, so she didn’t lose her uphill rhythm. 

And there he was. So close now that if she tried, she could see her reflection in the pale skeleton’s prismatic Oakley’s.
The lyrics stopped. Shit he’s fast. I’m faster, she said, but she was deaf to her own confidence. 

Along the tree line, a startled deer bolted. It flinched to top speed and bounded along her peripheral. She had a hare. Her nerves fired all at once and her muscles twitched. She picked up speed, now more than halfway up the hill. The deer sprang out of sight within seconds.
Lactic acid splashed across her body. She felt her muscles swelling, but met the pain with a sinewy smile, then shoveled it into her perpetual furnace of patriarchal destruction. You’ve trained for this shit. You’re a goddamn warrior huntress. You’re nothing, RO-GER. Last time you test me. Eat my ass, buddy.

The rest of the hill was tunnel vision. She topped the ridge and sucked down several gallons of moist oxygen. The road inclined but was far less savage. She looked at her phone, fixed on the stem of her handlebars. Her current pace was silly—three minutes faster than her personal best. Yah girl, hell fucking yes. Super Jackie came to race, she yelled to her unstoppable alter ego.
She looked up. A whale shaped cloud smiled at her while a plane flew through its eyeball. Suddenly, she sensed a presence at her back, her side, her shoulder. She glanced to her left and saw Roger’s baby blue outline. He’d caught her. No...not possible. I just gave it everything... She panicked, infuriated.
They were eye to eye. Hunched over, Roger was sneaking peeks at the sixty-five-year-old woman gasping in her yellow cycling outfit. Tongue tip poking out her veneers. She licked her lips sporadically in the wind. An obsessive tan face was scowling. He smiled, genuinely polite. 

Something slight and wicked lurched inside Jackie. Spooled up her spine. It spoke to her between exhalations. No. No, no no no. Can’t win. Won’t win. Can’t, won’t. Roger’s face looked worried, but only for a moment.
He  picked up speed as Bundy’s grade began to rise. So did Jackie. She couldn’t match him. Couldn’t beat him. She knew it. Thoughts she’d never had before whispered: The edge. What about the edge? The edge is right there. You can do it. Do it. 

By the time the words released her, Roger’s screams were already fading toward Lake Eagle.