So today (Saturday) was a big day. Big for me, at least, in that this morning I was in Brooklyn, in Prospect Park, racing Category 5 in the Tour of New York. (Again, why a 17-mile criterium in a city park is called the Tour of New York is beyond me, but that’s beside the point.)
Now, I realize I often have a tendency to go on an on regarding certain subjects, so in an effort to not bore you, the reader, to absolute tears, I’m going to present this morning’s events in a simple, easy-to-read bullet point format. (There’s a jackass blogger out there by the name of Max Tucker, or Tucker Max, and if anyone so much as hints at any sort of similarity between this post and Mr. Jackass Tucker, I will f*cking . . . I don’t even want to say what I’d do, so let’s just leave it at that, okay?)
• At 1:00 AM, I hop out of bed under the assumption I’ve heard my alarm go off. It isn’t until I’m in the kitchen preparing to feed the cat that I glance at the clock on the microwave and realize it’s near 4:30, which is when my alarm is supposed to sound. Clearly, I’m suffering from a mild case of racing anxiety.
• At 2:30, the same thing happens, yet I check my cell phone before expending the energy to stumble into the kitchen.
• At 4:30, the alarm finally clicks on and I feel nowhere near as awake as I did at 1:00 and 2:30.
• The gear’s already packed and the bike’s already prepped, so after a quick bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and mixing some Go Grape Cytomax, I’m off by 5:00.
• By 6:00, I’m standing on line waiting for my number. One might assume that pre-registering online would mean not having to stand in line, but clearly that’s not the case. The Tour of New York organizers take their business seriously and ask to see my USA Cycling license when I hand them my waiver. (Yes, I paid the $60 for a plastic card with my name that says USA Cycling. Makes me feel special just like my mother used to tell me: “You’re not dumb, Stevie. You’re special.”)
• At 6:15, I’m on the bike riding a lap to warm-up. I’m wearing my Adidas arm warmers for the first time and, again, I feel special.
• Taking one last spin through the parking lot, the Polish brothers Lester and Robert are nowhere to be seen. So much for my aftershave-laden lead-out train.
• The racing begins at 6:40 so pretty much everybody is on the line by 6:35. Pro-1-2-3 are the first to take off. Masters and women next, followed by Category 4. Then it’s our turn, Category 5.
• The whistle blows and I’m expecting the thirty or forty of us to simply click in and take it easy the first hundred or so feet. Clearly, I’ve got a lot to learn as guys begin sprinting immediately off the line. Mumbling under my breath, I keep up as we approach the one long hill in the park.
• Sitting in the middle of the pack, the first lap goes by without incidence and unlike my first race, I know realize the importance of sitting on a wheel as I refuse to stick my face in the wind. I hop from one wheel to the next until I find a guy roughly my size who creates a mother of a draft.
• We begin approaching the hill for the second go-around and by the time we reach the top, I’m (a) not dropped, (b) still near the front, yet (c) a glance at my wrist tells me my heart rate has reached 191. If this pace keeps up, I may very well die.
• A few corners later, someone manages to hit one of the orange cones lining the left side of the course. Said orange cone begins bouncing through the pack, missing my front tire by a few inches, but I guess that’s what Category 5 is about, right?
• Three laps down, two to go. The third time up the hill, my heart rate peaks at 192. I feel as if my chest may very well explode and I’m wondering if the hefty guy to my left is breathing as hard as I am. Actually, I’m wondering if anyone is breathing as hard as I am (wheezing, practically), but I don’t bother to look around. Instead, I remind myself, Just hold that wheel in front of you, dumbshit.
• Halfway through the third lap, the big guy I’m following, the one with the shaved legs, decides moving to the front is a good idea. As soon as he inadvertently drags me to the front, he changes his line so I’m now the first guy in the pack. A voice that sounds a hell of a lot like Ed Dalton pipes in from the back of my head: “Conserve!” With that said, I immediately pull off and drift to the back.
• On our fourth lap, we pass the Category 4 racers which, to me, seems counter-intuitive. “Why the hell are we passing them?” I ask no one in particular. Later I realize that, considering the Cat 4 race is twice as long as the Cat 5 race (17 miles), they’re simply conserving which means some of them must know Ed.
• Four laps down and one to go. That last time up the hill, the average speed drops from roughly 22 to 18 MPH, which I take as a sign of everyone growing somewhat tired, present company included. Over the past four laps, a few people have tried to go off the front, but in a 17-mile race, how far are they going to get? The pack’s covered everything so far and while I have no idea what to expect as we begin the last lap, I do realize it’s time to begin moving toward the front for a sprint which I’m sure will be absolute chaos.
• Less than a minute later, just as we’re approaching the long downhill, two guys touch ahead of me and hit the pavement. A third guy goes down when he hits the first two and I’ve got my brakes locked up, swerving to the right just in time to miss that third guy’s head as his shoulder slaps against the asphalt with a nasty thump. Having been behind all that, I’m now all the way in the back, thinking I most likely won’t have the chance or time to slip to the front.
• I’m right. After witnessing the crash, I’m not about to try and force my way through a tight pack of thirty or so Cat 5 riders. Instead, I sit in the back and note when and where the sprint starts (near the parking lot entrance to the Wollman skating rink) and oddly, the guys at the front who are sprinting don’t seem to be going that much faster than the rest of us, although I could have easily misjudged their speed.
• The winner crosses the line as do the rest of us less than five seconds later and that’s it. The race is over. I hit STOP on my watch to see we’ve been riding for just under forty minutes and my average heart rate is 171 with a max of 192. According to my cycling computer, top speed was just under 40 MPH with an average of 26.5 and, based on my heart rate, seems to make sense.
Yet I survived. The group did not spit me out the back the way it did last August. All this godforsaken riding over the fall, winter, and spring has paid off and I’m elated that I made it to the end with the main pack. Absolutely thrilled.
Then it was off to Staten Island for the group ride with Ed, Tommy, Horace, Joe, Anne, and Christian. And then it was home to Pleasantville, and then it was back to Manhattan, and then it was dinner, and then is was [stuff], and then it was time for bed.
And right now, as I sit here, it’s the next day, Sunday. It’s time to go out for a ride and crucify myself in the hills up here Westchester. Fantastic.
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