196

I’m back on the racing train and, believe or not, no matter what I might have said in the past (if anything), I love racing my goddam bike.

To back up, though, I believe it was a few months ago when I wrote about possibly joining the Century Road Club Association when I had moved from Westchester to Manhattan and last week I finally took the plunge and shelled out the $58 (or was it $48?) to join the CRCA as a “racing” member.

How utterly exciting.

So after signing on the dotted line and checking out the 2008 racing schedule, it was time to actually race this past Saturday. I got out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4:50 in the AM, washed down a granola bar with a glass of OJ, pulled on the arm warmers (among other things), and hit the road. Lucky for me, the start / finish line was in the park near East 78th Street and considering the lady friend and I live on West 70th Street, I didn’t have to drag my ass all over the city just to make it to a race.

Twenty minutes later, a guy behind a folding table handed me number 196, which I had to pin to the back of my jersey and that meant I had to step aside, remove my helmet, remove my glasses, and then pull my jersey (with rear pockets stuffed with granola bars for the ride over the GWB I had planned after the race) over my head while still wearing my arm warmers and Mellow Johnny cycling cap and lay the jersey on the grass in order to affix the number to the back.

There were plenty of women in the vicinity, athletically built chicks decked out in team kits, and there I knelt, naked except for a pair of skin-tight lycra shorts and arm warmers.

How embarrassing.

Half an hour later, someone blew a whistle and about thirty-five category 5 riders clicked into thirty-five pedals and started a five-lap race around Central Park.

The first four laps? Rather uneventful with a mellow pace. There were times when a random dickwad would hop to the front and take off which would then result with the rest of the field stringing out into a long line, all of our heart rates pounding, but apart from those few occasions and apart from every dickwad trying to blast up the big hill on the north end of the park at twenty-miles-per-hour, it was kind of a mellow race, although please note I say “kind of” a mellow race.

Why was it not completely mellow?

Some kid with three inches of snot hanging from the tip of his nose was having the hardest of times keeping his bike straight every time we blasted over the hill. On one of the five occasions we blasted over the hill, he veered left and as soon as I slipped to the right to pass the brat, he immediately veered right. When I tried slipping to the left, he tilted left himself.

Look, I’m a nice guy and everything, but if you can’t handle your bike because you’re breathing too hard, get the fuck out of my way before you hurt somebody.

So there was that. And there were of course the idiots who really have a hard time holding a line through a sweeping corner, which is unfortunate because, when you think about holding your line, it’s really not all that hard.

And there are the clowns who absolutely need to get to the front so they simply ride over the orange cones lining the side of the street, thereby knocking them into the middle of the pack.

Absolutely brilliant.

And, of course, with roughly half a lap left, the pace picked up and I mean it picked up big time. But that happens in every bike race, right? And just like my last race in Prospect Park, three freaking clowns five feet in front of me almost hit the deck as things started getting crazy.

Now that’s part of the dilemma with these road races. We’re all amateurs. No one’s paying us to race. We don’t make a goddam dime if we win and I’m pretty damn sure all of us have a job to go to come Monday morning, so why in the world would we put ourselves in a situation where any random jackhole might overlap our wheel while we’re doing twenty-eight-miles-per-hour?

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I, for one, have zero desire to break a collarbone (or worse) just for the glory of winning a Category 5 local club race so, with Prospect Park fresh in my memory, I kept the pace high but kept my distance by staying twenty or so riders back from the front.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mistake.

To reiterate, the start / finish line was atop a short yet mildly steep hill and as we neared the base of the hill, I was still somewhat toward the front, riding along and thinking to myself, I’m way too far back to even think about trying to sprint it out with these guys, but something odd happened.

I have to assume that after thirty miles of riding, some of the guys in the group might have been tired, because as we approached the hill, not everyone was opening up their sprint and I’m looking around thinking, Holy shit, this isn’t as crazy as I thought it was going to be and, Jesus, I actually have some room here.

So I went, but I went way too late and halfway up the hill, with maybe a hundred feet before the finish line, some clown cut off the guy in front of me and that meant I had to tap the brakes and by the time I got going again . . .

Regardless, I’m pretty sure that if I wasn’t in the top ten, I was definitely in the top fifteen and while the casual observer might say, “Still, you’re a big fat loser,” I really think I could have cracked the top ten, if not the top five, if not for the guys ahead of me slowing things down.

I know, I know. That sounds crazy, but believe it or not, once I realized I had the room to sprint, I was looking up and again, I know this is going to sound nuts, but I was actually passing guys as I moved up the hill.

Anyway, that was the race. Better luck next time.