Almost forgot - Road racing

Last saturday marked my return to road racing. I have stayed away from road racing for awhile now, mostly because it's hard to fit into my schedule. And also because it scares me a little - the first road race I ever entered ended with me in a 5 person pile up. One of the seat stays on my road bike got bent (fortunately it's a steel bike and was easily repaired), my rear wheel needed to be rebuilt and my handlebars and cables needed to be replaced. I was barely able to walk for two days due to a sprained hip and was off the bike for a week. It took me over a month to fully recover (I had also sprained my wrist and bruised my ribs).

The next two road races I did didn't go so well either - the first post-crash rash was only three weeks after the crash and I still hadn't fully recovered. The next race was difficult for me mentally - I had trouble staying in the pack - especially on the downhills - due to the fear of crashing again.

After that I pretty much stopped road racing. It was a pretty demoralizing experience and when you combine that with a 6:30am starting time (meaning I'd have to wake up around 4:30am) it was very easy to miss races.

But that all changed last weekend. The Kissena Cycling club organizes races in Prospect Park during the summer months and I decided to sign up. I prepaid online to make sure I'd go. I woke up at 4:30, had some breakfast and headed to the park. The guy at the registration desk recognized me from the track and I'm sure he wondered why I was in the Cat 5 field. He handed me my number and I wandered around to say hello to my friends who were also racing.

It came time to line up and I noticed that Alex "Thunder Thighs" was in the Cat 5 field. Surprising, to say the least, as he is a Cat 4 track racer who rides in the A group and often places. But he was pretty much in the same boat that I was - neither of us did much road racing and so we had to work our way up.

The race started off easily enough - the pace was pretty comfortable and I spent most of the time near the front of the pack, mostly as a precautionary measure in case there was a crash. Alex was also at the front of the pack, and decided to attack. I responded and got on his wheel but we only got a gap of a maybe a hundred meters and the pack quickly caught us.

And that was pretty much how the rest of the race would go. Alex would attack, I would respond but we would fail to make a break. We must have attacked three or four times. Alex is an incredible sprinter but it seems that breaking away is his weakness.

On the final lap there was a crash. Fortunately it was on the uphill and also fortunately, it was behind me. I heard the unmistakeable sound of metal twisting and bodies hitting the ground. I took a quick look backwards but then thought better of it and just continued forward. Immediately after the crash this one guy at the front launched an attack. I told Alex to let him go, figuring that we would catch him later. However after almost half a lap he had gained an impressive lead and Alex sprinted to catch up to him. When the pack reached the downhill I started picking up the pace to catch the two of them. I ended up pulling the pack up to them and losing all my energy in the process. Alex and I ended up finishing towards the back of the pack.

Despite my overall poor performance at the finish of the race I had a lot of fun. I don't take Cat 5 races that seriously and I don't take road racing that seriously either. It was nice to break up the monotony of pack riding with some (failed) attacks. Next time I'll probably just sit in the pack until the end, but I don't regret the strategy that Alex and I employed.