After a brief sojourn into the Midwest as a pretend race promoter, I have returned to pick up where I left off as a pretend bike racer. The problem with this situation is, due to many days of pretend promoter-based inactivity, that I have no idea whether I am fast or not at this point. I reckoned the best way to find out about my speed (or the inevitable lack thereof) was to enter the cheapest race I could find and see what happened.

Luckily, the CRCA club race on Saturday was a fine, thrifty opportunity for gauging my slowness. I am currently in a fit of bike frugality due to the cost incurred to grant a bunch of other cyclists the opportunity to ride around Iowa on gravel and up hills; and the $15 CRCA entry fee was within my budgetary reach. I set my alarm for 4am, and hoped that I could once again rise and caffeinate myself enough to make it to the race.

Spoiler alert, after two coffees and two poops, I made it to the race.

After a warm up of BBC world news and a half lap around Central Park. I was ready to participate in a race, and when I say “participate” I mean just that. I was to be a be-pinned leaf upon the race’s babbling brook, drifting about and landing wherever the current took me. Actually, that’s a lovely bit of prose, but I must now admit that it’s completely dishonest, because I am a dumb, conniving bike racer. And we bike racers like to find ways to race, no matter what condition we are in.

Teammate and pain aficionado Dylan decided to take off from the gun, in a move so audacious that—due to being perched upon my babbling brook of cluelessness—I didn’t even realize that he had attacked. Some time later my other teammate Pascal attacked also, and I allowed him to do so, as I am a very generous person. I soon settled into attempting to do as little as possible.

Eventually this became tiresome, and because I am a conniving bike racer I decided to make my day more interesting by offering to help another team in the race with goals similar to my own team’s goals. I shall not disclose the identity of this team because life needs more mystery and it also increases my chances of one day selling my services on the road, and therefore fulfilling a life long dream of rolling prostitution.

I helped this “team who shall not be named” do a thing that was beneficial to both my team and theirs, and then I settled back into doing as little as possible again. This is how I rolled to the finish line, where the merciless peloton scooped up quixotic teammate Dylan just before the line. Bike racing can be like that sometimes, and I would’ve gave Dylan $15 for his trouble, but I don’t have any money to spare.