About a week ago, I lost my enthusiasm for taking care of myself. This usually happens in the course of a season of racing, as the desire to keep up the regimen required to maintain the health for racing begins to wear on me. I get sick of being a  fit person. I get tired of watching what I eat and drink. I tire of training. And since I work at home, this weariness for all things athletic manifests itself in many ways. I stop combing my hair on a daily basis. I let my finger and toe nails grow to ridiculous lengths. I don’t shave every day—or even every third day. I have to force myself to ride my bike, and I lose all interest in utensils, preferring instead to eat as much as I can out of bowls—like a big mussy-haired, stubbly house cat with long claws.

I suppose a lot of this athletic malaise comes from jealousy and resentment. Having been herded into the suburbs a long time ago, I’ve been able to study the ways of its inhabitants (the adults, for instance, do not drive around shirtless in their station wagons blasting Minor Threat with the windows open—lesson learned). They go out for drinks, they stay up late on Friday nights, they go on weekend trips. All of these activities are foreign to a lunatic who races bikes regularly, and I find myself tempted by their activities. 

Gladly, there are ways to counteract the siren’s call of the land of clipped grass. I can get one of those tattoos that go around my bicep—perhaps one that is a garland composed of ivy, razor wire and images of Smurfs. I can get a preposterously large vehicle for acquiring my coffee drinks. I could really commit myself to the karaoke circuit instead of just playing around, or I could just continue to be the guy who "rides his bike all the time and does races somewhere in the city". This last option is probably the easiest—as I have all the stuff already.

Saturday morning was my opportunity to keep the suburbs at bay by taking part in the Lucarelli & Castaldi Cup 1/2/3 race in Prospect Park. The race was a sell out, with 110 riders signing up. A race of this size at this time in the season in Prospect Park virtually guarantees a field sprint, as everyone is pretty fit, and there’s always someone in the race who will be willing to chase down moves. It’s a bleak prospect for a team like ours to take part in a race like this—as we don’t have a pure field sprinter. Personally, I downgraded my expectations for this race from "get into a break" to "ride in circles fast" as soon as I saw the size of the field.

The race rolled along and every lap seemed to bring a move on the hill, which would get a little room, but then the momentum of the race would smother each little acorn of a break before it had a chance to bloom into a mighty oak of athletic affirmation. I began to plan for the inevitable field sprint, and as I sometimes do, I adopted a sprinter who might’ve needed some help for the day. If you are fit and have the natural fast twitch muscles of a sprinter, being successful basically comes down to positioning and attitude (and sometimes shoe covers). When I found my adoptee for the day (let’s call him "Racer Z", "Racer X" is so cliche—and might get the Speed Racer people on my tail), I asked if he was sprinting, he said he was, but with 4 laps left he was on the back end of the race. The field was so big it was going to take a lap just to get to the front, so I told him to follow me and I would bring him up.

My reasons for this were twofold: my first notion was altruistic—to help out Racer Z; my second was selfish—to help teammate Kevin by having someone to collaborate with in the sprint. I towed Z up to the front of the race as we hit the bell lap, there was a move away, and they were holding a small gap. They were still away after climbing the hill and they weren’t coming back fast enough on the back stretch for my liking, so I went to the front and closed the gap. That ended my usefulness for the duration of the race, I bid Racer Z adieu and left he and Kevin near the front to negotiate the frenzied finish. Ricky Lowe won the race in a field sprint and I returned back home to my suburban kitty bed.  

I had a lot of songs going through my head Saturday morning to help stave off the boredom, here is one of them, a song that does not get played in my sleepy town very often.