The Branchbrook spring series has had a run of bad weather luck to start the 2018 season. I forget whether it was the bomb cyclone or a neutron sleet or a dynamite drizzle that was responsible for the cancellations, but I do know that two weekends of Jersey park circles were lost. (I will now once again state that I think is profoundly moronic that we race bikes in March, but I do understand that it’s a complicated situation that involves parks access, permit histories and subtle nuances that I won’t get into here because I get miffed every time I have to come home from a race and thaw myself in the shower for 20 minutes—I won’t rant any more. But I will leave you with this thought—sometimes parts of me that are hairy and awful go numb from racing in the cold—I make no guarantees about the potentially scarring effects of my parenthetical asides.)

Revolting numb bits aside, I was excited to take part in my first Branchbrook race of the season. The Branchbrook races are delightful. They are run efficiently, the course is fun and the roads are in great shape—it’s no wonder that they’ve become popular and have served as a worthy replacement for the defunct (or should I say de-[van] dunked) Spring Series races. The Branchbrook races start at a more reasonable time than morning city races, but getting to the race of the elderly (the 50+ masters race) still requires a 5 am wake up, which isn’t quite my normal waking time—yet. (Although I am inching towards the “crazy old person early bird wake up before the birds and the worms” nonsense. Why in the name of God do people wake earlier as they get older? We’re tired! We should sleep in! This is something I wasn’t prepared for with aging—that and the ear hair—what possible evolutionary purpose could more ear hair serve? Protection from lobe frost? And the hair can only make hearing worse, because it’s covering your ear—the thing you hear with. The lesson is—as always—that 9 times out of 10, any parenthetical asides I add will turn out to be anywhere from mildly to thoroughly disgusting.)

So I woke up early, did the necessary kitchen and bathroom stuff to get out the door, and made my way to Newark. I signed up for the masters 50+ and 40+ races, to maximize my senior citizen status. I have a November birthday, so my racing license says 50, but I am actually 49 for most of the year. This is clearly egregious age doping on my part, but I could honestly care less. These guys have been kicking my ass for 20 years now, I have 11 months left to party and I’m going to take advantage whenever I can. Take your complaints to USA Cycling. The Branchbrook organizers wisely start the codger races early because of the early bird thing I mentioned above that somehow turned into a diatribe on ear hair. All races should do this. Old people get up early—midday racing is for the young and single—I cannot stress enough how serious I am about this. START THE OLD PEOPLE FIRST, WE’RE UP ANYWAY.

So I got to the race, lined up, shivered, cursed the cold and a God that would allow such misery, and we set off racing. In races that involve young folks, I need a combination of timing, wiliness and the misfortune of others to hope for any sort of result, but in a 50+, due to my spy age, I can race like a normal delusional bike racer. I can attack and not get shot out the back of the race, I can hope to sprint without looking like a broken wind up toy. I have fun. I do stupid stuff and it doesn’t kill my chances. I get asked what it’s like to be an older racer and I usually answer, “It’s better than death, and also a good preview.”, but I’ve developed another analogy for racing as a person of oldness. It’s like being a submarine captain with a drunk crew. You head out to the open seas, and you have a torpedo loading and ready to go. You give the order to fire and the torpedo shoots out towards the target, everything goes according to plan. But if you need another torpedo right away, you call down for another torpedo but your drunk crew can’t get their act together to get the torpedo loaded in time and the Lusitania steams away unharmed. (I really didn’t think this extended analogy though very well, because I think I just made myself the captain of a German WW1 U-boat, but I’m metaphorically stuck now, so just play along and we’ll pretend that letting an ocean liner get away is a bad thing—this must be how most Republicans feel lately.) What I’m trying to say is that, as you get older your drunk crew doesn’t reload your torpedoes quickly. You can match one explosive move, but if another move happens, your torpedo isn’t in the tube yet.

But the good thing about masters racing is that we all have rotten torpedo crews. We race like we’re young again, but with really long pauses for bouts of panting. So I attacked during the race and was in some mini moves, and then two guys got away and gained about 15 seconds. I bided my time and when I thought the time was right, I jumped across to the break. Others joined and we became a group of 7. We worked smoothly and ground out the laps until there was one left. We had two Wonder Wheels riders in our group (Doug O and Marc C), and they both attacked on the last lap. I covered both moves because I had fooled myself into thinking I had a chance in a sprint, and as we came to the final 500-ish meters, I was sitting on the wheel of a Houlihan guy (Mike S) who I thought wouldn’t be a threat because he was working hard in the break and was now stuck on the front. That was a gross miscalculation on my part. Mike jumped early, and I hesitated to see if anyone else would follow him. No one did. Mike got about 10 meters gap and held it to the line, which was pretty impressive. I was caught unaware and effectively led out the people behind me. Mike won, and I finished fourth, which is not bad for a U-boat with a drunken torpedo crew.

I started the 40+ race, but in keeping with this incredibly long submarine analogy, I would have to say in that race that I left my torpedos on the dry dock and the Lusitania got away.