Saturday morning was my first CRCA club race of the year. This wasn’t the first CRCA club race of the year, I missed that race as I have vowed to be the biggest wuss possible by avoiding racing in the rain, and the forecast for the first race was for precipitation. Of course, the rain never materialized, so I seemed lie the softest of soft softies to anyone who may have noticed my absence. Luckily, I have matured past the point of caring whether I am considered soft or not, I only really care whether people enjoy my homemade margaritas—and noting else matters. I was looking forward to my first club race, and to be honest I was feeling quite confident. I was four races (but with only two days of racing, thank you Branch Brook double ups!) into my season, and I had been hanging in there, I’d even managed to beat up on some of my elderly homies in the 50+ races, so my early season form seemed to be somewhere above “not pathetic”.

Out here in the wilds of Northern New Jersey, the pandemic has been a catalyst for cycling. I’ve seen more and more riders out on the road, and I’ve seen many more cyclists starting to take their riding more “seriously”. I use quotation marks here because I find it inherently silly to take bikes very seriously at the level we ride them. I’ve said it many times before, but what we do is more akin to a bowling league than it is to the World Tour. We dress up, meet our pals, huff and puff and go home to tell stories that bore the life out of our families. It’s all harmless fun (aside from the crashing and bone breaking portions), and no one is really changing the world in our pre-dawn races. What I’m trying to say is that bike racing is fun, you should try it. My neighbor John is one of riders out here that is taking things more seriously. He’s been taking part in races as his schedule allows and I helped persuade him to join the CRCA because dollar for dollar, it’s one of the most inexpensive ways to race bikes.

Saturday was John’s first club race of the season also, so we decided to carpool. A conservative estimate would say that I’ve done somewhere around 200 club races, so I know a thing or two about them. Mostly I know how to get to the race and where to park—vital knowledge to have if you’re coming from Jersey. I also know where registration happens, where to drop your bag and I can even recommend a certain secluded area of shrubbery to visit if the bathrooms happen to be locked before the race. I have a lot of practical knowledge. So I tried to share as much as I could with John on the drive to the race, he seemed interested, or was polite enough to convince me he was interested, either scenario was fine with me, I mean, it’s not like he was critiquing the ratio of lime to lemon juice in my margarita mix—that would’ve been devastating.

We got our numbers, pinned up, and I took my leave to take care of my “double deuce”. The Rockstar team has a good turnout, so it looked like we were in for a fun race. We shivered at the line (never forget, God hates bike races), and took off. We were doing a seven lap scratch race (that’s about 42 miles for you out-of-towners), and to my delight teammate Greg got in a break early, that meant I could sit back and watch things unfold from my perch in 30th place. Greg’s group was brought back, and shortly thereafter teammate Victor escaped in a group of four or so. This was doubly delightful, as it allowed me more squatting time while I basked in the reflected glow of Victor’s athletic achievement. We rolled about in the trailing pack until the laps had been ticked away. I didn’t sprint because duh, and after catching up to Victor, we found out he had won the race from the break. Delightful! Not only had Vic won, but he also helped make the rest of us look wise and tactical (whether we were or not is not the issue, you cannot argue with the winning team’s tactics, that’s like a bike racing law). A win for a teammate is always a win for me also, so it felt good to (co)win.

John and I packed up for the return trip to Jersey. He had a good experience in the B race, trying some attacks and not seeing much success. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that almost every race would turn out that way—and that’s not always the case—sometimes things work out right, sometimes you find that patch of shrubbery, you nail that lime to lemon ratio and you get the taste of success that keeps you coming back over the bridge to try your luck again.