I’m proud to announce that I have decided to return for a 31st season of racing bikes. My pretend bike racing career dates back to 1992, the year that brought us the Billy Ray Cyrus masterwork Achy Breaky Heart, which is not only a line dancing mainstay but also an apt metaphor for the totality of my bike racing success.

I planned on racing on the opening weekend of the CRCA, but was waylaid by an old-fashioned cold (my non-Covid illness is a sure sign that the planet is healing itself—while simultaneously trying to kill me) and the race the week after was canceled due to the folly of attempting to race bikes in March. Why do we do this when April is just 31 days away? I have no idea. Bike racing is pain, and I guess if it’s more painful then maybe it’s more authentic? I can’t hope to understand why we do this in (too) early spring. And, mind you, we payto do this. This isn’t a job, it isn’t even a side hustle. It is, as ever, a cry for help.

I decided my first cry for help in 2023 would happen in the 50+ field at Branch Brook. The temperature was forecast to be tolerable, and I like to start the season playing with kids my age to forestall the inevitable immolations that will come later in the season when I race with the young and the talented. I managed to remember which exit to take off the Garden State, parked in my trusty spot on the grassy knoll, registered, did porta-potty stuff and I was ready to roll.

At the start of a masters race at the beginning of any season, you take a long look to see who’s still around. Every year there are fewer masters racing contemporaries due to losses of motivation, gains in wisdom, or sadly, departures from this mortal coil. I looked about at the start and was pleased to see so many familiar faces. We pushed off and set about getting back to our old tricks again.

Branch Brook is a good place to begin a season’s campaign. There’s really only one turn, so you can get back to cornering at speed, and there’s no elevation to speak of, so no one gets shot out the back on a climb. I did some efforts off the front to see if my bodily fluids would boil (they didn’t), but the field stayed together, probably because most racers were testing the waters as I was. When you’re a master, the likelihood of getting a year older is far more certain than getting a year better, so you attack accordingly.

We were scheduled to do a 40-minute race (remember that fact for later), and the laps went by smoothly. There was a green jersey sprint, but nothing was getting away. I had worked out a plan with a teammate (Rockstar Games has combined with another team to add riders to our roster, but we have yet to get team clothing for all, which makes for intrigue in the masters ranks—intrigue that could be resolved by a quick look at the race start list—but we old folks get our thrills where we can) to be useful at the end of the race, but I didn’t pay careful attention to when the end of the race was going to…happen.

Because I didn’t realize that we were on the last lap of the race, I spent the end of the race in a state of befuddled confusion. “Why are we going so fast?” “What’s the hurry here?” “Would it kill them to play some Billy Ray Cyrus?” All of these questions went unanswered, and as we rolled over the line at the end of the race, I came to the realization that I was an idiot. Surely I missed out on an opportunity to place or even win that race. Yeah, that’s what happened. I totally would’ve won that race. This season is going to be different…