I have been feeling a little burnt out as of late, but I also trend towards being compulsive. So I am faced with a conundrum, I almost always write about each race I participate in, but I’ve been so uninterested in writing about races recently that I have not been fulfilling my unpaid obligation to write about racing. I will now fulfill my imaginary commitment and write some brief notes about each race.

Prospect Park July 14

This was a masters race, and as masters, we are supposed to know better, but evidently we don’t. There were crashes everywhere, and I was thankfully not involved in any of them. The most noteworthy incident involved a GoPro camera flying off of someone’s bike and wreaking havoc in the field. Note to the GoPro-ers, 2 hours of footage of the asses and/or faces of amateur racers is not compelling youtube footage, it’s torture. Unless you’re Danny MacAskill, leave the camera at home. (Although I would like to see the footage of your camera bouncing along the pavement at 40 mph.)

FBF Race July 16

This was a regulation FBF race. There was a break away that looked pretty promising, but then Euris and Evan (but mostly Euris) brought that break back all by their damn selves. A field sprint ensued.

Rockleigh Crit July 24

Those of you who regularly read my race reports are firstly, gluttons for punishment and secondly, if you read closely, are aware that I enjoy sausage. A recent family trip to the land of sausage and brewed heaven (known to some as beer) known as Dubuque had left me a little, shall we say, out of "competition preparedness", so my return to the inferno of NYC racing was waylaid by some extra "fun weight". Carrying this extra wiener weight and not racing for the duration of my trip put me back a few steps in comparison to everyone who stayed in New York and spun themselves around in circles in the parks.

This situation has worn on me recently, as being slow and tired is no fun. To combat this, I rode out to the happiest little bike race in the NYC area, the Rockleigh Crit. There’s really no other way to describe Rockleigh—it’s a happy race. The promoters are happy to be there, the racers are in a good mood, there’s people watching the race from lawn chairs. It’s all very… happy. And I needed something like this. FBF, as much as I enjoy it, can be an unforgiving place, and it takes a beer barrel’s worth of effort to get there. Rockleigh, on the other hand, is a race I can ride to, which makes me happy.

So happily I rode to the outskirts of Northern New Jersey, registered for the 1/2/3 race and prepared for a night’s worth of diversion around the Care Center. Rockleigh attracts a different crowd from FBF, through some careful Facebook stalking (My Facebook feed tells me all I need to know about the current state of local racing. It also tells me that my cousin is fed up with dating, that no meal should go un-photographed and that a certain local architect needs to step away from the "update status" box. Seriously. Stop it.) I know that Greg O and Zach K are slap fighting away at each other for the series championship. So there would be GC tactics involved in the racing. I also noticed at registration that there was a fellow with an international license signed up, and guys from other countries are always fast, right? That has to be written down in a rule book somewhere…

So we took off and did two neutral laps. Why two? Who gives a crap? Stop harshing the mellow! And the racing began. There were by my estimate about 142 attacks in the race last night. I jumped across splits whenever possible, but there was a lack of cohesion in the moves, and all are brought back. International Man kept the pressure on by jumping constantly, and we zipped along at a brisk pace. I experienced moments of strength, quickness, self-doubt and near-incontinence. This is the time in the season where everyone is in shape. Moves that would’ve been knock outs in the early season are being dragged back because everyone has been racing for fours months, but of course, that doesn’t mean you don’t try—that would just be boring.

141 attacks later, Eugene B attacked on the last lap and held a slight gap. I had very little left in my tank due to jumping about 125 times, so I decided to squander that remaining fuel by moving up just before turn one and well, I wasn’t really sure what to do after that. We rolled through the back stretch, and I was on the receiving end of a second-generation Marte head butt (I’ve now been head butted by two generations of Martes, that has to be some sort of record, no?). I slid into about 25th place, and that was that. People sprinted to the line, I kept up and Zach K won with Greg O in second.

I took the longer route home through quiet Jersey suburbs, while smelling other people’s dinners and feeling happy that I still had some road in front of me.