I’m going to start this journal entry with a special programming note, 2018 will be my last season writing about my career as a pretend bike racer. I will no longer be typing about my alleged bike exploits. I will continue to race my bike, but I will not be sharing the words from the voices in my head because frankly, those words no longer hold any interest for me.

I’ve been writing about the races I take part in for over a decade (I say “decade” here because I can’t be bothered to look up how long I’ve been writing about bike races—as I said before, I’ve lost interest in writing about my bike races), and I’ve always strived to write about more than just the blow by blow report of the race action (many bike races are deeply boring, especially those that end in a sprint, and writing about these races can be deeply, double boring). This desire to make my race reports about more than reporting about races has allowed me to share details about my life as a pretend bike racer that I think help make the world a better place (or these reports have served as an outlet for me to share details about my digestive system with the greater world—it’s a toss up, really). This sort of writing is hard, because connecting pretend bike racing issues with actual issues takes dedication and imagination, and I have run out of the desire to find any deeper meaning in bike racing.

But I will make the effort to find interesting things to write about bike races for one more season, because the contract with the voices in my head stipulates that I should probably take a farewell lap to rid myself of any lingering thoughts I may have that need to be purged. So buckle up, toss a Who CD into your music player of choice because I will be playing the hits for my last writing tour of about 20-ish races (I haven’t planned out how many races I will be doing this year because I’m not some goddam robot, geez, lay off already).

CRCA A Race March 3, 2018

So we still race bikes in March in the early spring in NYC, because we bike racers are essentially Lycra-clad lemmings (and that notion that lemmings will all run off a cliff because they like to commit mass suicide? Yeah, that’s been proven to be a myth also—a story conjured by a Disney documentary crew—but we just continue to use the lemmings myth metaphorically because it’s convenient—patently false, but convenient. Ok, I’ve kinda fallen into an endless lemming feedback loop here, but you get my point—bike racers are stupid). The day before the CRCA race, a big storm dumped loads of rain and wound the wind up as if it wanted the wind to start a bar fight. Conditions at the start of the race were fairly miserable, and the proper clothing conversations were raging all about the registration area. I have my chilly clothing options dialed in from my winter training rides, so I wasn’t worried about what I was wearing. (Every season I develop a full and thorough knowledge of the proper clothing to wear in temperatures of 5 degree increments, only to forget all that information over the summer, because I lack the wisdom to write down any of this cold weather research, and to be honest, I like a clothing surprise in the fall.)

We on Rockstar Games had a good team turnout for the first race of the season. After an active off-season, we had high hopes for the coming season. We were especially keen on the chances of teammates Tom and Victor, as they ride bikes fast. We started the race, and Tom took off and held the race at bay for about a lap, because of the aforementioned fastness. He was brought back and after that, there were attacks and lulls, fast times and slow times. We were represented in every break, and a move of around 8 riders formed with about a lap to go. Teammate Tom was included in that group, and they held a tenuous lead as we went through Tavern.

Just before we hit the turn onto horse shit alley, there was a crash at the left side of the field. The crash took out a few riders, and I was close enough to hear it and see a few guys go down, but I was far enough from the crash to not let it stop me from still thinking that I would be a factor in the sprint. If any of you have every read anything I’ve typed before, you know that I wasn’t a factor in the sprint, but teammate Victor was, finishing 6th in the race. Tom’s break was caught at the line (mostly), but he still managed to finish second behind Stalin, who leapt from the pack to snatch the victory from the remains of the breakaway.

And that’s what happened in the race, that description fulfills my duty to write about what happened, leaving only about twenty of these goddam things to go.