It’s official, my season has begun, like a Lycra-encased Punxsutawney Phil, I emerged from my hole in the ground and deemed the weather acceptable enough to ride in circles in Central Park. I did not race at Grant’s Tomb, because no one who enjoys having skin should race Grant’s Tomb as their first race of the year—the race is too damn early in the season. There—I said (typed) it—having Grant’s Tomb as the season opener is preposterous. We’re in a safe place here, right? It’s no longer a collegiate race, so perhaps it can be moved back in the calendar a bit? Grant’s Tomb as a season opening event is an awful idea, as everyone’s race skills are rusty, the weather is foul (if we’re lucky), and no one registers until the week before because they wait to see what the weather forecast predicts. The race should just be moved a bit later in the season, even a move to early April would make a big difference. This seems like an easy fix, doesn’t it?

Grant’s rant aside, I was excited to begin the new season. There’s something lovely about the prospect of a new season, as it hasn’t yet been sullied by disappointment and slowness—it’s very tempting to not race at all to preserve these feelings of optimism—but I am a pretend bike racer, and how can I feel smug and superior towards the non-racers that I interact with if I don’t race? I can’t look down on people if I’m not involved in any events. I must race to maintain my imaginary worldview—it’s very time consuming, but it’s all worth it to be able to tell a market analyst that I raced 5.8 laps of Central Park at 6am.

This season I am on a new team (Rockstar Games) with many of the same teammates from the year before. This new team hybrid-ing added some racers to the roster, so this would the first race of the season not only for myself, but also for the newly formulated team. The temperature bordered on intolerable, but after a winter of staring at the walls of my basement, I was willing to endure the cold to not have to listen to the voices in my head drone on about the best time to seed my lawn (my head voices are really dull—and they insist it’s early April).

My plan for the race was to race. That was it. I’ve always had really low expectations for the first race of the year. My goal was to pedal the whole time and not fall over, and (spoiler alert) I accomplished this goal. (If you wanted a race report, you can stop reading now, as that’s about all that happened.) In fact, I planned on using the first lap of the race to reacquaint myself with the freshly-destroyed Central Park tarmac—I really appreciate the new gravel section at the top of Harlem Hill. I was hole-mapping when the first split or attack or something of the race happened. None of us on Rockstar were included in this occurrence, so we tried to remedy the situation. The split came to within “jumping to” distance, and that’s what new teammate Chris did. And that was the last we saw of the break.

The break rolled to the finish, with Alex S of Foundation taking the win. Chris was outnumbered in the break by the Weathermen and others, but was at least smarter than the rest of us who were rolling around looking at holes in the ground while the race broke out. I won’t mention this to the market analysts when I give then the recap of my race, as far as they know I am a competent pretend bike racer.