My First

Women, veterans, masters, juniors, cat. 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's and whatever new categories the USCF intends to create have all experienced it. Whether they liked it or not or even remember much about it, they have all survived their first race. By sharing personal stories from our local racing community, Century Central hopes to gather insight about why we all involve ourselves with such a masochistic sport.

Eugene Boronow

When I was 13, I saw a race advertised in the Daily News, "The Olsten Challenge" in Eisenhower Park, LI. It was a 3-mile event. So for a couple of weeks I went out and practiced riding 3 miles as fast as possible. At the race, it was a small event with a few experienced racers, but mostly recreational riders. My friend (David Howell) and I were the only kids there. Dave had a new Peugeot, and I had a self-built bike that was made both from stuff from the garage and from the garbage. With cotter-pin cranks and toe clips & sneakers, it worked well enough. At the start, the "official" warned us of a sharp turn with sand in it, and cautioned us to ride very slowly through it. But all I heard was, "ride as fast as you can through the sandy turn." During the race I had trouble keeping up, but I passed everyone through the sand-- no problem (and no helmet). In the end I got 7th out of about 20. Ten years later I did my next race, "The Ossining Grand Prix", where I got 3rd in the citizens race. I was hooked.

John Tomlinson

My first race was a CRCA club race in March of my last year of high school. It was a cold and rainy morning and few people showed up. Lou Maltese was running the race and combined everyone -- and even then the field was small. Less than 20 riders.

We set off and the pace was pretty fast for me, but not too bad. I'd been commuting and messengering a lot, so I was in OK shape for a beginner. We went up the hill at the north end of the park quite fast and I started hurting, but I made it to the top in the group. I remember thinking "Good, now we can coast down the hill and have a rest" Not! (as people used to say in the 1980s.) I got dropped immediately and rode the rest of the race alone.

I ended up being the first C (or was it D) rider anyway so I "won." And I was hooked.

A guy who I was later to learn was one of the club's biggest hitter -- Jonathan Massey -- won the race overall. My race ended on an earlier lap, so I watched the finish and was impressed by Massey's long, painful looking sprint, and by the big bunch of mucus hanging way, way down from his face. What a sport.