My first race did not go well. Neither did my second, third, fourth, or fifth races. They were "fun", in the sense that I'm compulsively competitive, but they were mostly humiliating and overwhelming.
Somehow, I didn't quit, despite these mortifying experiences. It wouldn't have been unreasonable of me to've sold the bike, thrown the spandex out, and taken up - oh, I don't know - field hockey.
Eventually, Mark taught me how to corner, Will taught me how to position myself in a pack, and Charlie taught (okay, is teaching me) how to race offroad. Being taught, it would seem, yields improvement, which leads to genuine enjoyment.
Well isn't that something.
For the past couple of years, I've made an effort to pay it forward. Every so often, I'll organize a beginner's ride, wherein we'll ride slowly in the park and work on basic skills. The common theme is Do Not Crash Yourself Or Others, and it seems to be pretty effective.
It's unlikely that any of us "old guys" will be giving the newbies the time-management skillz necessary to fit hours of training into their already-busy weeks. It's almost impossible to convey how much fun it is to race without putting them in an actual race. We can't teach a love of the sport.
What we can do is keep them safe, so they can hang with the pack without crashing. Few things are more likely to drive new kids away than a few hours dangling miserably off the back of a paceline or a hip full of road rash. Prevent these things, and maybe they'll stick around long enough to develop that profound attachment to the bike game.
So I rolled around the park with one of the newbies, teaching him how to sit on my wheel, how to spin smoothly, how to paceline. Harold and Beth rolled through the park after their ride, and they were very helpful.
After about an hour, I think we'd made a lot of progress. Then things got weird. While we were doing cornering drills in a parking lot, four random Mexican kids on beat-up bmx bikes rolled up to us and started asking questions.
They couldn't get over how hard our tires were. They wanted to know why our seats were so small. They didn't believe how fast we could go.
Soon they started showing off, locking their rear wheels up and crashing into each other and telling tall tales of speed and derring-do.
Before we knew it, the sun was mostly set and we needed to leave. We needed to've left 10 minutes ago, actually. Halfway through the park, we were riding in the dark.
If the Monday night recovery ride scares you, if the twitchiness of newbies puts you ill-at-ease, you should ride with a bunch of local 9-year-olds. They swerved. They surged. They braked. They stood on their saddles, jumped over imaginary obstacles, and made every effort to crash each other.
"There's a car coming", I would shout, "move to the right!" And they would veer across the street, to the left, to get out of its way. As if they were visible in the low light.
I'm pretty sure I could've attacked our little peleton, to get myself out of danger... but that would've left the kids to fend for themselves, in the dark. Unsupervised.
Sure, they would've been riding by themselves had they not tacked on to the Rutgers ride. Sure, I wasn't in any way responsible for them. But dammit, now I was invested. So I rode behind them, held off the line of soccer moms in SUVs that was trailing us, and generally tried to keep them safe.
Anyway, it was fun. These kids were genuinely enjoying themselves, and it was contagious. Dangerous, perhaps, but also virulently contagious.
Once we reached the bridge over the Raritan, I snapped a quick photo. For posterity, like.
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