Portfolio of Failure :
Detroit Cycling Championship
Author: Pat Moriarty
portfolio-of-failure-dcc
Fitness is encouraged at the lab. We strive to hold ourselves accountable and maintain a base level of cardio. We are not professional athletes. Gavin is about as close to a professional athlete as you can be while still working a 9-5 desk job. However, we are likely more in shape than about 80% of the population in the US due to this country’s horrendous obesity issue.
So when a friend of mine who lives in Chicago asked if he could stay at my house one weekend to race in the Detroit Cycling Championship, I got interested. I had never done bicycle racing before, but as he explained to me, it really is the cheapest form of racing. Sure you can do swimming or running races but those are all cardio and there’s no speed. You can also do downhill skateboarding but we’re in the Midwest and don’t have hills. With bicycle racing, you can make a course almost anywhere and are at least going fast enough to be able to hurt yourself. That adds a element of danger and danger makes things fun.
There are many forms of bicycle racing, but the Detroit Cycling Championship was in a category called Criterium. This style of racing focused on many high effort sprints around a smaller course. In the case of the Detroit Cycling Championship, the course was a loop on the street around Comerica Park which houses Detroit’s professional baseball team the Tigers.
The event had several different categories separated by men’s and women’s. Each category had different levels of racers. The lower the number, the faster the pace of the race, the longer the time allotted, the bigger the prizes and the better the cyclists. As shown below, the races were time dependent. The better you were; the longer you raced for.
My friend told me he would be racing in the novice category, and I decided I would join him. I knew how to ride a bike, and my control of a bike was decent as I had road down some pretty big hills as a kid. I figured that novice would be people like me who were also just getting into the sport.
There was about a month and a half before the event and first thing I needed to do was get a road bike. I had a cruiser bike but it wasn’t built for speed. Turning to the good old Craigslist and Facebook marketplace, I started filtering through the classifieds. My budget was about $100 which seemed like a good price point for something I might only use once. To my surprise, it was much harder than I thought to find a decent bike for under $100, but after a few days of searching, I was able to find a Schwinn 10 speed that looked like it was in okay condition. So I sent a request to view the bike and set up a time to meet.
We met in a church parking lot at lunch time on a weekday so it was nice and empty. A good place to test out the bike. The fellow selling the bike was an odd man. He appeared to be around 45 years old arriving in a conversion van. He was on the heavier side, but the feature that stood out the most was the size of the man’s gorilla hands. As he grabbed the bike frame to pull it out of van, I kept thinking that this man could clobber someone with those hands. Luckily I didn’t have to worry about that as he was a very docile person.
I test road the bike around the parking lot. I had not ridden road bike much before and the height of the seat took some getting used to, but the size of the bike was a good fit for me. The bike needed some maintenance as you could not shift gears. Looking at the rear derailed, the adjustment screws had been tightened all the way down so it was likely a quick adjustment to get it back in working order.
I finished the test ride and told the man I would take it for the listed price of $50. I’m not one to haggle if I feel the price is fair as it save me and the seller stress and frustration. Before letting me go, the man told me the background behind the bike. It had belonged to his roommate that had passed away a few weeks ago. He kept going on, telling me that I shouldn’t modify the bike and to keep it original. After this 30 min spiel, I loaded the bike up in my wagon and drove home.
The first few days after purchasing the bike, I went to a buddy’s house. He helped me set the derailed correctly over a couple pops. With the ability to change gears, I started training for the race although my regiment was not the best. I pretty much road around to my friend’s houses and the bar to drink beers than rode home.
Fast forward about a month, and it was the weekend of the race. My friend arrived Friday night. I couldn’t help but giggle as he was covered in sweat wearing black denim pants and a wife beater. The early 2000s ford Ranger he had just driven 5 hours in had no AC, and the passenger side window would not roll down. On this hot, July day it made sense he was covered in sweat but it was funny all the same.
After a cool down period, we did a pre race ride where he showed me the techniques of for racing. Drafting was the name of the game, and you had to stay as close behind the guy in front of you to reduce the wind resistance.
During our pre race ride, we brought a squad for the training exercises. Two on bikes, two on mopeds to set the pace. My friends bike was quite nice, and he was fast. Much faster than me. He’s was able to draft one of the mopeds up to 30mph+. It was a 1995 Tomos with a top speed around 45mph. The only thing that stopped him was the fumes of the two stroke engine.
At that point, I was a little concerned. I could not do that even on my best day, but after the ride, my friend crushed some pops, and it seemed like he wasn’t worried about the race tomorrow. This eased my mind, and I had a few pops to celebrate seeing my friend for the first time in a few months.
The next morning we got up and got ready for the race. My friend gave me some tight cyclist pants and a highlighter yellow shirt to let people know I’m a hazard. To complete the outfit, I had to wear the mandatory helmet. Gary told me he had a helmet I could borrow, and on the of the race, he showed up with an insulated snowboarding helmet. It wasn’t ideal, but at this point there was no other options.
We drove to downtown Detroit in the ranger. It was about 90F that day and the exhaust fumes spewed into the single cab. With only the drivers side window in operation, I got my fair share of carbon monoxide into my lungs. I liked to think it was my warm up cause I was breathing heavy when we finally got to downtown.
After signing in, we did a couple warm ups in between the women’s races. The track wasn’t too big. Essentially, it was just riding around the block of the baseball field. We watched the women’s novice race which settled my mind. There were about 10 women kitted up in the full outfit rounding the track in a pack, but there was one lady wearing cargo shorts cruising.
Turns out the men’s novice was a different story. There was about 50 guys, and pretty much all of them were decked out with gear and expensive bikes. Some had team jerseys with up to 10 people on the same team.
I was getting nervous. These guys did not seem like novices, and I was already feeling dehydrated from the heat, the insulated snowboarding helmet and the pops I drank the night before.
As they let us onto the track, everyone took a warm up lap which I wasn’t expecting and I subsequently ended up at the back of the group when we got to the starting line.
I can’t remember if they used a gunshot to start us off, but we were off and I actually had the advantage at the start. Everyone had clipless pedals and while they were trying to get their footing , I was already going with my flat pedals.
I was off to a good start and could see my friend ahead of me, and I was in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t trying to pass anyone, but I felt like I was going fine. It surprised me how slow other cyclist went into the turns, but I think this was part of their strategy. They would go slow into the turns and then burst into a hard sprint right after to pull away from people behind them.
After a lap or two, the group started to spread out and that’s when it went downhill for me. With more spacing, people started to go faster on the straight away, and I just couldn’t keep up with them. When we would reach a turn, I’d catch up and pass a few people but immediately get passed and fall behind on the straight.
I didn’t have the acceleration or the top speed of the other cyclist, and after 3 laps. I fell far behind. As I passed the starting line, I was told to get off the track so I wouldn’t get lapped.
I proceeded to grab a seat in the shade and watch the rest of the race. My friend finished in the upper middle of the pack which impressed me as he had drunken 4 or 5 beers the night before and was probably just as dehydrated as I was.
As the race ended, I had a couple of the other cyclists come up to me and say it was good I was out there trying. The old bike, lack of clipless shoes, and snowboarding helmet probably have away the fact that I was new to this.
The only saving grace for this failure was that I did not come in last as two people had crashed during the second lap of the race.
Me in highlighter yellow
Guy I beat because he crashed a few seconds later
