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A Summer Summary of Cycling

If you're into cycling then you're in to cycling and that's just about all there is to it. If you're not there isn't much that can drag you into it except maybe having a significant other involved. Since most people I know aren't interested in the most mundane and minute details of the fun competition of the daily training rides I've decided to keep that in my calendar for tracking and to tone it down a bit in the online journal.

Instead I've gathered up a few notes from the summer and am posting here.

The big news this summer is that I finally (after almost 7 years without) picked up health insurance which allowed me to take the jump and try out racing. One of the race teams that has a strong east-coast representation Kissena puts on a fairly regular Saturday morning race series in Prospect Park in the spring and fall. They are a lot of fun with the exception of the 5am wake time needed to get my things together and pedal the 3 blocks to the start line (I am not a morning person).

For those not familiar there are a number of different race categories going from Cat 5 (beginner, any age) through Cat 1/Masters. One must complete a certain amount of races in Cat 5 in order to advance and aside from being required to have a yearly race license and team affiliation, I think your jumps up from 5 can be arbitrary (though I don't know a lot of Cat 5 people crazy enough to try to make the jump to Cat 2 or 1 and race the longest distance versus professionals).

I competed in 7 of the races and managed a 5th place finish on July 28 and a 1st place finish on September 8. Our friends at Team Organic took some great photos of the Kissena Prospect Park Race Series including pics of people who weren't on their team (thanks, guys!).

The photographer they had on the course had a very professional setup and took some great shots including our Cat 5 sprint finish. These three snaps are in chronological order. I'm the one in the blue jersey on the left.

The guy in the orange in the middle was a monster. He was also visiting from out of town.


A split second after this shot was taken I "threw" my bike over the line which was just enough to win the race by inches. I actually thought I had lost by that amount and introduced Sam as the race winner to a few friends when he corrected me by saying the video replay put me on top.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on September 16, 2007 04:56 PM