“How sweet it is” – Jackie Gleason

Traditionally I pick trash during the first mountain bike race of the season – I planned to do the same this day. As I cruised the Schenectady Central Park (SCP) mountain bike trail system on my Colnago World Cup I noticed a couple of things: (1) the trails were at a hero dirt moisture content and (2) the HRRT NICA conglomerate race team, a.k.a “the juniors” had done a wonderful job prepping the trails for their upcoming race, including removal of a winter's worth of windblown trash.

Tree-hugger note: In past years Dunkin' Donuts took top honors for most roadside trash accumulation around SCP. Single-use packaging and the drive-through are slowly burying the world in trash.

After a couple miles of trail riding, I started to get the itch to race. Then I noticed a racer with yellow shoes. Yellow shoes are like the matador's red cape. Hero dirt, beautifully prepped trails and now yellow shod competition – who, I ask, can resist this combination of planetary alignment. Race on.

As protocol dictates (according to me), when entering a mountain bike race on a cyclocross bike one must race in either the expert or open category or you just look silly. The main goal (also according to me), is to not only do your best in your category, but also not let any of the sport category sandbaggers catch you. In this particular race the sport category started one minute after the open.

Within the first mile of the SCP trails, the trail doubles back upon itself a couple of times. It's a perfect opportunity to size up the competition. As expected, the open cat boys were starting to gap me. I also spotted the lead sportie; a guy in a orange and white kit. Back when I was just a lad, my brothers and I would ride our bike across town to the public swimming pool. It cost a quarter a day to swim. Out in front of the public swimming pool there was an ice cream vendor with a stainless steel wrapped, umbrella adorned cart. For another quarter you could have any one of the items in the cart. All the way in the bottom of the cart, hiding in the mist created by the dry-ice were paper-wrapper treats, equipped at one end with a stick. Strip down the wrapper to expose the most delicious orange-vanilla ice cream experience ever. I'm being chased by a giant, mountain bike riding, creamsicle!

I need to keep the creamsicle behind me for two laps. I decided the best way to keep him off my tail was to chase down and pass the lagging open cat rider. Easier said than done. Maintaining contact with the open rider ahead of me lead to a dropped chain in the twisted snarling root section of trail and an endo in the “let’s-just-toss-these-old-telephone-poles-across-the-trail” section of the first lap. Regardless, I passed through the start-finish on the heels of an open rider and still comfortably ahead of the creamsicle.

The second lap went a little better: another chain drop, but no endo. It's definitely faster to slowly negotiate the pile of telephone poles than it is to endo quickly over the pile of telephone poles. Also, I judged that the mountain bikers were starting to feel the weight of their rigs. The sweeper of the open category riders yielded to me half way

through the second lap in the trail section known as squirrel. It's called squirrel, not because the trail changes direction umteen times in a distance equivalent to the width of a highway, but because when looked upon from above the trail resembles the chalk outline of a squirrel that tried to change directions umteen times while crossing a highway. I now had additional cushion between me and the creamsicle. Eureka! Just ahead, yellow shoes was slumped over his bike next to the trail. Could this possibly be an exacta race? Will I hold off all the sport cat riders and best the yellow shoe-shod open rider? Ernesto, mi danno le ali! I mean, I hope he's okay.

On the final stretch of the second lap, I slugged down the balance of my water and tossed my bottle to the side. Two laps down and I had disposed of the creamsicle rider and the rest of the sport category racers. Normally, two laps on the cross bike and I'm done - not today. All focus went to not allowing the yellow shod rider catch me on the third and final lap. If I can hold him off, it'll be the lemon icing on the creamsicle. Recalling famous words of a recently retired pro rider "If it hurts me, it must hurt the other ones twice as much", I put my head down and pushed on. Evidently the others were hurting because the ride order remained the same throughout the third lap and at 1:34:18 I had my exacta – A creamsicle with lemon icing.