In
the history of American Cyclo-cross there have been only a handful of
truly majestic and storied events such as the Cyclo-cross festival
held on the pristine grounds of Roger Williams Park. Roger Williams
Park, in the southern part of the city of Providence, Rhode Island,
is an elaborately landscaped 427-acre city park declared, by the
National Trust for Historic Preservation, one of the finest urban
parks in the U.S. The park is named after the founder of the city of
Providence and one of the founders of the state of Rhode Island,
Roger Williams. The land for the park was a gift to the people of
Providence in 1871, in accordance with the will of Betsy Williams,
the great-great-great-granddaughter and last surviving descendant
Roger Williams. The land had been the family farm and represented the
last of the original 1638 land grant to Roger Williams from
Canonicus, chief of the Narragansett tribe.
Greg LeMond says "It never gets easier, you just go faster", and we all learned from the AT&T television commercial
that “faster is better”. In my most recent cyclo-cross
experienced I've learned that those to hypotheses intersect in an
opera called the Masters race. Providence was my first “big” open
masters race – fields of over one-hundred 50+ years-young racers
competing head-to-head each day. And guess what – I liked it!
I had a blast riding with my peers (from an age standpoint anyway).
The Masters racers are good riders. I find these races more of a
learning event than a race. Don't get me wrong, the competition is
fierce. It's just that when the curly part of someone else's
handlebars ends up on the inside the curly part of mine, in a curve
and nobody panics, and nobody crashes, it just becomes a recitative
of the larger opera that is the Masters race. The course was one of
the most enjoyable I've ridden. The course lap was punctuated with
six fly-overs, just like an opera is punctuated by arias or ariettas.
I finished the five laps of the Masters race in fifty-three (53)
minutes – that's like an opera having an arietta every 106 seconds. Crazy!
So
how did I do? I did great. I failed better than I've failed before. I
held onto my reputation as mid-pack Don In an open Master's race –
both days.
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