Le Enforcer

French professional cyclists invented cyclocross as a fun way to trash their old racing bikes during the cold months before their sponsors gave them new ones in the spring, and has since become a fun way for bike shops to keep in the black while customers are out breaking parts in the mud and snow.  I race as seriously as any Frenchman, and I work for a that very bike dealer eyeing your wallet-pocket right now. Thusly programmed, it is my duty to encourage my competition to reach for their full potential, challenging themselves and their peers to fight past the pain towards new heights of athletic prowess ­­–and then crash them into the black Illinois dirt. Good job; here’s my card. Service rates on back.

Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that’s not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.

-Lance Armstrong

Knowing how to single a man out of a group, knock him and only him to the grass, avoid entangling myself, and make it look unintentional is a sacred skill – honed through experience – that takes on the role of justice when the track marshals aren’t looking. In men’s cyclocross, a sport as wet with testosterone as the secret syringe in a pro-tour coach’s travel bag, bullies abound.

I once saw a grown man yell to a kid (they let teenagers race with the men in the lower levels), “C’mon tubby!” and “Ta-ta-today junior! This is a race!” The man, smuggling a little stomach padding himself, wanted to pass but he couldn’t find a clean opening. I shouldered my way between them and at a tight right curve took a wide line to end in front of the man, forcing him to turn with my trajectory. There was a tree at the apex of the corner on a collision course with my right shoulder, but I ducked it by breadth of my hairs. The man, stuck on my right side, couldn’t. 

There is a certain satisfaction which tickles me when I do a just action and make others content.

-Michel de Montaigne, father of the essay, French

I saw the man again at a switchback, walking back to the pit, bent front wheel in hand. The boy ended up placing second in his category (of three total).

Though, power is but lubrication, and vengeance is a thirsty machine. At state championships a guy tried to put me into the dirt using the method I described above. I hopped the curb and rode through some caution tape to stay upright, but it cost me sweat to get back to my former position. On the next lap I did the exact same thing to him, knocking him out of contention for the upcoming sprint to the finish, which I lost by such a margin that I don’t think they kept track of my final placing.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories

-Montaigne, again

A semi-pro taught me how to teach people after he watched me lose position to some other racers with pointier elbows. He raced for a local shop and had an impressive collection of shiny streaks on his arms and knees: a legacy of scar tissue like sailor tattoos of great battles. He taught me that in the pack, whoever’s ahead decides who stays upright.

The way to have power is to take it

-Boss Tweed

 On a field, we practiced passes and I found that indeed, once his handlebars moved ahead of mine, he could push me with his knee, reach a hand back and squeeze my brake, bump me with his hip, and make me turn by swooping into my path. “Bike racing is not explicitly a contact sport” he assured me, “But this is how they do it in France."

The old French racing adage goes, “Do we look like we’re doing this for our health?” to which most spectators wonder, “why are you doing this?” Cyclocross is a niche activity, like a cult or fringe religion: snake handlers. I do it because I like to and I don’t expect outsiders to understand. It meets every cold Sunday through fall and winter, the church of amateur bicycle racing, where we day-job laden athletes pay our alms in blood and grease. What we get out of it is pride? Satisfaction? An excuse to buy new bike gear? All those things, sure, but at least for me there’s also the chance that I might do something memorable. In sport, if not in life, I can be a legend.  Picture my competition, old and grey, in front of the fire, telling the little ones, “In my day, when I wasn’t working, I used to ride my bike though the mud in circles. Not to get anywhere, mind you... But one day someone crashed me into a tree! I wonder where they put that brave man's statue.”