"RACING"

First of all it is all my mother's fault.
Being a doctor she used to work on weekends at different sporting events to make some extra money and used to take me along.  Once it was a big bike race near Moscow where racers used to come to my mother to quickly treat pretty awful road rush and jump back in the race. I was totally amazed by the toughness  of these guys and fell in love with bike racing forever. I was probably 7 years old.

I had two first races: one in my Russian life and one in American.  Both were pretty ridiculous. The one in Russia I had to ride 20 mi to, was late for it and started about 200 meters behind the bunch.  Not that it would matter.  It became just a ride where I joined a couple of strugglers and rode with them for a while.  Then I bonked big time (it was 50 mi road race) and was lucky to make it home before dark.

The one in US was at Bretton Woods, NH as part of now defunct White Mountains Bike Racing series. For that I came well prepared bringing my brand new Bianchi, smoking a couple of cigarettes while driving up and a short run as a warm up.  I was sure that these foot…, base…, basket… ball playing Americans have no idea about bike racing.  Needless to say, I was riding along after first mile, caught some elderly guy afterwards, but eventually beat him to the line for the next to the last place.

The setting and free food at Mt. Washington Hotel that sponsored the race were terrific. I thought that all races are that way and begun getting serious.  For starters I switched from cigarettes to pipe.

It took ten years before I landed on the podium of popular Miles Standish race after winning the field sprint for the second place.   No one in the bunch knew me and they all were too busy watching each other.  This was the “highest” point on my cycling life.  Barry of Cycling Revealed , who I robbed of the podium place, shook my hand and said that they will make sure this never happen again.  He was right, it did not.

The next best was Working Men Stage Race were I got 4^th overall because the road race breakaway got disqualified for joining another field. My 7^th in TT and 2^nd in the points race gave me enough for the 4^th overall.

I was also mentioned in VeloNews once for taking 6^th in extremely hilly Buckfield race in Maine, There were only 5 other guys in my age category race (all skinny climbers), so there is not much to brag about on this lonely ride with 4 mile climb done two times besides other good hills.