Kurt Bickel Blog

This is the city...San Dimas California. It's a small town where people work for a living. Some of those people race bikes. My job is to make sure those people don't get 23 seconds. My name is Friday. I carry water bottles.

(cue Dragnet music)

Sitting at dinner with my California team and listening to stories about Eddie B and racing with the Junior National team in Europe made me realize how fortunate we are to have Master's racing in the US. I can think of few if any other sports where you can go head to head with truly pedigreed athletes who, while they may have lost a step because of age, are nonetheless killers. It's not some fantasy camp where you compete against guys who have been sitting on the couch and doing infomercials based on past glory. It's the real deal.

San Dimas felt like a 1980's pro race and I was happy to carry water and kill myself for Cale, who had slayed all and put in a hillclimb that would have landed him in the top 20 in the pro field and set course records for two age groups (35 and 45).

With the might of the Ex Amgen monster team (my standing joke was their kit provider charged more for non championship (world or national) cuffs and collars), Big Orange, and the powerhouse from Arizona all trying to take the jersey from Cale we had our work cut out for us.

Two brutal races later and we had held serve. I didn't finish, having blown myself up with two laps to go to string the field out and keep Cale safe. And I was more than OK with that.