IAN'S SPELLBINDING CYCLING HISTORY

I have read plenty of ‘why I’m a bike racer’ passages. And, generally, I’m bored after the 5th sentence, even though I generally enjoy reading about people’s backgrounds in the sport. My history as a cyclist is the 2nd most exhilarating in the world, 2nd to only to Christoph’s.

Frankly, it’s amazing that I ever got into bicycle riding. When I was a kid, my father must have threatened me a thousand times to quit leaving my bike on the front lawn or he would sell it. When I was about 7, I once again forgot to put my bicycle in the shed, and when I woke up the next day, the bike was gone. For a week, I was convinced that my bicycle was stolen; Dad said that he didn’t touch it! Doggone it- Dad hid my Cricket in the neighbor’s shed to teach me a lesson. That lesson? Check the neighbor’s shed if my bike went missing.

Next, I recall a period of about 4 years where my good friends and I set up bike courses in our tiny backyards, much to the dismay of our mothers. The courses were creatively named: Ian-ville, Paul-ville, Pat-ville, Ryan-ville. Every day we’d ride, rake and groom the trails, pad up the jumps, and rip up perfectly good grass for hours until we had no choice but to eat or do homework. Bike-tag was also particularly popular during this period. The day that I got my Specialized Hardrock was the last day the neighborhood kids played bike-tag with Ayers. 

The Hardrock, you see, was my first bike with a big ring.

One year, we put on a mountain bike race at the neighborhood park. The park had some old trails, but we spent a whole summer trimming bushes, digging out berms, grooming trails, and cleaning up the park for our big kids-only race. We used old mildewed USCF release forms that my Dad still had from races he’d promoted, and made custom medals for age-category winners. Looking back, this was a huuuge production. We must have put up a hundred flyers all over the neighborhood. Anyway, on race day, I was pre-riding the course before it started, and somehow managed to endo in front of the crowd of spectating mothers, resulting in the withdrawal of half the entrants. 

I lost my aggressive riding style when I took physics in high school.

Somewhere around 1992, Dad rigged me up on a Schwinn Caliente with 24” tubulars, and I won the NJ State Championship for the TT, Crit, and Road Race, and took Silver in the Tri-State Track Championships. I should mention that my father has owned a bike shop since 1987, and was previously a rock star racer, with most of his hot results on the track. He had little to do with my involvement of the sport, though.

My success as a junior racer was short-lived. Upon moving up an age-category the following year, it was apparent that training was required to improve, and I immediately quit.

The next 8 years of my life were very dark. Soccer was king, as was roller hockey at the neighborhood park during the off-season. School was nothing but overachievement, earning awards like ‘student achiever of the year’, being voted ‘most musical’ and ‘computer whiz’ by my classmates, and presiding over the art society. I attended High Technology High School, but thankfully had a few very right-brained girlfriends who kept me close to the arts. Varsity soccer at Wall High was a distraction, and I generally hated playing, but it kept me in contact with my jock side. Highlights from my high school era included climbing Mt. Rainier, being the drummer in two rock bands, and spending way too many weekends home alone while cool school friends hung out at the mall or got drunk.

The University of Virginia was the only place I wanted to go next. During my senior year in high school, I visited a High Tech High alum who was at UVA. She was really hot, and she got me drunk and we hooked up

The next day I sent in my application, early decision, to UVA. Fortunately, some decisions are easy.

Cycling lay dormant until the fall of 2000, when Dad convinced me to do the Mt. Washington Hillclimb for fun. I had such a fun time that I decided to take a road bike to college. I didn’t ride it my first semester, mostly due to the fact that the fraternal scene stole most weekends- though I do recall shaving my legs. However, in my second semester, I somehow became the president of the cycling team. That January, thanks to beer, I was nearly 180 pounds (considered ‘healthy’ by my grandmother) and on the verge of pledging a fraternity. Fortunately, I got mono and the flu simultaneously from an ice-luge, resulting in extreme weight loss, extreme apathy for studying, and the destruction of my hopes to sustain a high GPA during college. This fateful second semester set the stage for me to become a bike racer.

In the summer of 2001, I competed in my first mass-start bike race since 1992: the NJ State Road Race Championships for category 5. Days later in the hospital, a friend told me that someone hooked my handlebars in the sprint. My front wheel went sideways, and it cracked in half just before I face-planted into the pavement at about 30 mph. I was lucky that day, because the crash might have easily been worse, though it’s hard to imagine how. The concussion left me out cold for a very long time with some very deep cuts on my face, including the loss of my four favourite front teeth and lips. I also broke my wrist. The rehabilitation from this crash was really tough.

But, I returned for my second year of college, and for some silly reason, began training for the 2002 collegiate racing season. Since then, it’s been your typical rocky path up the ranks. I met Christof (as it was spelled back then) that year, and life changed forever.