I wish they had this when I was a kid.

We piled in my Dad’s Tacoma, scrambling to get everything together the morning of my first race. We were headed to a NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) XC race in Temecula, California, about an hour and 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit away from my coastal dwelling in San Diego.

I had one kit. A roadie kit. Ah yes, prepubescent MTB larvae in lycra sausage casing. We burned into the pits a mere 15 minutes before my start time. Dad furiously pumped the tires on my green and white Specialized Carve, just in time to get to the start line. Looking back I was likely running 37 psi front and rear, and it especially pains me to think of the grinding inefficiency of my drivetrain, along with the squeal of my near certainly rubbing brakes. At the time, however, I had not the faintest inkling of how to fix anything, so I scurried off to the start line, my mind already made up that I would hate it.

Sure enough, that was a rough day. Having grown up on rec soccer and video games, my soft Southern California mind and body were not remotely prepared for the savage nature of a mountain bike racing beat down. I struggled across the finish line in last place and nearly burst out crying. This sport sucks! Where were the participation trophies and sliced oranges at halftime? There were no medals. There were no team dinners. Looking back on it, It was my first taste of privateer racing!

That first NICA race was in seventh grade. The year of adolescent indignities and uncertainty. A brutal transitional period for many, the last thing a fearful teen like myself would want to do is be different. Nobody my age rode bikes, so why should I? Both my parents were avid road racers. I grew up surrounded by this stuff. For chrissakes, there is a picture in our house of a 2-year-old me in pajamas taking a nap on a pair of Campy wheel covers in some godforsaken Los Angeles industrial park criterium course. That’s how I spent my infancy--with bikes. So of course, I wanted nothing to do with what my parents did and stubbornly veered away from cycling. And that was the end of my Junior High cycling career— one race barely completed. Complete disinterest in cycling renewed.




Hanging around the pits now, I often hear stories of kids who immediately fell in love with the sport, quickly bursting their Little League and AYSO bubbles in favor of two-wheeled machines. These types of stories make fantastic advertisements for mountain biking, but my experience with cycling was no such fairytale. That, however, is just the beauty of NICA. No matter how you got into cycling, whether you’re training 30 hours a week while doing homeschool online, or you just want to go for a ride in the woods once a week, there is a place for every kid.

Once I escaped the wretched stew of hormones that is middle school, I came to actually enjoy riding my bike. I have since moved up to the Varsity category, which in SoCal features some of the fastest racers in the country. Bike racing has taken me to some fantastic places, most recently Whistler, where I competed in my first EWS race.

As I suffered through the British Columbia woods in the midst of yet another tight liaison, I had a flashback to grinding my teeth on my stem at my very first mountain bike race, cursing my parents that they would be so evil as to sign me up for such a pointless thing as a bike race. The absolute desire to finish once again raced through my mind. A flat tire and four crashes later, I skidded by the GLC, blood streaming down my shin. A visit to Whistler hospital later, I came home with stitches on one shin and crutches to support the other mangled stump.
That’s just the beauty of cycling. If it’s your very first ride on your local trails, or you’re competing on the world stage, it’s the same blood pumping, lung-bursting experience. As Greg Lemond said, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”