Extra Pepper Please

Honestly the thing I love about racing my bike is the humility it affords me. There is a reason that cycling, even at the professional level, isn’t overrun with arrogance. From the outside it may appear that cycling like all pro sports is full of egotistical adrenaline junkies but honestly my experience has been the exact opposite.

Last night was my first cyclocross race of the season. Cyclocross (youtube video) is the punk rock cousin of road cycling and combines both mountain bike skills and road tactics. The big difference with a cross race is that it only last an hour. Even at the top levels the longest races are only 60 min. This means that to win you need to ride “flat out” for the entire race.

Last night’s race started out reasonably well and I found myself holding third place through the second lap. I was in a group of five that had broken away from the main field. I took a small wrong turn and ended up at the back of the group but at least I was still in the lead pack.

I was starting to settle in and felt my legs coming around when Pepper Harlton a junior female racer put the hammer down and handed all four of us in the lead group a huge helping of humility. Pepper rode away from us all with what seemed like very little effort. The thing about cycling is there is always someone faster and last night it happened to be a 17 year old girl.