Vol. 94 - Being a BMX Racer is Hard as F*ck

On trying to keep up.

My son has always been a natural on his bike. He started riding on a two wheeler when he was barely three years old. By the time he was four, he was tackling eight-, ten-, and twelve-mile rides. That year, he did his longest ride ever—an eighteen-mile loop around a lake we were vacationing on. Every Tuesday, we ride with a great group called KOBRA (Kids on Bikes Riding Around), tackling four-, five-, or six-mile mountain bike rides in the trails around our town. He absolutely loves riding his bike.

So it was only natural that we took him out to a local BMX track, where he could try the sport out.

He took to it immediately, racking up podium finishes and wins in his 5-to-7-Year-Old Novice category.

Of course, the entire time, I regaled him with stories of my own childhood on a BMX bike (mostly ripping around New Jersey’s Pine Barrens on my beloved GT Interceptor, with a good bit of racing peppered in there). After all, telling of our own glory days is like 85% of being a dad.

He asked if I still had that bike. I don’t. But I had something even cooler: a cherry 1996 Auburn CR-20rx. You see, back in the 90s, if a kid had an Auburn, he might as well have pulled up in a Lamborghini Countach. That’s how cool those bikes were. They were also rare and way too expensive for my parents to ever cop to buying me one.

It was so much easier when I was a hundred pounds lighter

And so you can imagine my surprise when I visited our local bike shop in 1999 and saw that Auburn at a deep discount, owing to the fact that it was three model years old. Apparently, it had been sitting in a box in the shop’s warehouse and the owner must not have known what he had. Whatever the reason, I scored the deal of a lifetime.

Then, just a few weeks later, I got my New Jersey state driver’s license. Which meant that BMX bikes soon held little interest for me and the Auburn sat in my parents’ basement, and then in my basement, for over twenty years.

Anyway, late last year, my son asked if I could start racing with him.

How could I say no? Hell, I even had a top-flight BMX bike sitting in our basement.

So I broke the Auburn out, dusted it off, lubed up the chain, and made a few laps beside my son at the BMX track.

It hurt something ferocious.

If I’m going to do this, there’s no way I can do it on a 20” bike, I thought. I also searched for my Auburn on eBay and, realizing its current value, thought better of racing it; not that I will ever sell that bike. After all, it’s basically a Lamborghini.

So I bought a 24”, known in the BMX world as a “Cruiser,” got a USA BMX license, and for the first time in nearly thirty years, got back on top of a BMX race hill.

Since then, I’ve raced a few times, even notching a few respectable finishes. But, in a lot of ways, it’s a brand new endeavor for me, despite the fact that I average at least 5,000 miles per year on my road bike.

I bike a shitload and I’m actually kind of good at it. But the kind of biking I do is completely different than BMX biking. The muscles used on a road bike, the aerobic toll, the skills, everything is a 180-degree turn from what I know on a road bike.

But it’s been a blast to learn, or, should I say, to try and remember how to do it.

It’s also great to approach BMX racing with a few years of wisdom in me, knowing that it’s just a race and not worth risking life and limb for (as I would have in my teens, twenties, and, if we’re being honest, much of my thirties). I’m out there to have fun, to learn, and to get my butt kicked a little bit.

Mostly, it’s great to head out to the track every Friday night with my family (because race nights always start with strider bike races, even our two-year-old daughter gets in on the action), to sit atop the hill next to my son, discussing our last heat, and how and what we could do better or different. It’s great to have him give me tips; after all, at this point he’s been racing a lot more than I have.

But the best part of it is the two hours before the racing starts, when the track is open for practice, and I get to line up in the gate next to my son, to make a few practice lap beside him, sharing something we both love more than most things in the world.