[Previous entry: "Mexicali can't win when it comes to its water pollution problem"] [Next entry: "Obama sparks angry emails"]

08/11/2008: "Summer Bike Racing in Baja California"

Night Warriors on the Ciclopista by Brian McNeece


Even though it’s 100 degrees at trackside, nobody complains about the heat. After all, it’s nightime. It’s Friday night in Baja California’s capital city of Mexicali in the heart of the usual scorching desert summer. Calentísimio! We’re racing road bikes on a 500 meter asphalt ciclopista or velodrome. Thousands of bugs seem happy enough buzzing madly around the lights above the track. A stiff humid breeze from the Sea of Cortez will make the race more interesting, and maybe it helps, just a little with the heavy heat. Maybe it helps.

Families with babies in strollers and youngsters in mini-kits of the local cycling clubs lounge on the side of the track. Races for the “infantiles,” including everything from tricycles to juniors are over, and the young ones are plying their parents for ice cream or dulces (candy), churritos, or hot dogs being sold from tables.

My race is coming up next. The novatos, or novices, have just finished, and the women are starting up. This is Mexico, so nobody minds if I warm up on the outside of the track. If it were a race in the US, an official would be on the megaphone immediately, screaming at me to get off the race, you idiot, no one on the track who’s not in the race. But this is Mexico.

As I cruise on the outside of the track, Tino comes up alongside me. He’s a veterano too, in my race, a guy I’ve raced ten maybe fifteen times before. “Why do we do this?” he asks me. “Nothing obligates us to suffer as we do.” A few years ago, when Tino was new to Mexicali, he showed up at a crit on a fixed wheel bike. He got plenty of sidelong glances, but stayed with the bunch to the finish and took the win in the sprint.

Tino and I have trained together too, for he lives in my town of El Centro. But once the race starts, no talking and no friendship. “I guess it’s an addiction,” he says and smiles. Tino is on the Exinsa team. They have three riders in my race: Tino, Elias, and Ricardo. Modesto is usually the team leader, but I don’t see him tonight. Still, it will be three against one. My teammates, the Cimarrones (Rams), are all in other race categories, so I’m on my own unless I can strike a deal with someone.

We veteranos line up. There are twelve of us. Two years ago the veterano class was anybody over 40. But Benjamin, 58, complained. How can we be expected to compete with somebody 18 years younger? So last year they upped the vet class to 50+. This summer, Benjamin is not around. I notice that Zambada is racing. He’s 48. Ah, that’s okay. Jorge Arredondo used to be a tough vet competitor, but he’s 44, so they make him race with the elite racers. I’m 56; Tino might be 50, maybe not.

Twelve of us are at the starting line. Waldo is back there. Waldo always races, although he’s probably 64 and gets dropped after about four laps. His grandkids are racing in the novice and the elite groups. Waldo is always smiling, happy to be riding. Hey, there’s a new face. It’s a guy named Miguel. Wait a minute, he’s in his 30’s. But this is Mexico. He hasn’t been training, (sez he) so what the heck.

I remember Miguel: he punched a guy in the face in Ensenada because the guy supposedly elbowed Miguel’s son during the sprint finish. Blood spattered all over the pavement. Miguel spent three days in the Ensenada jail. Now he’s in my race. Swell.

Race director Francisco “Pollo (Chicken)” Santacruz reads off our names and then says, “We have some new rules.” He looks at me. “Brian, you translate, okay?" We survey the field. Everybody but me is Mexican. “Oh, never mind,” says Pollo. “If you get lapped, you must ride outside the white line. You cannot draft on the lead group and the lead group cannot draft you.”

“The people behind should get the inside lane,” I suggest. “Otherwise, the race is over.”

Pollo scowls in derision and waves aside my suggestion. “Okay, 25 minutes plus two laps. Go.”

Since we’re old, we usually start up reasonably, with nobody jamming at top speed. That is, unless my teammate Tony Darr from Imperial is in the race. Tony often does a track stand at the starting line and then hauls ass while the rest of us are clipping in. So if he races in the vets, he just might try to lead the race from start to finish. The rest of us hate that. Tony is not here tonight.

The wind is in our face as we take the first turn in a counterclockwise direction. I lead through the first lap at a moderate pace, looking warily over my shoulder for the first attack. Here it comes, good old Tino blasting up the track around 26 miles per hour. I stand up to chase him down, for if he gets a gap, he might stay away indefinitely. His teammates won’t chase; they will sit on a wheel until it’s their turn to burn out somebody else’s solid fuel.

I pull the group up to Tino, who has backed down to about 21 miles per hour. We cruise around a couple of laps with the lead changing a few times. There’s Miguel next to me. I give him plenty of room.

The line of racers weaves across the track. The leader, now Francisco, pedals slowly, resting, ready for a new attack. Now it’s Elias, a big quiet man with a thick torso. Elias is dead meat on hills because of his size, but around a track, he’s a force to be reckoned with, for he can maintain a torrid pace. Once again I chase. Where’s everyone else? Suddenly I have my answer. As I approach Elias’s wheel, the third member of their team, Ricardo, comes screaming by on the downwind straightaway. Behind him is Rogelio Zambada. I crank it up and somehow get onto Zambada’s wheel. We’re six minutes into the race, and I’ve already had to sprint twice. I can do that about four more times before I’ll have burned all high octane fuel.

As we hit turn three I wave to the other Rogelio, and Blackie, and Tino’s son Daniel sitting with his friends. The curve is banked up about 8 feet from the field to the perimeter, topped by a small wall. A running track skirts the entire Ciudad Deportiva (Sports City), and there are usually moms and dads and kids jogging or walking.

Because of the wind, we’re always looking for the sheltered side of the rider in front of us, who in turn is always trying to prevent our finding it. So consequently, the lead rider will first hug the inside and then the outside of the track, depending on the wind. During the Elite race, forty to fifty riders will pass by the spectators on the outside edge of the track going 30+ mph, creating a lovely sizzle of precision bearings and the pulling power of a diesel semi, the force of their displaced air buffeting anyone standing too close.

Tino takes a turn, then Elias. Then surprise, suprise, Zambada is at the front. Everyone has their head down, going all out. I pass Elias, who sounds like he’s about to hoark his lungs onto the pavement. That’s racing; on the edge of the abyss, the pressure building up in our eyes and forehead, the road ahead starting to blur as our hearts hit the danger zone. That’s racing. Once again, I chase down the attack group, and I’m burning up precious fuel.

Ricardo whizzes past me. We’ve already lapped Waldo, Francisco, and a couple other racers unknown to me. Miguel has dropped out. I sprint for Ricardo’s wheel and hold on for a lap. Just when Ricardo slows, Tino and Elias go turbo and pass both of us. All this while on my wheel, Zambada comes by me. Tino and Elias have a four bike gap. I’m gasping for air, and so I yell, “Calmado!” to Zambada as he comes by.

He ought to be my ally. I’ve been doing most of the chasing on the Exinsa boys. If a fresh Zambada will just keep a fast pace, I can grab his wheel and we’ll steadily close that gap. But no, Zambada cranks it up, bridges the gap and leaves me and Ricardo behind. All I can do is hold my maximum pace and hope that the three leaders will get disorganized or inattentive and allow me to catch. Strategy now calls for Ricardo to sit on my wheel for the rest of the race.

I seem to get closer to the leaders, but then the gap widens and soon they have half a lap on me. It’s no use. Lap after lap, Ricardo sits on my wheel. Suddenly I pass through a small flurry of yellow butterflies, blown in I suppose from the farm land to the southeast of the city.

I gaze at the ambulance in the corner of the field, wondering who will crash tonight. During one road race a few seasons ago, a car clipped one of my teammates. He finished the race, but when we approached the ambulance driver for first aid, he said the ambulance was empty. We asked, “What do you expect to do, just pick up corpses?”

The battle for the finish goes on across the infield: Zambada outsprints Tino, with Elias third. I beat Ricardo for fourth.

After one cool down lap, I roll up to Zambada at the high end of the track, where he is whooping it up with his cheering section. An animated winner, he giddily thanks me for helping him during the race and promises to return the favor next week. I seem to remember this speech before, but no payoff yet.

At trackside, I congratulate Tino, who says, scowling, “Zambada should have worked with you.”

I rinse the dried sweat off my face and change out of my cycling gear. It’s still 98 degrees on my car thermometer at 10:00 p.m. Warm, but there’s a breeze. A pleasant night for a race in Mexico.