It’s 3 pm on a Friday you’re sitting at your desk, there is a project deadline on Monday but no time today, you’re racing away all weekend. 3:45 pm, tick tick, time to go! Pedal to the medal you’re driving, fast, SLOW DOWN! Start pumping the brakes because you’re in early Friday rush hour traffic. Once you reach the airport, you have to park in the outer edge corner spot, you missed the next shuttle. Doesn’t matter anyways, you drag your bike and bags to the waiting station for the next shuttle and that takes some time.
Checked in and after a painful one hundred dollar ‘sporting goods travel fee’ you’re at the terminal, searching for a boarding pass, checking your watch you realize you have one hour until your flight takes off. The line in front of you holds at least one hundred people. You begin to wonder will my expensive, giant black case make it to the right destination? With boarding pass in hand and baggage on its way you sprint through the terminal, dodging and weaving between the masses of people.
You hear your name being called on the loud speaker, as sweat runs down your face and your backpack straps dig into your shoulders, you make it on the plane. As you walk down the aisle fellow travelers give you glares of disappointment for being that last passenger on the flight. Hungry and tired you sit in the taught seat and buckle up for take-off. You made it!
You touch down in far off and unfamiliar city, amazingly enough your bike bag has arrived too. You gather everything, get on the terminal shuttle and make your way to get a rental car. Now an hour has passed and you are starved! You fire up the rental car and make your way to the hotel.
Thirty minutes later, with a ‘Golden Arch’ special in hand you check- in to your hotel, review race start info and its lights out at midnight.
The alarm rings at 6 a.m. Gazing over to the bike bag you bust out your allen wrenches and begin building at a brisk pace. Great work you built your bike in record time, twenty minutes. You walk out of your hotel room with heavy eyelids and greasy hands. Making your way to the lobby where breakfast is served. Stale bagel in hand you leave the lobby and go to the course.
Kitted up and on the start line by 8:45 you begin to relax and then the USA Cycling Official blows his whistle and you clip in.
NOW, STOP and rewind… Imagine this. You didn’t leave work early, didn’t fight traffic, didn’t deal with airport security, didn’t eat fast food and you didn’t stay in an unfamiliar bed. Instead, you gave a little more time to that work project and spent extra time at home. Does it mean something when you are relatively close to home when headed to bicycle race? I bet your wife, husband or mother would like to see you rip it up out there. We believe all of this matters.
The basic premise of the Southeast Regional Series is to create strong competition for the amateur and elite level regionally budgeted teams. It is far too easy for racers to only race against the people in their own state over and over again, so why not create a manageable five month long series. Your sponsors receive better exposure too. Five months, five events, five cities.
New race courses, fresh faces and fast legs!
