The Oakland Twilights have been happening on Tuesday evenings every summer since 1977 from May through September, and have always been an excellent way to get and stay fit for the "real" races on the weekends. The course is in an industrial park between the Oakland Coliseum and the Oakland Airport. In the 1980's, the adjacent businesses grew, and traffic became a problem. There were incidents such as when yours truly broadsided a car while at speed, so in 1989, the course was moved northwest to a point near Alameda. The businesses near the new course grew very rapidly, and the increase in containerized shipping adversely affected the businesses near the original course, so in the early 1990's, the race was moved back. It has been a great course; in 1977, Tom Simonson and Hal Tozer took several of us juniors there and taught us how to really do a pace line, in 1979, Ed Bense and I used the course to put on the Police Olympics (and for once we had no problem with course control!). In 1981, I was the Twilights' chief referee, a position giving me further insight into our favorite sport.
The event is actually two seperate races, each of which is split in half, the faster riders starting about a minute after the slower riders. This makes for an interesting time as the fast guys work to catch the slow guys, and the slow guys work to hold off the inevitable. In 1979, I was one of the fastest slow guys in the second (fastest) race. And if you can fogulate that... Anyway, the Bike Barb was a great motivator for me; the two of us often worked hard together and made life difficult for the fastest guys. He was not shy to point out defects in my pedaling style or to request other needed corrections. The same age as my father, he was a superior physical specimen, and while he did more than his fair share of the work, he knew that I was really trying, and said that at my rate of improvement, he could only hope that I would remember him by the next year.
I have never excelled at anything in life like I did riding all but one of the 1980 Oakland Twilights Series. I did so because of a great deal of fitness and motivation, as well as the fact that I completely psyched out my opponents. I could goof off for most of the race, and as long as I stuck to my formula, success was almost always guarranteed. I would simply stay well rested, and then with two laps to go, would leave them all behind, riding the last 4000 meters as if my life depended on it. Some folks are tentative about a breakaway effort, but I was not. I put all of my eggs in one basket. My most satisfying victory on this course was my fifth consecutive Twilights win in which some of the junior national team was present, had heard about me, and decided to break the streak. They tried every trick in the book and did succeed in wearing me down somewhat, but I stuck to my formula. When I finally blasted off, they were caught by surprise, lost crucial time getting organized, and I was just able to hold them at bay, finishing scant bike lengths ahead of all three.