This race was probably the most boring I've ever seen. It was suggested to me that I could put my college (Merritt Junior College in Oakland, California) on the map by performing in this championship event. I was told that the calibre of the riders was low, and that a top ten placing for me would be virtually guarranteed.
My attempts to interest my school's physical education department were as frustrating as they were fruitless. I wasn't asking for a nice salary like the UC Berkeley football team, or even pizza coupons like the guys on my school's football team; I just wanted a jersey representing my college in its first exposure to intercollegiate cycling. No can do.
I arrived early on race day wearing a faded and plain green nylon jersey, and observed that everyone else had nice attractive jerseys advertising their respective schools. I asked race director Tim Nicholson if and how I should identify my scholastic affiliation. He stated that since my school had never sent an athlete to such an event, thus no precedent had been set. He further explained that somewhere on my jersey should appear at least the initial of the school. I procured a four inch square of yellow binder paper, scribbled an "M" on it, and with a single safety pin attached it to the center of the front of my jersey. A cycling fashion plate I was not. Tim was not greatly amused, but he had more pressing concerns.
The race was on the campus of the Stanford University, and consisted of about an hour's worth of one mile laps. The monotony of the race was broken only by cycling character Jacquie Phelan (also known as Alice B. Toeclips) who stood on the outside of one of the turns on the vacant backside of the course, and exposed herself to us we approached the turn. There was some additional squealing of brakes as some noted the evenness of Jacquie's tan. Other than the nice view provided on turn three, it was an extremely dull and boring race. It was as if all but a handful of the one hundred plus contestants shared between them a picogram of testosterone.
Three guys rode away from the pack, yet despite our riding at a snail's pace, two of them couldn't cut it and ended up back in the pack. This race was really slow, but I just didn't have the mood to put on a show. The guy off the front was from UC Santa Barbara, and the pace of the pack was being kept even slower by one of the few competent riders in the pack, Larry Shields, also from UCSB.
The final sprint was one of the slowest that I had ever seen. When I decided to go for it, nobody reacted, and the only rider within five bike lengths of me at the line was Larry Shields, a talented road rider who was definitely not known for any kind of sprint.
Sometime later I gave the school's athletic director a photocopy of an article in Competitive Cycling (the nationally prominent cycling publication at the time) which included a good picture of Larry Shields and I rolling through turn one. I told him that I could have won the race, but that my morale had been in the toilet that day, and that second place had been very easy. He then said, "Oh my God, you didn't tell me that this was some kind of national championship!" I had to tell him, "Yes, I did, but you and your staff would not listen to me." I showed him the letter "M" on the wrinkled binder paper with its now rusty safety pin, and his heart just sank. He looked like he was going to cry as I left, and I never saw him again.
InterCollegiate cycling improved greatly in the years since that event, and today is a far cry what the wimpy event that I experienced, or the movie "Breaking Away" which came to pass at about the same time. It has become a great stepping stone to the higher ranks of racing for its many participants, each of whom has a nice team jersey.