Returning from a One Year Hiatus at Grant’s Tomb Crit
Most NYC cyclists have their favorite local race. After the Orchard Beach Criterium went extinct, the Grant’s Tomb Criterium surpassed it to become my favorite thanks to a course that features some proper crit corners, a huge selection of fields that allows most racers to double up, and big rider turnout to match. With the local race calendar increasingly dominated by early mornings in Central and Prospect Park, I always thought Grant’s Tomb was something different and special.
All of which made my experience at the 2024 edition of the race especially unfortunate. With a few laps remaining in my race, I got caught up in the chain reaction from a crash at the pointy end of the field, resulting in my elbow meeting a curb head-on at twenty-plus miles per hour. I came out on the losing end of that curb vs. human body interaction, with the prize for my loss coming in the form of a new metal radial head in my elbow and a very long recovery process.
That recovery process kept me off the bike entirely for nine months, which is a long time to think about the risk-reward of racing bikes. In the months leading up to the 2025 edition of the Grant’s Tomb Criterium I was finally able to start riding again, starting with 20-minute rides, then 30-minutes, and so on. During this stretch, I still wasn’t sure if I would race again, never mind racing this year. But as the Grant’s Tomb registration deadline started to tick down, I became intrigued about the symmetry of returning to racing at my favorite local event, almost exactly year after my worst crash in more than a decade of racing. And so, a few clicks on USA Cycling and Bikereg.com, I was back to being a bike racer.
I went into race day prepared and expecting to DNF. My only goal was to experience racing again, and to do so safely. To reinforce this low stakes approach, I even skipped the team’s Castelli cycling jerseys and went with one of our TBD long sleeve tech tees. As it turns out, racing a mid-day summer crit in one of these is both quite warm and not very aero, so perhaps it was a mistake. But no matter, I lined up at the start with my nerves spiked to the max, hoping to finish at least three laps.
The opening laps were both more and less terrifying than I expected. The swooping 180-degree turn where I shattered my elbow was beyond stressful, while the theoretically more technical 90-degree corners at the opposite end of the course were surprising palatable. I held my own as much as possible in what was a very fast start, but it turns out that riding a grand total of perhaps 8 hours over the course of a year is not good fitness prep for a criterium. By the third lap I was on the back of the field, holding on as other racers were getting dropped.
I made it two or three more laps before I was one of those dropped riders, but I kept the pace up solo for another few laps until the officials whistled me off the course. It was the DNF I came in expecting, but for my first race back I surpassed my highest expectations which feels like a good starting point for getting back into the sport. In fact, a few weeks later I finished a full race in Prospect Park, so perhaps I can once again officially consider myself a bike racer. While I’m still trying to figure out that all important risk-reward question, it feels good to at least be back in action in some fashion. What comes next, we’ll just have to see…
