Monster Track: I spent plenty of time waffling about whether or not I was going to race this. I gave myself plenty of excuses - the weather, my level of fitness, a cold that had been working on me - but something clicked and I got excited. I started riding around and seeing people on track bikes and whooping, yelling, "You ready for MonsterTrack?!" And people were yelling the same at me. Everybody on a track bike in the city got tingley, excited, grinning with anticipation.

Monstertrack 8, a race through Manhattan and Brooklyn in the middle of the winter, for track bikes, gained fame and notoriety through the years due to its intensity, its track bike requirement, and videos like Lucas Brunelle's helmet-cam action of Monster Track V.

I had no particular pretensions of doing well but had plenty of reason to get excited. I'm a solid biker, I told myself. Heck, the night before the race, at one of the pre-parties, I even beat two extremely fast, race-winning messengers in a thirty-second stationary bike sprint. Not the same skills that wins races but enough to raise the excitement level a little bit. A little bit more. To get me thinking, Okay, so, how good can I do?

The start was just south of Delancey - hundreds of people milling around in the cold and the snow, looking at each other's bikes, forming little clusters and shooting the shit, wondering how much later it would get before the organizers give us some fucking manifests and give us the go. When are we gonna start? Everyone's getting cold. The Organizers line us up. We stand around for a long time more. Finally Victor yells GO! and the hundreds of people make a mad dash for their bikes and to get out of the court before a bottleneck opens up - to get out to some open road.

But there were so many people that very few people found any open road, especially with the entire field going up 1st Avenue up to 61st street before splitting. It was amazing. Two hundred riders, yelling and screaming and whooping and going fast, together, tearing up 1st Avenue. Stretching well ahead of me and well behind me. You pass somebody you know or somebody you don't, throw them a shit-eating grin, and head on. At the UN, Nick caught up with me - we rode down to the race together, and he had a helmet cam. "I've been behind you," he said, "I'm getting great footage!" "Then get me some more!" I yelled, and sprinted ahead down into the tunnel. And we went faster...

It was impossible to stay with who I was riding with. After the first checkpoint the field seperated a lot and I went on my own way a lot, meeting up with people here and there along the course. My favorite part of alleycats is seeing people racing, coming from different directions, blowing by you, criss-crossing, riding together for half a mile before going in different directions. Like the whole city becomes alive with whooping bikers.

After two extensive forays to all the checkpoints between SoHo and Midtown, I went back to the base to get the last manifest, hit up the two sponsoring bike shops, and finish hard in Williamsburg. Caught up to somebody I know on the Williamsburg Bridge, jumped on his wheel to catch my breath for a minute before sprinting past me - "Get on my wheel and we'll take the bidge together!" I said - and we passed a group of riders. Then found the finish line, the bar, and dropped off our manifests.

Water. Fruit. Food. Beer.

Tired. Whew! Shit! My pants are wet and the road salt is stinging my thighs. It's dark but it's still early but it feels late.

MonsterTrack... Only a year until the next one...