This is the true post of Little 500 riders picked to have their lives surrounding America's Greatest College Weekend posted to the web. To find out what happens when the IDS stops just reporting and starts getting real...check here for The Real Ride -- Little 500 style.
So I'm sitting here on my porch, watching the spring rain, and thinking, again, about the end.
This year marks the end of my sixth year involved with the Little 500, and sure, I guess each year is about as memorable as the others. Every one stands distinctly, like any good story, with its own separate characters, story lines, winners and losers, beginning and end.
Tonight's victory banquet was actually my first since my senior year, and it brought back that feeling of finality that the race always seems to offer but never actually has.
The truth is it never ends. Teams don't stop training; IUSF doesn't stop planning; riders don't stop dreaming.
Some faces will be different, sure. There will be a new race director next year, with an awfully high standard to match. But the race will still be there, in all its pomp, pageantry and pride.
Pam Loebig, the outgoing director, talked tonight about the prevalence of alumni involvement in the race, and how important it is for the race. But to be honest, it's important for the riders too.
We don't come back because we wish we were still riding -- though certainly none of us would complain if we were, I guess. We come back, because we've given a part of ourselves to this incomparable thing. We've all felt the rush, the goosebumps and the pain, and we've shared a bond that we're never going to let go of, even if we try.
We don't come back to reminisce, to chase a part of our lives and ourselves forever behind us, beyond our reach. We come back to celebrate, to reconnect with those with whom we shared this incredible experience, and, really, in the end, to pass something down, in the way those before us once did for us.
It's funny when you'll talk to riders who will tell you how intimidated they were when they first started riding -- by older riders on their team, older or stronger riders on the track. Then you'll hear from the rookie class they broke in, and the reaction is essentially the same. At some point, everybody's terrified of somebody. It's part of the process of earning the right to be responsible for the race.
So we come back to remind them, I guess, of that responsibility, and to thank them for continuing to bear it. Someday they will too. It's just part of the evolution of a relationship too strong to be broken simply by graduation.
Next fall, 8,000 new freshmen will come to Indiana, all with different backgrounds and goals, and no real idea yet of how their college career will unfold.
A small portion of them, probably something around 50, will cast a wary eye over the prospect of training for the Little 500 and give it a whirl.
Some will probably have previous cycling experience, or at least some background cross training on a bike. Most will just be former high school athletes, most of them probably familiar with endurance sports at some level, eager to stay in shape and interested in this ambiguous bike race that they're told seizes a campus of nearly 40,000 people every spring and drives it out of its mind.
They'll be scared at first, intimidated by the length of the rides, and the strength of the riders. It will, as one vet told me the fall of my rookie year, come exponentially, and then that fear will turn to unsure arrogance -- they will enjoy the euphoria of a seemingly limitless future.
Then the track will open, and they'll forget everything but the race. They will, all of them, square in on race day, tapping their feet nervously in classes and falling asleep to the thought of flying away from a giant pack of riders. They'll see the entire damn thing unfold in their mind's eye, even though they'll have little actual clue what it even looks like.
They'll reach race day, and an inexplicable peace will take hold. Their first set will come and go, and then another and another. Around lap 80, legs tired and body screaming, they'll look up at the board and wonder how in the world they're going to make it through another 120 laps. They'll put their heads down, close their eyes and just hope to make it to the end of the race without crashing or throwing up.
And then, like it almost never happened, it will be over, and they will realize, finally, what riding in the Little 500 really does to you. They'll feel it and they'll know it, and they will never look at it the same way again.
If only for a brief moment, just a few years in a history now six decades long and growing, the race, and everything around it, will belong to them.
Zach Osterman is the coach of Sammy Cycling. He was a rider four-year rider for Sammy Cycling. He is a previous editor of this newspaper.
