Well, Jeremy has just finished his last race in Oregon as a Junior. He
turned 18 in October. As a parent of two Juniors, I wanted to take some
time and share some of our thoughts on racing as juniors. This is long and
rambling so many of you may not want to take the time to read this.
First off, the support of the racers and all the OBRA family has been
great. My kids fell into racing by accident and with out the support of
many of you, they would have never been able to race. NW Velo leadership
was a great inspiration to Josh and Jeremy as they started racing. Candi
has been very special to my sons. We look forward to seeing the officials
and race promoters, because they have played an important part in our
racing from the begining.
There has been many training rides down here in Southern Oregon that have
made training a lot more productive for my sons. Mark Lansing, Glenn Gann
and Ed Garfield have led road rides that were very helpful to my sons.
Jerry Horton have had some of the best mountain bike training rides for
Josh and Jeremy . Of course there are many other riders that have had a
great impact on my sons. I want to say a big thanks to all of you.
Of course I think many of you know cycling is not attracting the amount of
kids it should be attracting. If we are to change this and I think we can.
It will be at a cost to all of us. We are competing against schools and
many other organizations that are well organinzed. I do have a few simple
things we can do to help Juniors to enjoy their racing more. These are
things I am hoping Jeremy will do as he gets older. One of the biggest
would be to take the time at the races to spend time talking to a junior.
This means so much to juniors. The people that have done this for my sons,
they could not have done anything better to encourage their racing. One
person comes to mind right now, Erik Tonkin. Thanks Erik. John Gorman,
Jon Meyers, and Chancy Curl would be some others and of course many of the
women riders have been great to my sons. Thanks Tina!!!
I think many times, if a junior is doing real well against the Senior
riders, some riders think the Junior is stuck up and full of him or
herself, because he or she doesn't talk to the Senior riders. In fact many
times the case really is, the Junior is afraid to talk to the senior
riders. After all they are adults and many of the Juniors feel the adults
would not enjoy talking to them and they are just so excited to be able to
race against the Seniors, that they would not dream of hoping to be their
friends. This is a big problem with many of the national level junior
riders that we talk to. If the seniors take time to search out juniors
before they get to this level and just ask them to warm up with them or
pre-ride a course with them, I know the Junior riders and the Senior riders
would learn to really enjoy this time together. The cyclo-cross race this
last week-end would have been a great chance to have done this. I think
there were at least 30 junior riders there and many of them were new
riders. They would have known very few people and would not have had any
idea what was going on.
There are also a very few riders, that are down right mean to the better
junior riders. Jeremy has had riders shouting, swearing and actually
pushing him on training rides and races. In fact, we brought a mountain
bike kid to one ride where so many things went on that he never came back,
because the riders were so mean to the junior riders. I have not met a
national class junior rider that has not faced this problem. Sure most of
them get through it, but what about the kids at the local level that quit
because of it. They might have been the future national champion or just a
kid learning that cycling is fun for life. I really think any time a
senior rider takes a hand off his bar and reaches over and pushes a junior
because the junior won't pull him up the hill, maybe someone else should
talk to him about it. At least when this happened to Jeremy, it scared him
and it turned him off of road racing. He also had been raised to respect
adults and therefore did not let this person know what he thought of him.
The last thing I have noticed with juniors is, too many of them are
overtraining constantly. I say this at a time that Jeremy is
"overtrained", but it is for a short time and now he will be resting most
of the next month, almost until nationals. Way to many Juniors are doing
too many miles and constantly run down. When they hit 19 they are not
national champions, but they are so worn out they can't imagine going on,
so they quit. They figure I am already working like a dog and I can't make
it. In reallity they need to relax and understand, rest and fun will get
them through periods like this. For Jeremy that has meant only allowing
him to do 1 hard day and 1 race day a week and all the other days are fun
and easy days. The result has been he is still hungry to train and he can
see, if he needs to, he can train harder in the future. And at least for
the riders that want to make a living at this, life starts not at 19 but
sometime in the 20's. So when you are working with juniors help them to
see down the road. And remember fun beats work 9 times out of 10!!!
Thanks again for all the help. Jeremy is having a great time and many of
you are a big part of the reason why!!!
Jim VanSchoonhoven