Brompton World Championships: I Came, I Saw, I Folded

As the sporting world knows, yesterday saw the running of the Brompton World Championship USA race at the Harlem Skyscraper Criterium, a race in which I decided to compete after receiving a special "action suit" from a popular chain of menswear shops:

By the way, it's worth noting their stock rallied after my announcement, indicated by the green arrow:

I'm just saying.

Of course yesterday was also Fathers Day, and so that morning I took my elder son out for a ride on his new all-terrain bicycle:

This is his first geared bicycle, and I'm pleased to report he got the hang of shifting rather quickly, though that's hardly surprising as he's the beneficiary of my prodigious cycling genes.  I did however spare him my retrogrouchical tendencies, providing him with a bicycle equipped with both hydraulic disc brakes and a suspension fork.  Clearly, like many self-made moguls who pull themselves up from their bootstraps and then proceed to spoil their progeny, I am coddling him when it comes to cycling equipment.

(I've also installed a dropper post on my younger child's balance bike, though without a crank I'm not sure how to go about fitting an SRM.)

Anyway, after our excursion, I stuffed the top half of my "action suit" and a helmet into my Brompton bag:

And the whole crew boarded a train bound for Harlem USA:

Arriving at Marcus Garvey Park, the competition was as dapper as it was fierce:

And attire ran the spectrum from Park Avenue Doorman:

To Battle of Verdun:

Deeply intimidated, I nevertheless steadied my hands just enough to pin up:

Each safety pin a stake through the heart of my AWEAR-TECH by AWEARNESS Kenneth Cole suit:

It uses 37.5 technology, an advanced fabric technology from the high-performance sports world, in case you were wondering.

Of course you were.

I also pinned my necktie to my shirt so it wouldn't fly over my shoulder once I unleashed my incredible speed:

Brompton riders are a shifty bunch and you never know when one of them might grab onto your tie for a free ride.

At this point I should mention that it was rather hot.  Also, the Harlem crit is famous for crashes, and the race immediately preceding ours was the Category 3/4, arguably the crashiest field in all of amateur bicycle racing.  The upshot of this is was that our race was delayed considerably while an ambulance tended to the wounded, meaning we all spent at least an additional hour waiting for the start and sweating in our finery.

Linen clearly would have been the move.

In any case, eventually what was left of the 3/4 field finished their race and the Bromptonauts took to the course:

To some (okay, all) it might have looked like a sideshow, but for us it was the main event:

Rolling out towards the start, I experienced an exhilarating mix of intense anticipation and mild embarrassment:

Though it also might just have been the early stages of heatstroke.

We then lined up our machines for the Le Mans start:

And an impressive array it most certainly was:

We then lined up across from our Bromptons, and as we received our pre-race briefing this crew took the opportunity to briefly upstage us:

For that moment, the photographed became the photographers:

"I'm the king of the world!," this rider did not shout:

And then finally we were off.

What ensued were 10 extremely hot laps during which I would have given anything to discard my jacket, and you haven't experienced excitement until you've opened a button and loosened your tie while racing in a criterium on a bicycle with 16-inch wheels:

Next year I'm going with carbon trispokes and seersucker.