BOWMASTER OUT OF RUNNING, BUT STILL RACING
Look back ten to fifteen years and who was winning races in this area? If you said Tom Bowmaster, you would be right. So what happened to him? Moved away? Hit the couch?
No. Bowmaster is far from sitting on that couch, he just found another sport. Back during his collegiate years, a slip on an ice patch, hidden by a dusting of snow, landed him on the forever-injured list. His pelvis was twisted and stuck in the wrong position for three years before it was correctly diagnosed and treated.
Physical therapy helped and he was able to train again but he says he thinks that he has always limped from that and it came back to haunt him years later.
Bowmaster won some big races, like the Morristown Corporate Challenge and the Warner-Lambert 5K in Morris Plains. But that nagging hip pain was always a constant that finally forced him to give up running.
"Six or seven years ago it got extremely bad," said Bowmaster, who I interviewed on his cell phone, coming home from a bike race Saturday. The car was being driven by his longtime training buddy Gordon Pitt of Morristown.
They had just raced in Branch Brook Park in Newark in a road bike race. When asked how he did his reply was a blunt, "I stunk!"
He says he's not so good at In-Line skating either, but has taken it up to keep up with his fourteen year old son Brian.
"Brian is really good at it," said Bowmaster. "He skates circles around me."
Bowmasters' new love is not the skating, nor even the road bike racing. It is Cyclocross, a form of cross country racing on wheels.
"It's been growing quite a bit the last four or five years," said Bowmaster. "It's the equivalent of running. The same kind of terrain. Across fields and muddy with hills, and barriers to jump over."
The barriers are like steeplechase barriers but only 18 inches high. Some of the best riders can actually hop over using a technique called a "bunny hop" but most riders dismount and run with the bike to the barrier.
"You ride up to it and swing one leg off and then jump off and run," he said. "Pick up your bike and leap back on and start pedaling again. And the good guys don't slow down."
Each course is different, but the laps are supposed to be about two miles and have two barriers per lap.
Much like running races, the competitors are divided into divisions, but with a twist. In the A group is the elite. The B group is below that, with the C group further down. After those three divisions come the age groups, beginning with the 35 and up, the 45 and up and sometimes even a 55 and up. Each group competes in separate heats.
Bowmaster competes in the 45 and up age group although he could go for the C or B group if he chose to. He said the age group races are generally smaller and safer. The elite A's get to go last when the course is chewed up by the previous races.
Now here's where it gets way out of the running mode. The professionals have two bikes for the race. When their bikes gets too muddy or needs attention, the rider speeds into the pit, just like in car races, and trades it for a second bike that his "pit" crew has ready for him.
"They come riding into the pit area and have to jump off of one bike, grab the other bike and jump back on," said Bowmaster. "If they take more than two steps without a bike in their hands, they are disqualified."
The season starts out with only a couple races in September and heats up in November, mimicking cross country foot racing. The national race is in December. Augusta in Sussex County is the hotbed of cyclocross due to the fairgrounds there and the Skylands baseball stadium. This past August the State Fair featured a Cyclocross race as one of its grandstand events with the competitors given a ribbon emblazoned with "Entertainment" on it.
"We were the entertainment," said Bowmaster. "It was under lights and it was sort of like indoor dirt bike type things. It was on an enclosed track with lots of loops and turns. It was lots of fun."
Bowmaster figures his training takes more time now than when he was running. He bikes to work from his home in Morristown to his office in Piscataway. It's an hour and 45 minute ride - longer than he ever used to run. He has found a 29 mile route far off busy Route 287 that no one who needs to get somewhere fast would ever take according to Bowmaster.
"I counted the number of cars that passed me a couple of times and it was probably one car a mile."
Bowmaster and Pitt will compete at road racing from now until August and then switch to Cyclocross. In fact it was the short season of road bike racing that turned them to the other. They were looking for another outlet when they heard of the wheeled cross country racing in 2004. The first year they did four or five and were hooked.
"After one season I decided that it was absolutely the best sport that I had ever done," said Bowmaster.
That doesn't mean he has completely given up on running. He has been testing his hip with the inline skates and thinks he may soon be able to run a little and maybe race. But it is clear that this confirmed racer has been converted to wheels.
Originally published by the DAILY RECORD of Morris County, New Jersey on Sunday, April 1, 2007
Copyright, Madeline Bost, 2007
