Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/452

 great but—never fall an inch too soon, or you will go under without touching it.

In a bicycling obstacle race, the general idea of the conspiracy is to mock the boasted speed of the cyclist by making his machine a hindrance, a tribulation, and an incubus unto him. He is tempted, for instance, by a long stretch of level track to "pile it on," and go ahead; only to be met at the end by a row of hurdles, or something equally solid, which he cannot pull up in time to avoid running into, and over which he must then drag his damaged vehicle.

The bicycle obstacle race, like, indeed, other obstacle races, is chiefly to be seen at small country meetings. It is not a shy and modest plant, and never ventures into the glare of metropolitan notoriety. A town racing cyclist will not adventure his feather-weight instrument among the bangs, bumps, and general misadventures native to the obstacle race. Wherefore it comes to pass that in such a race, when it is found, many machines of uncertain age and build are to be seen, and many riders with gets-up and styles of riding which would mightily astonish the crowd at, say, the Herne Hill track. It is, perhaps, only at such a race that one may encounter a belated survival of the jockey cap among cyclists, and the rule is for the costume to partake of the characteristics of road and path, the former predominating, with now and again a distinct suggestion of the jockey or sulky-driver thrown in by way of imparting as sportive a flavour as possible. Sometimes fancy costumes are presented, and then jockeys and sweeps, Ally Sloper and Mephistopheles chase one another on bicycles of varying sorts and dates of manufacture.

A country meeting, too, where sports are held in a grass field, affords many advantages in the way of natural obstacles, through which the track may be laid, with a resulting steeplechase highly gratifying to such enemies of the cycling pastime as may be present. The track at a country meeting, prepared for an ordinary straightaway level race, presents in itself more often than not a series of difficulties not to be despised. There was a field (possibly is still) in Bedfordshire, used annually for bicycle races and other sports, wherein the unfortunate competitor, in what