Fasturdays: The Ultimate Cycling Road Trip

Last March, Steve M. Cullen and Beth Everhart quit their jobs, sold their Seattle home, bought a camper, and headed east. Their plan: to document the history and culture of American criterium races—by competing in more than 100 events between the two of them. The project, which the couple called Fasturdays, “started because we read a ton of sports and adventure books,” says Cullen, 40, a graphic designer and Category 2 racer.

Unable to find much information on US crit racing history, the couple began researching the sport on their own in early 2014. “Criterium racing in the United States is setting a global standard for fast technical racing,” says Cullen. “There’s a passage in Team 7-Eleven about the riders riding all day, partying with the local kids, smashing the crits, and looking good doing it. It’s mesmerizing.”

By June, Cullen had put together a map of races around North America, from Speed Week in Georgia, to Superweek in British Columbia, and a road trip was in the works. “This map symbolized all those romantic ideals of the adventure stories I’d spent a lifetime reading,” he says. “Epic quests to find hidden passes, chart blank spaces on the globe, [explore] foreign cultures, or learn secret trades. All that swashbuckling kung fu shit.”

What sounds romantic on paper turned into the most physically and emotionally demanding seven months of their lives. At the start, Everhart, a 37-year-old account marketing manager, was a newly upgraded Cat 3 racer with only four criteriums under her belt. Cullen became intimately acquainted with first-aid staff across the nation, tallying upwards of nine serious crashes that resulted in three broken fingers, two fractured wrists, and more than two-dozen stitches. But by the end of the summer, they’d posted impressive results (Everhart is now a Cat 2), visited 43 states, and collected enough stories to fill a book, which is due out this year.

“Criteriums show American life at its best,” says Cullen. “The events are held in the heart of interesting neighborhoods in small towns and cities alike. What’s on display? Fearlessness, speed, tactical savvy, raw horsepower—up close, in your face, in a very human way—the bravado and risk taking and can-do effort that is so very American.”

Crit-Racing Revelations

•Stay Smooth: Tensing up, looking behind you, or hitting the brakes will increase your odds of going down, says Everhart. “Practice calm in the race. It’s a skill.”
•Sprint Smart: “The sprint is mostly decided by the positioning battle beforehand,” she says. “If you can get into the last turn near the front, you are going to sprint well. It takes a lot of effort. You sprint with whatever is left in your legs.”
•Power Down: “We have a saying: ‘A warrior’s calm is the source of his fury,’” says Cullen. After a race, do 10 minutes of deep breathing with your eyes closed, lying on the floor. “It resets the body and kick-starts deeper recovery.”