Rolling in the streets, weaving in the woods, surrounded with friends and the fresh air breezing through your hair. These are the joys of bike racing. 

Sophomore Noah McCallum has loved riding his bike for as long as he can remember. He went from a reluctant beginner to a dedicated, cross-country mountain bike racer.

Freshman Landon Aberlie from West High School is a teammate of McCallum’s, and their team is called Parkway Composite.

“Bike racing is more competitive and time-consuming than most people realize,” Aberlie.

The team is mostly made up of students from Parkway, indicating the name, but Parkway Composite races under the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). 

“[We practice between] 8-20 hours a week. Training is the most time-consuming part of endurance sports, most people average around 100 miles plus a week and that’s all from training. We probably race 5-20 times a year,” McCallum said.

McCallum said bike racing is not as easy to sign up for like baseball is because it’s not directly connected to Parkway South. You have to know about the sport and spend your own money to be able to sign up and be a part of this sport.  Bike racing is more like a club sport. Parkway Composite has about 250 kids enrolled and participating. It’s not provided by high schools and you really have to make your own efforts to get into this sport. 

McCallum said another reason most people in their younger age don’t get into bike racing is because they don’t think to themselves, “I should try bike racing.” 

“I like to think of biking as a thing that people get into, like later in life after they’re out of school and have free time because it’s expensive. Saying you’re a cyclist is not as sexy as saying you’re a football player when you’re younger, I think. So it’s like an image thing as well. Like I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘that’s not a sport,’” he said.

Since he’s been competing, McCallum said he’s already done through 5 bikes. Besides the bike itself, he has clip-in shoes, a helmet, special racing jerseys, riding gloves and special water bottles that are molded to the bottle cages on his bike.

Sophomore Mitchell Stanley is one of McCallum’s close friends. Stanley said that even though he’s never seen his friend race, he respects what he does. 

“I think it’s really hard. He took me out before. I had a really hard time, you had to go up like this mountain, and it was really tiring,” Stanley said. 

Although bike racing involves a lot of movement and hard work, it also involves team building.

“[The] best part about bike racing is definitely the community. Competition is great when racing but friendship and passion toward the same thing out of racing is the best part about racing. Everyone cares for everyone; everyone wants to ride with everyone. It’s what makes cycling unique,” McCallum said.