THE FIRST CENTURY RACE
The Illinois Cycling Club was now in its glory, and I joined them and entered for the 100-mile race, which came off June 15, 1896. The aspirants began training for the event early in the spring, but I attended to my business days, and evenings I slipped out, unknown to anyone, practicing on the worst hills I could find, preparing for the race over the Elgin and Aurora course, but none of the boys knew that I was having any training whatever.
As Arthur and Walton were to start for Connecticut the same morning on their thousand-mile run, we ate breakfast together at Lawrence's Restaurant, on Madison Street, about three o'clock in the morning. When we were about to part, Arthur said to me: "Father, do you expect to win that race today?" My reply was to the effect that if I did not, Charley Knisely and his fast bunch would have to make 100 miles quicker than they had ever made it yet.
When I arrived at the club house about fifty were awaiting the command to fall in and about two or three hundred standing to see us off, and if ever a dark horse entered a race it was M. A. Richardson that morning.
That evening there were reports in all the daily papers, and among other things the Chicago Times-Herald said in part: "The sixth annual run of the Illinois Cycling Club, America's largest cycling organization, took place yesterday. Many of the fast riders, anxious to make a record over the famous Elgin and Aurora 100-mile course, tried to have the event postponed because of the heavy rains of Friday and Saturday, but the schedule could not be changed in their behalf.
"As it was a certainty that the rain had made the regular Elgin mud roads west of Maywood unridable, the course was taken over the Armitage road to Addison, 'seventeen miles out,' in the vain hope that this road would be in better condition. The mud just sufficiently dried to be caked and baked into a rough mass, beside which corduroy is a boulevard, furnished ample test for endurance, strength and skill, for no sooner had a mile of it been traveled than the roadside was strewn with physical and mechanical wrecks.
"The stunning surprise of the run was the fact that M. A. Richardson, the untrained and oldest member, a gray-haired wiry cycler, finished long first, making his appearance at the club house at 12:15, one hour before R. H. Inman, the second best man, who finished at 1:15. Upon the home run from Aurora, Richardson did some fast riding, leaving masculine brawn and youth to figure out just what had taken place."
THE SECOND RACE
The next year the race was set for June 28, 1897, when many outsiders from the country came in, all intent on beating Richardson, but one can imagine their surprise when I announced that I would drive a 126-gear wheel, which was equal to a ten per cent handicap from the 80-gear then in use.