Being the fairly remote tiny country town's schoolboy cycling champion was not enough. I had to get to the big smoke to improve my speed if I was ever to really excel in my chosen sport.
I needed some really stiff competition if I wanted to stand out in my last season as a junior. My 18th birthday and senior ranks coming up I was told that if I could find a good city coach interested enough in guiding me what to do I would not just mature faster physically but learn more quickly than ever possible in a tin pot town where it's no use being a big wheel when there's not much to beat.
Six months later there I was trackside at the Brunswick velodrome, a suburb in one of the country's bigger cities, a club renown for producing Olympic medallist riders. A naΓ―ve skinny country boy, the epitome of youthful innocence nonetheless and whose only asset was having natural sprinting speed and desire to stick it up the competition if I could find the right kind of coach.
In my first race there the officials had put me in the mass start junior 5-five mile event me being on the cusp of a move to senior ranks so it seemed that giving riders my age group a four lengths flogging at the finish wasn't such a big deal. That was the opinion of one particular spectator who was to lead me into a bizarre approach to getting right on top in this testosterone fuelled macho sport.
I was packing up to go back to the private boarding place where I was staying when this old guy the riders there called "Pop" came over to me and complimented my potential.
Pop it turned out was a track champion of his day, but now in his mid-60s he could only tell stories about those thunderous successes he had as a great sprinter. Just looking at his powerfully muscled thighs compared in shorts to my comparatively skinny legs made me realise where he got his great thrusting power to win, win, and win well.
Right from the outset he called me 'boy' no matter how often I reminded him my name was Jerry. Well, I sure looked like a boy compared to his rugged 6ft 3 in tall frame, me looking every bit the skinny ex schoolboy star standing just 5ft 6in. and with a boyish face that didn't give me credit for being a few years older than I looked. Pop put it on me right there, I could do with some proper coaching and he's got time on his side to help if I wanted.
"How about it boy?" he said there and then. "Put yourself in my hands and I'll mould you into something big, a hot shot good enough to stick it up all the others."
My mind was racing. What luck, new in the big smoke, no relatives, no one I knew and all I had was a burning ambition to become a champion track cyclist and here was a former whiz bang expert happy to give me a hand. Both hands to be exact.
We shook hands on a deal that he would coach me for free provided I satisfied him I was prepared to accept his advice and never to disclose to others his secret preparation to my proposed improvement.
Okay, naΓ―ve or not, the easiest part of all that was to eagerly say yes, I can't wait. Wow what a start. Pop even said he was excited too in having someone barely out of school that he could set up and mould his way into a budding champion sprinter. He hinted that it's all about the transfer of energy, meaning how he could transfer his power into my thigh muscles for greater sprint drive.
He gave me his address and I turned up there the next day after I finished a 25-mile road workout. He showed me his impressive trophy room stacked with silver cups, pennants, medallions, sashes and certificates around the four walls and on shelves, not to mention many photographs of him in action thrusting those pedals into submission.
My adrenalin was bubbling that how lucky I was to have this old champion take me under his big armpits even if he was nearly four times my teenage years. Okay, while he was that much way older he didn't look it with his broad chest and big frame making me feel small alongside of him.
Cycling had been good to his health making him seem more like 50 not the extra 16 years in real time. The aerobic manner of pedalling exercise is great for the arteries and heart compared to the guys who end up battle scarred crocks from being bashed about in football.
The first thing I discovered that on every visit I had to guzzle down a tall glass of jungle juice as he called it -- his home made concoction designed to perk me up superbly -- giving me instant alertness and drive is how he explained it. Being a bit backward compared to city teenagers I didn't know what an aphrodisiac was, not that Pop ever told me. But that regular drink he gave me sure made me stiffen up admirably prior to my rubdown after each training ride.
On the first occasion he put the finishing touches to a training program he mapped out that day and told me to take a shower so the pores of my skin would be clean for the special emollients he used in massaging my legs. By the time I got out of the shower I couldn't understand why my healthy seven-inch uncut dick was getting swollen and lofting up into a rock hard full erection. I'd never been undressed in front of anyone before and felt guilty. What if the old guy thought I'd been pulling myself in the shower when I stepped out stark naked?
Eventually, my shyness was so full of personal guilt that I didn't even question in my mind why he was wearing only a white bath towel around his waist as he ushered me to his massage table in the adjoining room. Pop merely looked at me down there and grinned without saying a word.
When he tossed the robe aside what looked like a police truncheon between his burly thighs made me blink twice. I'd never before seen a man naked such as was my genteel upbringing but man oh man, his dick was trunk-like, bare as a new born badger and hovering at quarter mast. Suddenly I felt as though I had a boy's penis by comparison despite the fact with such a small body frame mine nonetheless looked pretty well endowed between my lesser developed thighs.
Seeing the size of his very masculine manhood had me unintentionally gawking at his mid quarters. For a few moments I couldn't take my eyes off it, and he noticed.
"Haven't you seen a man's cock before in the flesh up close and personal?" he joked. "Not really -- not...not...until now, I stuttered "Why did you strip off? I asked in a meek tone as if my subservience wasn't already obvious.
"Listen boy I'll tell you something," he mused. "I'm not showing you how good a shape I'm in for what you young whipper snappers call an old man, it's because bare skin to bare skin allows the electricity energy to flow better from the masseur. If I wear clothes it cuts off the transmission of energy and you don't feel the benefit as good. Okay?"