Home to Indiana University’s main campus of 45,000 students, you might recognize Bloomington from the Academy Award–winning cult classic Breaking Away, which features a reenactment of IU’s weird and wonderful Little 500 bicycle race — if you know anything about the Indy 500, imagine the exact same scene, except swap the race cars for 33 teams of four college students who each swap and ride the same singlespeed bicycle around a quarter-mile cinder track for a total of 200 laps. The Little 500 began as a men’s only race in 1951 and allowed women to race in 1988, who race 100 laps instead of 200.

I didn’t know much about the Little 500 before traveling to Bloomington, and I have now achieved maximum fangirl status. Somehow I was given a media pass and was allowed to shoot photos as racers whizzed in circles around me all day. The Breaking Away fan in me was truly elated to watch Cutters cross the finish line first for the 2023 men’s race, tears welled in my eyes as I watched a stadium of sorority girls cheer for their singlespeed bike racer sisters, and I even had a drink with the members of Willkie Sprint, the team that won the first-ever Little 500 women’s race.