Home Course Advantage - 2019 Concord Crit

Well hot damn, that was a good one.

There is so much to say about how this race went, and I'm not sure I'll even hit it all here.


I'll lead off with paraphrasing what I said in an instagram post earlier this week. This season hasn't gone quite how I had hoped it would. With a limited race calendar and lackluster training, paired with planning for life in Northern NY, my head hasn't totally been there in races. Saturday was different. It was my last race day of the 2019 calendar, on my home course, where I got my very first criterium win back in 2016.


I lined up for the Cat 3/4 race in my older Sunapee Racing kit, intending on using this race as a hard warmup for the 1/2/3 race later in the day, and maybe to pad mine and my teammates pockets by going prime hunting. Going in, I didn't really have a plan for how the race should play out. Kramer did, Alec and Sean played along with Kramer, but I didn't. My plan was to play it by ear, knowing that the way I had come in to the race I could either go for primes or podium, but not both.


Well, early on I decided that I wanted to make sure we got some money out of our race. The first prime was early enough that I felt confident that I could go, collect the prime, and have enough time to recover for the finish as long as I didn't get caught up in a breakaway.





Well I got the prime without any contest, but nobody was bringing me back.


I didn't want to be in a breakaway this early, and certainly was not looking to stay away solo for too long this early. I dialed back my effort, putting on a show sitting up to stretch and drink, hoping to bait someone into chasing me down, but the pack was content with letting me dangle. 

Suns out, tongue's out?

So I dialed back my effort, settling in to a comfortable pace, and chilled out until the pack caught up to me two-and-a-half laps later.

 From here, my idea was to just pack-surf near the front until the closing laps and go for a bunch sprint, confident that Kramer and Alec could bring any attacks back. And for the most part, this plan worked. The race was pretty uneventful from then on.







Until right about here.




Derin, the Minuteman rider in the pink socks, launched an attack out of that corner with ~6 laps to go to collect the final prime. Like with me earlier, we were fine with letting him dangle for a couple of laps thinking that even a disorganized 3/4 field winding up for a sprint could bring back a lone rider. 



We were wrong. 




I launched a counter-attack to try and bring Derin back with 3 to go, and was quickly joined by a couple of my northern VT racing buddies Zach and Pat. Pat took a couple of deep pulls with his diesel engine before popping with a lap-and-a-half to go, and Zach and I traded off pulls until he dropped going up the climb to the roundabout on the final lap. By this point, we had put about 8 seconds into the field, and had clawed our way to within two seconds of the leader.





I managed to come over the top of Derin at the height of the course on the final lap, and dug deep to put a gap between us going into the chicane. 


I opened up a sprint going into the final corner just for insurance, and with ~150m to go, I knew that I had it locked. 


Taking home the win at my team's home race, with teammates in the field, on course, and in the announcing booth, in such a decisive fashion, was more than I could've imagined capping off my 2019 season. Hearing from the team at the post-race BBQ, the closing laps were some of the most exciting racing they've seen, and to have the flames atop the podium was icing on the cake. (I also lined up for the 1/2/3 race, but lasted 42 minutes before I realized I didn't want to be lapped a second time)


 As with last year, I am on my way back to Clarkson University, but this time in a *slightly* new role. In July, I was promoted to Interim Head Cross Country and Nordic Ski Coach, and will be taking charge of the teams starting in a couple of weeks when preseason begins!


Critting around - Greenfieldx2

As Crit Week descended upon New England, many a racer put aside their regularly scheduled life to commit the better part of the last nine days to race around the northeast (read: Massachusetts and briefly New Hampshire).

I, on the other hand, work in the tourism industry and was unable to afford the luxury of melting this weekend at Longsjo, but I did get soaked at Gran Prix Beverly and the Greenfield Criterium earlier in the week instead.



My Crit Half-Week started last Sunday at 3:30am, when my wake-up call for Greenfield came.

After my three hour drive, during which I saw seven deer, five raccoons, a dead possum, and a couple of squirrels, I arrived at the race. Two-and-a-half hours early. Ski racing for years put me into the mindset that you have to (plan to) show up multiple hours before your start for race prep, ski and wax testing, and a proper warmup. In cycling, that just equals a lot of standing and sitting around.

Eventually, it was time for my first race of the day. Oh yes, I was doubling up races today. First up was the Cat 3/4, which proved to be quite the stem-chewer. Granted, I was the cause of that chewing, but I digress.

The race started off, well, fast. After only a couple of laps, I found myself off the front with a rider from NCC. We were pushing the pace, but working together really well to try and stay away, arguably better than I've worked with my own training partners sometimes. For nearly thirty laps we yo-yoed off the front, collecting primes along the way while eluding the field. At our peak we had just over ten seconds on the field over the 1/2 mile course.


But alas, all things must come to an end, and with ~5 laps to go, we were reeled in for good. We knew it was coming, and with a rolling handshake, we were absorbed by the peloton. At this point, it was every man for themselves.

Coming into one to go, the bunch was running fast, and it got the better of someone who had a mechanical going through turn-2 on the last lap, backing up everyone behind them. I was one of those unlucky few, and had to lock up my brakes and start from a near-standstill with a quarter mile left to race.

That little mishap wasn't the greatest for my sprint position, but I managed to recover enough spots going through turns three and four to be able to sprint for eighth place.

Now the waiting happens. I had a little over two hours between the end of my 3/4 race and the start of the 4/5 race, and no idea what to do. Sit and wait? Eat lunch? Ride around? A little of each? Well time got away from me and number four was the answer. I had a quick couple of bites of my bacon and peanut-butter bagel, shook out the legs for a couple of laps before the start, and took my place in the field.
This time we tried to take things a little slower to start, with Donnie Seib and I trading off singing bars of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" for the first couple of laps. But soon enough, the pack got tired of our singing, and found that the only way to shut us up was to pick up the pace.



This race, rather than trying to go off the front to safety, I tried my best to stick in the front of the pack and work off of others instead of drilling it myself, and for the most part, my plan worked. I sat in the top-ten for most of the race, trading pulls and throwing myself out to pull back wannabe breakaways.


In time, I decided I wanted some swag, so my race plan turned to prime hunting. The organizers put a ton of merch on the line for each prime, and with each field having (at least) four primes, some fun was to be had. Gift cards, $80 pens, waffles, socks, mugs, I managed to win 5/8 primes between my two races, and three in the 4/5 race.

By doing so, though, I did not put myself in a good place to contest any sort of final sprint. I had been attacking for primes all race, and going into two-to-go I was still sitting towards the front of the pack as everyone was winding up behind me. Long story short, I got swamped from behind and had to settle sprinting for eighth. Again.

And that was day 1.

Torin Tries Cyclocross

Well, I apologize for not putting up a post-GMSR blog. I was still trying to figure out if I had died or not. For those interested, here is the recap I sent out to my team after the ordeal.


After GMSR, I hung up the slick tires and tried this weird event called Cyclocross, which involves throwing skinny mountain bike tires on a road bike and riding it places you probably shouldn't.

It's amazing.


My first four races came in late September/early October at Deer Farm and King Pine CX, venues which are roughly a half hour and half-mile from my house respectively.

I entered the Cat 3/4 and 4/5 races at each event, and by some miracle placed top-ten in each. (DF: 5th 4/5, 9th 3/4. KP 2nd 4/5, 7th 3/4)

The courses were tough in each their own way. Deer Farm was a much more technical, sprinty course than King Pine, which featured a monster climb 3/4 of the way through the lap, followed by a descent with a mini-headwall before the finish.

I won beer for my podium placing.

Fast forward to Hallowweekend, and I made the trek down to Hampton Falls for Orchard Cross, a day that started at 4:30 in the morning. Arriving at the venue before sunrise is something I haven't done since my Eastern Cup racing years, but at least it was warm this time. My race was the first of the day, and the dew hadn't quite lifted by the time we were on course. Early corners were slick, and sprinting 4-wide into them saw some (including myself) go down in the first couple laps. At least we figured it out by the pump-track.

Regardless, I found my pack with my teammate Ben and we held a good pace for(read: heckled) each other for the first three laps, sitting just in sight of the lead pack of 5.
After a little bit, I made my move heading up the straightaway and entered no-man's-land for almost a lap before branching up.

At this point, CX races become a contest of who can make it the longest without something breaking or crashing. In this case, over the last two laps, the group of 5 dropped to just 2 between two crashes and a puncture.

For the final half-lap, I hung on to the leader's wheel, and didn't try anything until I saw him fumble while remounting his bike after a set of barriers. I tried sprinting past him on the outside lane of the course (which at this point was between rows of berry bushes), but he headed me off in the last corner, taking the lead into the finish straight.

After eight years of racing, you learn to always take it to the line.

I haven't sprinted this hard since I duked it out my junior year against my teammate in Cross Country, and felt like I was going to die afterward. Looking at the finish line photo, the leader started posting up just before the line, and I was able to come around him and take the win by less than a bike length.