Surviving the Thunderdome - Exeter Classic 2019

Well that was a time.

If you've been following me since last season, I finally got my Cat 3 upgrade after my final race of the 2018 season at Lewiston, and have been jumping into a handful of races so far this year to get back into racing. I trained my way through a couple of ECCC races in Pennsylvania this April, raced at Scarborough a little bit, and my usual NHMS training races, but my "real" racing has been lacking.

Having placed 8th at the Cat 3 Nutmeg State Games Crit in June and crashing out of contention on the last lap of Longsjo on Sunday, I wasn't sure how lining up for my first P/1/2/3 race at Exeter was gonna go. I had a pre-race plan of maybe going for a couple of primes, but it became clear very early on that there was no way I was going to contest anything tonight.

Exeter is one of those races that most of New England cycling dreams about. It's one of only a handful (2) twilight criteriums left on the circuit, always brings out national-caliber racers, and pays quite well if you are lucky.

It's a very punchy circuit, with fast, tight corners and an uphill sprint at the end preceded by a windy descent littered with manhole covers. All packed into a lap that is less than a mile. Oof.

The race started off, well, pretty much like this:

In the first 45 seconds of the race we were already up over 27 miles per hour down the first straightaway, on what was the slowest lap of the race. I didn't get a great start, but quickly figured out that my place in this field was about 65-70 wheels deep. I found it pretty easy to wheel-surf that far back, and the accordion effect wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. The pack quickly settled into our race pace of 95-100 seconds a lap (28-29 mph) and my new goals were to just not get in the way and to not get dropped.

For the most part, my race was uneventful, hopping from wheel to wheel as riders were dropping off in front of me and clawing myself back up to the ever-shrinking peloton. It was a bizarre feeling being so far back in a bunch, though. I believe that this race was the largest field that I had ever started in, and usually for me, being "in the pack" is somewhere still in the top-25, and being more than 10 seconds behind the leaders usually meant that I was dropped and losing ground.

As mentioned earlier, my plan of trying to contest primes was quickly abandoned, and I let the big
guns handle things at the front.

As the laps ticked by (all 35 of them), I began feeling more and more comfortable taking some of the tighter corners in a group, figuring out braking and acceleration points that worked rather well, and trying to just hold on as well as I could from my position. Then, with 2 to go, this happened:

(Jump to 55:40, Paul Davis video)

That crash splintered the field enough for me to jump from the mid-50's into the low-30's with a lap and a half to go.

Coming into the second-to-last corner, some shenanigans happened in the lead bunch that caused another crash, sending a NE Devo rider over the curb just ahead of me, and from there anyone who wasn't still vying for the win had their fates sealed. The final split happened, and the rest of us had only to cross the line. 

My grupetto crossed the line 12 seconds behind the winner, and I was second to Tate in our "sprint" which was good enough for 23rd out of 92 starters. Afterwards, I felt surprisingly good about that finish. Usually I'm not super pleased with finishing outside of the top-10, but knowing the caliber of the race and how ridiculously hard it was, I'll take a top 25.



All photos from Katie Busick Photography

Going out with a bang: Concord and L-A Criteriums

After a season of ups and downs, my time going around in circles is coming to a close as I prepare to enter grad school in the coming weeks.

Last weekend, I capped my season early by racing my 'hometown' Concord Criterium, as well as the nearby Lewiston-Auburn Rotary Criterium. This is another tale of poor to mediocre preparation culminating in surprising results, so lets settle in.

A couple of weeks after Shoe City, I was given some pre-requisite classwork to complete prior to entering my graduate program, a two-year MBA at Clarkson University. The catch: I had until August 3rd to complete five classes worth of assignments, for which most of the syllabi said should take two weeks to complete if I put 3 hours a day into each class. By the time I received this work, I had 15 days to complete all of it. Needless to say, the saddle time took a back seat.

In the four weeks between Shoe City and Concord, I managed to squeeze in nine rides, not typically enough to sustain top performance. Adding to that minimal sleep thanks to trying to crank out school work, I was just killing it at this 'long term race prep' thing.

Rolling in to Concord, I had dropped out of the NHMS training race that Thursday because I felt like I was falling asleep during the race, so wasn't too sure about what was going to happen after a wet morning of volunteering pre-race.

My afternoon 3/4 field wasn't terribly stacked, a few strong riders but things played out mostly as expected. We got off to a good start, Staying together for the first handful of laps until Owen Wright took a flyer off the front and stayed away for a good chunk of the race. A few half-attempts to bring him back were quickly stopped by his teammates, until suddenly he was off the course looking for a helmet.

As it turns out, our breakaway guy had some helmet strap malfunctions and was DQ'd for not having a proper helmet (or something along those lines). Amateur/Pro-tip: If that ever happens to you in a race, yell to someone you know to find you a new helmet, go to the pit, get your new lid and a free lap before the officials yell at you.

Onwards with the rest of the race.

I managed to collect a couple of primes (two of the nearly twenty prizes up for grabs for our field!?), but started to feel it around the midpoint of the race, and started drifting towards the middle of the pack. Kramer saw that I was having a hard time focusing, and kept yelling to me when I drifted too far back or was making stupid moves.

I got the message, and got myself into the top-5 with a few laps to go, and then the rain hit.

Still a little wary of riding in a bunch post-crash, I eased back a little bit so that I could keep things upright for racing the following day. It seemed the rest of the field aside for Tate Kokubo had the same idea, so with roughly two laps to go, he went. And nobody chased.

Tate stayed away for the solo win, and I rolled across in 13th, wet and still looking for points.

The next morning in Lewiston, everything I owned was still wet: shoes, helmet, saddle, gloves. Luckily I had thrown the skinsuit in the wash/dry when I finally got home from Concord. The course was short, only 1k with a punchy climb right before the finish line.

It was a decent sized field for a 4/5 race in northern central Maine, a little over 30 racers, with a handful of power hitters like Donnie Seib, Tate, Mark Carpenter, and Adam York (basically the usual cast of characters from the front of any Cat 4 crit field this year).

We started the race pretty smoothly, trying to gauge the field a little bit, but quickly ramped up the speed to try and crack riders off the back. It worked, sorta.

With this race being run as a more low-key, local crit, the officials weren't too eager to pull dropped or lapped riders. Once we had created our selection, we still had to fight our way through traffic for a majority of the race.

Speaking of the selection: we ended up with a pack of ten riders, and we hammered this race. Mark and I went after every prime, and took home a few gift cards each. But other than when we were trying to kill each other for Dunkins, this may have been the smoothest Cat 4 (3.5) 'breakaway' I've been in. It's almost as if we all should've been in a higher category...

The laps quickly ticked down, and aside from the occasional car driving on course or guy-on-motorized-mountain-bike-riding-backwards-through-an-apex, things were pretty uneventful. We wound up for the sprint going up the final hill, but Mark and Cole Williams got a good, early jump that I couldn't cover in time, and rolled in among the lapped riders for third, just off of Cole's wheel.

With that result, I finally managed to get my Cat 3 upgrade, just in time to call it a season. After that race, I went home and started packing my things for grad school.

All photos from Concord by Connor Koehler, L-A courtesy.

Critting Around: Two4Two at GP Beverly

What. A freaking. Day.

After my alright results at Greenfield, I was really looking forward to a redemption shot at Gran Prix Beverly. I had won this race last year via a race-long breakaway, and after my breaks didn't stick at Greenfield, I was looking for more.

And it didn't come easy this time.

My race prep started two days before, trying to source a new shifter to replace my failing one. I went to every LBS in town and called a couple that I would/could drive to on race day to try and find something suitable but to no avail. Plans then turned to loaning a shifter from a teammate for the race, but travel delays made that unfeasible as well.

So here I was, hanging out in the pouring rain in Beverly, with a mostly-assembled bike, trying to put it together in the hours before the race. Splendid.

I managed to piece together a mostly-functioning bike (with the help of Look NRS) with just enough time for a one-lap warmup before taking to the line. Not the best start.

The race got off to a slow and mostly-cautious start, as the previous rain had made the corners a little slick, resulting in multiple crashes in the first few laps. I did my best to stay at/towards the front of the group in hopes to avoid them, but the first two took place DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME. Locking up the brakes (again) was not what I had in mind for 40 minutes. 

Unlike last year, I was unable to escape the field very much, only a couple of efforts that lasted for a lap or so before being reeled back in. My lack of warmup and the adverse pre-race situation was hitting me, and I was ever worried that my shifting would fail in some catastrophic way. Unable to really get into a tactical mindset, I had to resort to just drilling it (as usual) and hope for the best.

After a while, I realized that we had a break forming. No longer were we a pack of 40, but of 11. I could relax a little bit knowing that even being swallowed by the field would only push me back a handful of places instead of a dozen or more. I was finally able to let others do some of the work, jumping from wheel to wheel among the top-five to save some energy for the finish.

Going into the closing laps, I knew this race would be decided by a final sprint. I didn't have it in me to try and gap the pack from more than a lap out, and even if I tried, my move would be swiftly covered. I didn't try anything fancy or aggressive, just hanging out in second or third wheel for the last two laps. 

With one lap to go, the pack started to wind itself up, even in the chase group. Someone off the back went down into the final corner, causing our lead group to readjust our finish strategies. I was coming into the corner second, but the leader seemed to think that the race would be neutralized, and sat up. I wasn't taking that chance, and gradually ramped up my speed to edge by him down the last straight. No neutralization. With less than 100m to go I actually started my sprint.

(Minuteman guy with his hand up is the guy who sat up)

I had done it. Not only had I finally won a race in a bunch sprint, but I had won Gran Prix of Beverly two years in a row. On a bike with broken shifting. It honestly wasnt until I came out of the last corner that I thought I had a decent chance based on everything that has transpired before the start, but good lord was it an amazing feeling afterwards.