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.

You win some, you lose some... Shoe City Pro Circuit

Well that was a bust. 

Practically a mirror image from GP Beverly. Great weather, a working bike, and a really good warmup had me feeling super confident going into the first bike race that Haverhill, MA has hosted in nearly 20 years, the 4/5 race at the inaugural Shoe City Pro Circuit. It was a course that suited me, lightly technical with just enough elevation to make a difference, in a field that I knew I stood a chance against. I was going to finally get those upgrade points. Things just didn't go my way when it mattered. 

I got to Haverhill my usual 2+ hours before the race, well before registration opened. No repairs to do this time, just my habit from years of skiing and running. I rolled from my parking area down to the course, still in the midst of setup and hung out and laughed with the organizers in the registration building, watching the barriers unfold throughout downtown. 

Taking my time, I spun around the course easy a couple of times just as a quick note, relaying anything I thought should be seen to the organizers, and went back to the car to kit up for warmup, just a jersey and bibs kind of day. Warm, dry, perfect.

Things went smoothly through warmup, chatting with teammates and competitors about how things post-Beverly have been, excited to be the ones to christen this race. 

As the pre-race clock ticked town, I finally took the time to roll up and change into my skinsuit, which had been sitting in my cooler of ice and water all morning: little bit of a cooldown before the race starts always feels good.

I did my final course preview laps and hung out by the line, waiting for the final call to staging. Kramer was on the mic, heckling me for hanging on the barrier, and I was taking it all in. It was a good day, I was going to do well. 

The race got off to a neutral start, something we haven't seen much this year. Chilling in the pack for the first lap, we immediately got a prime bell as the pace car pulled off the course.

I forget what this prime was for, either $20 cash or a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. Either way I went for it, it's what I do. Took it, sat up for a little, let the pack latch on. I wasn't about to spend 40 minutes off the front again, I was feeling frisky and wanted to play, so I let Adam York set the pace.

Laps ticked by fast, and lap 3 was one of the the fastest laps of the day in all fields. We kept the pace rolling strong through 25 minutes, launching some efforts with Tate and gunning for primes. I took home the other one of the aforementioned primes during this time, and sat back while my teammate Erik controlled the pack, covering breaks and ramping up the speeds if things got a little sketchy. Things were going better than I could've expected.

Coming into the final laps of the race, we had one of the more valuable primes: $175 to Haverhill Crossfit. For some reason I ended up at the head of the race early in this lap, a place I did not want to be for a prime. But for another reason, nobody seemed to go for it. Was it because I didn't react? Did people not know we were supposed to be sprinting? I put in a dozen hard pedal strokes to jump for the line and as far as I know nobody else reacted to it and I took it home. 

Here's where things took a turn. That prime was with four laps to go. With three laps I had settled back into the top handful of wheels, and was sitting second going into the third corner of the course. I saw first wheel hop his rear tire, probably a pedal strike, and start to go down. Coming in less than a foot from him at 25mph, I couldn't react and followed him to the ground. Neither could third, fourth, or fifth through seventh. All but one of the pre-race favorites hit the deck with less than 3k to go in the race, our days were done. 

I ended up off the course, with my bike stuck in a haybale that was used to pad a telephone pole. 

My bars were sideways, pointed skywards, and I was missing a chunk of bar tape. Looking down I could see blood on my elbow. I knew I couldn't finish solely based on the state of the bars, so I made the clunky walk with the other crash victims back to the start to seek medical.

En route, I realized that I had hit the haybale hard enough to snap my saddle nearly in half. Afterwards, before I tried to ride back to my car, I discovered that my left chainstay had snapped as well.

In talking with medical, I found that I had road rash on top of my shoulder as well as on my hip to go along with my bloody elbow. I saw Adam, who sparked the chain reaction crash, with bandages all down his leg from road rash.

I wasn't mad, just dissappointed. I was so looking forward to finally being able to get my Cat 3 upgrade, which I only needed a third place finish for. It was a great race up until my final seconds, and I still think it was one of my favorite bike races of all time so far. Road rash heals, carbon may not, but the time bookending the crash was amazing. I will be back, with a bone to pick with turn-3.

After the race, beers were had with the rest of the Sunapee Team, who had a stellar performance in the Elite Women's race, and I started piecing together what my next move would be to replace my wounded steed. Within hours of my crash, offers were coming my way from all parts of New England cycling with parts and leads as to where I could get repairs done or find a replacement frame and wheels for the remainder of the season.

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.