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.














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.