Cox Criterium 6/25 Providence, RI, Gary Douville
Cox Critierium 6/25 Providence, RI: Cat 3/4, 23 laps, 23 miles, 98 starters, 44 finishers!
Gary Douville – 3rd
Adam Branfman – 6th
Scott Brooks, Roy Van Cleef, David Chiu, Anythony Laskaris, Julian Gent, Oscar Jimenez
What a race. Conditions: wet and rainy with rain ranging from moderate to very heavy. Course: a one mile lap with 5 laps, a few “S” turns, a downhill and a decent uphill leading to a mild downhill on the finishing straight. Personally I felt pretty good going into the race. I had fresh legs after a 5 day business trip in California followed by an easy 2 hour ride on Saturday. The race was tough for me for the first bunch of laps as I started near the back and had to work my way to get towards the front. I found that I could pass 5-10 guys easily each lap on the uphill towards the finish line which helped build some confidence. I don’t recall all of the primes but an early one was won by Roy Van Cleef followed by Scott Brooks and they seemed to just run away with it. There seemed to be a good number of primes and I intended to contest one about half way into the race to test the legs and see what I had up the hill. Roy is always aggressive out there which is great and he set the pace for a mid race prime and I decided that I was going to put in the effort. He was in the lead going down towards the final corner and a few guys passed him and I jumped on his wheel which had me in about 4th or 5th going into the last corner. I jumped out of the corner and took the prime with Roy following me for second. It was great to see NEBC taking primes and riding towards the front. Several laps later with 5 laps to go I was about 30 riders back and there was a crash with ~5 (or more?) guys in the last corner. I was only a few wheels behind the crash and ended up grabbing two handfulls of brakes and used the plastic “jersey barriers” as a berm moto-cross style. I slammed into the barrier and the bike jumped up and I unclipped but stayed on the saddle. I scooted around the carnage and headed up the climb towards the main pack. My heart rate had quadrupled due to the near miss and I was worried about getting back in the pack as we were split into several groups at this point. I was able to put my head down and pulled my way back to the pack in a little less than a lap. I then gradually worked my way to the front with a plan to work the climb each lap and get in the top 5 for the last lap. With 2 to go, we had Dave and Scott working nicely setting the pace. Roy worked his way to the front and put a little gap on the field which prompted an increase of pace. I then jumped on Scott’s wheel and we were about 10 wheels back. I wanted to be a little further up but we stayed about 10 or 15 wheels back. I went around Scott after the downhill and tried to get further up but only got to about 12 wheels back which is about where I was going into the last corner. I attacked up the hill and passed my way through to 6th by the top of the hill and then made up 3 additional places by the finish. I felt great and was happy with the result. Overall, NEBC placed well in the primes and had 2 in the top 10 in a tough race. As usual, we had guys towards the front most of the race and I think it was particularly important in this race to be towards the front due to the technical conditions and technical course.
Thanks for the support. Let’s do Fitchburg!
Gary