Fall River Crit, Gary Douville, 7-16
Cat 3 Race, 1:45PM, HOT 90 degrees, ~30 racers:
Scott Brooks, Scott Cole, Roy Van Cleef, Gary Douville
The course was 1 mile, 4 corners. There is a downhill start to a right hander to another downhill to a fast turn to a long straightaway into a turn up a decent hill into the last corner followed by a short false flat into a short downhill finish. Lots of room throughout the entire course, no bottlenecks.
For the first weekend in a while, this was my only race of the weekend. I was on a camping trip in RI for the weekend so didn’t do Claremont and was reasonably fresh for the day after a moderate 40 mile ride yesterday. I was hoping to do well after several hard weekends of racing and riding.
Our team stategy was to let no breaks go OR get into a winning break. I was feeling very good from the beginning and was comfortable chasing down attacks which I did with the support of both Scotts and Roy who also worked to keep the group under control (there were serious or half hearted attacks about every two laps with the intensity picking up in the second half of the race). Both Scott Brooks and Roy succeeded in getting away solo for several laps each resulting in Scott winning a prime and Roy coming in for a close second for another. Scott Cole won two primes early on and I won one. Of 5 primes, NEBC took 4.
On the climb leading into 3 laps to go an ECV rider attacked with one other guy and created a little gap. I decided to go and it took me about 1/2 a lap to bridge. At this point, NEBC did a stellar job shutting down the peloton and I was surprised to look back and see a huge gap formed with 2 laps to go. I was sure that the peloton would attack and close the gap, but the blocking by NEBC succeeded and perhaps heat was a deterrent, but it worked. I asked the other two in the break to dig deep so that we would stay away and we shared the work for the remainder of the race taking short pulls. About half way up the climb, I was sitting second wheel and dropped into the drops and attacked hard holding it to the line for first. The peloton came around with NEBC in 7th, 8th and 9th.
I want to thank the team for the discipline in chasing down breakaway attempts and doing an unbelievable job in shutting down the chase enabling me to take the win. Great job guys. Thanks Roy for coming out to play in the heat for a great post race ride before my 5 day business trip takes me off the bike for the week.
Gary Douville