Myles Standish Road Race - Cat 3 - 4/19/2009
David Chiu 2nd
Mike Rowell 8th
Scott Brooks 15th
Oscar Jiminez 16th
Plymouth, MA – I had purposely decided to skip Marblehead and Battenkill and make Myles Standish my opening race of the year, something lower key with a pure Category 3 field. This year we were graced with having the course moved from the disasterous pavement around College Pond to nicer pavement of Charge Pond, the same circuit they use in the spring for the Charge Pond Training Series. This change removed the hill from the race but introduced a fast downhill 110degree left hand turn, also a lot more people would be familiar with the course having raced it every weekend all pre-season; it’s a 1.2mi, one(1) corner circuit that rolls a bit. I made it out for one of the Charge Pond races to check it out and could not figure out that one corner, the one time I took it solo at the front of the race at full speed I ended up right up against the grass. Luckily this time, the day before was the NEBC Spring Racing Clinic where we were working on Cornering skills, and one of the practice corners we did mimiced this corner perfectly.
The field was small, we had 4, but we were second in representation to the CL Noonan Juniors at 6 in number. My plan for the day was to get a strong break going (even in this extremely short race), and hopefully have that break contain more than one NEBCer, becuase with a small field, strong headwind on the back side, and not many teams, I felt that a small motivated break could stay away if it went at the right moment (after people tired out a bit and got the chase out of their legs). The start was typical, with riders attacking form the gun and everyone jumping on everything. About 5 laps in, Kyle Smith (Cambridge Bicycle Racing) and Colin Houston (CL Noonan/KAM/Coast to Coast) went up the road and hovered with a small gap and there was a seemingly lackluster chase. The same guys who had been jumping on every move in the race seemed to have gotten the chase out of their legs. I got behind Mike Rowell as Mike gave a mighty pull and a flick of the elbow, so I pulled through and started to close down the gap. Not wanting to do all the work, I looked back for the next person to pull through and found a Gap instead. With the other 3 NEBCers at the front doing the signature slow-the-field-down-to-a-crawl-while-a-team-mate-is-off-the-front move. I soft pedaled for a quarter lap waiting to get caught, but the gap stayed, so I figure this was as good a time as any and was around when I had wanted to make a move anyway, I motored up to the break, timing my catch on the tail-wind section and latching on.
Once in the break, Kyle, Colin, and I worked well together cooperating to keep this thing going. A few laps later, I looked back and noticed we had a 4th rider, Tom Middleton (MBRC), with us, and the field was suddenly in view again. Fearing that this was the beginning of the catch I sat up a bit and skipped a pull or two in anticipation of a catch and counter attack to go with. But that never came, after a lap of the four of us, the field was out of sight again and it was game on. The four of us worked well together, eventually Kyle faded and dropped out of the break, and it was down to just Colin, Tom, and Myself.
Due to the placement of the finish line from the one 110 degree corner, the top 3 exiting the corner were going to be the top 3 finishing the race, with that in mind, I slotted myself into 2nd position going into the turn, the idea was to sling shot myself around the leader coming out the corner and go with the tailwind all the way to the finish. Well, it didn’t work out that way; Colin led through the corner and exited and began his sprint while I was still mid-corner, instantly gapping me, I followed suit instantly gapping Tom, and that’s exactly how we finished. The race was over entering that last corner.
Back in the field, Scott, Mike, and Oscar did a phenominal job to make sure anyone who wanted to chase, wore themselves out, and nothing got too organized to pull us back. There was some confusion with the lap cards, Scott played the right move with a monster attack in the “last lap” to get in to no-man’s land to try to grab the remaining money-spots and unfortunately won “1 to go” rather than the field sprint.
Effective blocking is not easy and is much more than just lining up your riders across the road so no one can pass. While in the break I was able to concentrate on keeping the tempo up rather than worry about what was going on back in the field as I knew Scott, Oscar, and Mike had a good handle on things. The break certainly would not have lasted without their help!